The Tyranny of Humour

distancing humor as defense mechanism/tension release valve (present in and undercutting every horror movie made these days)

hoo boy do i have a list of movies to change your mind on this

Ha. I know all too well that you do! I should have said "most mainstream horror movies". But as a fan of the genre, I know you know what I'm talking about. There's a slew of horror movies that just plain don't work as horror movies because they have one foot out the door of ironic remove.

If you ever need to remind yourself of the "alternative" to snark and banter, it's possibly even worse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Sincerity

My wife coined (I think) the term "fashionably nice" for an attitude we found a lot in the last few years at art-related stuff. I think that probably relates to "New Sincerity."

http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320441466l/160767.jpg

"Fashionably nice" is a great phrase

no yeah i figured haha! i agree though, i almost nominated deadgirl in the comedy poll but i was afraid people might watch it and think i was like the creepiest dude alive (and thats one of the few that do it well!) xpost to mr haircare

"For Common Things" came out 12 years ago, btw

The next real literary “rebels” in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that’ll be the point. Maybe that’s why they’ll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal.” To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law. Who knows.

- David Foster Wallace writing in 1993

which is what, two years after the Simpsons started?

E Unibus Plurum, iirc? That totally blew my mind when I read it in college (several years after it was written). So DFW predicted, and perhaps helped to create, Jonathan Safran Foer. Thanks?

:/

i don't even understand the premise of 90% of this thread, unless it's just that people conflate "having a sense of humor" with "being sarcastic all the time"

I think "being funny all the time" is kind of more than just "being sarcastic all the time"

I have no particular beef with the tyranny of humor, especially when humor bespeaks a kind of humility, but snideness, while occasionally fun, when taken in excess leads to utter dickishness and irrelevance.

I feel like this thread taps into something I've been feeling about irreverance as the new dominant cultural mode. Maybe "levity" is a better word, but just basically the idea that nothing should be taken seriously, no statement should be delivered with unflinching authority or certainty, everything has to make fun of itself, etc. I find this most present in advertising, where it seems like even tax prep services and cancer drugs use guitar-playing lolcats to sell.

well i think with advertising i think it's mainly that everyone realizes now on some level that advertising is bullshit so it's pretty much impossible to do "sincere" advertising anymore

irony is pretty much our primary tool as a feeling species and eventually when all of us who grew up in the 1990s are finally dead people will remember that the word doesn't mean "making fun of stuff" but refers to an attunement to the failure of expectations that is at root deeply humble, and that since probability and not physics is on some level the mother of the sciences lacking or failing to develop this sense is like never understanding that objects move when you push them, i.e., you won't ever have any idea what's going on

― the "intenterface" (difficult listening hour), Thursday, March 1, 2012 9:08 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is p great

2) is there not also a simultaneous culture of sincerity / drama happening all around us? aren't "reality tv shows" full of SERIOUS (OVERBLOWN) HUMAN DISAGREEMENT and wrangling on important issues? what about the "i'm okay, you're okay" culture of daytime talk shows (oprah, etc)? emo music? livejournal? what about the fever pitch of international political wrangling and post 9/11 malaise?

Although I do like a lot of stuff that I guess would fall under the heading of New Sincerity, there's also a lot of douchey flotsam that tends to wash up on that shore.

I just re-read "E Unibus Pluram" recently. It's a fantastic essay and really germaine to the discussion in this thread. As is a lot of stuff DFW discusses in Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself.

xpost -- I feel like this is something slightly different from the irony/sincerity issue that has already been so heavily dissected. It's more of a pervasive unseriousness in everything that I'm talking about.

Hazlitt: "Humour is the describing the ludicrous as i tis in itself; wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with something else. Humour is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident; wit is the product of art and fancy."

well i dunno, maybe some of you are just surrounded by assholes?

i have a lot of trouble seeing this as a worldwide cultural phenomenon, it reads a lot more like "OLD MAN YELLS AT CLOUD" or whatever

Tbf, the cloud was blocking the light

"comedy industrial complex" was pretty funny

When I'm writing something it comes naturally to me to insert maybe a little bit of humour. But often I read back something after it's published and just think "what was I doing?!". Humour is an effective tool but a dark art. One shouldn't wield it unless one knows what they're doing.

― Alexandre Dumbass (dog latin), Thursday, March 1, 2012 7:04 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is so, so otm.

I've been thinking a lot about the original post, especially that line from the young people that "a light and humorous tone is more important than anything" .... something about that notion is just so depressing to me.

