Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm Shows - Essay Example

? The Analysis of a Joke Word Count 351 (5 pages) In this piece: a joke will be chosen which fits into one of the categories as described in Jim Holt’s book about the history of jokes, and it will be explained why the joke was chosen—in addition to describing what is the point of humor. There are several types of categories of jokes. “[J]okes do fall into the category of folklore, along with myths, proverbs, legends, nursery rimes, riddles, and superstitions…a good proportion of the Jokes in oral circulation involv[ing] sex or scatology…. Although we think of the joke as a cultural constant, it is a form of humor that comes and goes with the rise and fall of civilizations.”1 The joke that was chosen was the following: A doctor walked into a bank. Preparing to endorse a check, he pulled a rectal thermometer out of his shirt pocket and tried to write with it. Realizing his mistake, he looked at the thermometer with annoyance and said, ‘Well thats great, just great... some asshole’s got my pen.’2 The category that this particular joke probably belongs in is the scatological category, because it deals with a reference to the rectum. It’s unsure why, but these types of jokes can be particularly compelling—because excrement seems to be something that humans find very funny. Of course, a simpler way to say that is to just say, “Poo is funny.” But why? What is so funny about our own feces? Fundamentally, excrement is elemental. If we didn’t have it, there would be no jokes. But why is humor about feces, farts, and, in fact—the entire range of human bodily functions, fodder for jokes? One must wonder. What makes this particular joke funny is that, through a play on words, we imagine the pen being stuck in some patient’s behind. That seems pretty funny that there would be a mix-up like that. Thus, there is a play on words and we find this joke, for the most part, funny—if not at least a bit crude. However, that is part of the charm of this particular joke. What many people don’t realize is that jokes that circulate about today are many times holdovers from previous jokes in the past. Jokes can even reveal the deeper currents of thought running through our minds. Freud had a theory that jokes provide an outlet for aggressive impulses.3 This joke was chosen because of its irreverence. Now, it’s not using very polite language either. This is where the aggressive element demonstrates itself. It’s not a polite joke, and it probably wouldn’t be polite to share in mixed company, unless the mixed company were to be as foul-mouthed as the language used in the joke. Although the joke’s language is not overly offensive, it does say something about the medical profession as well. Doctors are sometimes inept, and it’s easy to make jokes about doctors and lawyers because they both have high-stress professions. Humor can be a wonderful way to deflect problems, as well as provide a platform for expressing one’s personality. This is why comedians like Jerry Seinfeld did especially well with his show Seinfeld, and why, subsequently, comedians like Larry David did so well with his show Curb Your Enthusiasm. Many times, these humorous shows have something in common—they use real-life situations as fodder for something called situational comedy (or a sitcom). Situational comedies bring real-life problems to light. Who could ever forget the following bits: “Are you sponge-worthy?” “She’s got man hands!” Pig Man. The Soup Nazi. “You double-dipped the chip.” “Serenity now!” “Give me that, you old bag!” Who will ever forget these classic moments in Seinfeld history? These, and a series of other vignettes in his subsequent spin-off hit HBO comedy series--Curb Your Enthusiasm--were brought to you by none other than comedian, writer, actor, and executive producer Larry David. Larry David was the head writer and executive producer of Seinfeld, winning him a Primetime Emmy Award for Best Outstanding comedy series in the run of the show’s fourth year. Seinfeld made David a millionaire, and will make him a billionaire. Who would’ve thought that a story about stealing a chocolate babka from an old lady would be a memorable scene? Larry David—whom fellow comedian Jerry Seinfeld asked to be co-creator for Seinfeld as a commissioned pilot for NBC—usually depicted various episodes which pointed out the absurdities in everyday life. Although it had relatively humble beginnings, soon Seinfeld appealed to the average American and developed a cult following of devoted fans—who enjoyed reprising scenes from the show by memorizing their favorite lines. The show ran for 9 years, from 1989-1998. Now the executive producer of a semi-improvisational, partially-scripted, Golden Globe-winning show called Curb Your Enthusiasm--David plays an awkward, socially inept version of himself as a struggling stand-up comedian. In Curb, humorous moments in the show are compounded by the fact that David’s character is an unassuming guy who just seems to have incredibly bad luck, bad timing, and--in short--bad etiquette. David uses humor to his advantage in order to infuse an awkward situation with comic timing so that you are just left shaking your head like, “I can’t believe he just said that.” This led to the coining of the phrase “the Larry David moment” in Americana—a crowning cultural achievement for a man who was born two days before Independence Day in 1947. David’s character’s knee-jerk reactions in Curb can be viewed as wrong on so many levels, but it’s the type of show you can’t stop watching. It’s kind of like being a witness to a car crash—you’re present for the moment in which someone screws up and then you wind up just sticking around to see what happens. Part sensationalized overacting and part dramatic comedy, the actors in Curb—a show which was nominated for a Primetime Emmy 34 times and has won once--masterfully manipulate dry humor, massaging in themes from Seinfeld with more absurd and unusual situations, making this must-see TV. Curb Your Enthusiasm is a show with a series of unfortunate events in David’s everyday life to which people can relate. In a way, Curb is very much like real life—unscripted, raw, and uncut—which is part of its appeal. Curb is a spot-on situational comedy that took David years to cultivate through his early life and work experience. David originally started out in 1974 as a stand-up comedian hailing from Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn. Larry himself was raised in a Jewish family. He later harnessed his powers of creative writing to craft comedic vignettes from his personal life experiences. These situations demonstrated complex relationship dynamics in a funny way—making great fodder for shows which ultimately bolstered him to the upper echelons of a successful career in television. Larry David acknowledged that his real-life persona was the inspiration for creating George Costanza, a character on Seinfeld—a paranoid, greedy, and self-serving bald guy. The episode where George quit his job and returned afterward pretending that nothing had happened was actually based on a true story from Larry David’s own life when he was a comedy writer on SNL. The person at Saturday Night Live who had hired David as a writer was replaced, and his comedy sketches were not looked upon favorably by the new management. One day he just quit. After going back to his government-subsidized apartment in Manhattan Plaza to talk to Kenny Kramer—his friend across the hall who was the inspiration for the Seinfeld character Cosmo Kramer—David realized that he needed his job at SNL and that it was an amazing opportunity. So, Kramer suggested going back to work as if nothing had happened. David actually did that and it worked. Thus, this was yet another awkward moment in his life experience—of which there would be many--that generated the idea for an entire episode. Ultimately, in this essay a certain joke was examined, why it was chosen, and finally how humor has been used throughout time—especially on TV sitcoms like Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. WORKS CITED Funny Joke. Retrieved 15 November 2011 at: . Holt, Jim. Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes. US: W.W. Norton & Co., 2008. Pp. 6, 98. Read More