Our dear Writer Disgusted wrote a short post on mood and attached a link to this interesting of 2 program which talks about the humor in an almost sensible. Tired as he says, is much appreciated that a seemingly minor matter in question, for once, so something profound.
then I will do just the opposite.
Yes I have no neither the capacity nor the time needed to make a serious study of humor. I can only mention some of my ideas about what is "funny" and what is not. They are messy and possibly overlap at several points, but ... I'm in the kitchen on a Sunday at half past noon, I have a stomach full of roast and this is the best you can get from me.
- funny thing often surprising (and inconvenient). And grace is usually proportional to the ability to surprise (and inconvenience). In "Manhattan Murder Mystery " The characters played by Woody Allen and Diane Keaton go to see a woman with which they have an appointment. They bring a gift for her. She is found dead. Woody, scared, reacted by proposing to Keaton's gift to be left under the limp arm and leave. Explained does not sound very funny. Seen, it is. Not exactly the attitude expected of a reasonable person. What normal person would in that case? Leave the gift on the bed. Take vital signs on the body. Call the police or emergency services. Await the arrival of the authorities. Give a true version of events. That is, everything would be boring. When wisdom enters the door, jump out the window humor.
- The bad thing is funny. No good thing. I've always suspected, but lately I've been more aware. I can make two million jokes about cheap pizza establishments. Not one for a good salad of arugula with cherry tomatoes. One does not laugh at things you really love or people you truly admire. Yes, I can make jokes about people obsessed with eating only salad of arugula. People get sick when he learns that the cherry tomatoes just eat not from a farm farming. But that is wrong: a fanatic. Freak of the supposedly healthy.
- People with a sense of humor, in general, does not believe in anything too tight . Well, usually believes that the world is a ship without direction, a boat about to sink ... which, however, does not usually want to jump. I mean the strong attachment to political, religious, etc. usually incompatible with comedy. Nothing is more opposed to the epic and comedy. In the epic characters are often willing to kill and die for an idea. In comedy, the characters tend to give up any idea to survive. I just saw Falstaff at the Teatro Valle Inclán de Madrid. There, the fat character in Shakespeare, playing dead survives in the field of battle. He laughs at those who have actually died. What better example of life than playing dead to stay alive after the battle?
- The funny may be offensive . A few years ago I dressed up as a street vendor of roses. I came to the party, his face a bit of dark makeup, a fake mustache, a few bouquets of roses and was offering them to the guests, I imagine faking an accent. A few days later I learned that some people had found my costume pretty offensive. Felt there was something racist, or that I laughed a marginalized group. Since then, those were not my intentions, but that opinion left me somewhat touched. Today, I have not clear if that costume was a hit or not. On the one hand, I know the offense is more in the eye or mind of the feeling that in the act ... but I also know that you can be funny without offending anyone. Disney has spent decades living in it. However, what has to be all the humor and white? Is not that like asking all the movies that end happily, as if none of them had blood?
- However, not everything is funny offensive. I think that recently some comedians take the opposite view. Especially in television, I get the impression that the writers and reporters are determined to find the words hurtful, aggressive comment from one interviewee, hoping that this situation arises comedy. Many times the phrase is not funny and the result for the viewer (at least for me) is that just witnessing a shameful and tense scene in which empathizes with the interviewee, who is to respond to aggression with a maximum of training and wit. Be edge or being "politically incorrect" is not always funny. Sometimes just one is like an idiot.
- says a character in Woody Allen "Comedy is tragedy longer. " Ok, but ... how long? At the time it was very painful to let me that girlfriend. Then I made this short on that. He had spent the time necessary to be able to laugh about it, but not enough to forget the pain that led me to invent scenes and on the issue. In this case there is no problem: the jokes were on me (my character) and my relationships. But ... what about when we talk about a real crash, the problem of slopes of a famous or a nuclear disaster with hundreds of victims? How much time should be expected to make a joke? Who decides the time and type of joke? Who can make? Are some people more "authoritative" than others? Can a Jewish joke about the Holocaust that are banned to a "gentle"? Do we know the religion of "comedian" before laughing or, conversely, blame your joke? There will always be a person for any joke about pedophilia find it offensive. Is that person who should decide when you can make a joke and how to made this?
- "Comedy is tragedy more time." Ok, but ... How much tragedy? How much pain can be displayed if you want to keep being funny? How do you measure it? As I said in this post at its meeting on comedy, Robert McKee said that Charles Crichton, the director of "A Fish Called Wanda " filmed two versions of a plane on which a concrete block smashed a dog. The first shot included blood and guts. The second is not: just saw the dog's leash, which had just started the block. Showed the audience the two versions. Version "white" caused a lot of laughs. The blood, not one. Too explicitly showed the pain. As I wrote in this post , if blood is difficult to have a laugh. It is an unmistakable sign of pain. A crestfallen figure shows sadness, but can be funny. A suicidal person may also be comical if it is about to jump out the window or putting a noose around his neck. If you take a knife to cut the veins is more difficult for a laugh. We are approaching a field called "truth" and by then, it is possible that some of our public considers that this is no longer funny.
- However, the best recent comedy is closer to that border. For a time he said that while the television drama was progressing dramatically, the comedy seemed stuck in the sitcom format and canned laughter. However, in recent years, thanks to Seinfeld, Larry David , Ricky Gervais , Baron Cohen and many others, the comedy has been going on a lot more interesting but also probably more demanding. Technical forms (record supposedly more realistic, almost documentary, phasing out of canned laughter, natural sites) and writing (almost disappearance of the "gag" pure, reduced to a minimum frames) have been taking these new plays a middle ground, bittersweet, causing a bitter mixture but also less artificial than those of the plays that we used to see. Many viewers found them more pain than they expect from a comedy.
Ok, that's all for now. It's time to remove their pajamas and out of the kitchen. If you are interested, try to write a bit more on this subject in the future.
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