Why Six is REALLY Afraid of Seven

Okay, this title is a bit misleading. I don't want to talk about the personal lives of the poor saps we see in jokes. I don't know where the chicken went after she crossed the road, and I don't really care. What I do want to talk about is the value of analyzing humor.

Is it a good thing that we dissect something like humor apart to examine why it makes us laugh? How is this any different from the person who overanalyzes jokes, completely missing the humor?

I do believe that there is a difference. The person who makes a joke un-funny analyzes the fictional characters and situations present in jokes. This person would care about the chicken who crossed the road. "What was a chicken doing by the road? Isn't that what chicken fences are for? I don't really get this joke, it doesn't make any sense."

However, a person who analyzes humor doesn't pick apart the story in the joke, but rather the parts of it that make it funny to us. For instance, why use a chicken? Would people laugh harder if it was a duck? Also, wordplay, incongruities, and vulgarity are analyzed. If you don't  think anyone really looks carefully at humor, let me tell you about the search for the funniest joke in the world.

A cognitive scientist named Richard Wiseman created LaughLab in his epic quest for the funniest joke in the world. (If you look at the LaughLab website, yes, that's him next to the giant chicken.) The "funniest joke in the world" isn't bad, but not gut-wrenchingly funny, probably because jokes that appeal to everyone aren't neccessarily the favorites of the individual. It's a fact of life that people have different senses of humor.

All of us get a chance, sometimes against our will, to take a closer look at humor. It's not uncommon for classes studying a piece of literature, such as Shakespeare, to analyze what about it is funny, and why. I went through this, as many people do. Perhaps it would not have worked so well with more modern humor, but analysis actually helped me understand some of the archaic quips present in The Merchant of Venice. But even with modern humor, I find it interesting to think about why we laugh.

So, I say, let's find out why it's funny when a blonde in a potato sack cries, "Potatoes! Potatoes!" Let's examine why ducks are funnier than turtledoves. There's nothing wrong with that. Pick away, pick away!

Just don't forget to skip over the laughing part.

Ylerecnis,

N

P.S. I apologize for not having written for a while. I've been falling behind, entirely at my own fault.