Sorry, Trayce. It was Tracer Hand's quote.
― Beetbort (Aimless), Friday, 2 March 2012 00:40 (twelve years ago) link
Heh yeah I suspected it might be. 'shappened before, all good.
― Lindsay NAGL (Trayce), Friday, 2 March 2012 00:44 (twelve years ago) link
wrt to that English type of humour, Trayce, just wanted to say I'm not at all certain about it! Feel it's a thing that is said, a lot, but wd want to look a lot more closely before saying that sort of humour wasn't a class thing.
Did want to put it forward as a counterweight to the idea that we... ah fuck this phone, I've gotta get up and write this now?
― Fizzles, Friday, 2 March 2012 05:18 (twelve years ago) link
This whole thread turned v v weird for me, the initial idea was interesting but the extension into people using humor in their real lives as a net negative is just baffling. Note: I am pretty much happy and kinda O_O at how holy shit awesome the world (mostly) is 90% of the time so humor/levity seem kinda inextricable from my world view? Idk.
― Thu'um gang (jjjusten), Friday, 2 March 2012 05:31 (twelve years ago) link
otm
― Streep? That's where I'm a-striking! (darraghmac), Friday, 2 March 2012 09:08 (twelve years ago) link
So, continuing from above: ...counterweight to the idea that this is something new, or getting worse in some way.
wrt NV's Tyranny of Humour in 'public discourse', the first thing I thought of was punning headlines. They're not quite symbolic of the subject because they've become such a thing in themself, but they are representative of a continual, unfunny noise of non-seriousness. (Honorable exceptions like Foot Heads Arms Body/Book Lack in Ongar/Caley Thistle etc aside). This sort of thing has become pernicious beyond headlines, puns that aren't puns, non-directional irony or cynicism, whatever it is Brooker does where he says (thing) is like (absurd something else), we might as well (absurd action).
Where it's become more noticeably pernicious is in, say, politicians' speeches. Cameron and Osborne's funnies in their speeches have been extraordinarily ill-advised and have generated headlines as a consequence. But clearly they feel the need to do it.
Where public starts affecting private is in the concept of 'banter' I think. Top Gear blokey jokiness. That sort of humour (read 'general non-serious, gurning tone guess that must be FUNNY right?') seems to me very prevalent just generally as a thing you hear around the place. It seems to me horrible because it co-opts the listener into a moral view - the implicit message being, you're not laughing because you don't understand 'fun', rather than because you object to their capering imbecilities.
The worst of this is with colleagues you don't like and bosses. You can't not laugh/smile, unless you are a bastard of steel (I occasionally go as far as a thin smile, or just wait for the forced hilarity to die down and carry on with whatever was being talked about in a normal tone of voice). And so you are once again co-opted.
As for comedy, well generally the stuff that makes me laugh is stuff that occurs spontaneously in conversation/during the day/in my head. It is not related to the mechanics of performed humour generally. I guess I like the mechanics of how to create laughter when it comes off, but the number of things I find funny in performance comedy is so generally miniscule that I'm happy going with lex on this one and saying I hate comedy, especially stand-up.
There's just so much 'low-level funny' around that I find not at all funny, that yes, I do find there's a tyranny, both in the media and public discourse, but also in general talk around the place.
God, just rambling really, but Tyranny of Humour definitely strikes a chord, although yes, hard cultural differences wrt this as i think lex said upthread.
― Fizzles, Friday, 2 March 2012 09:39 (twelve years ago) link
I thnk this whole thread's premise is quite thought provoking! For me anyway. The idea that humour really is in everything we enjoy is interesting bcz I immediately started racking my brains trying to think of anything i've enjoyed (movie, book etc) that was relentlessly humorless, or dark, or similar. I'm sure there have been such things. But of course, one comes away from such experiences feeling rather stained and exhausted or mentally violated or whatever ("Salo" might be a good example?). So does that mean it is not worth experiencing? Not saying anyone's suggested this, just thinking aloud.
