Humor Theories/Stand-Up Comedy/Theories About Funny/Theories About Jokes

Sigmund Freud’s Jokes part A. II. b. 5. The Techniques of Conceptual Jokes – Indirect Representation

Posted on by nwilson

This is the twelfth of several installments on Sigmund Freud’s Jokes [Witz] and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905; free eBook) – and the reactions to it. Still trying for clarity.

In this installment, I’m still addressing his second chapter, and his laundry list of joke techniques, which he is trying to narrow down to a few meta-types. We’ve moved on to the “Techniques of conceptual jokes,” which he says rely more on the situation for their humor.

Techniques of conceptual jokes

Freud characterizes these conceptual jokes as “mak[ing] use of deviations from normal thinking,” (42) and ultimately arrives at five categories: displacement, absurdity, faulty reasoning, unification, and indirect representation. Now up is indirect representation, and its subsets, allusion, “synecdoche” and analogy.

Indirect Representation

Freud’s next category is of allusion, or reference to something not present.  He later says,

I have occasionally described allusion as indirect representation‘; and we may now observe that the various species of allusion, together with representation by the opposite and other techniques that have still to be mentioned, may be united into a single large group, for which indirect representation‘ would be the most comprehensive name. (59)

  • Connection or allusion

If representation by the opposite is one of the technical methods of jokes, we can expect that jokes may also make use of its contrary – representation by something similar or akin…. We shall describe the peculiarity of this technique far more appropriately if, instead of representation by something “akin,” we say by something “correlated” or “connected.” (54)

Freud relates this technique to that of allusion, but without the double meaning; in this technique, “its characteristic is replacement by something linked to it in a conceptual connection” (55-56). These are parallel to verbal techniques, particularly resemblance in sound, slight modifications, and omissions

    • Resemblance in sound

The connection used for the replacement may be merely a resemblance in sound, so that this sub-species becomes analogous to puns among verbal jokes. Here, however, it is not the resemblance in sound between two words, but between whole sentences, characteristic phrases, and so on.

For instance, Lichtenberg coined the saying: “New spas cure well,” which at once reminds us of the proverb: “New brooms sweep clean.” (56)

    • Slight modifications

The connection may also consist in similarity except for a “slight modification.” So that this technique, too, is parallel to a verbal technique. (56)

Example:

“Every fathom a queen,” a modification of Shakespeare‘s familiar “Every inch a king.” (56).

    • Omission

Finally, another kind of allusion consists in “omission,” which may be compared to condensation without the formation of a substitute. Actually, in every allusion something is omitted, viz. the train of thought leading to the allusion. It only depends on whether the more obvious thing is the gap in the wording of the allusion or the substitute which partly fills the gap. Thus a series of examples would lead us back from blatant omission to allusion proper. (57)

Here among the jokes is another Jewish, bath-house joke:

And now once again two Jews outside the bath-house:

One of them sighed: “Another year gone by already!” (58)

  • Synecdoche

Freud doesn’t name his next sub-species, so I’ll take the liberty. Synecdoche is “the part for the whole or the whole for the part.” This seems to be what Freud’s expressing when he says,

If we examine our material further, we seem to recognize a fresh sub-species of indirect representation…. This is representation by something small or very small – which performs the task of giving full expression to a whole characteristic by means of a tiny detail. This group can be brought under the classification of “allusion,” if we bear in mind that this smallness is related to what has to be represented, and can be seen to proceed from it. (59)

  • Analogy

Freud characterizes analogies as a sub-set of indirect representation, and though he questions if analogies are even jokes at all (and spends a lot of time working through examples), he eventually finds a few. Freud quotes Heinrich Heine for the following:

Her face resembled a palimpsest, on which, beneath the fresh black monastic manuscript of the text of a Church Father there lurk the half-obliterated lines of an ancient Greek love poem.

Freud finds this and a few other analogies to possess, in and of themselves, a joking quality.

