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Comedy Theory (2022)

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Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#71

Post by isotropy »

everdrive wrote: post #7

I've yet to see a theory of comedy which actually addresses that there are multiple kinds of comedy: - Bullying, where the joke is not particularly funny, but instead relies on attacking someone's status in front of a crowd. The crowd laughs in recognition of the successful attack, not because the joke is clever. - Epiphany humor -- the joke relies on some new thought, connection, or idea, and the "joke" is the leap…

Tone-of-voice example (not mine): "It. Just. Works." vs "It juuuuust works."

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#72

Post by patcon »

sweezyjeezy wrote: post #26
jimmaswell wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One gift of my flavor of ADHD - the instant branching to a multitude of interpretations of some series of inputs and multiple degrees of related ideas - is always being primed to make stupid jokes where I intentionally misinterpret or make you misinterpret something obvious. Like the other day my friend read "shrimp cargot" off a menu. I said "They taught a shrimp how to drive??" The other friend present thought it w…

Yeah I can relate! I've also heard Conan O'Brien say this before, he thinks that a big source of his comedy is just his brain outright not understanding things correctly.

YES. This is how I explain my brain. It doesn't understand correctly, and so it gets really great at exploring and making legible all the hidden dimensions and edges of thought. And from there, creativity is just taking those discovered dimensions and applying rote transformations: inversions or attenuations or extrapolations to absurd extremes ;)

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#73

Post by mewpmewp2 »

wholinator2 wrote: post #70
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By default you don't have to have any such emotional reaction to absurdity. You could just analyze the situation and take action accordingly.

The point is exactly that you _can't_ just analyze every single situation that ever happens and then know what to do. That there's a huge amount of life experience for which there is no analytical solution. So you can't "just analyze" every single thing. What do you do then? Dispair? Or laugh. The ancients eventually came up with the whole God thing to explain all confusion away but i have a feeling that happened aft…

So laugh = communication tool to indicate to others that a weird thing happened, but we think it's harmless, so we don't have to react?

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#75

Post by scandox »

OisinMoran wrote: post #51

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” The equating of jokes and comedy here is an affront for anyone who has explored different avenues of comedy in any way. The analysis is fine and even interesting for (as others have pointed out) one specific type of joke but just flippantly calling that all of comedy is very jarring as it is obviously wrong. I just completed…

Heard Adrian Edmondson on Desert Island Discs and one of the interesting things he said about comedy was that there were a limited number of jokes all of which he believed are contained in the recorded works of Laurel and Hardy and that he would be able to enumerate and show all of them from those works.

He also said he was tired of comedy as he knew all of the jokes. Later he sort of contradicted himself by saying that Waiting For Godot is a very funny play and that he felt he had not yet understood it all.

So that's kind of an interesting counterpoint...he does essentially conflate comedy and jokes.

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#76

Post by tetris11 »

clucas wrote: post #58
OisinMoran wrote: post #51

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” The equating of jokes and comedy here is an affront for anyone who has explored different avenues of comedy in any way. The analysis is fine and even interesting for (as others have pointed out) one specific type of joke but just flippantly calling that all of comedy is very jarring as it is obviously wrong. I just completed…

Yes, the article mistakes punchlines for comedy. Watch some of Norm MacDonald's stuff on Conan (troubled moth, Jacques de Gatineaux, drunk dart thrower, Andy the Swedish-German)... sure, the punchlines fit the model in the article, but the real humor comes from his delivery and the weird worlds he creates leading up to the punchlines.

Same with Phil Hartman and Matt Berry, they can make the most boring lines instantly funny through sheer power of charisma and vocal inflections.

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#77

Post by the_af »

OisinMoran wrote: post #51

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” The equating of jokes and comedy here is an affront for anyone who has explored different avenues of comedy in any way. The analysis is fine and even interesting for (as others have pointed out) one specific type of joke but just flippantly calling that all of comedy is very jarring as it is obviously wrong. I just completed…

Related to what you're saying, there's a whole essay by Mark Twain where he explains the difference between comedy (and comedic storytelling) and simply "telling a joke". He didn't think much of the "punchline" type of jokes, he was all about the storytelling... as you can tell by "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" and his many other stories.

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#78

Post by theultdev »

cheschire wrote: post #12
everdrive wrote: post #7

I've yet to see a theory of comedy which actually addresses that there are multiple kinds of comedy: - Bullying, where the joke is not particularly funny, but instead relies on attacking someone's status in front of a crowd. The crowd laughs in recognition of the successful attack, not because the joke is clever. - Epiphany humor -- the joke relies on some new thought, connection, or idea, and the "joke" is the leap…

The most comprehensive theory I have seen is that laughter, and therefore humor, is primarily a fear response. It starts as an infant when you laugh by having your surface nerves rapidly engaged through tickling. Even peakaboo is a fear game due to the child’s lack of object permanence. When you examine all funny things through the lens of fear, it becomes an interesting logic exercise to draw a connection between th…

It's common knowledge (or used to be) that humor is a healthy coping mechanism for fear and dark/uncomfortable situations.

In other words; comical relief.

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#79

Post by TheBruceHimself »

everdrive wrote: post #7

I've yet to see a theory of comedy which actually addresses that there are multiple kinds of comedy: - Bullying, where the joke is not particularly funny, but instead relies on attacking someone's status in front of a crowd. The crowd laughs in recognition of the successful attack, not because the joke is clever. - Epiphany humor -- the joke relies on some new thought, connection, or idea, and the "joke" is the leap…

I agree but i'd go even fruther and say the categories of comedy seem so damned plentify that almost any theory, or even set of theories, fails to capture all cases. Some people say it's about a twist in what one would expect, but in which case why is something happening repeatedly sometimes more funny, even when it begins to annoy you? And why is the buildup to an obvious punchline somehow funny (say a character you just know will fall off a ladder but waiting for it somehow is funny in and of itself). If it's about making witty connections then why is it genuinely just funny if someone shits themselves in a serious moment or just has a weird accent. Why are impressions funny? I laugh because part of me is saying "oh yeah, George Bush does squint his eyes like that a lot". it's funny to see... but why? Then you have anti-comedy: why is being unfunny funny? People say comedy comes from others pain: like cringe comedy or slapstick but there's times where someone really enjoying something obsessively is funny.

Also, if there are any universal theory then how come my grandad just doesn't understand why comedy i like is funny and vice-versa? It's not that i don't get "his comedy". It's just I find it hard to believe anyone would ever really laugh at it like mine. Then there's jokes from acient times that you wouldn't even think of as jokes now, but we know people laughted. If there is a universal theory of comedy i suspect it would be flexible to the point of being usless as it'd covers almost all human activity.

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#80

Post by lee-rhapsody »

namaria wrote: post #24
082349872349872 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some activities are highly theoretical: you learn the principles of operation, and maybe how they break down into elements, practice briefly, and then execute at a high level. Other activities are highly practical: you can learn the theory via a brief rundown, but executing at a high level takes years to decades of practice. My theory of theory of humour is that humour is in the latter category.

Most likely humor is just not one thing but many and seeking a unifying theory about something that isn't a unity won't yield anything.

This is the most useful comment in the whole thread.
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