That is not funny!
Today we are going to laugh at not laughing, or not laugh at those that laugh.
‘Analyzing humour is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested, and the frog dies of it.’ — Katharine and E.B. White
To Serve Man
First, here is a bit of humour. Perhaps we should say a bite of humour.
But like much of all great humour, it’s a framing of the truth; well presented. (this is how I view it). I present this first skit to remind all y’all to be careful when/why/where/how to get angry.
‘Humour is a framing of the truth; well presented.’
Please enjoy each video before proceeding.
YouTube - Key & Peele - Texting
This is an ingeniously written and edited skit, about… c̴̲̕o̵͓̎m̴̜͂m̵̖̕u̵̪̎n̸̹̈́i̴̱̔c̵̽͜ä̵̢́t̴̹̔ȉ̴͜o̷͉̕n̷̪̆. But it is also about assumptions, and intentions. How much can be solved in life if we trust others to simply have good intentions? How much of business, and especially early contact between possible future romantic interests, is about these core issues?
But humour is both a solo-sport., and a team sport. However, those that don’t find something funny seem to demand (and assume) it to be a team sport.
‘Communication is worthless until we agree on intentions.’
Then again…
‘The road to hell is always freshly paved.’
If( you==me ) { you=good } else { you=evil }
YouTube - John Cleese - explains Extremism
‘The biggest advantage of extremism is that it makes you feel good — because it provides you with enemies. Let me explain. The great thing about having enemies is that you can pretend that all the badness in the whole world is in your enemies and all the goodness in the whole world is in you.’ — John Cleese
Cleese is one of the most brilliant comedians of all time, of course. If you disagree, you are a twit, twat, and well, you can write in your favourite offensive insult here _____________.
I’m oft to say that Monty Python (just one of Cleese’s many endeavours) was not comedy, but rather, simply, social commentary. His mastery of ‘absurdism’ being the fulcrum upon which he rests his lanky pointy elbow.
When people say ‘That’s not funny!’ They really need to be clear to add ‘… to me.’
Otherwise, time to reread Orwell’s great comedy ‘1984.’
‘If anything I write appears offensive, imagine it being said by John Cleese standing in the nude. If it still seems offensive, imagine someone else in the nude.’
Benign Violation?
Peter McGraw is an American professor of marketing and psychology. He formed the Humor Research Lab (aka HuRL) dedicated to the scientific study of humour, its antecedents, and its consequences.
He words this well…
‘A violation is a necessary condition for humor, you may experience a negative emotion in addition to your amusement.’ — Peter McGraw
Here is an entire video delving deeper into this topic.
YouTube - PeterMcGraw - What makes things funny (TED talk)
McGraw said in his talk ‘these folks won’t laugh at your paedophile joke.’
Some people consider certain topics altogether off-limits. In any domain or silo, there are levels of understanding, agreed tenets, assumed intentions, etc. In fact, one can say there is a dialect or nomenclature that is domain-specific.
By example; there are great musicians, as voted on by sales, or the public. These may or may not be great musicians as viewed by other musicians. Same for all creative fields, but also non-creative fields. In comedy, there are comedian’s comedians. These are not well-known comedians, except by other comedians. It is sometimes difficult to bridge these levels of expertise.
Most people think they have a sense of humour. But, compared to what? How is this any different from a sense of fashion, and taste? And by sense, we are speaking of skill and talent. There is an entitlement each person tends to have about some subjects. While the average person would not claim they know how to do brain surgery, they will gladly proclaim (regardless of age, experience, background, education, or any other useful metric) that their sense of morals, humour, and god are real and correct. You might not believe me, but people will even become violent in defence of these, and yet, all three are just subjective opinions.
Paraprosdokian
In most jokes, it’s the punchline that matters. However, Imagine a joke where the punchline doesn’t matter at all. In fact, everyone knows the punchline.
