Joke

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
This article or section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please help improve this article or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since November 2006. (help, talk)

A joke is a short story or series of words spoken or communicated, ideally with the intent of being laughed at or found humorous by the listener or reader. A practical joke differs in that the humor is not verbal, but mainly physical (e.g. throwing a custard pie in the direction of somebody's face). Some jokes are not funny.

Jokes are performed either in a staged situation, such as a comedy in front of an audience, or informally for the entertainment of participants and onlookers. The desired response is generally laughter, although loud groans are also a common response to some forms of jokes, such as puns and shaggy dog stories.

Contents

[edit] Psychology of jokes

Why we laugh has been the subject of serious academic study, examples being:

Marvin Minsky suggests that laughter has a specific function related to the human brain. In his opinion jokes and laughter are mechanisms for the brain to learn nonsense. For that reason, he argues, jokes are usually not as funny when you hear them repeatedly.
  • Edward de Bono in "The Mechanism of the Mind" (1969) and "I am Right, You are Wrong" (1990).
Edward de Bono suggests that the mind is a pattern matching machine, and that it works by recognizing stories and behavior and putting them into familiar patterns. When a familiar connection is disrupted and an alternative unexpected new link is made in the brain via a different route than expected, then laughter occurs as the new connection is made. This theory explains a lot about jokes. For example:
  • Why jokes are only funny the first time they are told: once they are told the pattern is already there, so there can be no new connections, and so no laughter.
  • Why jokes have an elaborate and often repetitive set up: The repetition establishes the familiar pattern in the brain. A common method used in jokes is to tell almost the same story twice and then deliver the punch line the third time the story is told. The first two tellings of the story evoke a familiar pattern in the brain, thus priming the brain for the punch line.
  • Why jokes often rely on stereotypes: the use of a stereotype links to familiar expected behavior, thus saving time in the set-up.
  • Why jokes are variants on well known stories (eg the genie and a lamp): This again saves time in the set up and establishes a familiar pattern.

Laughter, the intended human reaction to jokes, is healthful in moderation, uses the stomach muscles, and releases endorphins, natural happiness-inducing chemicals, into the bloodstream.

One of the most complete and informative books on different types of jokes and how to tell them is Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor (1971), which encompasses several broad categories of humor, and gives useful tips on how to tell them, whom to tell them to, and ways to change the joke to fit one's audience.

[edit] Rules

The rules of humor are analogous to those of poetry, as said the French philosopher Henri Bergson: "In every wit there is something of a poet"[1]. These common rules are mainly: exactness, synthesis and rhythm.

Speed plays also a role, enhancing the laugh effect. As Mack Sennett showed in his works, the more frantic the funnier.

[edit] Exactness

To reach exactness, the comedian must choose the words in order to obtain a vivid, perfectly in focus image, and to avoid being generic (that drives the audience confused, and results in no laugh); to properly arrange the words in the sentence is also crucial to get exactness. An example by Woody Allen (from Side Effects, "A Giant Step for Mankind" story [3]):

   
Joke

Grasping the mouse firmly by the tail, I snapped it like a small whip, and the morsel of cheese came loose.
   
Joke

[edit] Synthesis

As Shakespeare said in Hamlet, "Brevity is the soul of wit"[2]. That means that a joke is best when it expresses the maximum meaning with a minimal number of words; this is today considered one of the key technical elements of a joke. An example from Woody Allen:

   
Joke

I took a speed reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.
   
Joke


Though, the familiarity of the pattern of "brevity" has lead to numerous examples of jokes where the very length is itself the pattern breaking "punchline". Numerous examples from Monty Python exist, for instance, the song "I Like Traffic Lights", and more modernly, Family Guy contains numerous such examples, most notably, in the episode Wasted Talent where Peter Griffin bangs his shin, a classic slapstick trope, and holds his shin whilst exhaling and inhaling to quiet the pain. This goes on for considerably longer than expected. This joke is repeated again in the fourth season in the episode Brian Goes Back to College when Peter is dressed as John "Hannibal" Smith from The A-Team.

[edit] Rhythm

Main articles: Timing (linguistics) and Comic timing

The joke content (meaning) is not what provokes the laugh, it just makes the salience of the joke and provokes a smile. What makes us laugh is the joke mechanism. This has been demonstrated with a classic theatre experiment by Milton Berle in the 50s: if during a series of jokes you insert phrases that are not jokes, but with the same rhythm, the audience laughs anyway. A classic is the ternary rhythm, with three beats: introduction, premise, antithesis (with the antithesis being the punch line).