― Lindsay NAGL (Trayce), Friday, 2 March 2012 09:44 (twelve years ago) link
FWIW I did not "enjoy" Salo one bit, in fact I never want to see it again and kind of wish I never had.
― Lindsay NAGL (Trayce), Friday, 2 March 2012 09:45 (twelve years ago) link
I really hate non-directional cynicism, you see it everywhere, it barely even registers as humour but it's become all pervasive, you see it in dreadfully written Metro intros, useless G2 recurring features like Pass Notes. The idea that everything is basically shit and scoffing at it should be the default mode of expression unless proven otherwise.
― Homosexual Satan Wasp (Matt DC), Friday, 2 March 2012 09:52 (twelve years ago) link
When I think of the tyranny of humour I also think of Alexis Petridis's Guardian album reviews, where he spends 2/3rd of the review laughing at his own jokes and the remaining third talking about the album. He used to restrict his stand-up routine to the first paragraph but it's expanded and expanded over the years.
― Homosexual Satan Wasp (Matt DC), Friday, 2 March 2012 09:54 (twelve years ago) link
it is broadly correct tho
― Streep? That's where I'm a-striking! (darraghmac), Friday, 2 March 2012 09:55 (twelve years ago) link
I tried something out last night at a client-schmoozing event: the withdrawal of levity. Any participation I had in one to one discussion, or as part of some coalesced group, was deadly serious. This did not go well - people looked at me as if I had antlers. Perhaps this is because there is, in terms of face to face communication, a generally accepted (or tolerated) rule that you shall not bore your audience. Perhaps that has bled through to print and online media.
book etc ... that was relentlessly humorless, or dark, or similarThe Trick Is To Keep Breathing, by Janice Galloway. I don't recall that being funny, but I do recall feeling exhuasted afterwards...
― calumerio, Friday, 2 March 2012 09:57 (twelve years ago) link
Even Shakespearean tragedy uses humour as a release valve and/or commentary. Struggling to think of many great works of literature that don't utilise humour in some way.
The alternative is looking po-faced, and no one wants that when they're trying to make a serious point.
― Homosexual Satan Wasp (Matt DC), Thursday, March 1, 2012 2:34 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
I was thinking on reading the beginning of the thread that I'd come across a concept in a drama class that to make an interesting bad/evil character you had to establish a feeling of sympathy. If you didn't then the audience didn't really care what they did, they'd just be dismissive of the character. & one method of establishing this sense of sympathy was through humour. Could be the irony of the gap between the character's intentionality and reality or something else. sorry started a thought but don't think I've got a proper conclusion.
― Stevolende, Friday, 2 March 2012 10:43 (twelve years ago) link
it shd be pretty obvious that i'm as desperately crowd-pleasing and class clownish as any poster on board, so i'm certain that part of this train of thought is a dissatisfaction with myself. but i'm still unsure as to why - or if - humour is the great universalizer. i think the point woof made about unseriousness might be closer to how i'm thinking. this isn't humour vs humourlessness so much as need to please versus need to express, maybe.
― FPocalypto! (Noodle Vague), Friday, 2 March 2012 10:48 (twelve years ago) link
but i'm still unsure as to why - or if - humour is the great universalizer
Fear of sex and death, probably.
― Homosexual Satan Wasp (Matt DC), Friday, 2 March 2012 10:51 (twelve years ago) link
If you can link it back to satire/mockery, it is the making small of things which are otherwise unpleasant or morbid maybe? Lilliputianisation... er.
― Fizzles, Friday, 2 March 2012 10:53 (twelve years ago) link
I don't think humor is the great universalizer at all, I think it (litcrit pomo alert:) interpellates tribes. A joke hails you as a belonging to a certain group, an address you can accept (even if provisionally or strategically: the thin-lipped smile) or reject. It's when people's jokes interpellate you as a BOORISH ASSHOLE that it gets wearying.