There is a special joke, a single joke, a shaggy dog story joke, that at one time was never revealed publically. It was made famous with an entire documentary, The Aristocrats (2005). It allowed the world to peek behind the curtain to see how comedians think, construct, and demonstrate their craft. The same joke; as told by different people. A joke by its very nature designed to challenge any culture, era, and audience, even other comedians. Gilbert Gottfried (just passed) may be considered (at least so far) to have done the best telling of the joke, both by how he told it, but also where, when, and…to whom, but also (as it turns out) for how long.
YouTube - Gilbert Gottfied - The Aristrocats
Hold on. Did you listen to the WHOLE thing?
‘If you miss any part, it just doesn’t make any sense.’
‘This is based on a true story’
‘Really, why leave the dog out?’
And what was the setting?
- Where? Friars Club
- When? 2001, a few weeks after 9/11 (oh yeah baby)
- Whom? Hugh Hefner, and an audience of influencers
This single act, 9min 11sec long, may have broken the chokehold 9/11 had on America. The brilliance was not to tell more jokes to allow people to start moving on, but rather to tell a joke so horrible, so beyond disgust, that it ‘resets’ you. It worked.
One of my favourite types of humour is a paraprosdokian, which is a mechanism often used in jokes, where the latter part of a sentence, phrase, or larger discourse is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. Masters of this include Groucho Marx, and Sarah Silverman. Sometimes, it is so subtle, that people miss it. The Aristocrats is one of the most subtle versions of this. Sometimes, it is even used outside of jokes.
Of Course, of Course…
So let’s test this a little. This is publicly shamed and currently cancelled (at least so far) Louis CK’s brilliant and tight set.
Let’s discuss; is letting children die ever funny? How about slavery, ever?
YouTube - Of course; But Maybe - Louis CK
Louis is in fact, brilliantly teaching the audience - that this line is razor-thin.
Explain It to Me Like I’m a 5-Year-Old
I’ve always loved this concept (abbr. ELI5), but I tend to use it differently, by asking, with how many words?
By the time I’m done, you might be a 50-year-old, and then, perhaps it will be clear.
This has become a common battle request on social sites, especially Twitter. Where people demand seasoned professionals to explain complex nuances of neurosurgery, politics, and economics, in simple terms. In 280 character chunks to be exact. This is — somewhat silly.
However, until this person can explain it to the audience, in these procrustean and draconian terms, they are deemed… wrong.
XKCD author Randall Munroe wrote a book on this entitled Thing Explainer using just 1,000 (‘ten hundred’ to be precise) of the most common words in English. There is even a website where you can try your hand at explaining things using simple words. But we still have a problem, of course, the book itself must contain words outside the scope of the topic and method of the book itself. There are simply things - i.e. words - that cannot be adequately explained in those ten hundred. So, meta. Meta is really hard to explain. Humour is often meta. Humour is very hard to explain.
Another of my favourite comedians is Groucho Marx. In this interview with Dick Cavett, he speaks of his co-star, Margaret Dumont, that literally never understood his jokes. This makes her one of the great actors, like Jack Nickolson, or Ryan Renolds. They just show up, and read what the writers wrote in their normal voices. Ryan is so good he doesn’t even need writers.
(it is actually worth watching the entire interview, although I have queued it to a key starting point)
‘If you applaud, you only waste time I could use talking to you.’
Next Up, Punching Down
Peter McGraw touches on this when he showed a picture of two fruits for sale. The ‘foreigner’ (implied as an American, wealthy) is being charged more money for the same fruit presented in English ($5), and Spanish ($4); that’s funny. But, flip it around, where the poor are made to pay more; not so funny.
But where do we draw this line?
There are entire collections of videos of (implied) wealthy people unable to drive their own expensive cars (Ferarri’s, Lamborghini's, etc.). Skidding, crashing into walls, not being able to get out of gear, etc. Does the fact that it is an expensive car actually excuse laughing at someone learning to drive a sophisticated machine? Do these people have feelings?
Does how much money you have free people from hurting their feelings? In society, today, the answer is mostly… yes. But, there are of course exceptions.
Disease trumps wealth; sometimes.
