The Cellar

The Cellar (http://cellar.org/index.php)
-   Philosophy (http://cellar.org/forumdisplay.php?f=25)
-   -   Humour is cruel by definition (http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=15303)

monster 09-06-2007 08:50 AM

Humour is cruel by definition
 
Discuss :D

One poster commented that they don't like cruel humour. Isn't all humour cruel at some level? Surely something is being laughed at, and at some point that thing will relate to a person?

Or is the opposite true? Is there no such thing as cruel humour? Are amusement and suffering incongruous intentions, so that something can be either cruel or humourous, but not both?

Cloud 09-06-2007 08:58 AM

Yes, all humor originates in the suffering of others. Heinlein grokked it.

monster 09-06-2007 09:11 AM

So where is the "line of acceptability". Is it a personal thing, variable according to the current PC and personal beliefs and issues? Or is it some measurable point, applicable to all but elusive to the comprehension of many?

skysidhe 09-06-2007 09:24 AM

schadenfreude is the lowest form of humor.


Humor to me is subtle and smart. Sarcasm, wit ,satire and irony.



Quote:

Originally Posted by monster (Post 382434)
So where is the "line of acceptability". Is it a personal thing, variable according to the current PC and personal beliefs and issues? Or is it some measurable point, applicable to all but elusive to the comprehension of many?

I think it is our personal belief systems. Would we accept this IN REAL LIFE? Do we like rauncy British humor? slap-stick?
Shows like Bernie Mac and Scrubs ,Jon Stewart, Ellen DeGeneres are incredibly funny to me. I liked the movie superbad and knocked up but slap stick and schadenfreude eludes me. I don't put people down in the attempt to make others laugh. It's just not my style.

Flint 09-06-2007 09:27 AM

Nothing is less funny than something that tries too hard to be funny. Like when you over-explain a joke, it kills the humor.

You could express this as a formula: if effort "E" is greater than punchline "P" then the comedic index "C" is negative.

Quote:

As I said, it was too contrived to be comedic. The scenario was distracting.
Quote:

It didn't have a chance to be funny…the elaborate planning involved ruined that.
This has less to do with the nature of the material than it does the nature of proper delivery. But, yes, it is a personal thing.

glatt 09-06-2007 09:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flint (Post 382444)
This has less to do with the nature of the material than it does the nature of proper delivery.

The driver of this morning's Metro train absolutely killed. He got a train full of surly commuters to laugh a genuine deep belly laugh. Had to be a few hundred people all laughing. All he said over the PA system was "I don't know." But it was the delivery. He killed.

DanaC 09-06-2007 10:56 AM

It isn't the level of cruelty...it's who is being cruel to whom. It's the power differential, or relationship between the person being cruel and the victim of that cruelty. It's the difference between a practical joke and bullying.

wolf 09-06-2007 11:03 AM

Monster, in one sentence you have explained the appeal of The Three Stooges.

Flint 09-06-2007 11:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DanaC
It's the difference between a practical joke and bullying.

The difference could also be in the set-up. It could, potentially, be funny to impulsively trip a co-worker as they walk by (with no pre-meditation); but if, instead, you had spent hours building a booby trap, only to film it knocking down a random passerby, then E (effort) would be greater then P (punchline) causing C (comedic index) to be negative. Also, in this case, the greater part of the joke is the creator of the set-up, not the victim; IE the creator becomes the subject. I should add that the very senselessness of the act could counter-intuitively have a positive, absurdist quality.

DanaC 09-06-2007 11:12 AM

Humour is very subjective. I have friends with what I consider to be quite cruel senses of humour. They're still my friends and sometimes I find them funny. There are times however when I find their humour unpleasant. That's just how I am. Doesn't mean I think I am better than them, just means I have a tendency to relate more closely to the person/creature that has been the butt of the joke, more than I relate to the person who is carrying out the joke. Maybe it's because I spent so many years being the butt of seriously cruel humour as a child attending school with a disfiguring skin condition. Not everyone went though that so maybe they don't have an exaggerated sense empathy in those instances.

We all find different things funny. Our sense of humour is personal and grounded in our life experiences.

Pie 09-06-2007 11:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cloud (Post 382430)
Yes, all humor originates in the suffering of others. Heinlein grokked it.

They may be the lowest form of humor, but are puns "cruel"?


