The Megahit Movies

by Richard Stefanik

  These ideas are compatible with a “dual script” theory that is the basis of the humor of misunderstanding, which is a fruitful device in constructing humorous situations.

  An Integration of the Theories of Humor

  In his book, Semantic Mechanisms of Humor, Victor Raskin offers the following synthesis of theories of humor: In general, while the history of humor research has been marked by a great deal of fighting, with loud claims and counter claims, examples and counterexamples, theories and anti-theories, the three large groups of theories … are not at all incompatible, and much feuding and animosity in the fields has often been based on the mutual misunderstanding of each other’s goals, premises and, of course, terminology. The three approaches actually characterize the complex phenomena of humor from very different angles and do not at all contradict each other—rather they seem to supplement each other quite nicely.

  In our terms, the incongruity-based theories make a statement about the stimulus; the superiority theories characterize the relations or attitudes between the speaker and hearer; and the release/relief theories comment on the feelings and psychology of the hearer only.

  To state this within the conceptual framework of the constructivist theory:

  Incongruity-based theories are useful in constructing situations that generate laughter in members of the audience.

  Superiority-based theories are useful in characterizing attitudes in members of the audience that humorous situations may produce. Release/Relief theories are useful in characterizing the feelings and psychology of members of the audience that humorous situations may generate.

  Since, as screenwriters, we are concerned with designing humorous situations in stories, the insights developed within the incongruity tradition should be the most fruitful for this enterprise.

  Morreall’s Theory of Humor In Taking Laughter Seriously, John Morreall, working within the incongruity tradition, develops a theory of humor, which is the thesis that “laughter results from a pleasant psychological shift.”

  The constructivist theory agrees with much that Morreall has to say in his book, but emphasizes not the state of the individual laughing, but the situation that caused the laughter. Instead of focusing on the pleasant shifts that occur within the individual, it concentrates on the construction of the tension producing sequence of events in the situation that are suddenly transformed and conclude by becoming non-threatening to the perceiver.

  The Constructive Theory of Humor The definition of the constructivist theory of humor is restated below. Humor, is an experience that causes people to laugh. Humor is generated by a sudden radical deviation from expected patterns of behavior in a situation that concludes by being non-threatening to the perceiver. Upon reflection, these situations are characterized as containing incongruous elements or exhibiting behavior patterns that are inappropriate in this type of situation.

  The “behavior” in the phrase “a sudden deviation from expected patterns of behavior,” can be: Linguistic behavior (grammar, word usage, pragmatics) Character and social behavior (deviations from stereotypes, attacks on authority)

  Situational or Visual associations (incongruities)

  Or it can be any other “pattern” that the perceiver has come to expect will be continued in the situation, and where “expected” means conforming to what is normal or accepted as standard by the community. The audience must have a common knowledge of these standards and norms, or they will not laugh. In other humorous situations, “expected” means the pattern presented to the audience during the setup portion of the joke. The notion of “pattern” is also important, for sequence items usually must be constructed in order to create expectations in the audience. The deviation must be original and sudden, otherwise, it will not produce laughter. Often, it is the exact opposite of what is expected. The element of surprise is also an essential ingredient of humor. People rarely laugh at a joke the second time they hear it.

  The deviation to the expected pattern can be an exaggerated response, an understated response, or an irrelevant response to the situation. All are deviations from the normal behavior expected, and all will produce tension in the viewers, who know what the expected behavior should be. These responses will cause the tension to be relieved though laughter,

  if no real harm is done to the characters for which the audience has empathy. The audience will also laugh if harm is done to a character that the audience hates, as demonstrated by the behavior of the burglars in Home Alone.

  The deviation should also be “radical” in the sense of being extreme. Very often, it is the exact opposite of what was expected. If the deviation is small or only of a minor degree, then the surprise will be minimal and the resulting laughter greatly diminished.

  Humor in the midst of conflict relieves tension, and this release is pleasurable for the audience. To entertain the audience is to make them laugh in the midst of danger. This gives the audience the thrills and excitement of vicariously being in jeopardy, while still having a pleasurable experience.

  HUMOROUS DIALOGUE Humorous dialogue are linguistic and logical structures that produce laughter. They are different from humorous situations, which deal with objects, events, actions, and their relationships that produce laughter, and humorous characters whose behavior patterns involve some incongruity that causes people to laugh.