Summary

So indirect representation is the final technique by which the joker makes use of deviations from normal thinking within the situation to achieve humor.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

Cases and Current Events/Comics Talking Shop/Stand-Up Comedy

Hari Kondabolu’s Dual Goal

Posted on by nwilson

Comic Hari Kondabolu has bachelor’s degree in Comparative Politics and master’s degree in Human Rights, so he probably knows a thing or two about theories of public action. However, in an article by Holly Vasic of the Daily Utah Chronical (7/19/2017), he expresses that his goals are two-fold:

The goal is always to make people laugh or be honest with my point of view.

I have reasons to like and dislike this phrasing.

Other goals

First off, I like that it expresses the idea, uncommon at the lower levels of small shows and open mics, that one can do something on stage other than telling jokes.  Of course, we can, but the dominant view is that we shouldn’t.

People came there to laugh, and getting to that is what we comics should be trying to do, that’s the traditional comic’s intent, which defines an absolute version of stand-up.

Objects

On the other hand, it expresses the popular idea that the comics “make” audiences laugh, like they are objects that are unable to prevent us from working on them. Some would say it doesn’t matter – this is just an expression; however, I’ve disputed it as frequently as it pops up, because:

  1. It’s really common – hopefully my readers can see how often it gets said
  2. It has implications for how we think humor works
  3. Which, in turn, has implications for what comics try to do
  4. Which ultimately shapes the comedy we see, what gets made

As I’ve said, I try to point out these assumptions to elevate the discourse, so we can make the choices conscious. We can choose to see the audience as active participants in the humor, as people with whom we must develop a relationship; in short, as lovers.

Either/or

The phrasing also suggests a dichotomy, like he’s only trying to do one or the other, and never both at the same time or anything else.  That bothers me.

This is the same view expressed in Nathan Mills’ review of Hasan Minhaj – that Minhaj doesn’t just tell jokes, but has a lot of stuff in-between:

Homecoming King is full of these lessons in between well-built and well-rehearsed jokes. Minhaj seamlessly transitions between the moments as if they’re two separate pieces of him.

That’s what worries me in the phrasing – this idea that the jokes and the other stuff are separate pieces.  Mills was referring to life lessons, whereas Kondabolu is referring to his point of view, but other comics don’t view either of those as separate from their humor.

Mo’Nique and Zainab Johnson have each expressed that they try to be honest and express their point of view in order to get the laughs. [This post is in the queue.] Tiffany Haddish has said that she uses her comedy to teach, while getting laughs [Also in the queue.] The point is, other comics try and succeed at doing both at the same time.

Summary

Yes, it’s one quick quote, tossed off by Kondabolu without thought, but sometimes those reveal more than carefully prepared dissertations; unexamined assumptions, things we’ve just absorbed from society, things that we mouth back at it when on the spot may tell us a lot about society, and, in turn, they shape society.

So yes, comics can do things other than tell jokes, but they can also do other things while telling jokes.  And sometimes, the audience will choose to laugh.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

Humor Theories/Stand-Up Comedy/Theories About Funny/Theories About Jokes

Sigmund Freud’s Jokes part A. II. b. 4. The Techniques of Conceptual Jokes – Unification

Posted on by nwilson

This is the eleventh of several installments on Sigmund Freud’s Jokes [Witz] and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905; free eBook) – and the reactions to it. Still trying for clarity.

In this installment, I’m still addressing his second chapter, and his laundry list of joke techniques, which he is trying to narrow down to a few meta-types. We’ve moved on to the “Techniques of conceptual jokes,” which he says rely more on the situation for their humor.

Techniques of conceptual jokes

Freud characterizes these conceptual jokes as “mak[ing] use of deviations from normal thinking,” (42) and ultimately arrives at five categories: displacement, absurdity, faulty reasoning, unification, and indirect representation. Now up is unification, which has four sub-sets: ready repartees, “ands,” representation by the opposite and overstatement.

