For years I have wondered about the true nature of the humor. There is no definition to it. There is no particular style that guarantees to be funny. There are people who can make a crowd laugh on the matters of simple observations, and there are people when they joke only a few people laugh, the rest of the crowd laugh's years later (extreme case). If I have to define humor, I would call it the ability to project in words, or actions, or emotions, the various links and subtle relationships which have been processed through creative imagination, between any two instances of time. Instances of time here may refer to objects, events, persona, or ideas.
Humor, as percieved popularly, is not an art, rather, its a bi-product of a logical-mathematics-oriented approach to life. Humor, is the realization of descripencies in the system; a social system for example. Hence, one can conclude that Humor is always ironic, or better: humor and irony are the same.
Another question arises, why people chose to laugh on a descrepency in a system? At first it may seem a little odd, and against the teachings of, well, civilised manner. One may argue on its basis that civilised manner is a joke and our civilization is nothing more than a farce. What goals our race tend to achieve by imposing restrictions on people? This however, is arguable.
It is ironic, that I have written such a boring and technical essay on the subject of humor. But, hey, thats funny!
Note: I dont know why I dont feel like finishing the stuff I start. So here is another incomplete essay.
3 comments:
I like that you are thinking about humour.
i would like to add something.
isn,t humour a bit like beauty? a concept that cannot be measured in a universal way. Doesn't it vary according to culture, era, gender.. and even according to individual conceptional frames? Something may be funny when you are 15 and not so funny when you are 50, or you may read a funny book and not understand it when u r 15, and find it brilliantly hilarious when you are 50. You may find South Park funny, and yet british humour, dry. Just like I think Gulf women at a party are not beautiful.. but they think they are.
Also, irony is a style. Like sarcasm, or parody. It is an effect created through language. Without language, oral or written, you can't have humour... can you?
To try to limit humour and measure it it is tantamount lo labelling beauty as such or such thing... which it cannot be given the fact that beauty is limitless. as is humour.
Well teapot, thats the thing. I cannot agree more that humor is as abstract as beauty and it further shares same innate characteristics with it.
One can argue that beauty is the name of irony too. The descripency in this case is rooted into the temporaryness (if thats a word) of its nature.
Youth is beautiful, but it only lasts for few years. Then its taken over by the ugly shadows of old age. It melts away into the face lines, like a cotton shirt pulled out of a cow's mouth.
It is ironic that so much attention is paid to beauty where we all know that its not everlasting. Every rose must wither at the end of the day.
Now for the things which are funny at one age and not at another: If it was once funny, its ironic that a 50 year old man is not laughing on it.
If it wasnt funny at 15 but is funny at 50 then there is a problem with the subject's understanding and comprehension and not with the humor.
By the way, South Park rocks!
You claim that humour, like beauty exists in itself, while I claim that humour, like beauty exists only dependantly to its observer.
I guess taht is where our essencial differences lie.
So let me ask you, how can you be certain taht beauty and humour are in them-selves, that they exist outside of you? You mock me because I think humour changes depending on variables, like age, culture and gender. Can you prove me wrong?
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