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.