As someone who wrote a humor book and am currently working on another, this topic fascinates me. For the last month, I've been analyzing jokes from different comedians, looking for the root of why they're funny.<p>As I see it, humor is something that ventures outside of our own "world," yet relates to it. Someone else's inside joke isn't funny to you because it doesn't relate to the "world" you live in. This is also true of referential humor like Family Guy. If you don't know the reference, it's generally not funny.<p>From analyzing about 30 jokes, these are some of the repeating themes I've come across:
- Change the context of something (by far the most common)
- Taking a phrase literally
- Explain something that doesn't need to be explained.
- Under exaggerate.
- Over exaggerate.
- Connect two unrelated things.
- Say something predictable and then take what would have been the cliched ending to an extreme.<p>The core of these elements and many others is that you're taking a shared view of something and manipulating it, whether through changing the context, taking an element to an extreme, or one of the other numerous ways.<p>Everyone knows if something is funny on a subconscious level, but few can explain why they laughed at something. Much like how most people know if they like a movie or not, but can't articulate the exact elements that caused them to enjoy the story (unless they've read several books on screenwriting/story telling). I'd be very interested in seeing the results from this study.
Bergson comes to mind - the central cause of laughter is mechanism applied to life, and all comic effects are articulated around this cause by our imagination.<p>"The comic is strictly a human phenomenon. A landscape cannot be a source of laughter, and when humans make fun of animals, it is often because they recognize some human behaviour in them. Man is not only a being that can laugh, but also a being that is a source of laughter."<p>"Laughter requires an indifference, a detachment from sensibility and emotion: it is more difficult to laugh when one is fully aware of the seriousness of a situation."<p>"It is difficult to laugh alone, it is easier to laugh collectively. One who is excluded from a group of people does not laugh with them, there is often a complicity in laughter. Thus the comic is not a mere pleasure of the intellect, it is a human and social activity, it has a social meaning."<p>"Because the mind is flexible, always in activity, we tend to attribute these qualities to the body too, ignoring its materiality. But when we are fully aware that the body is a weigh, a burden for the soul, the situation is comic. We laugh every time somebody looks like a material thing, every time we are under the impression that someone is a thing."<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughter_%28Bergson_book%29" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughter_%28Bergson_book%29</a>
I thought Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" had a good attempt at an explanation:<p>The Martian "Mike" being told what being a human is like:<p>> <i>‘And while you are waiting, don’t doubt that you are man. You are. Man born of woman and born to trouble…and some day you will grok its fullness and laugh – because man is the animal that laughs at himself.’</i><p>Mike figuring out humor and the human condition:<p>> <i>“I had thought–I had been told–that a ‘funny’ thing is a thing of goodness. It isn’t. Not ever is it funny to the person it happens to. Like that sheriff without his pants. The goodness is in the laughing. I grok it is a bravery…and a sharing…against pain and sorrow and defeat.”<p>“But–Mike, it is not a goodness to laugh at people.”<p>“No. But I was not laughing at the little monkey. I was laughing at us. People. And suddenly I knew I was people and could not stop laughing.” He paused. “This is hard to explain, because you have never lived as a Martian, for all that I’ve told you about it. On Mars there is never anything to laugh at. All the things that are funny to us humans either cannot happen on Mars or are not permitted to happen–sweetheart, what you call ‘freedom’ doesn’t exist on Mars; everything is planned by the Old Ones–or the things that do happen on Mars which we laugh at here on Earth aren’t funny because there is no wrongness about them. Death, for example.”<p>“Death isn’t funny.”<p>“Then why are there so many jokes about death? Jill, with us–us humans–death is so sad that we must laugh at it. All those religions–they contradict each other on every other point but each one is filled with ways to help people be brave enough to laugh even though they know they are dying.”</i>
One theory I read (reported by Ayn Rand but accredited to an acquaintance) is that humour is when somebody's perception of reality is undercut. So for instance, someone walking down the street and slipping on a banana isn't funny, but if the person was walking with great dignity/purpose/ostentation, some sort of VIP, then it's funny. Because their perception of reality and their opinion of themselves is at odds with their swift fall from grace.<p>I think this might be right. When I make people laugh it's usually by giving the impression that I fundamentally misunderstand some fact of reality (or that I perceive myself differently to others).<p>When we physically laugh it's like a short circuit of one perception of reality breaking through from another.
Kierkegaard gives a theory in <i>Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments</i>. I don't remember the details very well, but it has something to do with contradiction. I seem to remember near the end he offers some way to distinguish between the ironic and the comic.
As someone who has published a theory on humor that I think is completely unbreakable, I welcome this project and I'll definitely throw my hat in the ring.
Quoting from "The Comedy Bible" which I read a long time ago.<p>Basic joke structure is:<p>Setup + Punchline<p>Setup = Attitude + Topic + Premise<p>Example: Robin Williams<p>Attitude: Parenting is hard<p>Topic + Premise: "When you have a baby, you have to clean up your act."<p>Punchline: "You can't come in drunk and go, 'Hey here's a little switch. Daddy's going to throw up on you'"
i saw this video:
a couple of puppies were greedily eating from a saucer full of dog food, when one of those doggies, while attempting to dig through the glorious food, toppled over his head right into the saucer. It was a damn funny scene! But none of the other puppies seemed to react, and they all (including our clown) continued to devour :)<p>whenever i'm thoughtful on the 'meta-humor' discussion, i'm reminded of this scene, because it seems like strong reminder of people's perception of a lighter vein in a scenario in contrast to a puppy's ignorance thereof.
The proposal seems to be a joke. For example, this video review of the existing theories is hand-wavy and totally "blond" (sorry). <a href="https://www.microryza.com/projects/crowdsourcing-humor-using-humans-and-computers-together-to-write-jokes/updates/125" rel="nofollow">https://www.microryza.com/projects/crowdsourcing-humor-using...</a><p>If this was serious she would at least mention this recent book, which presents a deep and subtle evolutionary explanation, along with a thorough review of past theories, and yes includes lots of jokes: Inside Jokes by Matthew M. Hurley, Daniel C. Dennett, and Reginald B. Adams Jr. <a href="http://insidejokesbook.com/" rel="nofollow">http://insidejokesbook.com/</a><p>Basically, humor is a learning mechanism. It's funny when we take something to be true and then suddenly discover it to be false (as long as there is no immediate danger).
This is completely off-topic, and I'm not one to usually go off on a complete tangent for the sake of something funny, but seeing as this <i>is</i> an article on funny... the first thing that came to mind when reading the title is "Data's been trying to figure this one out forever" (for those that don't know Data: <a href="http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Data" rel="nofollow">http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Data</a> - for those of you that do, please do me the favor of not acknowledging the emotion chip from <i>Generations</i> as canon!)<p><i>edit</i>: Yes, the chip is from TNG series, but in the show Data (thankfully) never actually plugs it in.
Just FYI - <a href="http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/2556917/reload=0" rel="nofollow">http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/2556917/reload=0</a><p>There appears to be an evolutionary need for humor, so the unknown theory here could actually shed some light.<p>Also, laughing yoga. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahhN3Ryw4O4" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahhN3Ryw4O4</a>
Interesting. I always found it fascinating that a lot of people start laughing when watching the horror in a movie like "Ichi the Killer". Maybe humor is the emotion of the absurd and unreal.