We watched the "Dead Parrot" sketch from monty python and another skit that was recommended called "Slightly Mad" from a british T.V. show called "A Bit of Fry and Laurie."
Please answer the following questions:
1) Choose either clip (or a character from one of them) and using your groups z-theory explain why it is funny.
2) Choose either clip (or a character from one of them) that you found less funny or un-funny and explain why it is not funny (using info from class and z-theory) and also provide some examples of how it may be made more funny.
3) Choose a character from one of the sketches and try to explain their sense of humor (this was to draw more on personality and individual componants of humor like political and religious views, upbringing, etc.).
Dead Parrot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npjOSLCR2hE
Slightly Mad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoglB5NRxTo
I turned this in during class!
Well I would say that the guys being treated for his slightly madness bases his humor around sarcasm. Throughout the whole clip he continues to demonstrate this due to the fact that the psychiatrist didn't seem to buy his fake angry stunt. By emitting these sarcastic and angry behaviors, this would lead me to say that he tends to exhibit traits that would be associated within an aggressive sense of humor. According to Eysenck's theoretical model of humor, The patient would be be displaying the conative component. This can be described as having motivational or impulse expression which he called himself trying to do in a rather incongruous unique way. Towards the beginning of the clip he also displayed some characteristics of a tough-mindedness perspective because he opened with a sarcastic sex comment stating, "he was coming to the psychiatrist for free sex." In looking further into the personality aspect, his humor brings forth another observation. The State trait Cheerfulness inventory points out his association with the Bad Mood because hes interaction style was pretty much ill-humorous to me.
I personally find him or the clip that funny because it was almost like the patient was trying to hard in which cause it to be ill humorous to me. Some people are naturals at making people bust out laughing like the comedian Lavell Crawford's clips shown at the end of class. He really wasn't actually trying to make the audience laugh it just basically feel into place when he was actually trying to make a public service announcement about not doing CRACK. This actually got more laughs them both of the British humor clips. Why could this be? Maybe because creativity wasn't really shown in either of the British clips. Also the punch lines in conversational humor were pretty new to us looking at the British clips. Lavell on the other hand used more linguistically based techniques to make his point across they we all actually could relate or identify with.
I was in class Thursday but emailed Zach my answers...here they are again, though:
1. Why is a scene funny based on Z-theory?
-I didn’t really think this clip was that funny, but it was a little humorous how the guy getting therapy didn’t understand the questions being asked of him – either that or he was just really sarcastic. According to my z-theory (PSSC), you must be able to cognitively process humor in order to have humor – this case was a little different though because I thought it was funny that the patient was unable to cognitively process the questions being asked of him.
2. Why is a scene not funny?
-I mainly didn’t like the clip because I had a hard time understanding it because they talk too fast and had an accent that I am not used to hearing. Because of my difficulty understanding, my z-theory would argue that I didn’t find the clip funny because I couldn’t comprehend it.
3. Character’s sense of humor
-Nothing describes the client’s sense of humor any better than sarcasm (or possibly ignorance). I can’t really tell if his apparent lack of understanding was due to his sarcastic personality or if he truly didn’t understand. I’m leaning more towards sarcastic.
I was in class Thursday but emailed Zach my answers...here they are again, though:
1. Why is a scene funny based on Z-theory?
-I didn’t really think this clip was that funny, but it was a little humorous how the guy getting therapy didn’t understand the questions being asked of him – either that or he was just really sarcastic. According to my z-theory (PSSC), you must be able to cognitively process humor in order to have humor – this case was a little different though because I thought it was funny that the patient was unable to cognitively process the questions being asked of him.
2. Why is a scene not funny?
-I mainly didn’t like the clip because I had a hard time understanding it because they talk too fast and had an accent that I am not used to hearing. Because of my difficulty understanding, my z-theory would argue that I didn’t find the clip funny because I couldn’t comprehend it.
3. Character’s sense of humor
-Nothing describes the client’s sense of humor any better than sarcasm (or possibly ignorance). I can’t really tell if his apparent lack of understanding was due to his sarcastic personality or if he truly didn’t understand. I’m leaning more towards sarcastic.
I was in class on Thursday and turned in my answers at the end of class.
I turned this in during class.
1. I thought that the Dead Parrot skit was funny because of how incongruous it was to me. I haven’t seen a lot of British comedy so I thought just the way they talked was funny. The customers voice was kind of high, and I thought that made it even funnier. I think it applies to our Equilibrium theory in that this situation is really uncomfortable and I think that if this situation would’ve happened in real life, it would’ve been a lot more aggressive and hostile, but in the skit the humor kind of balances it out, so it’s funny instead of awkward.
