Let’s Make a Funny!!!! Humor, Irony, and Satire: Razors and Smiles

What is the purpose of humor? Bergson’s conclusion—that the purpose of laughter is to correct. We have standards for what we consider human behavior, and we want people to follow them. Rigidity and stiffness, whether of character of mind, or of body, go against the flexibility we expect of humans. Bergson writes, “The rigid, the ready-made, the mechanical, as opposed to the supple, the continuously changing and the living, absentmindedness as opposed to attention, any form of the automatic as opposed to adaptability of action, these are the behaviors that laughter isolates and woks to correct.” We laugh when someone slips on a banana peel because we want people to have the intelligence to adapt to the risk and walk around it.

Simple Humor - Slapstick Michael Meer writes, “Of course people don’t always agree about what’s amusing, owing to their personal sensibilities...” Bergson insists that humor must be strictly intellectual, an activity only for the mind and that humor requires that we “anesthetize our hearts.” As Michael Meyer writes, “Humor can open people’s eyes, but it can also cause people to shut them if they feel offended by it.” Most people, we hope, cannot “anesthetize” their hearts enough to laugh a a joke built on a racial stereotype, for instance, and will be offended by it.

More Complicated Humor – Comedy of Situation identify a behavior for which laughter could be said to provide the correction. The jack-in-the-box is a staple in animated cartoons, maybe nowhere better than in Tom and Jerry. The cat pops up; the mouse bats him down—again and again. The puppet form of role inversion, too, appears often in cartoons. Bugs Bunny frequently reverses roles with a pursuer, especially dramatically with Yosemite Sam. The comic technique Bergson calls “serial interference,” the scene in which characters think they are talking about the same thing or person when they are not may be the most common tool of the television situation-comedy writer. How does this comic situation influence the “meaning of the work as a whole”?

Comedy of Words This one is tough – you first have to explain how a writer uses comedy to create meaning observe Bergson’s comment that “we must distinguish between the comedy language expresses and the comedy it creates.”

Types of Verbal Comedy Stiffness of a speaker, letting momentum cause characters to say or do what they did not intend to (Titania and Bottom) Language inversion and puns, the “correspondence of two sets of ideas in the same sentence, as in a pun.” Transposing tone - Parody transforms the solemn into the familiar Exaggeration, speaking of small things as though they were big, as in the attitude of Peter Quince and some others of the “rude mechanicals” toward their play in act 1, scene 2 of Midsummer (text p. 1539). The second is understatement, peaking of big things as though they were small Value transposition, speaking of something of little value in terms normally reserved for something of high value, or the reverse Irony, speaking of what should be as if it actually were Using a professional vocabulary outside its normal field “comedy of character,” when an emotion a character is believed to have is given its own independent existence. In the second, characters use movements and even patterns of speech that have no logical purpose, purely “out of a kind of internal itch.”

Irony – chiefly used to create poignancy or HUMOR Verbal irony – words state the opposite of the writer’s (or speaker’s) true meaning Situational irony – events turn out the opposite of what was expected Dramatic irony – facts or events are unknown to a character in a play or piece of fiction, but known to the reader, audience, or other characters in the work.

Satire is… A work that targets human vices and follies; social institutions and conventions and… Aims to reform said vice, folly, institution, or convention Or just ridicule it.

Devices that support satire Irony, wit, parody, caricature, hyperbole, understatement, sarcasm Goals are varied: good satire, however, is often funny as well as insightful about the human condition

When reading, consider: What is the author’s purpose? 1. Find the verb: to ridicule? To criticize? To warn? To change? To prevent? 2. Find the noun: institutions? Conventions? Vices? Follies? In Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”, he VERB the NOUN for/about YOUR IDEAS. How does the author achieve his purpose? 1. Identify the devices used: syntax, tone, diction, hyperbole, understatement, irony, wit, parody, caricature, sarcasm 2. Then explain HOW the devices achieve the PURPOSE Finally, evaluate how effectively the author uses satire to achieve his goal. Swift employs DEVICE, DEVICE, DEVICE in order to DEGREE OF EFFICACY VERB NOUN.