Gender issues and laughter

The article "Science of Laughter" states that biologically speaking women are the laughers and men are the comedians in order to attract women. Now while I admit that I like a man who makes me laugh, I'm not sure that I agree. I can think of plenty of times when the men in my life laugh without my joining in. But then I think this begs the question of "guy humor" vrs. "girl humor." I have often annoyed my girlfriends by agreeing with my guy friends. But when it comes to humor I am very resistant to what I call "guy humor" or what Kevin Smith calls "dick and fart jokes." I've seen all of his movies, but I never laugh at the easy jokes. I prefer the more intelligent insights and special references. Now my husband and brother laugh so hard at the easy stuff that they've been known to cry. Now this baffles me, because my husband is a professor and I tend to think that he should have a finer humor palate. But alas this is not the case so I tend to agree that there is a difference in what men and women find humorous.

Mother Nature, it's just not right...

Does humor help or hinder persuasion? Hmmmmmmm, This is a difficult question because there is so much that goes into persuasion. For example in the article we read for this week, they briefly touch on gender differences. and depending on the context these can may a big difference in the way humor is perceived. For example Tampax has a new line of commercials involving Mother Nature, a woman clad in a red suit, delivering monthly "gifts." The first time I saw I one of these I was horrified. There used to be an unwritten rule about using red in a feminine hygiene commercial. My husband on the other hand laughed out loud and then immediately apologized to me. He said: I guess that isn't really funny? So sure there was humor, but it didn't persuade me to buy the product.

When it comes to ads I think the needs of the audience make a huge difference in regards to the persuasion factor. I love the Etrade commercial with the stock trading baby. They may me laugh every time, but I don't trade stocks online. I have a money guy for that, because I know that I don't have the time to study the stock market. It has nothing to do with ads. That being said I do think that humor can help persuade by increasing likability. When Bill Clinton was running for office he appealed to the young audience by getting on MTV and being funny. He proved himself to be a "real guy." And that piqued a lot of interest that ultimately turned in to votes. So does humor help persuade? I think if it's used properly it can help, but I hope that people are smart enough to look at the whole picture first, not just the quick laugh.

Why are Bad things funny?

Originally I had a trailer clip to entice you, dear readers, but alas I am experiencing technical difficulties. So my question of the day, or rather the rest of the semester, is: Why is dark comedy so funny? In particular I want to look at the movie Very Bad Things.

Dark humor is full of all the things that should be terrifying to us as a society, yet we laugh at it. When my husband and I saw this movie he was rolling over the manner of the stripper/prostitute's death. We both laughed through the entire movie. It's mock serious tone did nothing to put us in a serious mood. The reprehensible acts that build through the story were hilarious. But if the same story had been presented on the nightly news would we have laughed? If these events had happened to people we know we would be crying. So why were we laughing so hard at this movie that we started to cry? This will be my research focus this semester. In addition I plan to compare the audience of this movie in 1998 to a much older audience, say the 50's. Would the Golden Era of movies have a place for this type of humor? Would it have earned that title, or been put in a horror bin? I do find a lot of early horror films funny.... But is that the movie or modern society? Where does the fine line of humor fall in such work and why? Tune in again for more on my research.

Physiology or Philosophy?

Although I enjoyed our excerpt from Herbert Spencer, I would assume a lot of my classmates did not. It reads like a physiology lecture, and being a science geek, this was right up my alley. Spencer describes extra neural excitement and the way it needs to find a path out of the body. He uses the example of exercise and I think it's a great one. When you're nervous or excited, you can't sit still. You often can't sleep either. But if you exercise, say run or play basketball. You work out that extra energy and you can finally focus. Personally I experience this a lot. When I don't exercise regularly I don't sleep. It's as simple as that. Spencer puts laughter in the same category. It's simply a physical channel for excess neural stimulation.

So why don't we laugh all the time? He goes on to explain that laughter only occurs in a descending order. If the overstimulating event is not "inferior" to the preceding stimuli, laughter won't be the channel that the excess takes. I think of this as a necessary let down. If a stimulus creates more tension and escalates the excess you don't laugh. For instance if someone is ill and in the hospital, you may have an excess of stimulation. If something silly happens you might laugh and release it. Perhaps your loved one starts to come around and makes a joke. But if your loved one dies. That next step is a further escalating step and doesn't elicit a laugh but a different release, probably tears.

I'm not sure how this ties in with Freud but Spencer makes a lot of sense to me.

Ugh! Freud!

I need to start this by saying that I am not a fan of Freud. And this week's selection did nothing to warm me to him. For starters his comic examples of a death row inmate making a joke, on his way to the gallows, about a great way to start the week, was tasteless. Needless to say I didn't see the humor in it.

Basically what he's saying in this excerpt is that humor comes from "the ego's victorious assertion of its own invulnerability." He explains this as a "fine" distinction. He seems to be saying that it's a wonderful thing that our minds can trick us into believing that we are better than others and some what bullet-proof. Maybe it's just my own bias (probably) but I think he's insufferable. This idea seems to me to be a rehashing of superiority theory. See also Aristotle, Plato and Hobbes. Trying to think of an example for this I came up with the same ideas from those posts. I'm sure I'm probably wrong here, so feel free to comment and correct me.

And now on to Kierkegaard The piece I read for this post cracked me up because the bulk of the piece is a foot note. That's not the point, but as an English major, I thought that had to be pointed out as just too funny. What Kierkegaard is saying in this piece is that basically any situation can be funny depending on the perception of the outcome. If you can see a way out the situation you can see the humor in it, but if you are wallowing without a light at the end of the tunnel, the situation becomes tragic. Hence the theater masks.

To be honest it sound so much like finding the humor in a really bad day, after the fact. I have had such horrible strings of events that I feel like crying when I'm in the middle of it. But often when I get home, ready to complain, my husband will have made me dinner, or my kid uses the same dramatic tone to tell me how she killed her ladybug friend accidentally. And when I start to tell the story of my bad day, it becomes a mini comedy routine, because I know that when I get home at the end it's all okay. Suddenly the fact that despite my best efforts I got lunch down the front of my shirt, and the three attempts to get the printer to work right are straight out of a sitcom. Perhaps that's also just how I deal with things, but I think it fits the distinction that Kierkegaard is making. The humor comes from a certainty that somehow things will work out.

No, Not That One

Although I agree with his name, Arthur Shopenhauer, described the idea of the Ludicrous without such a colorful example. Okay seriously, Shopenhauer builds on Incongruity theory by picking up where Kant left off. He leave the physical aspects of laughter alone and describes the difference between wit and ludicrous. In a nut shell the idea is that wit is more of an art form. To use wit is to be in control of the source of the humor. To intentionally set an expected ending to a story, for example. Where as the ludicrous man misses the mark unknowingly.

I have a perfect example of this from my own life. My daughter is in 4K this year and comes home with the craziest stories. The other day she told me about a boy at school who was chewing on his sandals. She said that the teachers told him to stop, but he wasn't really listening. I responded: Oh gross! You don't do that right. And she said: Of course not, I wasn't wearing sandals. I almost had to pull the car over, I was laughing so hard. So I quickly redirected that chewing on shoes is gross and will make you sick... But her wit is not yet fine, she stuck to her literally meaning. In this case my daughter was ludicrous, although I did laugh at her. So I guess I'll be sure to keep her in her Converse at school.