Q. What's brown and sticky?

A. A stick.


(Who's suffering now?)

skysidhe 09-06-2007 11:33 AM

lol pie :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flint (Post 382530)
The difference could also be in the set-up. It could, potentially, be funny to impulsively trip a co-worker as they walk by (with no pre-meditation); but if, instead, you had spent hours building a booby trap, only to film it knocking down a random passerby, then E (effort) would be greater then P (punchline) causing C (comedic index) to be negative. Also, in this case, the greater part of the joke is the creator of the set-up, not the victim; IE the creator becomes the subject. I should add that the very senselessness of the act could counter-intuitively have a positive, absurdist quality.

This is almost exactly what I almost posted and didn't.
My example went like this:

Goofball is walking along and another sticks out his foot and trips the poor bastard. People laugh and thinks it's funny. The goofball dosn't think it was. The goofball not only feels like shit because it was a mean spirited. He says so. Part of the on -lookers agree part of them do not.

The ones that find it funny use the very reason they laugh as validation that is was in fact funny dismissing the targets feelings of the contrary.

vs an actually funny one

Goofball goes to church. She wears a dress and somehow the toilet paper gets stuck in the hem and flows out behind her as she leaves the room. Into the hallway she goes until a kind samaritan helps her out. Funny as hell.


oh and I absolutley abhor funny home videos. The above example would lose that funny quality if put on tape.

glatt 09-06-2007 01:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pie (Post 382547)
Q. What's brown and sticky?

A. A stick.


(Who's suffering now?)

The audience is steered towards thinking about feces, and the joke is that it wasn't feces. The audience is suffering.

Clodfobble 09-06-2007 04:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by skysidhe
She wears a dress and somehow the toilet paper gets stuck in the hem and flows out behind her as she leaves the room. Into the hallway she goes until a kind samaritan helps her out. Funny as hell.

What if the woman is absolutely mortified at the embarrassment of walking around with toilet paper dangling off of her, and runs back into the bathroom crying? Does it stop being funny as hell for you then?

elSicomoro 09-06-2007 04:55 PM

[humor]Monster, you're in America...fucking spell like one![/humor]

busterb 09-06-2007 07:59 PM

Nothing worst that spending a few days on a prank and it goes over their head. Say what?

jinx 09-06-2007 08:00 PM

Only if the prank involves an anvil buster...

Undertoad 09-06-2007 08:10 PM

What's cruel about this? (9 mins of classic Hedberg)

monster 09-06-2007 08:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sycamore (Post 382745)
[humor]Monster, you're in America...fucking spell like one![/humor]

[humour]They're not the same thing ;)[/humour]

(I'm sure there's a joke about there being no U in American humour, but I have beer, so I'll let it slide....)

Toadie boy, what was that video clip? I was tempted to mail the guy a barrette. I was the one suffering there, man. Cruelty to monster.

Cloud 09-06-2007 08:34 PM

"I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much . . . because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting."

Valentine Michael Smith. Here is a link to an excerpt to the whole passage from Strange Land, with discussion:

http://ockhamsrazor.joeuser.com/arti...AID=161492&s=1

Undertoad 09-06-2007 09:10 PM

The late Mitch Hedberg's last Comedy Central special.

zippyt 09-06-2007 09:15 PM

Well its like this ( for me at least ) , my last name is Cockerham ,
so school was fun but USMC boot camp was better , I couldn't talk back , and One Drill Inst. made me his mission , butt of a joke , try standing at STIFF ATTENTION with a DI screaming COCK !!! ( sorta reminds me of LJ now that I think of it ) spitting and all Trying to get a reaction out of me .
at he time it sucked , now looking back it is SOO redickulus it just makes me giggle ,
i laugh at the boot camp part of Full Metal Jacket !!!
Squirel appult ??? BWAHHHHHAAAAAAAAA HA HA !!!!!!

DucksNuts 09-07-2007 12:30 AM

There should be more posts of this caliber from you, Bippy!!

Posts that contain the words STIFF ATTENTION, redickulus and BWAHHHHHAAAAAAAAA HA HA !!!!!!

wolf 09-07-2007 01:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zippyt (Post 382848)
i laugh at the boot camp part of Full Metal Jacket !!!

Despite never having been in boot camp, I also laugh at that part of Full Metal Jacket. Different reasons, I'm sure, but it's still very funny.

I am aware, though, that my sense of humor runs deep, dark, dry, and strange. Black humor is not unusual in folks in emergency services professions. It's a release valve for us, to some extent, a reaction to the stress of what we do on a daily basis.

Thing is, though, that I was like this before I start doing this stuff.

rkzenrage 09-07-2007 01:50 AM

Studied this in college, true, all humor is based on pain/sadism/masochism, but intent matters to the audience... what is the person delivering the joke trying to do?

