Week 2: Benign Violation / Relief / Silent Comedy

“For a violation to produce humour, it also needs to seem OK, safe, acceptable, or, in other words, benign” (Warren & McGraw, 2015)

The concept of benign violation was slightly confusing to me until Warren and McGraw use the example of how we only laugh from tickles when they’re from someone other than ourselves. The unexpected (as long as we know we’re safe) makes us laugh due to our relief about the situation.

I had to leave the makeup studio class after 1 hour as I had a scheduled seminar/class that I had to attend, hence I did not get feedback on my week 1 sketch, but my friends who watched my sketch complimented my use of facial expressions and sound effects, but some people also found the whole situation in the sketch a little confusing. Hence this week, especially with the topic of silent comedy, I wanted to create a clear sketch that didn’t need dialogue or sound to be funny.

For experiment #2, I was inspired by a scene in a Buster Keaton movie, where there is a banana peel on the floor but no one ends up slipping on it as expected, as this is a cliche in comedy. My sketch was based around this cliche but going against it and hopefully surprising the audience into laughing or even just giggling. I also drew a lot of inspiration from the style of silent films that cut between text and visuals to encourage the audience to laugh. However, I am now questioning if I overused text in a supposedly silent comedic sketch (which is something I’ll ask my peers when I get feedback).

Experiment #2: Silent Comedy – Harmless Banana Peel?

Sound effects sourced from freesound.org

References:

Warren, C. & McGraw, A.P. (2015), “Benign Violation TheoryLinks to an external site.” in Attardo, S. (ed), Encyclopedia of Humor Studies, Los Angeles: SAGE Reference.