The 3 Theories (Blog 2)

The Superiority, Incongruity, and Relief theories are all funny (and sometimes not funny) in their own way. The Superiority Theory can be funny because when you laugh at someone or something for doing something very stupid, you feel so much better about yourself. This type of comedy can be a very good way for comedians and TV shows to get people to laugh because they either pick on someone in the audience, themselves or one of the celebrities everyone has heard of. The Incongruity Theory can be humorous to some people because the whole joke turns into something you were definitely not expecting. This creates the humor in the joke because if you ask someone to "run to Publix," you do not expect them to literally put on their running shoes and grab a water bottle. You expect them to get in the car and drive to Publix. If the person were to start to jog to the closest store, that would be incongruity humor. The Relief Theory is when you are laughing to relieve stress or awkwardness. I believe this is why most people watch comedy shows and try to have a good laugh.  Most comedy shows count on the people watching to want to escape their lives for a while and just laugh. Comedians was that attention so they can keep the audience distracted by the laughter for the whole show, hoping to put the viewer in a better mood than they were when they began watching. I do not think that one theory is better or funnier than the other. I believe that everyone has their own tastes in comedy and personally, I enjoy to laugh, and I think a lot of the examples from the readings are funny. The Superiority, Incongruity, and Relief Theories can mean different things to different people but I think that all of them are funny and neither is more superior than the others.

Comments

  1. Shane HerronSeptember 7, 2018 at 10:22 AM

    Do you think the theories themselves are funny or the types of humor? That may seem a silly question, but I think it would be great (and funny) to argue that the theories themselves are funny.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lead Blog: The Good Place

Image
For my lead blog, I have decided to write about a show called The Good Place . This show is about a group of people, a robot lady, and an immortal being. The group of people has all just died and think they are in The Good Place (this is supposed to represent heaven) when actually they have been sent to The Bad Place (hell) to suffer forever. They each suffer in their own ways until they figure out they are not supposed to be there. The immortal being was trying out a new technique of torture. Instead of burning and stabbing them, he was going to slowly have them drive each other insane. The robot lady is named Janet. She literally knows everything in the universe and is basically an Alexa but in a human body. She can also get you whatever you want. She originally is there to make the scene seem real to the humans but comes in handy quite often when the humans are scheming. 1 The first scene from this show is when Jason, who is pretending to be a silent monk when he is ac...
Read more

Response to Lead Blog 2

I enjoyed how Matthew told the story of when he saw What We Do in the Shadows  because it was pretty funny how he saw it with his parents, and just from watching the trailer and a few clips I can tell I probably would not have. Also, thanks to Matthew for kind of summarizing the movie for us too. Anyway, I can definitely tell that incongruity humor is used throughout this movie, how could it not be? Most of these vampires are centuries old and living in modern time; there is no way they could know everything about the modern world now.  It is funny how they try to fit in but stand out so much at the same time. I liked the example of the "we should get some slaves" comment. Obviously, slavery is horrible and not to mention illegal. So, this incongruity is humorous because no one would ever say that now. People nowadays would consider hiring a maid or butler but would never think of them as a slave of course. It is also funny that the vamp...
Read more

Response to Lead Blog 9

Tom and Jerry is one of the best shows I used to watch as a kid! I was actually obsessed! Of course, the show is a perfect example of the incongruity theory because Jerry (the mouse) always manages to escape Tom (the cat). It is also funny because of the fact that Jerry uses things like bombs, guns, and dynamite to avoid Tom at all costs. Even though Tom is clearly being attacked in any way possible, he still tries so hard to catch Jerry. I feel like the episode you describe at the beginning of the second paragraph was a good choice because I feel like it portrays the show as a whole very well. I never had thought about the importance of the fact that Tom and Jerry only uses music and sound effects and I agree that this is an important aspect of the show because it displays the era it was created in. Anyway, I did not know that this show came out in the 1940s. I cannot believe that you can still see Tom and Jerry running on TV and that it is even so well known. I am very glad it be...
Read more