Unification

Unification is Freud’s fourth category of conceptual jokes.  He says, “Their technique, in particular, reminds us of what we already know” (47). He describes these jokes as “refined rather than strong,” and that they “work by methods that are unobtrusive,” so he gives us multiple examples (47).

January is the month in which we offer our dear friends wishes, and the rest are the months in which they are not fulfilled.

Human life falls into two halves. In the first half we wish the second one would come; and in the second we wish the first one were back.

Experience consists in experiencing what we do not wish to experience. (47)

The last two are borrowed from Fischer.  While he notes some overlap with “multiple use of the same material,” Freud finds something more in these jokes:

I should like in particular to stress the fact that here new and unexpected unities are set up, relations of ideas to one another, definitions made mutually or by reference to a common third element. I should like to name this process “unification.” (47)

While this process “is clearly analogous to condensation by compression into the same words,” the examples, particularly the first one, “are characterized by a (once again, modified) relation to a third element” (48).

Freud then launches into a series of sub-sets.

  • Ready repartees

Freud notes,

[R]epartee consists in the defence going to meet the aggression, in “turning the tables on someone” or “paying someone back in his own coin” – that is, in establishing an unexpected unity between attack and counter-attack. (49-50)

Some of Freud’s examples are clever:

The French poet J. B. Rousseau wrote an Ode to Posterity. Voltaire was not of opinion that the poem merited survival, and jokingly remarked: “This poem will not reach its destination.” (Fischer, 1889; 49)

Duke Charles of Württemberg happened on one of his rides to come upon a dyer who was engaged on his job. Pointing to the grey horse he was riding, the Duke called out: “Can you dye him blue?”

“Yes, of course, your Highness,” came the answer, “if he can stand boiling.” (50)

I never said that!

I always like the old joke, falsely attributed to Winston Churchill, where an offended woman says to her offender,

“If you were my husband, sir, I’d give you a dose of poison!”

The man looked at her. “If I were your husband,” said he, “I’d take it!”

These are thought to be an return attack, a rejoinder that comes uniquely out of the situation, unifying what was said or done with something unexpected.

  • “and”

Unification has another, quite specially interesting technical instrument at its disposal: stringing things together with the conjunction “and.” If things are strung together in this way it implies that they are connected: we cannot help understanding it so. (50)

Freud’s example:

For instance, when Heine, speaking of the city of Göttingen in the Harzreise, remarks: “Speaking generally, the inhabitants of Göttingen are divided into students, professors, philistines and donkeys,” we take this grouping in precisely the sense which Heine emphasizes in an addition to the sentence: “and these four classes are anything but sharply divided.”

Freud argues that in this example (and in other cases) the “and” causes us to make connections and assumptions we might otherwise miss.

  • Representation by the opposite

The replacement of the really appropriate “no” by a “yes” constitutes a new technical method of joking. (51)

Freud uses the example of the Duke’s horse, which he wants dyed blue, and also this one:

Frederick the Great heard of a preacher in Silesia who had the reputation of being in contact with spirits. He sent for the man and received him with the question “You can conjure up spirits?”

The reply was: “At your Majesty‘s command. But they don‘t come.”‘

Freud notes

In order to carry out the replacement, it was necessary to add a “but” to the “yes”; so that “yes” and “but” are equivalent in sense to “no” (51).

The example with the Duke’s horse adds an “if,” with similar effect. Freud comes to call this “representation by the opposite” (51-52).

  • Overstatement

In these the “yes” which would be in place in the reduction is replaced by a “no,” which, however, on account of its content, has the force of an intensified “yes,” and vice versa. A denial is a substitute for an overstated confirmation. (52)

Freud’s examples are:

Two Jews were discussing baths. “I have a bath every year,” said one of them, “whether I need one or not.”

A Jew noticed the remains of some food in another one‘s beard. “I can tell you what you had to eat yesterday.”

“Well, tell me.”

“Lentils, then.”

