Understanding Comedy - Term Paper Example

Understanding Comedy One of the most precious parts of the human condition is humor. A world that has no souls is a world without laughter. Comedy brings human in people’s lives. It serves many purposes like defusing social tension, reducing stress, increasing quality of life and revealing human’s behavioral absurdity. One of the main medium of conveying funny thoughts is through creative writing. This writing can blunt the controversial topics’ potential edge. It also evokes mirth feeling in the reader. Laughter created through comedy contributes to increased health of the audience’s life. (Mundy and White) Comedy takes a variety of forms: They include stand-up, sitcom, political satire, screenwriting, literal fiction and even websites. It has been proved through research that there is a link between psychological well-being of a person and humor. That link defines the characteristics of funny jokes that are understood as social Humor aspect. Humor is determined by the logic and comedy relationship. It also adheres to the calculations involving time and comedy. Through the withholding of laws, it becomes the best way to get one laughing. The template of all humor is provided in comedy through tension and resolution, misdirection, surprise and pattern recognition. Comedy can be cruel with the intention to depict negligent acts in the society to bring change. In Dream humor comes from the weirdness of the situation and Pucks intervention. Comedy is practically applied through presentations that include copious clips from televisions and movies. This helps in depicting the translations of comedy principles into actual laughter. There is less research done in determining the relation between cognitive processes that form the basis of humor production and psychological relations of people; who are able to generate high-quality humor consistently. These individuals vary from class clown in schools, stand-up comedians and internationally known humor writers. One of the most technical things to understand in comedy is its nature in relation to its production as depicted in creative writing and elsewhere. How can one categorize humorous individuals in terms of recognitive personality? The correlation of humor production ability and humor production stylistic characters in the society helps in determining humor standards. The analysis of psychology of the comedian professionals helps in understanding creative humor. Comedy uses subversion as a construct to undermine or point out paternalistic reality. For example, Sense and Sensibility provides the feminist criticism. There are six basic requirements for something to be humorous. It must be appealing to the intellect more that the emotions. Humor must be mechanical. Humor must be essentially human, with the ability of humanity remembrance. There must be a set of societal norms that are established that the observer is familiar with in the humor. This may be through daily life or provided materials that are expository by the author. The actions performed, and the spoken dialogue must be inconsistent to the immediate society. The humor must also be perceived as harmless to the people involved by the audience. In the consideration of all the elements, the humor will be receptive. However, in the absence of any, then the humor fails. Humor can be classified into three identifiable groups: superiority, relief and incongruity theories. The leading approach is the incongruity theory. This theory includes historical figures like Immanuel Kant and has its origin in rhetoric comments made by Aristotle. Humor ion this class is identified as a response to an incongruity. This term is used to include, logical responsibility, ambiguity, inappropriateness and irrelevance. Thomas Hobbes states that superiority theory in humor arises from the sudden glory that is felt when one recognizes of his supremacy over others. It is emphasized by the aggressive feelings that are fueled by the humor. This theory is clearly depicted in the way it is used by Aristotle and Plato in their plays. Relief theory is typically associated with Herbert spencer and Sigmund Freud in their writings. They both saw humor fundamentally as a way of saving or releasing energy that is generated through repression. Comic relief can be seen in the movie Romeo and Juliet. This is depicted through the many lines by the Nurse in creating Humor through literal device of repetition. The structure and thought of comedy is anchored on comic and tragic fading into each other in a sensible graduation. The harmonious blending of the two elements reveals the greatest beauty of poetical work. The perfect unison existing of the elements is not in drama only but also in similar characters. Famous actors are known to have similar quality and mostly, it is often hard to tell whether they have more humor or pathetic in their impersonations. The glad transfusion and interchange of comic and tragic coloring is known as one of the perfect artistic characters. It equips the compatibility process along with the contention. The employment of comic and tragic fading is commonly employed by Shakespeare in most of his comedies. These elements have no principles on the procedural use that is better known and fully appreciated. Shakespeare’s tragedies never disappoints in having comic interludes. In nearly every case of