Theories of humour: The Comic Event / Surprise / Incongruity
With this short piece, I wanted to evoke the feeling of incongruity from the audience by having the scene take place in an emotional setting, hence the therapy session. We expect the tone to be a drama, or maybe a coming of age, however the twist of the client having comically small hands suberts those expectations, the physical humour stripping the realism from the scene and introducing an air of ridiculousness. Something that one would notice (and hopefully find funny) after a second watch is that the topic of conversation uses words such as “grip” and “palm of his hand”, a hint at the clients later reveal.
This also feeds into the discussion that was had with my group in class in which we were tasked to answer the question “What is Comedy?”. We suggested that comedy is a coping mechanism for humanity, having the ability to find a lightness in dark topics. With this in mind, I used the often overwhelming and vulnerable position of being open with a psychologist and combined it with the absurd, making light of an otherwise intimate moment.
In our week 1 reading “Six Small Essays”, Simons states that “The funniest thing is something exploding that you wouldn’t expect to explode” (Simons 2023). Inspired by that, I introduced a final act of randomness by ending the scene with an explosion following the client’s line “I think i’m going to be okay…”. Not only is the explosion completely out of pocket, but it contradicts what the audience believes is an honest statement. By ending on a fiery death, there is no closure or happy ending. The audience has had no time to get to know these two characters, therefore the level of misfortune feels comical.
In regard to my own research, I was certainly inspired by the works of Youtuber, TomSka, specifically his sketch comedy series, ASDF, that consisted of a compilation of short clips with simplistic animated characters. The series utilised dark humour, absurdity and randomness, being a time capsule for early to mid 2000s YouTube comedy.
Link to video: https://youtu.be/BCGNkyLAucM
Starring:
Noah Lissarrague as Small Handz
Stock video and sound from Pixabay
Link to ASDF Series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYnsfV5N2n8&list=PL6HF94r1ogByYa2xFAXIE_1Pw-K0AU_Vd