2. I thought the end of the Dead Parrot scene was not funny because there’s no resolution to it. We talked about in class how in America, we find jokes funny because of their punch lines. If the build up to it might be kind of lame, it could still be funny if it has a good punch line. I think the skit itself is really funny, but I think that it does need an ending other than “This is silly, so let’s stop.”
3. In the skit Slightly Mad, I think the two characters personalities kind of balance each other out. Hugh Laurie’s character is very sarcastic, loud, eccentric, hostile, and he’s in hurry. And Fry is the opposite, he’s really calm. I think if they were both acting like Laurie’s character, it would be a little too much, and a mess. If they were both like Fry’s character, it wouldn’t be funny at all. But I think the fact that the two have very different personalities, it leads to a balance in the situation in the skit, and it makes it funny.
I didn’t really think that the clip of “A Slightly Mad” was really that funny. I have never really watched that much british comedy before, but after watching the clips I guess I can see how some people may think they are funny. Even though my Z theory got voted out, I have chosen to join the PSSC theory. According to that theory, you must be able to get a joke, or decode it to have humor. I think that in order to get british comedy, you have to be able to understand the sarcasm, and the puns that accompany it.
Out of the Dead Parrot clip and the Slightly Mad clip, I think that the Slightly Mad clip was less humorous than the Dead Parrot clip. I agree with Kayla when she claims that the clip was hard to understand, but that would be another reason why British people think that kind of comedy is funnier than others. I think that if Americans were to redo the clip then we would think it is funnier.
The Dead Parrot’s customer was the funniest character to me. I think that his stupidity of buying a dead parrot in the first place and the fact that the man would sell a dead parrot is humorous in itself. There were also certain punch lines in the skit that would tie the jokes together, but all in all the customer’s ignorance was the funniest.
Each of the main characters in the Dead Parrot skit were looking out for their own interests, the customer by getting his money back, and the shop owner by profiting over selling a dead bird. It might be a stretch, but using my group's z-theory, they might have been using humor in each of their situations to deal with this scenario and get what they wanted. The customer was not only telling the guy at the shop, but also reassuring himself that the situation was bizarre and that he should be able to return the dead parrot. The guy who sold the parrot kept insisting that the bird was resting to accomplish his own goal of making a profit. Each character was working towards their own self interest to maintain their equilibrium.
I didn't think the Slightly Mad clip was very funny. I felt like it was just the same thing over and over, and if it's not funny the first time Hugh Laurie says it, it's not going to be funny all the other ways he tries to convince the other guy he is mad. I'm kind of biased though because I despise Hugh Laurie..
The owner of the pet shop was very sarcastic. He knew that the parrot was dead when he sold it but he insists that the bird is just resting and points out that the parrot has beautiful feathers. The whole skit is incongruous because it is an unlikely situation that a person would have to convince a pet store owner that a bird is dead, when clearly, it is dead.
Monty Python
Swarm theory is about relating to others and reacting with others to stimuli. I think if we were the man returning the bird, we too would be frustrated in this ridiculously situation. This is where the humor comes from. The answers of the store keeper to the customer’s complains are incongruity to normal situations, the answers are nonsense. I however do not find a lot of entertain within this nonsense comedy. I find the beginning of the situation to be a little funny, however I think it get old fast. It is interesting that the writers of the site also find the scene to be getting too ridiculous by saying “this is too silly” and then ending the scene. This is nonsense hilarious with no resolution, to some the ridiculousness might get funnier, but to me it gets more frustrating or boring.
A bit of Fry and Laurie
Adding on to the first response about the Swarm theory, I think we relate to the therapist in this scene, Hugh Laurie is being ridiculous. He is not really ill and his symptoms are incongruity to what mental-illness really is. In this film, I also get disinterested quick with this nonsense humor scene. I started thinking about the dumb and nonsense humor I do like is when there is not a poor victim or schmuck within the situation and when things are progressively getting worst, like planes, trains, and automobiles, and ben stiller movies.
1) My groups "Z-theory" is Eqilibirum Theory which basically states that humor is a primarily social phenomena used to bring balance to social situations. Of particular importance to our theory is how it brings balance, the mechanism is cognitive incongruity. The "Dead Parrot" skit is a perfect example of how our theory works.
The overall situation is a familiar one, attempting to return a defective product. Ordinarily this would be a very aversive situation but it seems that this should be easily avoided since the parrot is dead and there should be little room for discussion. Here the incongruity is in the fact that the store-keeper continues to try and make excuses for the obviously dead parrot.