“Wrong: the day before yesterday!” (53)

This is the idea of protesting too much, or revealing things that one shouldn’t.  While Freud constantly points out that his classifications overlap, he misses making a distinction between this and his “automatic” faulty reasoning, above.

As these examples show, representation by the opposite is an instrument of joke-technique that is used frequently and works powerfully. (54)

Summary

So displacement is the first of several techniques by which the joker makes use of deviations from normal thinking within the situation to achieve humor.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

 

Cases and Current Events/Comics in the News/Stand-Up Comedy

Tiffany Haddish Stepped in It Again.

Posted on by nwilson

The issue

In an interview with Los Angeles Times reporter, Tre’Vell Anderson (7/20/2017), she said Bill Cosby was one of the comedians who inspired her, and added that she wouldn’t mind collaborating with him on a project:

I still want to work with Bill Cosby; I don’t care, I’ll drink the juice. I’ll drink the juice. I’ll take a nap. I don’t give a damn. [Laughs.] But seriously, I would love for him to play my grandfather in something.

Michael Harriot of theroot.com (7/28/2017) tracks the outrage,

As soon as the article was published, headlines sprang up all over the internet condemning Haddish’s remarks as insensitive to Cosby’s accusers and all survivors of sexual abuse and rape.

Just kidding

In an AP interview (7/27/2017), she clarified that her comments were an attempt at a joke. She explained that she had done over 20 interviews that day and probably reached a little too far trying to conjure up something funny for the interviewer.

In every interview you have to be humorous because you’re a comedian. So I was trying to be humorous, and maybe it was not the best joke, but it was a joke. I’ll work with whomever. I’m not afraid of nobody. Nobody can do anything to me that I don’t allow.

This is a matter we’ve discussed before, the “just kidding” response. Don’t get me wrong: I think Haddish’s statement was a joke, made in the moment. And I think further that she expresses a sentiment that is right: at this stage of her career, she should work with anyone who can give her a leg up, even if it’s Cosby – though she should watch out for herself.

However, Haddish’s point is that she has to be funny in interviews because she’s a comic. Several comics would dispute this, arguing that when they’re not onstage, they shouldn’t have this obligation – this expectation.  Haddish’s situation is different, I would argue, than comics who make politically incorrect or ill advised jokes onstage.

Doing it onstage

Harriot makes some important points here:

In 2011, Morgan was castigated for going on an “anti-gay tirade” during a Nashville, Tenn., comedy show. That’s right. He wasn’t trying to make a joke to a newspaper. He was onstage talking to people who paid to hear him go onstage to make jokes. Earlier this year, Dave Chappelle faced the same backlash when he released a pair of specials that had parts many felt were transphobic and blind to rape culture.

I am not one of those people who rail against the culture of political correctness; nor am I one of those people who believe that “art” is sacrosanct and cannot be criticized. However, I do think it is at least disingenuous and at most stupid to criticize comedians for making jokes when we know it’s a joke.

It may seem like a fine line to parse, but I separate them from city officials who email Barack Obama memes to each other or cops caught making racist jokes because we pay them to calculate our water bill and patrol the streets. They can make their friends laugh on their own time.

Cosby’s alleged crimes are horrendous. Haddish is a product of abuse and dysfunction, and perhaps her ability to make fun of it and situations like the one she escaped is one of the pillars on which her I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude stands. She explained that it was a joke. That’s enough.

Harriot is right that comics should get some leeway onstage.  However, he would seem to extend the same “joking” excuse to all of a comic’s activities; an understanding he does not bestow on your average Joe.

This begs the questions, “When she’s not onstage, do we know it was a joke? How? Should we just take her at her word?” While Haddish is not one of those “social” or “political” comics, who have an overt message and will bring it up onstage and moreso in interviews, neither does she get to escape the idea that when offstage, she might be a real person. While we can agree that while “on the job,” our public officials and servants don’t get to make racist jokes, do comics get the same leeway in interviews as they do onstage?