Griff 09-07-2007 10:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Undertoad (Post 382818)
What's cruel about this? (9 mins of classic Hedberg)

There is some self depricating stuff in there, cruelty turned inward. He does do a lot of incongruity stuff though. He exploits the tension between what is said and what exists. comic genius

Flint 09-07-2007 10:17 AM

I object to the suggestion that ALL humor is based on pain/cruelty/humiliation. One example: Some words just sound funny. It's completely abstract.

skysidhe 09-07-2007 10:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clodfobble (Post 382726)
What if the woman is absolutely mortified at the embarrassment of walking around with toilet paper dangling off of her, and runs back into the bathroom crying? Does it stop being funny as hell for you then?


I don't know because that woman was me :D

The hall was empty. The good lady was mortified for me but I just chuckled and smiled because I felt lucky I was interupted before I walked through the pews that way.

I had heard about this kinda thing happening. When ever I wear a dress I always check the back of it. hehehe That was along time ago and I still check!


If it had been someone else it would not have been funny. no

oh and p.s. These days I no longer go to church but I do not hold the toilet paper or my panty hose responsible. :)

Aliantha 09-07-2007 07:26 PM

Here's something that i think is funny.

Last night my brother and his wife were talking about having recently been 'fire walking'. (you know that thing where they put you in a trance and then you walk on hot coals).

I said, what happens if you get half way and 'wake up'. My husband turns to me and says, "you have to turn back".

To me, that's funny. No one is harmed by it and it's just plain funny.

I don't think humour has to be couched in someone elses pain. I think things can be funny without having to hurt someone else.

Aliantha 09-07-2007 07:34 PM

Here's another cracker from my husband.

We were watching the news about Pres Bush's motorcade when he arrived in Oz. There were something like 30 cars in it.

Husband turns around and says, "that's not Bush, that's a fucking forest"

Clodfobble 09-07-2007 08:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aliantha
I said, what happens if you get half way and 'wake up'. My husband turns to me and says, "you have to turn back".

To me, that's funny. No one is harmed by it and it's just plain funny.

But isn't the joke either (or both)

A.) The fire-walker in question is too stupid to know that halfway back is the same as halfway there, so we laugh at their foolishness
B.) The fire-walker is going to suffer the same amount of foot pain as they would have if they'd walked forward, so again we laugh at their pain/foolishness.

No one real is hurt, but you are still laughing at the idea that someone will not be having the happiest outcome possible (i.e., jump off the pathway to the side, end of fire-walking experience--not really so funny.)

Aliantha 09-07-2007 08:59 PM

Well even if they jumped off the side they'd still have burnt feet.

For me the humour is in the history of turning back when things get a bit rough. In this instance, the usual solution which is to turn back is just as bad as going forward. Also, as you say, the people are not real. It's a hypothetical situation. It was also an interjection into a serious question, the answer to which happened to be that it's never happened (although I doubt the legitimacy of that answer).

You can't get through the forest, so you go back the way you came. Hansel and Gretel wanted to follow their bread crumb path back (and we all know how that turned out).

DanaC 09-08-2007 06:15 AM

LoL that's funny.

DanaC 09-08-2007 06:16 AM

All humour has a 'victim', the subject or butt of the joke, but not all humour is cruel.

Pie 09-08-2007 10:06 AM

I've heard that scientist define part of humor as the whipsawing of the mind -- when you expect one thing and get another. The more unexpected, the greater the humor. Thus the "brown and sticky" joke. That does mean that the "cruelty" is towards the listener, in as much as they got jerked around. But they're laughing; they must like it. It's the mental equivalent to the rollercoaster.

Therefore, discussing humor in the context of cruelty must include the quality of the response to the joke. It's only cruel if someone found it offensive or unethical or hurtful.

:. Know your audience.

Aliantha 09-08-2007 08:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DanaC (Post 383394)
All humour has a 'victim', the subject or butt of the joke, but not all humour is cruel.

I think that sums up what I was trying to say.

I suppose my brother and his wife could have been offended at the jokes my husband cracked about firewalking, but they didn't. They laughed because he wasn't trying to be hurtful towards them or firewalkers and he wasn't making any judgement about how smart or stupid you'd have to be to do it.

It was funny, and if you'd been there, you would have laughed.


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 09:05 PM.

Powered by: vBulletin Version 3.8.1
Copyright ©2000 - 2025, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.