Definition of Humour - Essay Example

? Anthro 2040 Dr. Ewa Wasilewska 03 May I LAUGHED AND LEARNED HUMOUR It is true that “Laughter is the best medicine”. We laughed every day because of different jokes from different people with different personalities. I never thought that even this simple way of joking around has also been taken seriously by our anthropologists, psychologists and sociologists through the years. We, however, as ordinary people, just ask ourselves what’s with the word “humour”? Humour can be defined in two perspectives. First definition is from William Beeman of the Department of Anthropology in Brown University. He said that “humour is performative pragmatic accomplishment involving a wide range of communication skills including, but not exclusively involving, language, gesture, the presentation of visual imagery, and situation management. It aims at creating a concrete feeling of enjoyment for an audience, most commonly manifested in a physical display consisting of displays of pleasure including smiles and laughter.” 1 Another definition of humour, “is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement” 2 Not all people are talented enough to be humorous. Someone needs to be creative and imaginative. In this case, there is what we call “humour formula” Root components of humour are being reflective of or imitative of reality and surprise/misdirection, contradiction/paradox, ambiguity. Therefore, methods to create humour include hyperbole, metaphor, farce, reframing and timing. 3 Our society has evolved in different angles. We have learned from our parents, siblings and friends knowing which laughable jokes are and which are not. Sometimes when people are stressed from their work, when they laugh at jokes, it gives them a relaxing feeling, releasing stress. It is therefore healthy to laugh at jokes. But that is not the focus of my paper. I just want to make this paper an informative material to others who may be reading this in the future. I laughed and I learned humour. In our subject Anthropology 2040-1, I thought we will just study how to create jokes and learn the tricks of being a stand-up comedian. It was more of a deep understanding about the origins of humour and how Jewish people are important in the anthropological study of humour. But why did our forefathers like Plato, Socrates and others became curious about the elements of Humour. Who doesn’t want to hear jokes? Of course everyone does. But sometimes people became abusive of their sense of humour. Having a sense of humour is a great talent. It means that you can make everyone laugh, and sometimes people make money for this ability. In some television shows, competition is always present. So, instead of naming the person or show, they use jokes against their competitors. Especially if one T.V. show claimed they are number 1 in the ratings, others react and use other means to prove to people they are number 1 too. Humour is sometimes used by people who think they are more superior to the others. Like in schools, the usual scenes are some rich kids prank over poor kids, good looking students prank on not so good looking students. But how far is too far when it comes to humour? Honestly, we are influenced by our society when it comes to humour verbals and visuals. We selectively and consciously laugh at areas we found defects or we found out of the ordinary. Anything that is not perfect in our subconscious is not ordinary and therefore we can say, we laugh about it sometimes because it is not how we expect it should appear. According to Ted Cohen, when a joke involves logic running wild, the joke will present an absurdity – an absurdity in itself or an absurd response to a normal overture or a kind of doubling of absurdity. 4 Religious humour is by far the most controversial part of our modern society. Most of the readings about this concept points towards Jewish people. But before we go to Jewish people, let’s first understand why religion entails humour by defining religious ideology. According to Marvin Koller, “religious ideology is composed of idea and belief systems”.5 These systems provide the intellectual substance of faith that probe, explain, reason, logically organize and thoughtfully deal with the purposes and nature of life and death.6 It is however, history in the past of noted cultures like the Jewish people have developed its own way of dealing with humour about them. Jewish people are the remaining remnant followers of the Judaism. This is a small group of people and through the years they suffered sadness, rejection, tragedy, misunderstanding and seemingly relentless persecution and suffering.7 I’d like to share a very popular joke about religion. This is about which religion is the best and will be saved by God. There were three men boasting about their religions. The first guy is a Muslim, the second guy is a Buddhist and third guy is a Catholic. Muslims believe and praise Allah, Buddhists believe in Buddha and Catholics believe in God. They were discussing about the teachings of their religions and the promise of salvation to them by their God. So, they challenge each other to jump off the highest building then whoever survives the fall surely was saved by their God. The first guy to jump is the Muslim and he narrated prayers before jumping and when finally jumped, he called “Allah, Allah”. The two guys were amazed that the Muslim is alive and not even bruised. The next guy to take the challenge is the Buddhist. Same as the Muslim, he narrated prayers, and then jumped off and called “Buddha, Buddha”. And there, he float like a feather before the touching the ground and he is saved. Lastly, the Catholic guy, now he is more nervous and really prayed hard to God to save him. He’s really trembling but he has no choice but to make the jump. He jumped off the building and when he is falling and calling to God, he is still falling really fast and can imagine he will hit the ground seriously wounded. Because he felt afraid of dying, he suddenly changed to “Allah, Allah” and “Buddha, Buddha”. Here is another humour and this is a Jewish humour: A priest and a rabbi were sharing a compartment on a train. After a while, the priest put down his book and said to the Rabbi, "I know that in your religion you're not supposed to eat pork... but have you really never ever tasted it?"  