In efforts to wrap our heads around silent comedy, we explored the benign violation theory, which is commonly found in forms of visual humour. Through a series of screenings, a favourite of mine being the pilot episode of Mr Bean, we noticed how a circumstance that could be considered a “violation” while simultaneously being “appraised as benign” is an affective form of comedy (Warren and McGraw 2015:75). Rowan Atkinson cheating on a test by peering over the person sat beside him is a violation, but his strange and laughable mannerisms create a benign situation, and ultimately one of many “humorous violations” in the series (Warren and McGraw 2015:75). More visual humour we looked at validates this theory, and for some unknown reason, there was nothing funnier than Kyle MacLachlan repeatedly tapping his travel card at a train station. This could be because I immediately recognised him, and so maybe it wasn’t so much the action, but the famous person doing the action… food for thought.
Something I noticed in the content we looked at was the humour in a camera lingering on something uncomfortable, and I took that concept with smiling inanimate objects. The subject lives in a black and white world, and anything remotely happy is foreign to them. In efforts to learn how to smile, they’re left disgruntled and throw a Scrub Daddy into their sink. In all honesty, this is mostly just a projection of hearing “you should smile more,” hence the title, but was a fun way of exploring visual humour and putting humour theories of relief into practice.
References
Warren C & McGraw A.P. (2015) ‘Benign Violation Theory’ in Attardo S (ed), Encyclopedia of Humor Studies, Los Angeles