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:11 (twelve years ago) link
i love the deployment of humour within a satirical context but i think it's telling that satire and humour have become conflated to the point where people assume that all satire must be humourous and that every "Cameron is a wanker" zing must be satire.
― FPocalypto! (Noodle Vague), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:11 (twelve years ago) link
i have a whole side-notion in my head btw about neurodiverse people and the notion of an inability to process humour, but that is really far from where i was going here.
― FPocalypto! (Noodle Vague), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:15 (twelve years ago) link
^otm, but then I don't think there's been any decent satire for years. No, scratch that, any satire at all? You might look in Private Eye I guess, but I think you'd look in vain for the most part (it's not really satirical?). Oh, Thick of It I suppose.
― Fizzles, Friday, 2 March 2012 11:15 (twelve years ago) link
xpost.
also somebody raised upthread that there is also, for want of a better word, an emo culture which expresses itself in easily repeated psychological jargon and unexamined assumptions about the importance of being yourself, expressing yourself, and never being judged by anyone ever (except God, ymmv). but maybe that's too big to fit here either. i acknowledge that stuff functions as a counterweight to Red Nose Britain tho.
― FPocalypto! (Noodle Vague), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:19 (twelve years ago) link
there's an issue for something like The Thick of It where the satirical comment is so close to the reality that it ceases to function as satire, cf. Kissinger and the Nobel Peace Prize etc
― FPocalypto! (Noodle Vague), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:20 (twelve years ago) link
I was going to mention Private Eye in that it's a publication that's actually LESS humorous that you expect, once you get past the first few pages it's all investigative stuff and burning anger.
― Homosexual Satan Wasp (Matt DC), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:20 (twelve years ago) link
except the second half which is all remixes of the same jokes that Peter Cook was probably making in 1965 and i assume is the selling point to at least a good chunk of Eye readers?
― FPocalypto! (Noodle Vague), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:22 (twelve years ago) link
and i assume Craig Brown is still doing his savant toff who read something about a celebrity in the Spectator once steez
― FPocalypto! (Noodle Vague), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:23 (twelve years ago) link
actually the reason the Eye shdn't be counted as a satirical magazine now is because the satire is almost always the worst thing in there
― FPocalypto! (Noodle Vague), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:24 (twelve years ago) link
ok so it turns out Craig Brown is Florence MacHine's uncle? huge lol
― FPocalypto! (Noodle Vague), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:30 (twelve years ago) link
!!!
― lex pretend, Friday, 2 March 2012 11:31 (twelve years ago) link
there's an issue for something like The Thick of It where the satirical comment is so close to the reality
Definitely. Never really found The Office funny for that reason. It was just like an office. Which took me back to your original post (and woof's response) about whether humour is necessary.
I remember Wyndham Lewis wrote somewhere that all sorts of works are the better for being 'stiffened with satire' rather than being necessarily purely satirical (anyone who's read any of his purely satirical works will feel he has a point about limiting the amount of satire maybe).
I feel aesthetically that's right (and might operate only on a relatively unobtrusive level like externalising descriptions of people). Whether the same applies to humour I'm not so sure. I find black things funny. What woof said about Beckett upthread is relevant.
xpost lol.
― Fizzles, Friday, 2 March 2012 11:31 (twelve years ago) link
i find black things v. funny. this is another point - often we bring the humour to what we're experiencing, it isn't necessarily present in the art work itself. i'll argue that Salo functions as black humour and i'm convinced that i'm right but it's obvious how you could miss it. the same wd go for a hell of a lot of cultural products. but is this eye for humour itself an expression of a sensibility that belongs to now?
― FPocalypto! (Noodle Vague), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:34 (twelve years ago) link
No.
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:35 (twelve years ago) link
Cautious no.