So many people I know, especially coworkers, treat 'seriousness' as a negative. Like you can't dispense good news without being funny and up and light and breezy and it's just so FAKE. They seem to cling to this notion that 'happiness' is some kind of permanent emotion that they can attain by only reading things that make them laugh, and instead, in my opinion, avoiding seriousness of any kind, especially in writing, turns you into a moron. How on earth can anyone engage with 'lightness'.

Just... ugh! And i'm a happy, laughing person in general, I love humour, I love standup comedy (sorry lex)...but only where it fits. I don't want to laugh all the time.

Any my rhetorical question to the young people, isn't there any consideration for establishing an original voice with which to dispense your information, rather than using the same voice that 10,0000 bajillion blogs are already using? And using it allll the time just dilutes the message.

Kinda feel like this is not what everyone else is talking about though, plus I'm kind of flailing around anyway so as you were...

i tend to use humor in most situations that have no particular gravity or need for seriousness. IRL, that's maybe half the time. on ILX, that's pretty much all the time.

xp

nah it is part of what i was getting at inbetween yelling at clouds

i'm only intermittenly jokey in my professional writing, and i used to be even more dry when i started out. one of the first places i wrote for had a habit of inserting terrible jokes into my pieces, which i really hated in a way that i generally don't resent other forms of editorial intervention, like if there's anything you should retain of a writer's style it should be their tone, their sense of humor or level of seriousness.

Does one insert humor into sentences or does it happen naturally? genuinely curious

So many people I know, especially coworkers, treat 'seriousness' as a negative

i just ... i don't have this problem! and i work with teenagers!

I'll introduce you to my workplace, late great

and i'll introduce you to mine!!

:D

ILX work exchange program wd be excellent

there are just so many counterexamples to everything on this thread!

i think i phrased the initial fuzzy thoughts as tentatively as i cd. i'm all for counter-examples, a few have occurred to me since i started. and i was thinking more of the sphere of public discourse than human interaction in general, i think.

Too many coworkers treat humor as a negative.

I've noticed a verrrrry slight shift change in the college students I work with or see: they'll use "hating" or "haters" if you insult a star, athlete, or other Beloved Person. There's a real scorn for what they call "negativity."

i think there's a big UK/US divide here

although, y'know, gawker, so maybe not, idk

Feed them shit, Alfred, and see whether they look askance at 'hating' that.

even in the sphere of public discourse, i find it hard to defend the claim that today's culture is somewhat "lighter" or less serious than that of the past.

it does seem like there's a big US/UK divide ... is it because in the past you guys basically only had paternalistic high-minded quality public programming on TV & radio and now you have the same wasteland of for-profit TV as the US?

so you're saying modern Yoo Kay culture has made them sour

my entire life philosophy boils down to "take things as seriously as you have to, but be as honest as painfully possible" so I don't really see the sincerity/humorous divide, either

on the other hand, irony/sarcasm for its own sake is really, really annoying

Ta-Nehisi Coates Rules, The Thread

FYI

Not a bad philosophy, Dan. Personally, I find it hard to take pretty much anything too seriously (even the things I'm generally quite serious about), and I see everything within the broad span of human endeavor as a source of both awe and guffaws, depending on the perspective one employs at a given time. And I think the best and most admirable humor has a healthy balance of both.

Seriousness should be reserved for subjects and situations where its application makes a material difference to your own life or the lives of people you come into contact with. However, this shouldn't be used as a license to treat everything else with frivolity. There is a middle ground, you know.

Also, anyone who cannot and does not aim humor at themselves should be disbarred from aiming it at anyone else.

(Now I will go back and read the whole thread.)

Earnestness/sincerity are perfectly fine in many ways, but as personality traits aren't they v close to the bottom of the list of 'positives' you'd ideally be looking for in ppl you've to spend time with?

No. When I married my wife she had very little idea of humor and was nearly incapable of saying anything funny, including not knowing how to tell a programmatic joke with a punchline. But I can make her laugh. We are still married after 28 years.

Her quality of earnestness is valuable to me, because it makes her extremely trustworthy and perservering. When things go wrong, she is deeply committed to finding out how to make them go right again. That has helped immeasurably over the decades.

Humor is a leaven in one's character, to keep it from too much density and heaviness of spirit, but humor as the basis of one's character can be a disaster, if there is no graivty to offset it.

I feel this way sometimes. We can't shut up, so we make stupid jokes. Maybe if we had religion we could be solemn over that. Otherwise the only occasions are funerals.

tbf and all, i noted sincerity as a positive trait, i acknowledge it as such. Personally speaking there're just loads of better ones, ymmv obv.

From Trayce's DFW quote:

Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval.

Paradox: the complete refusal of seriousness may emerge from the fear of being seen as ridiculous.

the complete refusal of humour can come from the same source

The complete refusal of either is rare, though