Tuesday, August 30, 2016
FYWS Hw 2: Most persuasive piece so far
I believe that the most persuasive piece of work that we've read so far is "Humour and Superiority" by John Lippitt. Reason being, John Lippitt uses the best mode to get his point across, refuting what others have been saying about the same topics. One main example of this is Lippitt's refutal of Hobbe's claim that you can not laugh at yourself, unless you have become superior of that old self. Lippitt wants to know what happens when you find something funny out about yourself? Because it is very possible for this to be true. I have had several cases of this happening. One being when I was with a group of my best friends in high school. All of the sudden I just began to start laughing hysterically. All of my friends, bewildered by my laughter, curiously asked "why are you laughing?". Then I explained what happened earlier that day. I told them about how I was home alone with my dog, but instead of laying around and watching television, I played with my dog. All I ever wanted for that day was to put a hat on my dog, but he would just shake the hat right off. In my failure, I worked best, cutting holes on each side of the hat, and running an elastic string through the holes. Now, I had created a doggy hat that would not fall off. At the time, I was determined to make all of this work, so I did not realize how funny it was that I wanted my dog to simply wear a hat. So when I was hanging out with my friends that day, my mom got home from work and found my dog wearing his hat. Then I proceeded to laugh hysterically at what I'd achieved earlier in the day. I believe that all the different theories just describe different types of comedy, rather than reaching a larger main theory. I also believe that not all examples of incongruity, superiority, and relief aren't funny because society has changed so much. First off, different people find different things funny, but secondly, because of what's wrong and right in society makes specific things not funny anymore. Specifically with the incongruity theory. Most examples of incongruity in society today are considered as degrading, rather than funny.
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You make our opinion very clear. You make very good sense of the incongruity theory.
ReplyDeleteI love your story! I also chose Lippitt's work to be the most persuasive because he analyzed the faults in Hobbes' theory, especially the ones that are not as relevant in modern comedy. I too have laughed at myself, not even out of my past inferiority or superiority, but due to something funny that occurred in the past or even laughing at myself for laughing at something else. I appreciated Lippitt's example of the child and the parents and found this to be accurate in the sense that one can laugh at another without malice or intended superiority. It makes me wonder then if the intention or purpose behind that joke holds more value in our study of comedy than the reaction to that joke. Because all people have such different views of comedy, it is expected for some forms of humor to be received differently in which case it is more important how the joke was intended regardless of its reception. For example, I can appreciate the Monty Python humor because I recognize it as intended to be funny for that particular audience although I do not perceive it to be extremely funny myself. Perhaps this could be another measure of comedy: does the thought behind the humor have merit regardless of personal effect? An objective unit of comedy?
ReplyDeleteHow did you finally solve the dog-hat problem? This is the holy grail of dog comedy. You can get things on the dog but not really keep them there. It's hard to say we feel superior to a dog, right? I mean, we normally might feel superior to a dog, but as Hutcheson points out, this is an example more of a dog acting like us. It's more about gaining dignity than losing it.
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