Joke Writing Flashcards
how are tragedy and comedy similar?
both acknowledge botched nature of human life
what is a joke (psychological, philosophical, and cognitive aspects)
- psych: Freud believed jokes were dream-like, rooted in subconscious, subliminal, aggressive and sexual
- phil: Kant said laughter was a “tense expectation… transformed into nothing”
- cog: De Bono suggests that jokes establish and subverts a pattern; our pleasure comes from re-ordering a new pattern
biological/evolutionary theory of laugher
signals to others that what we thought was dangerous was never there -> ie. you thought a bear was in the bush, but it was really a bunny (the incongruency makes it funny)
Beerbohm’s view on laughter
laughter and love bridge intellectual and physical experiences in opposite directions
a successful joke is…
one that makes people laugh or smile
jokes as literary texts
Paul Auster: joke is purest most essential form of storytelling - every word has to count
folklore/street jokes
- authorship unimportant
- templates that get updated (ie. dumb Polish jokes in the 70’s got turned into dumb blonde jokes in the 90’s)
- often relate to ethical or moral themes
written material
- authorship matters (joke is often fused with performance/voice of comedian)
- limited literary form somewhere between poetry and prose
How are folklore/street jokes and written material similar?
both emphasize economy of words, symbolism, and rhythm
literary devices in comedy
- the moving detail: roots us in a scene, its specificity is funny, makes a joke seem real
- rhythm/cadence: build and explosion, deliberately chosen
- word choice: ie. alcoholic instead of drunk
components of a joke
- premise/setup: creates pattern/expectation
- punchline/payoff: subverts/disrupts/reorders expectations
- ex. Pretentious? (premise) Moi? (payoff)
units of standup comedy
- the joke
- the bit
- the set
units of standup -> joke
- any combo of premise and punchline
- may also include a tag (another punchline built off first premise and punchline)
units of standup -> bit
section of related material (aka “chunk”)
units of standup -> set
entirety of comic’s performance, from stepping onstage to stepping off
5 main comic elements/devices
- incongruity
- irony
- reversal
- tension
- surprise
comic devices -> incongruity
2 or more things that don’t belong together (ie. “holy shit!”)
comic devices -> irony
when what you get isn’t what you expected
comic devices -> reversal
subversion of status -> flips who has power (ie. Eddie Murphy bit -> lead kid drops ice cream)
Rule of 3
- 3 is the shortest space to establish and subvert a pattern (ex. a priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into a bar…)
uses of comedy
- trojan horse: allows us to speak about subjects otherwise too uncomfortable (politics, social issues, etc.)
- persuasive: forces listener to temporarily share your premise
- “punching up”: Chris Rock coined this -> victim/minority group making a joke where the butt of the joke is the perpetrator/person higher up in the social hierarchy
comedy is ____ + ____
TRAGEDY + TIME