In regards to the Milton Berle experiment, they can be taken to demonstrate the concept of "breaking context" or "breaking the pattern". It isn't necessarily the Rythm that caused the audience to laugh, but the disparity between the expectation of a "joke" and being instead given a non-sequitur "normal phrase." This normal phrase is, itself, unexpected, and is a kind of punchline.

[edit] Conclusions

When a technically-good joke is referred changing it with paraphrasing, it is not laughable anymore; this is because the paraphrase, changing some term or moving it within the sentence, breaks the joke mechanism (its vividness, brevity and rhythm), and its power and effectiveness are lost. Douglas Adams described sentences where the joke word is the final word as "comically weighted." This saves the "payoff" until the last possible moment, allowing the expectation for surprise to reach its highest point, while the mind is more firmly rooted in the pattern established by the rest of the sentence. [citation needed]

[edit] Why do we laugh (model of appreciation)

No satisfactory theory of laughter that explains why humans laugh has yet gained wide acceptance.

Some of the prominent explanations (that is a humor appreciation model) comes from part of the ideas contained in the psychology essay Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, by Sigmund Freud (1905) [4].

According to Freud's operational description, we laugh when the unconscious energy emerges to reach the conscious mind; and it reaches it unexpectedly thanks to the techniques used by the comedian. This exceeding energy is rapidly discharged in the form of laughter.

Freud distinguishes three fields: the comic, the wit, and the humor.

[edit] Comic

In the comic field plays the 'economy of ideative expenditure'; in other words excessive energy is wasted or action-essential energy is saved. The profound meaning of a comic gag or a comic joke is "I'm a child"; the comic deals with the clumsy body of the child.

A classic example are Laurel and Hardy. An individual laughs because he recognizes the child that is in himself. In clowns stumbling is a childish tempo. In the comic, the visual gags may be translated into a joke. For example in Side Effects (By Destiny Denied story) by Woody Allen:

   
Joke

"My father used to wear loafers," she confessed. "Both on the same foot".
   
Joke

The typical comic technique is the disproportion.

[edit] Wit

In the wit field plays the 'economy of censorship expenditure'[3]; usually censorship prevents some 'dangerous ideas' from reaching the conscious mind, or helps us avoid saying everything that comes to mind; adversely, the wit circumvents the censorship and brings up those ideas. Different wit techniques allow one to express them in a funny way. The profound meaning behind a wit joke is "I have dangerous ideas". An example from Woody Allen:

   
Joke

I contemplated suicide again - this time by inhaling next to an insurance salesman.
   
Joke

Wit is a branch of rhetoric, and there are about 200 techniques (technically they are called tropes, a particular kind of figure of speech) that can be used to make jokes[4].

Irony can be seen as belonging to this field.

[edit] Humor

In the comedy field[5], humor induces an 'economized expenditure of emotion' [6]. In other words, the joke erases an emotion that should be felt about an event, making us insensitive to it. The profound meaning of the void feel of a humor joke is "I'm a cynic". An example from Woody Allen:

   
Joke

Three times I've been mistaken for Robert Redford. Each time by a blind person.
   
Joke

This field of jokes is still a grey area, being mostly unexplored. Extensive use of this kind of humor can be found in the work of British satirist Chris Morris, like the sketches of the Jam television program.

Black humor and sarcasm belong to this field.

[edit] Types of jokes

Jokes often depend on the humor of the unexpected, the mildly taboo (which can include the distasteful or socially improper), or playing off stereotypes and other cultural beliefs. Many jokes fit into more than one category.

[edit] Subjects

Political jokes are usually a form of satire. They generally concern politicians and heads of state, but may also cover the absurdities of a country's political situation. Two large categories of this type of jokes exist. The first one makes fun of a negative attitude to political opponents or to politicians in general. The second one makes fun of political clichés, mottos, catch phrases or simply blunders of politicians. Some, especially the you have two cows genre, derive humor from comparing different political systems.

Professional humor includes caricatured portrayals of certain professions such as lawyers, and in-jokes told by professionals to each other (e.g. Medical humor).

Mathematical jokes are a form of in-joke, generally designed to be understandable only by insiders.

Ethnic jokes exploit racial stereotypes. They are often racist and frequently considered offensive. Ethnic jokes are common, for example:

The British also tell jokes starting "An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman..." which exploit the supposed parsimony of the Scot, stupidity of the Irish, or some combination. The British find humor in poking fun at any race, including their own. Additionally, many cultures have Black jokes, which exploit the supposed stupidity and/or supposed incompetence of people of African descent.

Racially offensive humor is increasingly unacceptable, but there are similar jokes based on other stereotypes such as blonde jokes.