his comedy, there is a series of thread and in some instance tragic outlook in its background. Moreover, comic is not the tragic; however, their intertwining may be in subtle and interaction speed. They rest upon opposite principles in some respect. Tragic earnestness comes out from the deep ethical principle that animates the individual. The tragic character must have intensity and strength of will that will never give up its purpose. In comedy, there is a conflict with some ethical principles on the individual’s part. The individual tends a violation but does not realize his intention. This occurs through external deception or internal weakness break downs. The peculiar quality of the tragic hero is the wanting of complete absorption in some great purpose. The common realm of comedy and tragedy is in the ethical world and its collision. Their essential difference is based on the relation difference of the main characters to this world that is ethical. The constitution of Comedy is not based on one person, but several who are in action and counter-action. Therefore, the comic action and comic individuals constitute to humor in the comedy. Termination is necessary in springing from the preceding elements that provide Comic solution. Comic individual is in one form or the other the victim of deception. The individual fights his own mind’s shadow or follows an external appearance which ends in nullity. The individual has an absurdity plan and is always deceived. He does not do what he evidently seems to be doing. The object of the comic individual may be reasonable. He may have a lofty purpose, but he becomes inadequate to fulfilling it. This delusion is due to his believes in his own ability to accomplishing his wills. Comic individual always has absurd object. He pursues it though with the same resolution. This may be called a folly, a frailty or a foible. The essential characteristics are still that the individual is following an appearance. Therefore, he is a victim of deception even though he may be conscious of the delusive and absurd nature in the end. There are two limitations of Comic Individual. One of limitations is that the individual must not succeed in ethical principles violation that the conflict’s with comic individual. These are the heights, the most valuable man’s interest and cannot be endangered without exciting and apprehension that destroys each comic tendency. Therefore, the delusion is not supposed to go beyond producing ethical principles in violation. The other limitation states that it ought not to transgress the sanity limits. For instance, an insane man is not a comic character. The individual must depict reason though he is to be absurd in the end. The ending must show a restoration from delusion and sometimes a punishment that are precluded by sanity notion. Comic action has the necessary elements of each dramatic action. The action may be analyzed into the movement, thread, and collision. The individual is driven to act through delusion where he has an end that he seeks to realize. In this context, he does not stand alone, but his instruments surround him. The connection between him and the instruments helps in performing certain mediations, for the individual. This result to thread constitution; this is generally the central figure through which is the leading principle’s bearer. The tempest is also classified as a comedy that produces humor. Jokes are classified in a wide range of criteria in classification. It is identified through language communication and is peppered with insults, metaphors and clever world plays. They are classified according to the themes, target, cycle, subject, origin, propriety level, text length and narrative form. All classifications have their own practical uses as well as their own validity. One constant problem in the classification of jokes is the urge to apply incompatible criteria that are mutually incompatible. Humor’s phenomenon complexity and daunting variety of joke types are beneficial in building taxonomies of separate jokes. Linguistic ambiguity is the dependent of linguistic jokes. This is understood as fragment property of text that allows for two or more semantic interpretations that are significantly different. They can be arrived at through a substantial typical text recipient proportion. Jokes are ambiguity based and are classified according to the involved ambiguity application type. More than one ambiguity type can be identified in a fragment of joke’s text that is open to radical different interpretations. This is in-line with Henri Bergson’s laughter theory. Henry limits his scope about laughter and comedy in the idea that comedy is human. This means that we laugh at people or things they do. He depicts that laughter is purely cerebral and has a social function. Humor in comedy and jokes fit into elements of magic and fantastic genre. They provide a long wondering journey in the play action. They also involve obsession in the understanding concept of recovery and loss. This is evident in the comedy flow but reveals a better gain as it comes to an end. Traditional comic theory tends to expound reductive view of human nature in comedy and attribute a forming intent to it in comic practice. Works Cited Mundy, John and Glyn White. Laughing Matter: Understanding Film,Television and Radio Comedy. London: Manchester University Press, 2013. Print. Read More