― Fizzles, Friday, 2 March 2012 11:36 (twelve years ago) link
like obviously some people have always seen humour in everything. but does the degree to which this is a thinkable response change thru time/geography? i'm almost convinced it does. po-faced Victorians like all cliches is obviously false and disprovable but societies do have a public face i think, a way that they like to think about themselves out loud and present themselves to themselves. we live in an informal age and i wd agree with the crustiest Telegraph curmudgeon on that point, tho our conclusions wd be different.
― FPocalypto! (Noodle Vague), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:37 (twelve years ago) link
eg Ulysses now is funny in some of the same ways and in some very different ways than it was in 1922. or more accurately perhaps it was serious in different ways back then.
― FPocalypto! (Noodle Vague), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:39 (twelve years ago) link
We live in an informal age compared to upper class urban Victorians but that's tilting the playing field a little bit!
I don't know why, maybe it's just a natural egotism, but people always seem to think that previous generations were less funny, more serious-minded, less sophisticated, easier to fool, etc etc.
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:40 (twelve years ago) link
the intent of the artist is of limited importance, i think, and proximity is an important part of that murky equation
― Streep? That's where I'm a-striking! (darraghmac), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:41 (twelve years ago) link
and yeah 100 years ago only the worst kind of political demagogue wanted to be your friend, friend of the people.
Trace this isn't less, more, better, worse...this is different. I'm saying that societies and cultures are different to one another. They may even repeat the same mannerisms, but i don't buy a timeless universality of experience.
― FPocalypto! (Noodle Vague), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:42 (twelve years ago) link
Couple of case studies I guess. The first a 'yes' to the suggestion it's an expression of 'now'. Kafka I found incredibly gloomy (obv) when I first read him as a teenager. Now I find him quite amusing to read. The endless fruitless attempts to get things done in the face of the way things are (yes it's more than that), why, it's Larry David! (no.)
Celine: black as hell, and often extremely funny in what is essentially a presentation the bleak absurd? Black humour funny as a consequence of existentialism? see also Beckett.
So, death of god results in black humour? v possibly. See also the transition of the word absurd from the unique impossible to 'lol'.
Wd want to try and look at Rabelais/Cervantes/Swift maybe in this context, but people be staring at me not doing work.
― Fizzles, Friday, 2 March 2012 11:42 (twelve years ago) link
Is it egotism? Premise of this thread seems to be that this might not, in itself, be A Good Thing.
― Homosexual Satan Wasp (Matt DC), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:42 (twelve years ago) link
so that's me saying 'yes' I guess.
sorry, xposting like blazes.
― Fizzles, Friday, 2 March 2012 11:43 (twelve years ago) link
and it's not "previous generations", it's public discourse. the way media and public figures address their audience. the ways it's considered seemly for adults to relate to each other in public.
― FPocalypto! (Noodle Vague), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:43 (twelve years ago) link
also xposting like mad. cos i'll have to work again shortly.
― FPocalypto! (Noodle Vague), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:44 (twelve years ago) link
There is some kind of irony in a thread about humour being humorously delinated :/
― Lindsay NAGL (Trayce), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:45 (twelve years ago) link
deliniated. gah.
I'm cautiously yes on a cultural shift towards the tendency to see humour. I get the feeling 30s-70s maybe were a great deal more serious about their Kafka, Beckett, Dostoevsky etc.
― woof, Friday, 2 March 2012 11:46 (twelve years ago) link
death of god results in black humour
god = high seriousnessaftermath of death of god = black humourgod dead and forgotten = tim vine
― woof, Friday, 2 March 2012 11:47 (twelve years ago) link
xp
yeah i'm thinking this, from the perspective of criticism. altho it's obviously not the only measure of how writers are received.
― FPocalypto! (Noodle Vague), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:47 (twelve years ago) link
aftermath of death of god = black humour
fits nicely into Breton's Anthology of Black Humour
― FPocalypto! (Noodle Vague), Friday, 2 March 2012 11:48 (twelve years ago) link