Faith's Comedy Blog

Human Interactions I am going to follow in the same direction as Paige, except take a more sociological approach. I analyzed this topic briefly in my blog post that was in response to Paige's lead blog post, however, I find human interactions very fascinating. Sociology studies human behavior and human interactions, and laughter is a significant part of interactions between individuals. We often study how humor is used to make fun of people (superiority theory) or to relieve stress (relief theory) however, laughter can also help alter people's perspective on important things in our lives. Humorous interactions seem to not be a top priority when people seek out comedic television shows or turn to political satire for their news. However, human interactions among other things shape our beliefs, behaviors, and overall opinions of the world. For example, two friends are interacting through conversation and one says jokingly, "we need to show compassion for the mentally ill...

Michael Scott I've only actually seen a few episodes of The Office , and honestly, I am not exactly sure why. It is such a well-known sitcom and has received such widespread praise. Although I've only seen a few episodes, I definitely agree with Lucy's statement about the audience feeling superior to Michael Scott which makes us find the show even funnier, even though it is often thought that the feeling of superiority sometimes causes us to find things less funny. Michael Scott's crazy personality causes us to find it okay to laugh at him and as Lucy said, the feeling of superiority "makes us love the characters even more." To analyze another character in regards to the superiority theory, we often laugh at the weird antics of Dwight, who is one of the employees at Dunder Mifflin. Even though the superiority theory is one of the more common theories present in this show simply because of the weird personalities of the characters, the relief theory is also p...

"Laughter Medicine" Amazing post, Paige! This post is a different approach than others who came before simply because instead of analyzing one type of humor, Paige broadened the scopes and began to analyze how these types of humor are actually helping us in our lives. When Paige said that humor "can aid in creating bonds between doctors and their patients," I began to think about my sociology class and how this could count as another study, besides psychology, to prove just how much humor impacts our lives or how our lives impact our humor. Sociology is basically the study of human behavior as well as human interactions. Laughter is an integrated part of human behavior regulated by the brain, that often stems from human interactions, to provide an emotional context to conversations. Humor and laughter help us through many of our life struggles, as Paige pointed out, however, our lives and our interactions with others often impact our own humor and what we tend to ...

John Mulaney Because the clip was only about two minutes long, I could only get a sense of Mulaney's character. However, as Caroline said, he definitely does seem to be degrading himself often regarding this bit about how he is a terrible driver. The statement that struck me as most relevant to this particular comedian was "well constructed stand-up comedy depends less on the audience feeling superior and more on the self-awareness of the comedian." As Caroline mentioned, Mulaney knows that he is "inferior" to the audience, but that is the whole point of his joke. He wants to make himself feel inferior, which allows the audience to laugh at him without the feeling of superiority. This alleviates any tension between the audience and the comedian which gives the audience the ability to laugh freely at his jokes and recognize that he is making himself inferior for their own amusement.

Cody Ko It is a very real possibility that I never heard of Cody Ko until just now. I was not a crazy vine fan and rarely watched youtube videos other than the occasional makeup tutorial (because what girl can say they have not watched at least one??). After watching the video, his comedic sense of humor does not seem unlike mine. I found the video very hilarious and I will most likely watch more of his videos. The way Alexis analyzed this video in terms of the superiority theory is, in my opinion, completely accurate. The whole point of this entire video is to mock the man who is still a virgin and the way he acts around girls. The title of the video is "that's cringe" implying that it is cringy to be a 34-year-old virgin. However, when Alexis analyzed the video in terms of the benign violation theory, I would have to somewhat disagree. I do not believe that the video Skippy created was benign at all because watching him talk to girls was often very uncomfortable which...