Since we are watching this video and not actually in the situation this is a pseudo-social situation, and thus the mechanism of equilibrium is important. The cognitive incongruity (why on earth is the store-keeper continueing to make it seem like the bird is alive?) reminds us of a similar situation we've been in, or can imagine ourselves being in, and the insecurity we may feel (or anticipate feeling) is reduced by bolstering our faith that quite often the other person is making arguments as pointless as this store-keeper.
2) Here I will choose the ending part of the skit "Slightly Mad." It ends with the psychiatrist finding out that the patient has been writing notes and sending them to the local newspapers, this convinces the dr. that he is mad. Basically I have no idea why this is funny. I imagine that it was a topical or political reference that has been lost with the passage of time, or the fact that it was a british tv show. Several other people commented that if Americans re did the show it would be funnier. This is why they rarely take tv shows from another country and play them 'as is' in our own. Even hit shows like "Whose Line is It Anyway," and "The Office" completely re-did the cast, etc. to make it more relatable. British Comedy seemed to be better accepted in the past (60's-80's) than more recently. It could be made more funny than by using political and situational analogies that better relate to our lives.
3) For the personality characteristics we have to look at he actor's themselves since we don't get to know the characters well enough to see what makes them laugh or what they might think is funny. I'll use John Cleese (the customer) from the Dead Parrot Skit. One of the things you see about british comedy is that it is often very silly and whimsical. Another person commented above that we in America tend to like incongruity resolution rather than this type of fantasy and silliness. Our text suggests then that we ought to have more conservative or traditional views than in Britain (or at least compared to the writers and actors in Monty Python). Furthermore increase intelligence is also associated with enjoyment of this type of humor. This somewhat pans out as the members of Monty Python were all very liberal and very well educated.
This is not to say that if you don't find it funny you are a dumb conservative however, because numerous other factors influence what types of things you find funny. It would only be bizarre to find uneducated traditionalists who DO find it funny, but not to find educated tradionalists, or uneducated liberals who do not.
Out of the two skits presented in class, I found the “Dead Parrot” skit to be the funnier of the two. According to my group’s PSSC Theory, this clip was funny because the humor was based on a strong underlying sense of aggression. According to the Psychoanalytic Theory, my group believes that in some cases, humor stems from aggressive feelings, thoughts, and tendencies. The aggression in this skit can be seen when the customer begins to get mad because the clerk will not return the parrot he had just recently bought. The customer bangs the parrot on the desk and yells at it, but the clerk just tells the angry customer that the parrot is sleeping. The clerk refuses to let the customer return the parrot and it outrages the man. The clerk is showing a certain level of aggressive humor because he is not catering to the customer’s needs by returning his money. Similarly, the clerk was previously showing aggressive humor by nailing the dead parrot’s feet to the perch inside the cage while the parrot was on display in the store. Furthermore, when the clerk gives the customer wrong information about where to file a complaint and what stop on the subway they were at, he is showing further examples of aggressive humor. The clerk is confusing the customer for his own enjoyment while the customer becomes bewildered. Lastly, this skit relates to my group’s theory in regard to the Social Theory. This type of humor showed a strong sarcastic and ironic intonation by the clerk and the customer. These types of humor depend more on the social context, and require an understanding of a variety of linguistic and social factors such as speaker intentions, theory of mind, and vocal intonation in order to demonstrate the correct sarcastic and ironic intonations that are required to produce such humor.
One aspect of the “Dead Parrot” skit that was not as funny was the portion of the skit that dealt with the different subway stops. I have never lived in an area that utilizes a subway system to get from place to place; therefore, I did not find this part as funny because it does not relate to my personal schema. My groups PSSC Theory believes that a person must have a certain level of cognition in order to appreciate some forms of humor, which is part of the Cognitive Theory. In my case, I did not find this portion of the skit to be as funny because I do not have the same cognitive thinking about subways compared to someone who uses a subway system every day. Furthermore, the only pet I have ever had was a bird, so I found the part of the skit about the dead bird to be a lot funnier because I have previously had a pet bird and could relate. In other words, because of my pre-existing cognitions I found the part about the dead parrot to be funnier than the part about the subway confusion.
