Humour
:''This article discusses humour in terms of comedy and laughter. For ancient Greek theories of humour in physiology, psychology and medicine, see
four humours. See also
aqueous humour.
Humour (
also spelled humor) is the ability or
quality of people, objects, or situations to evoke feelings of
amusement in other people. The term encompasses a form of
entertainment or human
communication which evokes such feelings, or which makes people
laugh or feel
happy.
The origin of the term derives from the
humoural medicine of the
ancient Greeks, which stated that a mix of fluids known as humours controlled human health and emotion.
A
sense of humour is the ability to
experience humour, a quality which all people share, although the extent to which an individual will personally find something humorous depends on a host of absolute and relative
variables, including, but not limited to
geographical location,
culture, maturity, level of
education and
context. For example, young children (of any background) particularly favour
slapstick, while
satire tends to appeal to more mature audiences.
|
Humans often find the behaviour of other animals amusing or humorous. |
*
Black humour*
Caustic humour*
Droll*
Dry humour*
Non-sequitur*
Obscenity*
Parody*
Random humour*
Ridicule, such as the
Darwin Awards*
Sarcasm*
Satire*
Self-irony**
Self-ridicule, such as
Rodney Dangerfield's self-deprecating humour
*
Wit, as in many
one-liner jokes
*
Anti-humour*
Deadpan*
Form-versus-content humour*
Slapstick*
Surreal humour or
absurdity*
Practical joke: luring someone into a humorous position or situation and then laughing at their expense
*
Figure of speech**
Triple and
paraprosdokian**
Enthymeme**
Syllepsis (
zeugma)
**
Hyperbole**
Understatement*
Inherently funny words with sounds that make them amusing in the language of delivery
*
Irony, where a statement or situation implies both a superficial and a concealed meaning which are at odds with each other.
*
Joke**
Adages, often in the form of paradox "
laws" of nature, such as
Murphy's law**
Stereotyping, such as blonde jokes, lawyer jokes, racial jokes,
viola jokes.
**Sick Jokes, arousing humour through grotesque, violent or exceptionally cruel scenarios
*
Riddle*
Word play**
Acrosticdoublespeak, a form of satire characterised by the unsubtle encryption of an
acrostically constructed humorous message
**
Oxymoron**
Pun*
Bathos**Exaggerated or unexpected gestures and movements
**Inflicting pain, such as kick in the groin
*
Character Driven, deriving humour from the way characters act in specific situations, without
punchlines.
Exemplified by The Larry Sanders Show and
Curb Your Enthusiasm.
*
Clash of context humour, such "fish out of water"
*
Comic sounds
*Deliberate
ambiguity and confusion with reality, often performed by
Andy Kaufman*
Unintentional humour, that is, making people laugh without intending to (as with
Ed Wood's ''
Plan 9 From Outer Space)
*
Faking stupidity*
Funny pictures: Photos or drawings/cartoons that are intentionally or unintentionally humorous.
*
Sight gags
*
Visual humour: Similar to the
sight gag, but encompassing narrative in theatre or comics ,or on film or video.
Some claim that humour cannot or should not be explained. Author
E. B. White once said that "Humour can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind." However, attempts to do just that have been made, as follow.
The term "humour" as formerly applied in comedy, referred to the interpenetration of the
sublime and the ridiculous. In this context, humour is often a
subjective experience as it depends on a special mood or perspective from its audience to be effective.
Arthur Schopenhauer lamented the misuse of the term (the German
loanword from English) to mean any type of comedy.
One explanation of humour is based on the fact that a great deal of humour is a consequence of language. Language is an approximation of thoughts through symbolic manipulation, and the gap between the expectations inherent in those symbols and the breaking of those expectations leads to laughter.
Irony is explicitly this form of comedy, whereas
slapstick takes more passive social norms relating to physicality and plays with them. In other words, comedy is a sign of a 'bug' in the symbolic make-up of language, as well as a self-correcting mechanism for such bugs. Once the problem in meaning has been described through a joke, people immediately begin correcting their impressions of the symbols that have been mocked. This is one explanation why jokes are often funny only when told the first time.
Another explanation is that humour frequently contains an unexpected, often sudden, shift in perspective. Nearly anything can be the object of this perspective twist. This, however, does not explain why people being humiliated and verbally abused, without it being unexpected or a shift in perspective, is considered funny - ref.
The Office.
Another explanation is that the essence of humour lies in two ingredients; the
relevance factor and the
surprise factor. First, something familiar (or
relevant) to the audience is presented. (However, the relevant situation may be so familiar to the audience that it doesn't always have to be presented, as occurs in
absurd humour, for example). From there, they may think they know the natural follow-through thoughts or conclusion. The next principal ingredient is the presentation of something different from what the audience expected, or else the natural result of interpreting the original situation in a different, less common way (see
twist or
surprise factor). For example:
A man speaks to his doctor after an operation. He says, "Doc, now that the surgery is done, will I be able to play the piano?" The doctor replies, "Of course!" The man says, "Good, because I couldn't before!"Both explanations can be put under the general heading of "failed expectations". In language, or a situation with a relevance factor, or even a sublime setting, an audience has a certain expectation. If these expectations fail in a way that has some credulity, humour results. It has been postulated that the laughter/feel good element of humour is a biological function that helps one deal with the new, expanded point of view: a lawyer thinks differently than a priest or rabbi (below), a banana peel on the floor could be dangerous. This is why some link of credulity is important rather than any random line being a punchline.