We bore witness to Will Smith laughing at Chris Rock’s standup. He even was laughing (along with almost everyone) at a joke at his wife’s expense. Then, his wife decided she did not like this joke, and her expression changed. Smith, seeing this, didn’t change that he thought it was funny, but rather was angry someone upset his wife. A feeling I’m sure many of us can relate to. We might get angry if someone insults us, but we become far angrier if someone insults our friends or family.
What he did next though… changed everything. He committed an actual act of terrorism. He physically assaulted someone; for making a joke.
There are of course many dynamics here, each separate, and some overlapping.
- Let us be clear, this joke would have worked just as well had she purposefully shaved her hair.
- She is a stunningly beautiful woman with or without hair.
- The joke works because Demi Moore was badass, buff, beautiful, and bald. G.I Jane II could be better if she were black too.
Ah, but Alopecia is a disease, and in cancel culture, no insulted person is left behind. That Jada’s baldness is caused by a disease is not really part of what makes the joke funny. but it became 100% about that.
That Smith physically attacked Rock (and remember, Smith in real life is a trained killer, those muscles are not fake, nor was his workout and training) is disgraceful.
Do you not like me calling Will Smith a Terrorist? Well, every comedian getting on stage now has to be ‘ready’ for some nut-job making it physical, literally endangering their lives.
I’ve written for quite a few comedians. One comedian I was helping tighten his set made an impressive series of well-structured jokes about his wife. Well, great to me, because, they were jokes, just jokes. However, I knew it would not play well with most people. He and his wife are very attractive, but she is not there to defend herself when he is on stage, and all the audience would see is a good looking entitled white guy making fun of his immigrant wife (Norm from Cheers got away with this because he was not attractive). We reworked it to focus on her family, and entire ethnicity, Russian. If she were Mexican, it would not have worked, right? This might be perceived as ‘punching down,’ which seems to happen at every level of society. But Russians, well, they have no feelings, so they are open game, right?
Over the years I’ve commented on this general topic in many ways:
‘Sadly, with a foot in several cultures, I find I end up just insulting almost everyone, and thus a foot in my mouth as well.’
‘Being offended makes people feel important… I want people to feel important.’
‘If I’ve offended you, I wish to apologise … for not telling you about the support groups. No one should have to carry that burden alone.’
‘I don’t want to accidentally insult someone by a misused word. I want to insult them because I used the right word.’
‘I rub people the wrong way. It is a shame people can’t be rubbed in all directions.’
… and one from one of the god’s of irony and humour’Norm MacDonald take:
‘Comedy is surprises, so if you’re intending to make somebody laugh and they don’t laugh, that’s funny.’
At the end of the day though, we must understand what the world would really look like if we each had our way.
At the end of the day though, we must understand what the world would really look like if we each had our way.
Personally, I want to live in a world where we laugh, play, and explore. Obviously, we don’t want to be hurt, nor should we be hurting others. But we are all as much different from one another as we are the same, and someone is bound to get hurt in that setup.
I’m oft these days to point out that success is measured by one’s fortune to have a million haters, but a million and one fans.
Years ago I squirrelled away these 4 points I saw in some post. I did not know who said them, just that I agree with each point completely. Later, I learned that the person who said them (Matt Walsh) is almost completely diametrically the opposite of me.
- If it wasn’t intended to offend you, then you shouldn’t be offended.
- You do not get to decide someone else’s intentions. They do.
- Being offended is a choice you make. Nobody is responsible for that choice but you.
- Even if the slight was intended and deliberate, functioning adults understand that they must move on and not dwell over every sideways glance or rude comment.
I still agree with each point completely, knowing he is mostly, and most… repulsive to me.
Is the plan now to cancel everything a person has created (written, said, believed, performed) because they also have done things that are atrocious?
I’m always reminded of:
Puritanism — The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy — H. L. Mencken
If we cancel or stop people from testing these edges, what remains? Who is left?
‘Enjoy the company you’re left with. (can be used as advice, or a curse.)
Some damned funny videos, where at least one person did not think it was funny:
