Exclusivity

Does the comic need to be part of the "group" he or she is joking about?

No. The popular sitcom, Seinfeld, approaches this subject in an episode that features Jerry's dentist, who converts to Judaism, then feels he has the right to make fun of Jews. Jerry finds this offensive--"as a comedian." People don't have to be part of the group to joke about them; sometimes the best jokes are created by those outside, looking in. It is a different perspective, that's all. Jerry retaliates to his dentist's conversion joke-making by creating a few jokes about dentists. He then becomes labeled an "anti-dentite."

Seinfeld Scene

Racist Jokes: Hate Speech?

Senthorun Sunil Raj, a law student at the University of Sydney, wrote an essay called, "Just Joking: Is Racist Humour A Form Of Vilification?" In it, he explains humor and joking as, "way[s] of negotiating 'serious' ideas...[which offer] a mode of engagement that touches topics which are not necessarily acceptable in serious communication." Recently, the popular show South Park has been in the news for an episode that inspired a 'Facebook' event last Friday entitled, "Kick a Ginger Day." The event caused one child near Los Angeles to be beaten because of his red hair. But the South Park episode, in which Eric Cartman generates hatred for all "gingers" seems so ridiculous, as Raj mentions, NOT "serious communication." Humor has the ability to conjure hatred, but really, it all depends on the audience. South Park's intent is to present race hatred as ridiculous--red-haired people as a separate, inferior race--more people watching the show connected that ridiculousness to other forms of racism; a few used it as a reason to actually kick a ginger.

Male & Female Humor

I have a hard time deciding whether men or women are funnier. Men have been more highly represented in the comedic scene, but this can be said of any public representation. Kate Rigg, a comedian interviewed in Bitch Magazine, says, "Speaking your mind is considered a male quality, and in stand-up you have to speak your mind." She adds, later, "It's the most awful feeling in the world...feeling that your voice doesn't matter." So female comedians have the challenge that women in any field have faced. The most impressive comedy, to me, is the comedy whose intentional audience is neither men nor women. An excellent example of this non-gendered type of humor is that of the late Mitch Hedberg. His jokes are observational and non-confrontational. Gender plays no role in this type of comedy.

Watch Mitch Hedberg

Humor as a Technique of Social Influence

"Humor as a Technique of Social Influence," an article by Karen O'Quin and Joel Aronoff, focuses on a social experiment intended to discover whether humor can persuade its audience. Results seemed to show that, indeed, "humor increases the likeability of a communicator." And who couldn't be persuaded by likeability? I found this ad that, ironically, produces humor and promotes the "coldness" of Guinness beer. Likeability increases through its humorous form of being cold.

Research Topic

I’ve chosen the fresh (only in its fifth season this fall), yet quite successful FX comedy series, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, for my research topic in Rhetoric of Laughter for several reasons. First of all, it is a contemporary show. The fifth season currently airs every Thursday night. Issues raised within its episodes are issues prominent in America right now. Second, these issues are most often controversial, but it is strictly because of the developed personalities of each character that any audience can easily find humor in these taboos. Third, I simply admire the style of the show’s writers (also its three main actors). They seamlessly connect each character’s plot in a culminating climax, giving every episode the proper elements required of short stories to achieve a certain “artistic unity.” I am sure that through research and close study of one specific episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, I can prove these reasons for the show’s significance and perhaps discover more along the way.

Bergson, on Comedy

Comedy, according to Henri Bergson, is strictly human. "You may laugh at an animal, but only because you have detected in it some human attitude or expression." In order to laugh, however, one must be indifferent to the situation, for, as Bergson would express, "laughter has no greater foe than emotion." To explain this point, I would refer back to the comedy of Jerry Seinfeld. In the final Seinfeld episode, the four friends stand by and observe a mugger attacking a rather large man. The man, we can see, is under a great deal of stress as he pulls out his wallet for the mugger, whose involved emotion in one of anger and agitation. The four main characters stand back and laugh at the situation. They have no involvement, in their minds.

Herbert Spencer's Humor

Herbert Spencer utilizes a great deal of his philosophy on laughter in describing the physiology of laughter itself. He describes it as a "reflex action." Repressed "[emotions reflect back, accumulate, and intensify.]" What Spencer states here is that laughter arises through certain thoughts. Muscular movements then cease the mental thought. Such reflex is caused by expectations of descending incongruity, meaning, "consciousness is unawares transferred from great things to small." Let's say, for instance, that your brother, whom you often worry about, informs you that he lost his job, that's why he isn't at work when he should be. Thoughts begin to plague your mind: what will he do now? He has to feed his two children, how will he find another job? His whole family will starve; they're going to lose the house--"Just kidding," he says, suddenly, "I took the afternoon off." You feel relieved, but all that "nervous energy" must be released. Therefore, you laugh...or smack him.

Freud's Vision of Laughter

Sigmund Freud sees humor as a process: either the object of laughter generates its own "humorous attitude," or the spectator (subject) finds humor in the unknowing object. Laughter best arises, says Freud, "from the saving of expenditure in feeling that the hearer derives the humorous satisfaction." But how does it travel from one person to another? That's where rhetoric comes in to play: "we may suppose there is only an echo, a copy of this unknown process." (above mentioned) Freud brings in his usual philosophy to explain some of the characteristics of humor. Describing it as a "liberating element," he says that humor is, "the ego's victorious assertion of its own invulnerability."

Arthur Schopenhauer and Soren Kierkegaard Generally Agree

Arthur Schopenhauer and Soren Kierkegaard generally agree with Kant on the Incongruity Theory of laughter. Comedy, to both philosophers, must arise from contradiction. But Schopenhauer explains in greater detail the meaning behind many of the terms concerning laughter. Wit is intentional and usually utilizes words. Likewise, the joke is the "intentionally ludicrous." Folly, then, is generally unintentional, and is found most often in action, rather than words. Pedantry is a form of folly which is, in Schopenhauer's explanation, "guided by reason in everything." Therefore, a pedant would perform actions based wholly on conceptual reasoning, not then, upon concrete experience. He goes on to explain that "irony is a joke concealed behind seriousness," and humor, opposing irony, "is seriousness concealed behind a joke." In shorter words, both philosophers believe that one cannot understand humor until he can first understand seriousness, for it is in the contradiction between the two that laughter may arise. Kierkegaard then explains, further than Schopenhauer, that "the comical is present wherever there is contradiction, and wherever one is justified in ignoring the pain, because it is non-essential."
I grouped these two philosophers together because I believe they are making the same argument, and one example may perhaps suffice for all the points above mentioned. Most definitely a pedant, the classic 1950s television show, I Love Lucy, grapples with the notions of comedy versus seriousness. While Lucy continuously attempts to be serious in success, she acts as if she understands a situation as a professional should. But without the proper training, she very often finds herself in quite humorous predicaments. The situations become humorous to the audience, because we understand the seriousness that Lucy so artfully destroys. In the following clip, Lucy tries to prove to her husband that she can go out and bring home the bacon; she wants to prove that she can take on the (1950s) "man's role." The professional atmosphere should be quite serious, but, as you may well observe, Lucy turns it into folly.

Watch Lucy in the Candy Episode

Immanuel Kant's Incongruity Theory

Setting aside the Superiority Theory of laughter, we then proceed to Kant's introduction to the Incongruity Theory. Kant sees humor as a healthy animation of the mind and body reacting to sensations "that have no design at their basis." Like winning the jackpot, laughter often springs from the discovery of something unexpected upon no logical reasoning. Wit performs this function, in Kant's words, "so that we can thus reach the body through the soul and use the latter as the physician of the former." Laughter exercises the mind and body.
To further exercise your mind's comparative notions of logic and ill-logic, and to perhaps exercise your body by means of laughter, I now present a brief animation of the song "Everything You Know Is Wrong," by Weird Al Yankovic.

Watch "Everything You Know Is Wrong!"

Thomas Hobbes on the Superiority Theory

Thomas Hobbes, nearly two millenia after Plato and Aristotle's lives, carries on the discussion of the Superiority Theory concerning laughter. Agreeing with the established terms, Hobbes merely strengthens its authority. He explains that men laugh at the recognition of their own abilities. In his own words, "laughter without offense, must be at absurdities and infirmities abstracted from persons, and when all the company may laugh together: for laughing to one's self puts all the rest into jealousy and examination of themselves." (Hobbes, from Human Nature, as provided in Philosophy of Laughter, above cited) While I can understand the situation that Hobbes describes, for I can picture the Lindsy Lohan flick Mean Girls as an example of the harsh laughter of judgment, I must also add that true laughter must derive from countless other sources. Laughter, Hobbes himself coins as "always joy," so must this Superiority Theory be true of all people, or just the inwardly "distorted" and the self-conscious? As I read his words, I wonder if Hobbes ever spent his highly academic life with children. Children laugh, and I do not think they even understand others' infirmities. They also produce laughter; laughter which I believe to be of the purest form. I have a two-year old nephew who constantly causes me to laugh, quite often to the point of tears, and usually this laughter is caused by the things he does so well. His cleverness surprises me when, rather than acknowledging his mother threatening to leave the picnic and go home if he doesn't eat his sandwich, he turns to me and compliments me on my hair. Now, Thomas Hobbes, explain to me how this laughter could be "nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others."

Aristotle on Laughter

Aristotle generally agrees with Plato's views, but he adds to the notion of Superiority Theory. In the case of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, he explains the human personality as related to humor. On one end of the spectrum, we have the buffoon, in today's case, I would relate this to the television sitcom; its laugh tracks indicate when the audience should be laughing, dumbing down the humor to the point where the listener does not even have to pay attention to what is said. On the other end of the spectrum, we have what Aristotle calls "the boorish," those who do not take laughter lightly. I would compare this, again to television, with the example of political analyst talk shows; so invested are they in their political cause, that they rarely leave room for light-hearted humor. In the middle is the sophisticated; Aristotle's "well-bred and educated" mean. This jokester knows the proper moments and subject-matter to cause laughter in his audience. This I would compare to Tonight Show host Conan O'Brian. While his wit provides wonderful humor, he remains aware of his new position in prime-time television. He censors much of his comments, as opposed to his position on Late Night, where his audience would be generally less significant and perhaps expecting a moreso crude humor.

Plato, on laughter:

Plato introduces us to the Superiority Theory of laughter. John Morreall, editor of The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor, describes the Superiority Theory by suggesting that "laughter is always directed at somebody as a kind of scorn." In following, Plato's Philebus places Socrates in a dialogue with Protarchus, explaining the simultaneity of pleasure and pain in laughter: pleasure, in the laughter itself, and pain, in the ridicule of others. A simple example of this would be finding humor in a friend's clumsiness: he hits the softball, pride swelling in his chest as he gauges the distance of the flight. He decides to kick it in to high gear rounding first--but in doing so, trips over the bag into a flailing leap and rolls to a stop between first and second base. The opposing team tags him out. We laugh at this (or, at least, I certainly did when I witnessed this spectacle), because of the ridiculous attempt of success in a skill not highly practiced by the subject.

rachelslaughter

When writing out my newly acquired web address for this fresh, new realm of communication that I am about to enter, I notice the odd phrase which the English language's duality suddenly presents. Rachel's laughter, as pertaining to the UW Oshkosh undergraduate class, Rhetoric of Laughter, transforms itself, in the form of a web address (without the apostrophe), into Rachel slaughter. On that note...
What is rhetoric? A good question, to begin, for it seems as though there could be an endless list of possible definitions. Aristotle defines rhetoric as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion." Beyond that, he explains how a rhetorician must intimately know and understand human nature and how it works. Rhetoric guides human tendency, not simply by what is expressed , but by how it is expressed. This is style. He professes that, "appropriate style will adapt itself to the emotions of the hearers, the character of the speaker, and the nature of the subject." Style, rightfully coined as "the art of language," by classical tradition, refers to prose, poetry, use of simile, metaphor, epithet, etc. By using such techniques, the author may well invoke his audience to simultaneously arrive at common judgment.
Rhetoric of Laughter, then, would refer to the persuasive means by which laughter results. Returning to the above mentioned slaughter comment, I decided to keep my original web address, not only for the irony protruding from its dual meaning, but also to explain a bit of truth on my approach to this subject: it has always been my understanding that once a joke needs explaining, it has lost its former wit. Will intense study of this subject "slaughter" the slight sense of humor I may have retained from my carefree childhood? We shall see; though it was not the strongest element of my personality, anyway.