Analyzing Scooter's Essay 'Made You Laugh'

Use the guided analysis exercises within the lesson as a model for this part of the assignment.

In Roxane Gay’s essay, “Some Jokes are Funnier,” she states an experience she once had of witnessing a rape joke and the dilemma around rape jokes in general. Her main argument, however, is that rape jokes are not funny as it can yield to multiple consequences. For example, Gay stated that rape jokes remind women of their social standing as being unequal to men because their “bodies and reproductive freedom are open to legislation and public discourse” and, as a result, become centers of comedic relief. She further elaborates her argument by examining the issue of rape and humor. Gay believes humor is subjective while the concept of rape should not even be subjective. Because of people thinking that rape is subjective, they began to distort

Richard Pryor once said, “There’s a thin line between to laugh with and to laugh at” (A-Z Quotes). Leon Rappoport, a professor at Kansas State University, believed in the same thin line as Pryor. Rappoport received his BA and MS at New York University, and completed his PhD in 1963 at the University of Colorado(Kansas State University). He studied psychological sciences, and concentrated his studies in decision making and human judgment, even writing a book called Punchlines: The Case for Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Humor (Kansas State University). In another book, The Sword and Shield Metaphor and Other Perspectives, Rappoport claims that humor depends on how the audience receives humor. The audience can either be on the side of the audience that is getting laughed at, or they can be on the side of the audience that is laughing with other people.

Don't we all have something in common? Well that's just how comedians have an effect to communicate a universal truth with their audience. Whether if its confusion, sickness, frustration we all have something that we can relate to and that is how comedians use this effect because we can relate to that feeling or subject. That's how a comedian can communicate a universal truth to us by using humor.

Throughout time, humorists have been able to pull off a phenomenon, which allows for others to laugh about sensitive, stressful topics. With talent, humorists are able to captivate positive emotion from their audience and allow for society to see delicate issues in an unbiased view. Although humorists are commonly seen as people who only intend to entertain, humorists purposefully say things through their work that allow for hard issues to be spoken or illustrated.

Ron Hansen’s work, My Kid’s Dog, is a story about revenge, irony, and circularity. The family pet, Sparky, dies. We are informed of this in the first lines of the piece, “My kid’s dog died. Sparky. I hated that dog (244).” Here Hansen gives us a clue to their relationship, “We got off on the wrong foot. Whining in his pen those first nights. My squirt gun in his face and him blinking from the water. And then the holes in the yard. The so-called accidents in the house (244).” Right off the bat we get a clear sense of the mood between the two.

“Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious” -Peter Ustinov. Comedy is used in everyday life. It is a way to slip in the truth while decreasing the blow. Comedy allows the hard things to hear, to be said in a way where it is not so hard. The truth can be hard to hear sometimes but comedy uses comedic tactics to slip in the truth that is hard to hear, but needs to be said, into the world. In the excerpt from Live right and Find Happiness (Although Beer is Much Faster) by Dave Barry, is a high comedy excerpt that uses the comedic tactics sarcasm and situational irony to express the truth about growing up and how to live right in a funny manner.

“Theories of humor often suggest that humor requires a perceived violation, or something that disrupts people’s sense of how the world ought to be” (McGraw and Warren 2010).

Lei states that "humor is shared by people from every nation. However, different nations have different kinds of sense of humor, closely related to religion, ideology, society, politics and culture. Therefore, although humor has been studied for a very long time, most are from the perspective of literature, art, sociology, psychology, pragmatics or linguistics. Some scholars doubt that humor can be fully translated into another language because humor is language-specific and culture-specific. Only a few scholars study the translation of humor." (2010, p.7).

Humor can go a long way in an essay about one's past experiences. It can help relay a point across while keeping the reader interested in the story. It can help everything flow together and keep the mood of the story light and airy. In Kellie Young's essay, the undercurrent, humor is consistent throughout the essay. The main source of humor involves stories about her mother and how she pokes fun at how her mom was always overprotective. Different types of humor such as hyperboles, realistic images and ironic situations are used and it adds to the overall essay and helps get the point across. Even though her mom badgers her with what she feels is right for Young, her words stick with her and it helps guide her throughout her life.

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn left quite the impression. A book filled with action, adventure, and poor decisions made by teenagers makes up an interesting literary cocktail. Even though the story shows signs of Twain’s best work, the shear boredom of it all was too much to enjoy ending the novel. The most aggravation part was the changing of dialects throughout the narrative. Yes, the understanding of where different characters came from and how they speak is an interesting and clever idea of captivating an audience. However, it just made deciphering what characters like Jim were saying, therefore making the book too infuriating to want to continue reading. With all that said, there were moments when humor was very present

“ Everyone has a sense of humor. If you don’t laugh at jokes you probably laugh at opinions.”. People understand things differently. Its easier to get a point across in a joke and have others listen then laughed at because it sound more like an opinion. Humorists are vital because they expose the taboo subject in society; this illustrated by the following comedic “Doorbell” , “I want a wife”, and “This way up .

In the school that the narrator teaches at, we can see how the narrator feels about Harlem. The narrator discusses how the laughter throughout the halls is "mocking and insular" instead of "joyous" (Mays 94). From this you can see that the children attending the school are often picking on and making fun of each other. The narrator is very much used to this type of interaction because he and his brother grew up the same way but he is just now realizing that it is not normal.

Humour and satire are two concepts that are both wide ranging and diverse, from dark, to light hearted, with each producing a different effect. Humour in the main, is something that is used to please the audience, its function is to invoke laughter amongst its audience. Satire is used to create a comical critical view of the subject at hand, this can range from a light hearted comical way, to a judgemental way, with each style giving the text a different meaning, however this does not mean that satire cannot be humorous, which can evident in the use of parody and irony within texts. Within literature both concepts play an important role to how the text is viewed, humour can include word play, grammatical jokes, to even inside jokes with the author and reader, and with satire, including that of irony and parody, with each style and type delivering humour in its own unique way. These differing styles of humour can be found in a variety of forms including Jasper Forde’s The Eyre Affair (2001), with its silly atmosphere, word play and grammar jokes, and the use of light hearted satire and parody to brighten up the text, and Julian Barnes A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (1989), where there is a more serious atmosphere, with a more critical, satirical eye on history and characters, as well as using irony to achieve its comical effect, and the position of the world. Each text is humorous and satirical in its own right, and with each author using different techniques to

The conception of comedy has been around since the dawn of man; Aristophanes wrote comic plays dating back to 425 BCE, but as time progress so does comedy. The jokes and comics we see today have changed drastically since then, and have evolved into a new style of humor. Comedy is used by writers, playwrights, and everyday people to make life more enjoyable and cause the greatest feeling to man… Laughter.