The clerk’s sense of humor was more of a morbid and aggressive type of humor. His humor was morbid because he found it funny to nail a dead parrot onto the perch of the cage. A reason for his humor may be because of the strong emphasis placed on intellectual achievement and rationality during the school years, which have been found produce anxiety about intellectual performance, leading to a great deal of joking about stupidity and irrational behavior. The use of humor to cope with potentially threatening topics is also evident in a person’s use of morbid humor. Therefore, the clerk may be using a more morbid style of humor in order to deal with his suppressed anxiety about intellectual performance where he may have previously considered himself not ‘good enough.’ On the other hand, a morbid, caustic, sarcastic, and ironic sense of humor is often exhibited by people who are in some way depressed. The clerk may be using this type of humor to deal with the inner turmoil of his depression.
1) I chose Hugh Laurie from the "Slightly Mad" skit to explain our z-theory. Our Z-theory being the equilibrium theory, incongruencies play a large part in defining it. Essentially, we see this incongruency to resolve social discomfort. The discomfort is resolved in the form of humor.
We find Hugh Laurie funny because we don't think of clients in a psychology office to be so blunt and in your face as Hugh Laurie is in this clip. We see this attitude right when Mr. Meddlycott sits down. The psychiatrist asks why he has come and he abprubtly says "Well why do you think?! I haven't come for dancing lessons, or the free sex!" (hilarious) Since this is not what we expect from a client, it brings up a tumultuous situation, however, our brain views this incongruecy as humorous, and the tension that has arisen is once again back to normal because we derived pleasure out of the experience, and we are able to move on.
2) I wholly disliked the dead parrot sketch. I dislike alot of Monty Python acts because of the over-the-top nature of humor used. Like many have said, it's very whimsical and silly, and often seems very rehearsed. Repetition also comes into play here, using our theory, we've disclosed the incongruency that the parrot is dead and the men are arguing over a faulty product. But this goes on for another 5+ minutes, the same joke, phrased in a different way. Worst of all, since Americans enjoy conflict resolution, somebody walks in the skit and concludes it by saying things have gotten too silly. I can see how the British may think this is funny, as they might value the improvisation of the actors very highly, and the fact that they can go on and on about the same joke subject is admireable. However, being accustomed to American comedy, this just doesn't get me going.
3) I will again choose Hugh Laurie on this question. I'm a fan of Laurie, not a huge one, but I do enjoy his work. I've seen videos on YouTube about him. (like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWYvl_AIIbU which is really funny)
I think he's a very well educated, entertaining man and this shines through substantially in the Fry and Laurie show. We can also see the sharp wit in his humor through his character on the TV show House. When you watch the Fry and Laurie skit, having only seen it for the first time, you can see where this off beat humor comes from with his character in House. Im sure his poking fun at the government and psychological practices also has something to do with his upbringing and political viewpoint.
For the first question to relate one of these videos to our Z theory (the Swarm Theory), I would most likely agree that both of the videos have the element of aggression and superiority that is a key part of our theory, however I think the Monty Python "Dead Parrot" video has more of this in the event of the situation. The angry customer which purchases a dead parrot from the employee is clearly upset about this and displays his anger by using a sense of repetition (combined with humorous, sarcastic quips) to display his emotion. The aggressive undertone in his demand first for why the clerk sold him a dead parrot, the displays of the animal actually being dead (I found this to be the funniest part) and the command that something be done about the situation, then the switch to the "brother's store" (actually the same store) is where the aggression builds more and more until finally the customer is exhausted (which is humorous as well). In our theory, the use of aggression is employed by a stimulus, and then a leader of the swarm which causes others to follow. Although there were no followers, because it was just the customer and the clerk, the stimulus was the dead parrot purchase, and the "leader" in a sense, was the customer who was aggravated responding to the stimulus.
2.)A character I did not find particularly funny or engaging in these video clips was that of the therapist. Until the end when he actually starts to believe the patient is "slightly mad", he doesn't add much humor to the assessment situation and acts like I assume a normal psychiatrist would (asking questions and looking for answers to make a diagnosis). Our Swarm theory would relate to this in the social aspect (the patient discusses his "mad" theory in relation to how he interacts with others using humor). In terms of what we have learned in class, I would also say that irony is at work here when the patient employs this toward the therapist multiple times, answering back with retorts that mirror what is already being said.
I think this clip would be funnier if it included more situations of "slightly mad" than just the bread in the shoe before the end with the articles in the paper. Also, I would have liked to see more sarcasm used with the therapist to swing comments back to the patient; this would have helped because I didn't find this clip very funny overall.
3.) I would like to use the Laurie clip again here to draw on personality characteristics. Although this is just a skit about slightly mad, pretending the character is actually in this state would lead to upbringing and how the patient got to this psychological state of mind. In class we learned that humor can be drawn from past experiences, and the ironic statements about state of mind from this patient could be a reflection of that.
Overall, I enjoyed the Laurie more than the Monty Python