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.
Yeah, I think the real problem here is black letters on a brown background. Not the white letters.
ReplyDeleteIt's seems like there's three straight man formulas here: maybe what we have is outraged voice of reason, the true ordinary person trying to make sense of a crazy situation, and then the apparently sane people who break through the morass, and sound even crazier than the initial craziness.