Brono is the star

Response to mockumentaries and why they are funny 

              Personally, I’m a huge movie buff, but I don’t watch or know that much about TV.  I have never seen the office but what I have heard is it is quite enjoyable and funny.  The little I have seen is some of the interviews.  The interviews are rather funny but not unique.  They follow a similar style as reality show.  It’s not a good way to do this, it stops the flow of the show and is just like cutaway gags with more set up.  Now Borat on the other hand, is really funny.  That movie is over the top, ridiculous and rather shocking.  I’m usually not a fan of shock humor because it is cheap and goes for an easy laugh but in Borat it works perfectly.  The realism is what make it work.  The real reaction makes everything genuine giving the audience both a permission to laugh and a sense of incongruity.  

Response to lead blog post Nov 11

The Dicks in Family Guy

                Personally, I am not a fan of the family guy style of comedy because it is very repetitive.  The death of comedy is repetitiveness.  Most comedies that use repetition follow the rule of three but Family Guy doesn’t.  This could be a bold move to make their own mark but in reality, it is a way to pad the run time.  I believe that Family Guy tries to use Stockholm Syndrome to make their jokes funny.  Also, they are way to heavy-handed with their message for my taste.  The cut away gags can be funny but they don’t add to the plot or develop the characters.  It’s just there as a means to fill the time frame.  I might laugh at the gag but it’s similar to vine humor, short and pointless.

                Using cutaway gags are just ways to distract the audience from the failing in the comedy.  It is like an amped version of the Fight Club movie theater gag.  In that scene, Tyler Durden splices pictures of dicks into children cartoons.  This is what I think of every time I see these gags because it’s funny but is vastly inappropriate and doesn’t actual do anything important.  

response to cue the fake laughter

Laugh track: a hacks tool  

                A hack is a person or persons that produce poor quality products just to make money, usually in the film industry.  Some notable hacks are Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, and Kevin James. 

                Laugh tracks are used whenever a comedy show is not funny and the writers, producers, and actors are too big of hacks to fix it.  As you said the laugh track is only there to bring a not funny scene to kind of funny but there is a less obvious reason they do this.  It all comes down to economics.  It is easier and cheaper to write something that is either only slightly or not at all funny than what is actually funny.  Since they can force humor that will make them the same amount of money as ligament humor, there are no incentives for these hacks to invest time and money into good writing. They are scamming the world in a legal scam, which people are willingly buying into because they don’t realize that they are being focused to laugh.  Laugh track are used by a talentless hack.

                I have never been a fan of any form of in comedy expression that tries to tell me when to laugh, it cheapens the comedy.  Live audience is better than laugh track because it forces the show to be funny but still it seems that if a show is funny enough for a live audience to laugh than it is redundant to have them.  The silent movies are great examples how of comedy does not need sound to make people laugh.  A good comedy relies on the humor and clever jokes. 

lead blog response Straight man

Straight man

                The first two scenarios follow and the opening paragraph defines the deadpan form of the straight man.   The straight man is most common form since it is just a small part of a larger joke.  The straight man is a character or entity that acts in a calm rational way while people and things going on around him are acting incongruous.  They both have different sets up but follow the same flow.  Something illegal and inappropriate is mentioned and only one character realizes the problem with it.  Everyone else thinks it perfectly okay so it escalates.   The straight man acts rationally and tries to deal with the issue.  The third video works under its own logic.  The logic seems incongruous to us because it is a different logic than our own.  It is basically plain incongruity humor, funny, nothing special.  The scenes are very formulaic but the third video show that they can modify their formula slightly to appeal to people. 

                I had never heard of this group before and I was pleasantly surprised at the videos, since the qualifier for the channel was middle school.  The last paragraph being white was very fitting for a blog on The Whitest Kids U’Know.  If I were you I would have ran with the last paragraph and not admit it was accidental.  Also black letters on brown background was a terrible choice.

Lead Blog Post

Lead Blog Post: Hey Abbott

               I have always been a fan of sketch comedy, with its simplistic approach to making everything confusing.  My favorite artists of sketch comedy are Abbott and Costello.  They have a large repertoire of sketches with different types of jokes in each but they all follow a formula.  First, Abbot and Costello are put in a situation that they must get out of or explain something.  They start by confusing the target whether this is the audience or a in sketch person.  Then they give a small sense of relief by making something clear.  They follow that up by confusing everyone once again.  Finally, they sum the whole joke up and deliver a punch line.