 

 

Harriot’s concessions

Harriot makes some concessions to the culture of sensitivity:

I can understand when people say they don’t like that brand of comedy (I still don’t understand how Andrew Dice Clay was ever a thing). I can even understand why some people get offended when someone they don’t know says something that has no effect on their lives whatsoever. Even though I wasn’t outraged when Emilia Clarke equated Hollywood sexism with racism, I thought it was a stupid thing to say with a straight face.

Yes, as will become apparent (if it isn’t already), there are forms of humor and comics I downright detest – some of these comics will for that reason never appear on this blog – Dice isn’t one of them.  And yes, we should help people by becoming outraged on their behalf – particularly when some of them are outraged – that’s called “being an ally.”

False dichotomies

Harriot is also right to point out some of the points of comedy, but he takes it too far:

Much of comedy is using absurdity and hyperbole to make fun of reality. There are some who prefer to chuckle, but I don’t want to live in a world where sidesplitting jokes are replaced by innocuous puns and clever witticisms. I like the “I might get you pregnant” Morgan. I prefer the Chappelle who dissects white people, crackheads and racism. You can’t get that by making someone dance on the knife’s edge of public sentiment.

You can’t fall in love with her for blithely beginning a story with “What had happened was … ” on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and turn around and get upset with her when she doesn’t carefully choose her words for a newspaper interview. You can’t ask her to tread gently around sensitive toes and give banana-grapefruit blowjobs in a movie. Milquetoast doesn’t coexist with bold fearlessness.

They don’t go dagetha.

This is a false dichotomy: either we allow everything, or we are reduced to puns and witticisms.  I agree that, as with all free speech, comedians should be free to say whatever they want.  They are not, however, free from the consequences of their speech.  These consequences will usually be mixed – some will understand their intent, even if they miss their mark, but some will be outraged, and perhaps they should be. That’s what affects a comic’s career.  In the internet age, comics will find their crowds, their niches, however, if they want to become huge, they have to appeal to the mainstream, and that means not saying things that hugely offend.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

 

Humor Theories/Stand-Up Comedy/Theories About Funny/Theories About Jokes

Sigmund Freud’s Jokes part A. II. b. 3. The Techniques of Conceptual Jokes – Faulty Reasoning

Posted on by nwilson

This is the tenth of several installments on Sigmund Freud’s Jokes [Witz] and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905; free eBook) – and the reactions to it. Still trying for clarity.

In this installment, I’m still addressing his second chapter, and his laundry list of joke techniques, which he is trying to narrow down to a few meta-types. We’ve moved on to the “Techniques of conceptual jokes,” which he says rely more on the situation for their humor.

Techniques of conceptual jokes

Freud characterizes these conceptual jokes as “mak[ing] use of deviations from normal thinking,” (42) and ultimately arrives at five categories: displacement, absurdity, faulty reasoning, unification, and indirect representation. Now up is faulty reasoning, with its two sub-sets, sophistical jokes and automatic extension.

Faulty reasoning

These have the “appearance of logic” about them, but are really “facades” for pieces of faulty reasoning (43).  Freud later calls a first sub-category of these “sophistical” pieces of faulty reasoning, or “sophistical” jokes (46). The key example, most often referenced, is the Kettle Joke.

  • Sophistical jokes: The kettle joke

A. borrowed a copper kettle from B. and after he had returned it was sued by B. because the kettle now had a big hole in it which made it unusable. His [A.’s] defence was:

“First, I never borrowed a kettle from B. at all; secondly, the kettle had a hole in it already when I got it from him; thirdly, I gave him back the kettle undamaged.”

Each one of these defences is valid in itself, but taken together they exclude one another. A. was treating in isolation what had to be regarded as connected whole…. We might also say: A. has put an “and” where only an “either-or” is possible (44).

Freud has another category, however, which he describes as “automatic.”

