The Major Flaw


When Alexis specified her humor not being for everyone, she was talking about the minority like me who cannot stand "the raunchy and mean types of comedy". For the few who do despise this type of humor as I do, the humor itself serves as a painful reminder of how different we are from a society which appraises the exact opposite values and morals we've been taught and accepted since we were born. As much as I am tempted to spend this post criticizing Cody Ko and his friend's blatant acceptance of what so many consider the "cool" way of life, I'm going to refrain from doing so. Besides, this example of humor offers me the perfect opportunity to shed light on a major flaw I encountered when studying Freud's Relief Theory.

As we already know, according to Freud's theory, our body's are storing "stress" accumulated overtime for confining to societal norms, from acting in a way which is acceptable. This is why, he claims, humans find humor which violates the societal norms, humor which, in other words, is inappropriate, vastly more amusing than humor which is innocent. I find this claim either entirely incorrect or too much of a generalization when it comes to our diverse society. This concept absolutely doesn't apply to me. I find it very difficult to laugh at most jokes with profanity and almost all innuendos. These jokes almost never fail to be too much a violation for my taste in humor. The rare exceptions when I do laugh at something which normally doesn't arouse joy in me, I have found only occur when I am around good friends. But, those exceptions are still so rare you probably wouldn't believe it.

My different taste in comedy also brings attention another vaguely specified concept in the benign-violation theory. McGraw, at least in the Humor Code article we read, never mentioned the possible variations in each person's humor. He outlined how people need to see a joke as a benign-violation in order to perceive it as humorous. But, he never explicitly mentioned how different people's perceptions of benign-violations can be. For instance, what I view as a violation, Alexis views as hitting the sweet spot between the two extremes. This is an important concept McGraw and Warner left out of their article or ignored completely. 

Still loved your post, Alexis! :) Even though it's not for me, it's important to study and analyze all types of humor.


Comments

  1. Al-pal ThompsonOctober 3, 2018 at 9:08 AM

    I like how you mentioned how different people's perceptions can be, I never really looked at the video from a different set of eyes; approaching it with a new perspective. I thoroughly enjoyed the video, but I have a better sense of where you're coming from and I understand how this isn't the comedy for you. This was a great post and made me see the video in a different way. Thank you!!

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  2. Shane HerronOctober 3, 2018 at 12:50 PM

    It's definitely a polarizing clip. I wonder if we have to think about relief totally in terms of offensiveness though. Lippitt suggests that, and certainly Freud's theory might imply this. But we could also see anything that cuts social tension as relief. So, perhaps it fails because it doesn't provide relief for some?

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  3. UnknownOctober 9, 2018 at 1:25 PM

    I find your observation of the subjectivity of benign-violation very interesting and insightful! I, too, found Cody Ko's video too much of a violation to be funny, and I think this illuminates the flexibility of the benign-violation theory: as you suggested, some people may find something more of a violation than others, or too benign, and therefore may perceive things differently in regards to their funniness.

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