               The famous who’s on first sketch uses strange names and simple misunderstanding to make the joke.  This follows incongruity theory because the people have names that are usually used as question.  The people are baseball players that are supposed to have names that people will cheer.  This makes their question name seem even more out of place.   The strange names have a very formulaic sound throughout the sketch.  The set-up Costello is a new player who wants to know the players’ names on the team.  Who is generally the first question that would be asked about someone by a stranger.  The naming of the first baseman Who would make for maximum confusion and set up What as the second baseman to further the confusion.  What is a common way to start a question and it eliminates easy ways to clear up the name confusion.  The third baseman is just a way to provide sanity in the sketch because Costello figures that one out quickly giving some relief.  The sketch goes back into confusion with the introduction of Tomorrow and Today as the pitcher and catcher.  This is furthered by Why and Because as left field and center field.  The joke is then summed up by Costello saying a play with the players’ names.  The punchline is Costello saying, “I don’t give a damn” and then getting told that that is the shortstop name. 

               The 7 times 13 equal 28 sketch uses deception to make a simple math seem complex. The incongruity comes from the basic math that is being manipulated in way that seems to work but does not actually.  It follows the formula perfectly, the difference between this sketch and Who’s on First sketch is that confusion stimulates from math rather than names.  The sketch starts with Costello having to prove that he only owes $28 to the landlord.  The confusion starts with Costello saying that 7 multiplied by 13 equals 28.  He uses division to completely confuse the landlord and make him doubt what he knows is true.  He then uses multiplication to further confuse the landlord.  When the landlord seems to have figured out how to fix his predicament it gives a sense of relief.  The landlord then tries to use addition to get out of the predicament.  Costello turns this around on the landlord to confuse and trick him.  The punchline in this case is Costello taking the money and walking away with it. 

               This formulaic tendency is present in all comedy.  It isn’t always the same formula but there is an always a formula.  The formula is usually much more evident in sketch comedy than other comedy because they have one main joke that it is focused on and working towards the punchline.  While other types of comedy may have a multitube of jokes that act as red herrings to the formula.  Does this mean that comedy is just a different form of science, where everything can be quantified?  Is the only thing we are missing to completely understand and perfectly execute comedy the units?  This may sound ridiculous but remember we are currently taking a class all about examining comedy by deconstructing it, similarly to what most people do in science or math classes. 

Response to David Lead blog post

Response to Bridesmaids lead blog post

               That clip was completely the lowest type of humor, poop jokes.  The only real redeeming quality of the scene is that it is very up front about itself.  It does not try to hid the lowbrow nature of the joke.  This is both a good and bad thing.  It is a good thing because there is no deception going on but it does not help the joke.  The lack of cover means that creator of the scene, director and writers, didn’t care enough to even try to make the joke seem better.

               The setting of the joke does make incongruity a possible reason for the comedy, such as it is.  A better reason is superiority because its nicely dressed people being brought down to something everyone does.  This doesn’t improve the joke but it does more accurately represent the reasoning behind the joke.

               The difference between Bridesmaid poop humor and South Parks talking poop, other than comedy, is that South Park was using it to make fun of people who fight against Christmas.  South Park’s Mr. Hankey is an over the top of all the shit people spew out of their mouths when talking about the holidays and end all for holiday symbols.  This is due to him being a piece of poop that everyone, no matter the ethnicity or religion, will hate as a holiday symbol.  Mr. Hankey is a satire while the Bridesmaid scene is not even funny.  

22.3 Years or A response to when is "Too Soon" too soon

22.3 years

Full disclosure I don’t remember anything at 9/11 2001, but that is just a flashbulb memory because of a tragic event.  Also everyone in our class would have been 3-4 so it is unlikely they remember or comprehend the events of that day.  Other than the backlash from 9/11 that everyone felt I was relatively unaffected by 9/11 on a personal level.

There is no exact time frame for a to be too soon.  It is all dependent on the person and how the event has directly influenced them.  Even if it is right after a tragic event, the joke can still be funny.  If its clever then the joke no matter how political incorrect it is still funny.  The main problem with 9/11 jokes is they are very stupid and go for the low hanging fruit.  They aren’t clever or funny if they were than I would have no problem with them.  Also comedy is a necessary step in getting over tragedy so the sooner it starts the faster the tragedy will be got over. 

Now to the informative section of the blog.  When I was in high school I work a forge with my friends to make various metal objects.  We heat the metal on hot coals and then used a mixture of hammers and wedges to shape the heated malleable metal.  The “jet steel can’t melt steel beams” reasoning is completely wrong.  Just to start with a plane crashing into a building would compromise it structure integrity.   The beams holding up the building did not need to melt they just need to be heated up to a point where starts going through allotropy.  This is where the energy from the heat displaces atoms in the metal.  Once it start going through allotropy the structure of the beam would be sufficiently compromised for the weight of a skyscraper to bend it.

pick a better title

A Response to Lead Blog Post

               Deadpan humor is an interesting category of comedy because it relies solely on the ridiculousness of the situation. It is often a part of a comedy rather than the main focus.  The common aspect of this is the straight man, the person that acts serious in ridiculous situations.  They bring the deadpan comedy by not reacting to the strangeness of the circumstances.  The comedy from deadpan humor is at the lack of reaction rather than the joke itself. 