The rabbi closed his newspaper and replied, "I must tell you the truth. Yes I have, on the odd occasion." The rabbi then had his turn to interrogate. He asked, "I know that in your religion you're supposed to be celibate... but..." The priest interrupted, "Yes, I know what you are going to ask, and yes, I have succumbed to temptation once or twice." The two continued with their reading and there was silence for a while. Then the rabbi peeked around his newspaper and said, "Better than pork, isn't it?"8 Most of the stand-comedians in America are Jewish; Joey Adams, Marshall Brickman, Joseph Heller, Alan King, Lou Myers, Gene Wilder, Willie Howard, Bette Midler, Abe Burrows, to name a few. This is I think where they can uplift themselves from the long term view about Jews that they are perennial minorities and that they are always conscious with their tragic background in the past. Although, many nations respect the Jews and Judaism in terms of their religion without the fear of comment, in America, some of them now lived a prosperous life. Most of the Jews are the rich ones in the America. Often the Jews called America as “The Promised Land” rather than Israel because Jews and Judaism are found therein to be contributors to the cultural mosaic that is the American way of life. 9 According to Ted Cohen, his hypothesis on what lies behind at least one strand of Jewish humour in America are these two characteristics of the humorists: they have the stance of an outsider, and the soul of a critical student. 10 Now, let’s discuss about self-censorship of humour. According to a definition, “self-censorship is the act of censoring or classifying one’s work (blog, book(s), film(s), or other means of expression), out of fear of, or deference to, the sensibilities of others, without overt pressure from any specific party or institution of authority. Self-censorship is often practiced by film producers, film directors, publishers, news anchors, journalists, musicians and other kinds of authors.” 11 In other words, this term is mostly used in media. Media is wide ranged and can easily influence people. As what I have discussed earlier in this essay, some T.V. shows use self-censorship humours to influence people, to think that their show is better than others. Sometimes it’s just too much. Some hosts who are very influential to their audience, when making comments on-air make some sort of problem with the other show’s audience. Self-censorship is also a common use in the politics or governance. Here is one political humour I’ve encountered online: President Vladimir Putin called President Bush with an emergency:"Our largest condom factory has exploded!" the Russian President cried; "My people's favourite form of birth control! This is a true disaster!" "Boris, the American people would be happy to do anything within their power to help you.", replied the President. "I do need your help," said Putin. "Could you possibly send 1,000,000 condoms ASAP to tie us over?" "Why certainly! I'll get right on it!", said Bush."Oh, and one more small favour, please?", said Putin. "Yes?", replied the President. "Could the condoms be red in colour and at least 10" long and 4" in diameter?" said Yeltsin. "No problem," replied the President and with that Bush hung up and called the President of Trojan condoms. "I need a favour, you've got to make 1,000,000 condoms right away and send them to Russia.""Consider it done," said the President of Trojan. "Great! Now listen, they have to be red in colour, 10" long and 4" wide." "Easily done. Anything else?" "Yeah," said the President, "Print 'MADE IN AMERICA, SIZE MEDIUM' on each one."11 Americans hate foreign policy because they hate foreigners, they are not globally conscious and multi-cultural, and it is confusing to them. So how come politics become humorous. Some politicians drew into several policy making, laws and other representations in the government. Yet, later they will abolish it because some global companies insist in giving them a big apple instead of cherry. Politicians are believed to be powerful in terms of law-making but also sometimes they are powerful in law-breaking just by flashing their ids or showing their faces to the police officer. American foreign policy must have three elements, nation-building, a different approach to national security and universal tenets of democracy. 12 Lastly, sexual differences when it comes to humour response. Men and women react differently when it comes to jokes. Yet, there are no anthropological analyses of humour as it relates to sexual differences. 13 The socio-cultural aspects of women having the lower status than men is rather a constraint for women to fully use their talents. These factors can be due to differential socialization, lack of economic and political power, lack of a contribution to the production of necessary goods and services, dominant cultural values concerning ideal womanhood, and a general dependence on males for security. 14 Men sometimes prank jokes about women when they are with their guy friends. Women usually are part of verbal jokes with sexual connotations. Women are not as aggressive as men when it comes to humour. It is always that women are not always on the same level as men. Women are not aggressive when it comes to humour because of their modesty and passivity. Our subject in Anthropology of Humour was an informative tool for me especially in dealing with everyday life. It is important to laugh and smile everyday and respond to every humour we encounter. We as humans are born with nothing yet when our mothers gave birth to us. And like me when I stepped into this class, I was nude like a new born baby yet dressed up with knowledge and wisdom. We must give credits to the people who continue to study about our origins, our anthropological aspects because without their writings and accounts, we will never know how to deal with our own society. Sources: 1. Beeman, William O. “Humor.” Brown University. 2000. Linguistic Lexicon for the Millenium, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 9:2. 02 May 2011 . 2. Wikipedia.org. 2001. 02 May 2011. . 3. Same as source #3. 4. Cohen, Ted. “Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters.” Chicago and London:The University of Chicago Press,1999:49. Print. 5. Koller,Marvin R. “Humor and Society: Explorations Regarding the Sociology of Humor.” Houston: Cape and Gowle Press, Inc.:1988:177. Print. 6. Same as source #5. 7. Koller,Marvin R. “Humor and Society: Explorations Regarding the Sociology of Humor.” Houston: Cape and Gowle Press, Inc.:1988:180. Print. 8. “The Best Jewish Jokes in the World.” 02 May 2011. . 9. Koller,Marvin R. “Humor and Society: Explorations Regarding the Sociology of Humor.” Houston: Cape and Gowle Press, Inc.:1988:180-81. Print. 10. Cohen, Ted. “Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters.” Chicago and London:The University of Chicago Press,1999:68. Print. 11. “Funny Political Jokes.” Comedy-Zone.net. 2009. 02 May 2011. . 12. O’Rourke, P.J. “Peace Kills.” New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2004:2. Print. 13. Apte, Mahadev L. “Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach.” Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1985. Print. 14. Apte, Mahadev L. “Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach.” Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1985:68. Print. Read More