  • Automatic extension

Automatic jokes are when the faulty reasoning is an automatic extension of previously accepted norms or logic. Freud’s examples are pretty horrible, in cultural terms; here’s his second one:

The bridegroom was most disagreeably surprised when the bride was introduced to him, and drew the broker on one side and whispered his remonstrances: “Why have you brought me here?” he asked reproachfully. “She‘s ugly and old, she squints and has bad teeth and bleary eyes . . .”

“You needn‘t lower your voice”, interrupted the broker, “she‘s deaf as well.”

In each of his cases, Freud argues,

A person who has reacted in the same way several times in succession repeats this mode of expression on the next occasion, when it is unsuitable and defeats his own intentions. He neglects to adapt himself to the needs of the situation, by giving way to the automatic action of habit…. The broker in the second story is so much fascinated by the enumeration of the bride’s defects and infirmities that he completes the list out of his own knowledge, though that was certainly not his business or purpose…. In every case automatic action triumphs over the expedient modification of thought and expression. (46)

Summary

So faulty reasoning is another technique by which the joker makes use of deviations from normal thinking within the situation to achieve humor.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

Cases and Current Events/Comics in the News/Stand-Up Comedy

Mo Amer’s Honest Truths

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Corinna Burford of Paste Magazine (7/21/2017), talks about the recent surge in Mo Amer’s career, about his recent appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (available on YouTube), and along the way says a few things that should interest us.

Dishonesty

Amer is “a Kuwait-born refugee of Palestinian descent in Houston, Texas,” which gives him an uncommon point of view. However, after 9/11/2001, he began to back away from those topics. As Burford tells it,

His tour to Japan, Korea and Bahrain was canceled. He worried about performing his set in local clubs, due to its personal nature and references to his culture. “I was scared,” he says. “For six months I just pretended to be Italian so I could let things blow over.”

This interests me because it speaks to the idea of a persona that isn’t based on the comic’s “True,” real life, which probably happens a lot more than most comics admit. Many comic’s intent is to go for a laugh, which drives them to say whatever will make that happen and avoid anything that impedes it.

Honesty

However, Amer eventually comes back to his roots.  Burford interprets it thusly,

But pretending became untenable. “I felt like I was losing myself,” he says. “Eventually I got so frustrated that I decided to go up at a comedy show and talk about who I was.” The experience was far from easy. “The audience went from laughter to complete shock,” he recalls, but eventually the crowd warmed up and he felt renewed worth in his more personal material. “You could feel that you were battling with these people’s emotions.”

I can completely relate to the feeling of frustration and “losing” yourself in the persona you think the audience wants you to be, and the urge to be something else.

However, the idea of “who I was” is problematic for me because it’s probably always a negotiation, if not, as Amer notes in his case “battle.”  You’re not being all of who you are, let alone all of who you could be, but the funniest part of you that the audience will accept with a laugh. And we have to make a choice to be the victim or the butt, to allow them to laugh with us or laugh at us. More recently, Amer is acting as the former.

Truth to power

More recently, Amer blew up the interwebs when he Instagrammed out a photo of himself seated next to Eric Trump with the caption:

Hey guys heading to Scotland to start the U.K. Tour and I am “randomly” chosen to sit next to non other than Eric Trump. Good news guys Muslims will not have to check in and get IDs. That’s what I was told. I will be asking him a lot of questions on this trip to Glasgow, Scotland. Sometimes God just sends you the material. #Merica #UKTour #HumanAppeal #ThisisNotAnEndorsement  #Trump2016ComedyTour

Burford notes,

CB: In hindsight, the run-in with Trump seems to have presaged a new phase in Amer’s career, one where he can finally speak truth to power on a larger scale than ever before.

MA: Now people look to me for commentary. What I’ve wanted from standup is to be able share my takes and ideas, and the Eric Trump thing has kind of fast-tracked that. It has given me platform that I’ve been wanting for a long time.

This idea of “speaking truth to power” is thus more Burford’s that Amer’s. Burford would make him as operating in a privileged, comic space where he is free to say what he pleases.