               In the second paragraph, the example given of deadpan humor falls dead because the situation is not strange.  The character Ron Swanson does work as a straight man with his serious composure and bluntness.  His comment is just superiority, he’s making himself seem above everyone, not taking part in a deadpan joke.  The unapologetic manor further reinforces this since he does not feel that the person he is talking to deserves to be treated better.

               The failure to deliver deadpan comedy can be much better than actual deadpan comedy if done correctly.  It can improve the joke by drawing more attention to a topic or just the genuine feeling of the scene.  If it’s done poorly it can be the worse type of comedy because it just seems forced and fake.  Deadpan comedy only works if the situation is strange enough and the people either do not react to it or at least try not to react.

Global Village

A Response to Comedy Within the Global Village

               Just to start with on the title and the portion about the global village.  The global village is an inevitability when dealing with mass communication because people are quick to adapt to what is perceived as most beneficial to them.  This could be abandoning their culture to follow a new one, which is why the variety of world culture is appear to be shrinking.  The world culture doesn’t actually shrink it just changes, much like matter, culture is not destroyed just changed.  Culture is constantly changing and all the global village does is speed up the process. 

As for the humanization by global village through talk shows and the internet.  They do the opposite, the people are human and their action in life humanizes them.  The global village makes them seem larger than life or at least alien.  The first three memes on the post are excellent evidence of this.  Drake dancing makes him seem insane and distances him from humanity (despite the fact that most of us cannot dance worth a shit).  The second meme humanizes the grandfather but puts the granddaughter on a pedestal above everyone else.  The third meme does makes the girl seem like an asshole below everyone. 

The part about talk shows not taking issues serious is evidence that there is a multitude of subculture at work.  The people that want to laugh at an issue verse the people want a serious discussion.  These are wide categories to put people in that found the joking matter of Trump on The Tonight Show.  I can’t explain why some people expect a comedy show to be serious just because a president candidate is on.  The best I can figure is a subculture, maybe even a type of comedy, of people who just like being outraged.  

Thought about it to much

Sharkeisha, Shovel Girl and the Social Permission Theory Response

               I’m not sure exactly why but the Sharkeisha video seemed really depressing to me.  It has nothing to do the actual content of the video, which is funny.  The strange name and the cathartic violence make the video funny.  The part that is depressing is that this video speaks to many problems for society as a whole.  The problem isn’t that people find it or video’s like it funny.  One of the problems it demonstrates is the problem with overexposure.  Just from the handful of memes shown on the blog it is clear that the it suffered from overexposure.  That is the death of comedy, but still people continue a joke well after it is dead.  This is common for anything well known, but is not beneficial to society because ruins things.  The main problem I see from the videos is societies willingness to give up their right to privacy.  Events that would generally be private matters or unfortunate incidents are now not only public knowledge, but widespread jokes and memes.   The fact that this happens is terrible but the worst part is that people willingly do this.  They release these video’s on their own accord, conceding their own right to privacy.  What makes it worst is that society promotes this self-relinquish of our rights. 

               I agree that the humor from the videos probably come from the social permission theory.  There is also some superior theory and incongruity in them.  As said in the second paragraph the humor from the physical interactions could be associated with any theory but superiority fits best.  Comedy cannot be explained by one theory; even specific examples can rarely only fit one theory.  Now saying that, the false alarm theory does not work at all.  The girls in both videos do not seem to be ok afterward, they both look like they should go to a doctors to get checked out for a concussion.  The girls do get up but do not seem safe post alteration.   Also I feel little sympathy for the girls in the videos because there had to be a buildup that could be predicted to violently explode for there to be people filming.  The sympathy comes from the realization that their friends didn’t care enough about them to stop filming and help.  We laugh at them because society tells us they put this up so go ahead and laugh but the more I think about the videos the more these seem like tragedies than comedies.  

sept. 9 response Comedy isn't a set Idea it Mixes with Everything

A response to The Difference Between Comedy and Seriousness

               There can be a difference between Comedy and serious but there doesn’t have to be.  There are many comedies that work because there is an overlap between these two “genre”.  They have either a serious main character, whose perspective we see the world through as weird stuff happens to and around them.   Another way they merge the line is to make everything so serious that it seems other worldly like in Deadliest prey (also the last ten minute of Faithful Findings but I’m pretty sure that falls more under Stockholm syndrome than comedy).  