For this reason, many jokes work in threes. For instance, a class of jokes exists beginning with the formulaic line "A
priest, a
rabbi, and a
lawyer are sitting in a bar..." (or close variations on this). Typically, the priest will make a remark, the rabbi will continue in the same vein, and then the lawyer will make a third point that forms a sharp break from the established pattern, but nonetheless forms a logical (or at least stereotypical) response. Example of a variation:
A gardener, an architect, and a lawyer are discussing which of their vocations is the most ancient. The gardener comments, "My vocation goes back to the Garden of Eden, when God told Adam to tend the garden." The architect comments, "My vocation goes back to the creation, when God created the world itself from primordial chaos." They both look curiously at the lawyer, who asks, "And who do you think created the primordial chaos?"
In this vein of thought, knowing a punch line in advance, or some situation which would spoil the delivery of the punchline, can destroy the surprise factor, and in turn destroy the entertainment value or amusement the joke may have otherwise provided. Conversely, a person previously holding the same unexpected conclusions or secret perspectives as a comedian could derive amusement from hearing those same thoughts expressed and elaborated. That there is commonality, unity of thought, and an ability to openly analyse and express these (where secrecy and inhibited exploration was previously thought necessary) can be both the relevance and the surprise factors in these situations. This phenomenon explains much of the success of comedians who deal with same-gender and same-culture audiences on gender conflicts and cultural topics, respectively.
Notable studies of humour have come from the pens of Aristotle in The Poetics (Part V), of Sigmund Freud in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious'' and of Schopenhauer. The French philosopher
Henri Bergson wrote an essay on "the meaning of the comic", in which he viewed the essence of humour as the encrustation of the mechanical upon the living. He used as an instance a book by an English humourist, in which an elderly woman who desired a reputation as a philanthropist provided "homes within easy hail of her mansion for the conversion of atheists who have been specially manufactured for her, so to speak, and for a number of honest folk who have been made into drunkards so that she may cure them of their failing, etc." This idea seems funny because a genuine impulse of charity as a living, vital impulse has become encrusted by a mechanical conception of how it should manifest itself.
A Bergsonian might explain puns in the same spirit. Puns classify words not by what lives (their meaning) but by mechanics (their mere sound).
There also exist linguistic and psycholinguistic studies of humour,
irony,
parody and pretence. Prominent theoreticians in this field include
Raymond Gibbs,
Herbert Clark,
Michael Billig, Willibald Ruch, Victor Raskin, Eliot Oring, and
Salvatore Attardo. Although many writers have emphasised the positive or cathartic effects of humour some, notably Billig, have emphasised the potential of humour for cruelty and its involvement with social control and regulation.
A number of
science fiction writers have explored the theory of humour. In
Stranger in a Strange Land,
Robert A. Heinlein proposes that humour comes from pain, and that laughter is a mechanism to keep us from crying.
Isaac Asimov, on the other hand, proposes (in his first jokebook,
Treasury of Humor) that the essence of humour is anticlimax: an abrupt change in point of view, in which trivial matters are suddenly elevated in importance above those that would normally be far more important.
Required components:
* some
surprise,
contradiction,
ambiguity or
paradox.
* appealing to
feelings or to
emotions.
* similar to
reality, but not realMethods:
*
metaphor*
hyperbole*
reframing*
timingRowan Atkinson explains in his lecture
Funny Business, that an object or a person can become funny in three different ways. They are:
* By being in an unusual place
* By behaving in an unusual way
* By being the wrong size
Most
sight gags fit into one or more of these categories.
*****Humour is also described as an essential ingredient in spiritual life. Many Masters have added it to their teachings in various forms. Much of Taoism is humour-based. A famous figure in spiritual humour is the 'laughing Buddha', who would answer all questions with a belly laugh.
A quote from modern Spiritual Master Adi Da Samraj, "No humourless, pleasureless son-of-a-bitch ever realised God." Adi Da is known to have caused hours of laughter in many of his disciples over the last 34 years.
In the book "Death Comes Dancing", the author, Ma Satya Barti, had a laughing fit that lasted 3 days, as part of her own spiritual purification process.
Mobbs, D., Greicius, M.D., Abdel-Azim, E., Menon, V. & Reiss, A. L. Humor modulates the mesolimbic reward centers.
Neuron,
40, 1041 - 1048, (2003).
*Billig, M. (2005).
Laughter and ridicule: Towards a social critique of humour. London: Sage.
Daniele Luttazzi,
Introduction to his italian translation of
Woody Allen's trilogy
Side Effects,
Without Feathers and
Getting Even (Bompiani, 2004, ISBN 8845233049 -57-65).
*
Dictionary of the History of ideas: Sense of the Comic
*
Humor reference guide: a comprehensive classification and analysis
*
A collection of interviews with standup comedians*
jokes.m3Rlin.orgA growing collection of funny images
