So, it’s my final column of the semester. I’d say it was a pleasure writing for you all, but that’d be a lie. Y’all are kind of pretentious, to be honest. It makes me uncomfortable to be around you.
This semester I’ve advocated fart jokes, rape jokes, profane jokes, clever jokes and satirical jokes. And every week I was applauded for my genius and offered many potential brides. I’ve acquired five new cows since the beginning of April from courting alone. Someone gave me a goat with a lazy eye, but I sent it back. I couldn’t trust the thing.
How do I finish off my semester strong? That’s easy: I’ll talk about comedy.
So, here’s a question I probably should have answered six weeks ago: What is comedy? That’s easy, too: Comedy makes people laugh. But that doesn’t really describe what it is. Well, then, it’s about irony. But that doesn’t say much about what form comedy takes. Is it just a concept or an ethereal entity from which the most eldritch of cults have developed? No. To both. Comedy is a puzzle.
“A puzzle? That’s silly.” No, it’s not. See how I put words in your mouth there? Ain’t I a stinker?
What’s a puzzle? A puzzle is a problem with a solution. The most important thing about a well-constructed puzzle, though, is this: You’re given all the information necessary to solve it, and it’s up to you to make logical connections between those bits of information to provide an answer. Well, that’s what comedy is.
Comedy is about irony: subversion of expectation. The core engagement of comedy is identifying the disconnect between expectation and reality. How and why was your or someone else’s expectation subverted? That’s the question you’re trying to answer as you listen to a joke. In this way, comedy is a puzzle: By the time you’re told the punchline, you have all the information necessary to solve the puzzle and realize the subversion of expectation that took place. It’s up to you to make that connection, though. That’s why it’s not funny when we have to explain a joke.
Here’s an example: puns. When you understand a pun, the subversion of expectation is, “That word isn’t supposed to have that definition within that context!” To disparage bad wind is dis-gust-ing. You shouldn’t read the word “disgusting” and think about wind. That’s the irony. That is where expectation subverts reality.
Another example: cartoons. Wile E. Coyote is the only one who thinks he isn’t going to get hurt as a result of his schemes; the audience and the Road Runner know he’ll get hurt. That’s dramatic irony. Slapstick is yet another case of irony. Wile E. Coyote flattens to be paper-thin when a rock lands on him — we consider how we’ve seen things flatten, but we know that logic wouldn’t apply to coyotes.
Basically, constructing and analyzing comedy is critical thinking. Comedy is stimulating. It’s creative. It makes us juxtapose what we perceive and what is true. It makes us create relationships between things that otherwise wouldn’t be related. In this way, comedy is constructive. It’s not mindless — not even slapstick can be watched passively if you take the time to analyze it.
This is why I fight for comedy, and this is why I want comedy to be boundless in its subject matter. It’s an engaging activity, and we can practice it every day in casual conversation. You don’t even have to write jokes. To understand why you laugh is already an interesting collection of puzzles to solve. Comedy gets a bad stigma, but it’s really just a silly way of being thoughtful. Plus, comedy makes you giggle. I like giggles.
Michael Smith just wants love, but he doesn’t want to be weird about it. So, he slips it casually in his bylines on Tuesdays.