Amer’s view is more basic: simply “sharing my takes and ideas” on a particular stage or “platform.” He has no assumption that it’s Truth, that it’s reaching powerful people (other than, perhaps, the general audience) or that it will make an impact. It’s more that it’s his truths, which, as I described when talking about David Misch, are certain takes and ideas that fit with his persona to get a laugh.

While we know he’s trying to tell more of his story, he’s still gravitating towards the parts of his stories that he can make funny, that can get a laugh.  In his appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, we laugh with him at Disneyland and Coke, who don’t include the most popular name in the world, Mohamed, in their campaigns, at soccer announcers who have to use it too much.  We laugh with him as he passes for Hispanic because he was forced to take E.S.L. We laugh with him at his 20 year citizenship process (already “extreme vetting”), and his passport woes in the meantime.

Summary

These are stories with some truth to them, in that they’re his takes on his experiences – they’re his truths. Through them, Amer says things about our culture and politics to audience members who always have the potential to become politically active, and he’s getting to say them on a national stage, so even more people are potentially activated. But this activation is more subtle, more insidious and, for me, more interesting.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

Big Theories/Postmodern Theory

Michel Foucault on Prediscursives and the Discursive

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Similar to de Saussure’s concept of signs, Michel Foucault claims that there are things that exist in the world – IRL – there are objects, bodies, events, practices, institutions, etc. These are prediscursive, existing outside of and perhaps prior to our talking about them or even our knowledge of them.

However, there’s also the discursive, the way we talk about these things. We interpret the prediscursive through the way that it is caught up in the discursive, which represents a whole vast cloud of knowledge and assumptions about characteristics, connections, relationships, etc. that Foucault calls a discourse formation.

It’s not that the prediscursive doesn’t matter outside of the discursive – it really does – but its complicated.  First off, ‘this prediscursive is still discursive,” that is to say, it signifies.  While it doesn’t “specify” how the object should be taken up and interpreted, it does serve to limit, to “characterize” and “define rules” (76).  In this way, the prediscursive elements are kind of like signifiers: we see a body that is marked by physical attributes, we see that this body is a certain size, we see that it has a particular skin color. These are real characteristics of bodies.

When we add the discursive on top of it, we get a set of signifieds that together create a sign; we begin to assign things meanings: those physical attributes mark her as a “woman.” That size of a woman is “heavyset,” or “big, fat.” That skin color is “black.”  Each of those interpretations comes along with a whole gang of other attributions – and taken collectively, they create more – about her lifestyle, her habits, her character, and why and how she’s funny.

More

To really blow your mind, the prediscursive exceeds the interpretation it’s given in any set of discourse formations. They say, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” that’s what we’re going for here.

When I try to describe an older photograph to you, you might agree that I did a better or worse job, but I will never capture all of it. Further, someone with a background in art or composition will see more than me. Someone with a background in photography may see more and different things. A historian would see different things.  With a great photograph, we could all sit around and talk for days and never express everything that the photo means, what it evokes in us.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

References:

 

Foucault, Michel.  The Archaeology of Knowledge.  New York: Pantheon Books, 1972.

Big Theories/Postmodern Theory

de Saussure on Signifier – Signified – Signs

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Structural Linguist Ferdinand de Saussure posited that any sign – any thing that is meaningful, a word, an emoji, a picture, etc. – can be broken into two parts: signifier and signified. The signifier is what we see or hear or experience.  The signified is what we think of, perceive or interpret. So when I see the letter “c” I think the sound I hear when someone says it, and visa versa; they come to signify each other.  Further, when I see a sequence, like “c-a-t,” I think – not just of the word “cat” – but about an idea of a cat, whatever that is in my mind: cats I’ve seen or encountered, purring, growling, biting, clawing, grumpy, etc.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

References:

de Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics, Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1977.

