Reading Response 2:
The beginning of chapter three of Comedy Writing Secrets really intrigued me. It boiled down the 6 essential ingredients that make humor, well, humor. I know there are 6, and the explanations are lengthy, but I’ll sum then up as quickly as possible. They are, in order by book, not by importance necessarily, target, hostility, realism, exaggeration, emotion, and surprise. What this chapter draws on are the ways in which these six things make people funny. These ideas really interest me because I consider myself fairly funny, but have never really thought about what I put into my endless one-liners. These topics boil it down for me.
I’ll start off with target. In my opinion, Helitzner has gotten everything in this section correct. His targets of self, sex, celebrities, places, products, and ideas hit the nail on the head. When I think of humor I think of the cruel, quick jabs that my friends and I throw back and forth to each other constantly. You know, if one’s voice cracks, that’s the next ten to twelve jokes. Or if our friend who is extremely self-conscious buys a “girly” hair product, his day is potentially ruined by our incessant jokes. I would never think of making fun of a person with a disability, or person who got in a car accident, although I’m sure I’ve let one of those slip before.
In his next segment, Helitzner speaks of hostility. Although I agree with him on all of his targets of hostility, some of which include family affairs, and authority, I believe there are other things that evoke hostility. For example, bad drivers and stupid are two that top my list. I do however find hostility a large part of humor because if you are dissatisfied with something, then you think about what exactly pisses you off about it. You pick and choose certain things to actually make fun of. Because, as Helitzner says, the more narrow your subject, the better chance you have to surprise your audience.
I do not think I grasped the concept of realism very well. I got through the section without realizing it was over. What I picked up from it was that humor should be as realistic as possible. The example that helped me understand this section was Robert Wohl’s one-liner, “If the world if normal, then how come hot dogs come in packages of ten, and hot dog buns come in packages of eight.” I think this is a good topic to discuss because it really is important. I’m pretty sure that space aliens are not as funny as some of the “normal” stuff in our everyday life.
Exaggeration is a large part of humor, but I think most people know that. It might be good to discuss in class, but it seems that exaggeration is pretty self-explanatory as to why it makes normal occurrences funny.
The fifth element is emotion. Emotion, although all of the aspects are important, seems to be the most important. I mean really, if you think about it, if a comedian did not have emotion, he wouldn’t be very funny. I really like how the book went into detail of how to build and create emotion to be funny. This could be a really good talking point in class.
And finally comes surprise. What is comedy without surprise? Not much. The book doesn’t go into too much detail here because surprise is, well, surprise. However, I did like the phrase “Comedy is mentally pulling the rug out from under each person in your audience.”
The reason I like this part is because, not only does it give specific detail, but Helitzner makes the THREES formula interesting. The other thing I like about this is that all six of these aspects tie in with the MAP formula as well. So undoubtedly, there are many relevant and important talking points here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYCoZhIUtu4&feature=channelI chose this Dane Cook bit, not because I think it’s his funniest, because he does have some funny material, but because I could find a way to equate all of his actions to the THREES formula.
