Also, what makes a joke funny?
“True wit is nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.”
Alexander Pope
The juxtaposition of two normally disassociated thoughts.
(My thoughts. At least now we have something to debate.)
For me to find a joke funny, there has to be an unexpected element involved. This is probably why the ‘Knock Knock’ variety of jokes seem to be funny to children, but not to adults, who know what answer to expect.
YMMV
Which is why I find this funny.
"Two ducks are sitting in a bath, one sais to the other, “Can you pass me the soap?” and the other one sais, “What do I look like, a toaster?”
I agree. I usually phrased humor as being our way of dismissing something unusual, and jokes as unusual situations created for our amusement.
Thanks.
One canibal says to another while eating a clown, “Does this taste funny to you?”
I don’t have the first idea myself, but for the purposes of stimulating a better debate let me rephrase the OP to:
What is the sense of humour, and how is it stimulated?
Two tomatoes are sitting in a fridge
Tomato1: “Damn its cold in here”
Tomato2: “AAAAAHHHH Holy shit!!! :eek: A talking tomato”
I recall seeing a show called “Baby Watching”, narrated by Desmond Morris. In it, he noted that a baby first laughs when its mother does something that, if it were done by anybody else, would be scary. However, this is mommy, so it’s “safe”. It’s scary but safe, two concepts that, up till now the child did not anticipate could go together. This kind of fits in with the “unexpected” element that most humor requires.
Even slapstick must be exaggerated, or it isn’t funny. I’ve always thought that verbal (and written) humor relies on engaging the person being told the joke in a train of thought which, at the punchline, is derailed, but in a logical, if unexpected direction. Of course, given the duck/toaster joke above, perhaps this does not necessarily apply to everyone.
Example:Two cannibals are sitting down to dinner.
One of them heaves a big sigh.
The other asks “What’s wrong?”
The first says “Oh, I just can’t stand my mother-in-law.”
The second one says “So? Then just eat the vegetables.”
[Note – this was probably a lot funnier when mother-in-law jokes were in vogue. I have enclosed the deconstruction in a spoiler box for those who insist that explaining a joke makes it less funny.]
Except that the speakers are cannibals, the conversation up to the punch line is not unusual for people familiar with western cultures. This misdirects the listener’s thoughts away from the fact that he was just told that these are two cannibals having dinner. The punch-line is also a common saying we are used to hearing (at least in the english-speaking world), but definitely not in the context of the set-up. There is a momentary disconnect between the two phrases until you recall that the speakers are cannibals. Then the punchline makes sense, and you laugh (or chuckle, or tell the person who told you the joke it was in poor taste).
–SSgtBaloo
It is not just that “the element”, aka punchline, is unexpected, but that it forces a reorientation to all of the previous material (the set up) … that it fits the set up at least as well as how we had been interpreting it, maybe better.
We are forced to reinterpret the meaning of what we had been perceiving as one thing in light of the new information (the punchline) and recognize that there is a different way of seeing it. A higher order figure ground reversal (you know when it switches from two faces to a vase and back).
A sense of humor is that ability to parallel process in the background and to let those streams surface if they a find an unexpectedly good fit, and to turn the anxiety that such a surprise produces into laughter rather than upset.
A related example: A missionary sojourning in darkest Africa is captured by a local tribe. Next thing he knows, he’s tied up and plunked in a big iron cauldron of water. He’s sure he’s done for, but then he sees one of the tribesmen – fatter and better ornamented than the rest, obviously the chief – kneeling by the pot, head bowed and hands clapses. Seeing a ray of hope, he asks: “Pardon me, brother, but are you, by chance, a Christian?” The chief looks up and snaps, “I certainly am! And please don’t interrupt me while I’m saying grace!”
From George Orwell’s essay, “The Art of Donald McGill,”* published in Horizon, September 1941:
*This was an essay on comical cartoon postcards that at the time were offered for sale in some British newsstands. I’ve never seen one of these postcards, but, based on Orwell’s vivid descriptions, they were very similar in tone to the humor of The Benny Hill Show, except that Benny Hill touched on subjects McGill never would, such as adultery and homosexuality.
I think the thing that makes some jokes funny is similar to the thing that makes a good story; the audience is led along a familiar and comfortable train of thought, then, some aspect of an element is revealed that causes them to look around and discover that not only are they suddenly in an unfamiliar place, but that the familiarity and comfort on the journey to this place was actually a delusion.
I suppose this could be called a plot twist, but not all plot twists are this good - some of them just consist of surprising people a new and unexpected element that they could not possibly have anticipated and that wasn’t even hinted at, but a good one would be one of those things that is blindingly obvious in retrospect because it had been built up all along.
(From memory as I can’t find the script online).
In a ‘joke masterclass’ sketch by Fry and Laurie, a joke is defined as:
"1. Logic gone awry.
2. A blurring or slipping of moral categories.
“On your balls, Hugh, beckon the audience… and tongue the joke in.”
- “I won’t say it was a small town… but the speed limit signs were back to back!”
Er… Hmmm… I believe that should be “city limits signs”. (JMO).
From here:
I’m none the wiser for reading any of that…
IMHO something can be totally expected and still be funny, consider slapstick for example. You see the manhole, the guy reading the paper, but its still funny. Why? Who knows?
A lot of jokes I think, are concerned with expressing truth in an absurd way as in jjimm’s example: “I won’t say it was a small town… but the speed limit signs were back to back!”.
There you have the truth, and the absurdity that points to the truth.
But IMHO, there are many different types of joke, things that can make us laugh, but they don’t seem to have any common element at all.
Q. What do you call a hooker with no eyes?
A. Blind date.
DaLovin’ Dj
Nope, it’s definitely speed limit signs in the original sketch. We don’t call towns ‘cities’ in England. And they tend to have speed limit signs on the entrance and exit to the town. It’s an utterly shit joke too, though, so improving it would be gilding the turd, rather.