Big Theories/Dramatism

Kenneth Burke on Terministic Screens: Reflections – Selections – Deflections

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As I said in a previous post, we have to realize, along with Kenneth Burke, that any discourse, any story, description or set of terms (“woman,” “heavyset,” “black,” etc.) must act as what Kenneth Burke calls a “terministic screen“–that it frames an issue. We should note the dual nature of screens: that they are both a surface upon which images can be projected, and also objects that block our view. Both these aspects come into play. The issue framed by a term is inevitably changed:

Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function as a deflection of reality. (45)

“A picture is worth a thousand words”–probably more like a million, and which thousand one chooses will never fully encapsulate everything that the picture is and can be. That’s the selection aspect. The deflection aspect is also important to note, because while we think we’re being shown all there is, what we see distracts us from the rest.  For instance, when comics play on their marginal personas and identities for a laugh, it fails to represent other things those comics could be, and further entrenches the expectations we have for all comics of that type.  These expectations, in turn may limit what we allow future comics who look like that to do.

Further, it’s not like we can escape this situation:

We must use terministic screens, since we can’t say anything without the use of terms (50).

The screens are a habit of symbolizing–in using symbols, we automatically create screens. The same is true of more complex symbols/screens, like identities and personas.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

References:

Burke, Kenneth (1966). “Terministic Screens.”  Language as Symbolic Action.  University of California: Berkeley, CA. 44-62.

Humor Theories/Stand-Up Comedy/Theories About Funny/Theories About Jokes

Sigmund Freud’s Jokes part A. II. b. 2. The Techniques of Conceptual Jokes – Absurdity

Posted on by nwilson

This is the ninth of several installments on Sigmund Freud’s Jokes [Witz] and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905; free eBook) – and the reactions to it. Still trying for clarity.

In this installment, I’m still addressing his second chapter, and his laundry list of joke techniques, which he is trying to narrow down to a few meta-types. We’ve moved on to the “Techniques of conceptual jokes,” which he says rely more on the situation for their humor.

Techniques of conceptual jokes

Freud characterizes these conceptual jokes as “mak[ing] use of deviations from normal thinking,” (42) and ultimately arrives at five categories: displacement, absurdity, faulty reasoning, unification, and indirect representation. Now up is absurdity.

Absurdity

Freud classifies these as “jokes which… undisguisedly exhibit a piece of nonsense or stupidity” (39), sometimes to point out further absurdity, and sometimes not.

  • Pointing out further absurdity

One of his shorter examples here is as follows:

“Never to be born would be the best thing for mortal men.” “But,” adds the philosophical comment in Fliegende Blätter [trans. Flying leaves; A German satirical magazine], “this happens to scarcely one person in a hundred thousand.” (40)

Freud argues that the comment is nonsensical, the idea that “scarcely one person in a hundred thousand” is “never born” makes no sense. But it highlights the nonsense of the statement that preceded it: If you were never born, you wouldn’t be a mortal – you wouldn’t exist, or collectively, the category of “mortal men” wouldn’t exist. Freud thus concludes

The technique of the nonsensical joke which we have so far considered really consists, therefore, in presenting something that is stupid and nonsensical, the sense of which lies in the revelation and demonstration of something else that is stupid and nonsensical (41).

However, Freud also allows that it doesn’t always do this.

  • Without

Freud has a number of examples here as well, but here’s a short one: Lichtenberg’s joke where,

That’s dumb.

He wondered how it is that cats have two holes cut in their skin precisely at the place where their eyes are…. [Georg Christoph] Lichtenberg’s is a joke which makes use of stupidity for some purpose and behind which something lies.  But what? For the moment, we must admit, no answer can be given. (42)

Summary

So absurdity is another technique by which the joker makes use of deviations from normal thinking within the situation to achieve humor. Freud says sometimes they are enlightening, but sometimes not. However, I read the last example as a critique of creationists – it seems to be critiquing evolution by saying that they think it randomly happened that way, which is absurd, but ascribing an absurd argument to someone is a straw man fallacy, and those who make such allegations are the ones at fault, to it boomerangs.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?