Religious jokes fall into several categories:

  • Jokes based on stereotypes associated with people of religion (e.g. nun jokes, priest jokes, or rabbi jokes)
  • Jokes on classical religious subjects: crucifixion, Adam and Eve, St. Peter at The Gates, etc.
  • Jokes that collide different religious denominations: "A rabbi, a medicine man, and a pastor went fishing..."
  • Letters and addresses to God.

Self-deprecating or self-effacing humor is superficially similar to racial and stereotype jokes, but involves the targets laughing at themselves. It is said to maintain a sense of perspective and to be powerful in defusing confrontations. Probably the best-known and most common example is Jewish humor. The egalitarian tradition was strong among the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe in which the powerful were often mocked subtly. Prominent members of the community were kidded during social gatherings, part a good-natured tradition of humor as a leveling device. A similar situation exists in the Scandinavian "Ole and Lena" joke.

Self-deprecating humor has also been used by politicians, who recognize its ability to acknowledge controversial issues and steal the punch of criticism - for example, when Abraham Lincoln was accused of being two-faced he replied, "If I had two faces, do you think this is the one I’d be wearing?".

Dirty jokes are based on taboo, often sexual, content or vocabulary. Many dirty jokes are also sexist.

Other taboos are challenged by sick jokes and gallows humor; to joke about disability is considered in this group.

Surrealist or minimalist jokes exploit semantic inconsistency, for example: Q: What's red and invisible? A: No tomatoes..

Anti Jokes are jokes that aren't funny in normal sense, and often can be decidedly unfunny, but rely on absurdity, surrealism and abstractness of the joke or situation to provide entertainment.

[edit] Styles

The question / answer joke, sometimes posed as a common riddle, has a supposedly straight question and an answer which is twisted for humorous effect; puns are often employed. Of this type are knock-knock joke, lightbulb joke, the many variations on "why did the chicken cross the road?", and the class of "What's the difference between..." joke, where the punch line is often a pun or a spoonerism linking two apparently entirely unconnected concepts.

Some jokes require a double act, where one respondent (usually the straight man) can be relied on to give the correct response to the person telling the joke. This is more common in performance than informal joke-telling.

A shaggy dog story is an extremely long and involved joke with a weak or completely nonexistent punchline. The humor lies in building up the audience's anticipation and then letting them down completely. The longer the story can continue without the audience realising it is a joke, and not a serious anecdote, the more successful it is. Shaggy jokes appear to date from the 1930s, although there are several competing variants for the "original" shaggy dog story. According to one, an advertisement is placed in a newspaper, searching for the shaggiest dog in the world. The teller of the joke then relates the story of the search for the shaggiest dog in extreme and exaggerated detail (flying around the world, climbing mountains, fending off sabre-toothed tigers, etc); a good teller will be able to stretch the story out to over half an hour. When the winning dog is finally presented, the advertiser takes a look at the dog and states: "I don't think he's so shaggy".

[edit] Jokes and brain

Principal fissures and lobes of the cerebrum viewed laterally. (Frontal lobe is blue, temporal lobe is green.)
Enlarge
Principal fissures and lobes of the cerebrum viewed laterally. (Frontal lobe is blue, temporal lobe is green.)
For more details on Laughter and brain, see Laughter.

The process of a joke understanding, is elaborated by the right prefrontal lobe and both the temporal lobes. If the inconsistency gets resolved, the brainwaves suddenly turn into negative ones, and the individual laughs; otherwise, if the inconsistency doesn't get resolved, the brainwaves stay positive and there is no laugh.[citation needed]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Henri Bergson [1901] (2005). Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Dover Publications.
    In this essay Bergson viewed the essence of humour as the encrustation of the mechanical upon the living. He used as an instance a book by an English humorist, in which an elderly woman who desired a reputation as a philanthropist provided "homes within easy hail of her mansion for the conversion of atheists who have been specially manufactured for her, so to speak, and for a number of honest folk who have been made into drunkards so that she may cure them of their failing, etc." This idea seems funny because a genuine impulse of charity as a living, vital impulse has become encrusted by a mechanical conception of how it should manifest itself.
  2. ^ William Shakespeare (1600-1602). Hamlet, act 2, scene 2.
  3. ^ Freud literally calls it "the economy of psychic expenditure" (Wit and its relation to the unconscious, p. 180) [1]
  4. ^ Salvatore Attardo, Linguistic Theories of Humor, p. 55 (1994, Walter de Gruyter, ISBN 3110142554).
  5. ^ Freud produced this final part of his interpretation many years later, in a paper later supplemented to the book and published in 1928 ("Humour", International Journal of Psychoanalysis)
  6. ^ Freud literally calls it 'economy of affect' or 'economy of sympathy'. Wit and its relation to the unconscious, p. 371-4

[edit] External Links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../j/o/k/Joke.html"