The tendency for people to laugh at others pain is an age old phenomenon that cannot be measured because it is completely opinionated.  Also there isn’t fine universal line between comedy and serious, since it is based on people’s experiences and personalities.  Some people could find this scene over the top or not funny while others might be a sadist.  It is this range of tastes that change how people approach making a comedy they either target a vast audience with stuff like the Taser scene in the hangover or they target a niche audience.  The more niche of an audience a comedy targets, the more likely it is to go over the line between serious and not serious.  Comedy from pain is usually the lowest common denominator of comedy because it appeals to the masses.  This is why it is used in movies like The Hangover, because it is easy to set the scene or give the impression that stuff that is legitimately dangerous or harmful is funny.  This prefacing can make anything funny if done right, further destroying the idea that there is a line (if you don’t believe me about all the terrible event throughout history that people laugh at now.).  

A response to Comedy Taken Too Far

A response to Comedy Taken Too Far?

               Your blog post was very interesting, I had never heard of this mock trailer before so I even learned something, but there are a few problems.  You seem to have gotten offended by what is obviously supposed to be satire.  This is the point of satire, to go over the top and make fun of something to show how ridiculous things are.  Satire can be hilarious to everyone even the ones getting made fun of, by showing how other people think of a group and how wrong that is.  Sometimes, like this time, people get offended by this, that is a good thing.  Without someone pushing the boundary and offending people, life would be humorless and boring.  Counter to that, we still need people to get offended to tell us where the line is and what goes too far over the line.

               Another problem is your trying to look at this from superiority theory but in your own post you explain how that doesn’t work.  What does work is incongruity theory.  It explains why your father finds it funny and why it would appeal to people from Boston.  The theory also can explain why you don’t find it funny.  You find it to over top, so it’s not funny because it just seems ridiculous. 

               Now to finally answer the question posed in title, to put in one-word NO.  There is no such thing as taking comedy too far.   The point of comedy is to break down barriers and expose new ideas.  It helps us grow as humans and as a species by showing problems in ideas or groups.  Therefore, to say comedy has gone too far or try to limit it, is detrimental to the development of humanity.  We need comedy go “Too Far”, so no there is no such thing as taking comedy too far.

              I found Zupancic introduction the most persuasive of the reading.  The writing related comedy to real world events and everyday life.  A good movie that this can relate to is Sleeper staring Woody Allen because it uses comedy to make fun of politics, social norms and takes a very philosophical approach to it.  It’s about a guy who wakes up in the future to find everything is different and no one know much about the time he from.  He then gets embroiled in a revolution and a plot to steal the nose of the supreme leader.  Throughout the movie there are jokes at the experience of political systems. 

               The theories each describe a type of comedy but there is a lot of overlap between them.  There are some comedy that falls under superiority and incongruity theory because there is multiply reason people laugh.  Some people have their preferred type of comedy like funny weird or sometimes they want to have some relief theory.  Each theory has its own merits and tries to make sense of comedy, while having to try to descript why that theory works for different jokes.  The best theory is really a matter of personal preference so there is no way to quantify it.

Movie review

To Be Or Not to Be

Full disclosure before the blog post, the readings did not help me with writing but it did help me to decide not just to make this post a movie review.  Now its more deconstruction instead of a traditional movie review.

To Be or Not to Be is a great movie produced and stared by Mel Brooks.  It does a great mix of social, historical and lowering of class comedy.  It takes place in Poland during the Nazi occupation and is about a Dr. Fredrick Bronski (Mel Brooks) trying to get out of Poland with his acting crew and a multitude of Jewish people.  He is very uptight and self-centered and a lot of the comedy comes from his belief that he is the best actor.  The lowering of class and social commentary are very similar in this movie.  They both happen around and to Dr. Bronski with him having to adjust to his situation.  The jokes about him going from rich to poor and him having to work with the guy his wife is cheating on him with, in order to accomplish his goals. 

 The lowering of class comes from Dr. Bronski going from a mansion to living in a ghetto, which he is openly infuriated with.  He also has to deal with his wife cheating on him with a polish fighter pilot, which is summoned to her room when Dr. Bronski recites that famous quote from hamlet, “To be or not to be”.  When this happens he gets so frustrated that he cares more about it more than World War II.  The historical humor and commentary comes from the Nazi occupation.  The movie makes fun of the Nazi marking of homosexuals with triangles, by having a gay man use it to his advantage to find a date.  It also makes fun of the Nazi occupation by having the main characters accuse them of being addicted to occupying things. It is an excellent movie and everyone should see it or the 1942 original.