During week ones tutorials, we discussed our ideas on what comedy and humour actually is. The readings gathered in Seth Simons ‘six small essays about comedy’ was a good starting point in exploring these ideas and certainly helped facilitate discussions over what the idea of humour and comedy actually is. One of my favourite essays from this collection was ‘Why People Laugh’ (Simons, 2023) – the reading made me think about not only why people laugh, but the relationship that laughter has with humour and comedy; different forms of comedy and humour illicit a different kind of laughter.

One of the main theories of humour we discussed in class was incongruity. The way comedy can achieve this is through contrasting audience expectations and creating an element of surprise. For example, Tim Robinsons ‘I Think You Should Leave’ skit about the office printer – Breaking this down, the only humorous part of this skit is the female office employee not acting like the other employees, which becomes increasingly more funny the further she strays away from how  you would expect an employee to act. prior to this discussion, I had never considered the nature of humour and what makes things ‘funny’ – however after this discussion I was certainly thinking about how I consume comedy, the comedians I enjoy watching (e.g. Key and Peele, Ricky Gervais) and how they use incongruity and the element of surprise in their material.

Prior to this thirty second skit, I had never written or considered how I could create comedy on screen, so I began thinking about realistic ideas I could capture. Thinking about incongruity, I began to consider normal situations, trends, and how they could be comically altered to surprise audiences and illicit a humorous reaction. I found this process surprisingly difficult, however eventually began to think about specific scenarios, phrases, or activities that could have a double meaning – which could then be used in a skit as premise for a misunderstanding. My initial idea for the ‘ice bath skit’ was for it to be longer, with characters discussing the many benefits of ice baths; increased energy, more attentive, and more awake – all things that could also be misunderstood for smoking literal ice. I really enjoyed the process of coming up with this idea and look forward to creating more comedy through the semester.

References:

Simons, S. (2023), “Six Small Essays About Comedy”, Humorism, <https://www.humorism.xyz/six-small-essays-about-comedy/Links to an external site.>.