  In this section, we will present some of the constructions of language that tend to generate laughter. John Allen Paulos in Mathematics and Humor, states

  Logic, pattern, rules, structure—all these are essential to both mathematics and humor, although of course the emphasis is different in the two. In humor the logic is often inverted, patterns are distorted, rules are misunderstood, and structures are confused. Yet these transformations are not random and must make sense on some level. Understanding the “correct” logic, pattern, rule, or structure is essential to understanding what is incongruous in a given story—to ‘getting the joke.’

  The assertion of logical contradictions will always generate laughter, especially if the character asserting it doesn’t realize that he is contradicting himself. Associated with this is the non-sequitor, an illogical statement that is humorous because the second statement (the sequitor) is in no way conceptually connected with the first statement. This is the George Burns-Gracie Allen style of humor and is also often found in the dialogues between Chico and Groucho Marx.

  Switching between conceptual frameworks during a dialogue will also generate laughter, especially if there are words in the different frameworks that sound alike. Any violation of a rule of logic will cause people to laugh, provided that they understand which rule is being violated. Koestler, in Acts of Creation, states that laughter results from “the perceiving of a situation or idea in two self-consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference.”

  So-called “modal jokes” are the result of a deviation from an utterance and the normal expected attitude associated with that type of utterance. An example of this is a hysterical person screaming that they are relaxed, or a person yelling at the top of their lungs that they are speaking softly. Laughter is often generated when a character assumes an inappropriate attitude for an issue which the audience will interpret as the character perceiving the situation from a radically different perspective. One example of this technique is to discuss a topic with “mocking insincerity,” a method often used by David Letterman on his late night television show.

  Another construction that extends the modal form occurs when a joke fails to make the audience laugh. An experienced comedian will then respond with ridiculing his own delivery or the writer of the material, or chastising the audience for their lack of comprehension. Johnny Carson was a master of this technique.

  Linguistic incompetence, in all of its variations, will generate laughter. The audience understands the appropriate language use and will laugh at any deviations. Puns are often not successful because the speaker usually does not sincerely expresses the second use of the word in
the sentence. The audience does not believe that the speaker could really be confusing the two different meanings of the word.

  To misinterpret the intended metaphoric meaning of a word for its literal meaning will generate laughter, especially if the audience understands the context of conversation. Ambiguity is a fruitful source for humor. The setup line makes a true statement using one of the possible meanings of a word. This establishes the audience’s expectations within this context. The punch line then states another true statement based on a radically different meaning of the same word. This produces the deviation from expectations that causes people to laugh.

  The comic “rule of three” forms another standard construction, consisting of two setup lines followed by the punch line. The first case introduces the situation and the pattern of behavior to the audience. The second case reinforces the pattern within this situation, so that the audience will come to accept this as a standard and normal pattern. This effectively builds up the audience expectation about what will happen next. The third case will be a surprise radical deviation from this pattern, but a deviation that does not threaten the audience. If the audience feels threatened, they will feel fear and anger, instead of laughing.

  In Comedy Writing Handbook, the professional Hollywood comedy writer, Gene Perret, explores the various linguistic constructions that create humor by deviating from expected patterns of linguistic usage. Some of the suggestions offered by Perret are discussed below. The punch line should be kept hidden until the very last word. This will prolong the audience’s expectations and make the deviation sudden.

  Sentences using words that generate bizarre images within the minds of the audience will create incongruity by making them visualize unexpected patterns. Exaggerate an impossible image. The more absurd or outlandish the image, the greater the incongruity in the mind of the audience, and the greater the resulting laughter. Use very ‘concrete’ and particular images, because the more visual it is, the more the audience will become emotionally involved and the more energy will be expended in laughter when they can’t make the image fit into their normal framework of things.

  Humor is often generated when one character misinterprets the meaning of the words and sentences uttered by another character. The laughter will be even greater if the hearer then ascribes the opposite attitude to the speaker than the speaker intended.

  Language that exaggerates and distorts objects will generate laughter. This is accomplished when an object is viewed from a radically different perspective, and its traits are magnified to the extreme. For example, the small becomes the infinitesimally small, and the large becomes the gigantic. Distortions of the dimensions of space and time will create absurdity.

  Transforming clichés and quotations is another important technique that constructs humor. The Joker, in Batman, often uses the inappropriate use of clichés to produce humor. As Helitzer states, “one definition of a cliché is a phrase so predictable you can finish it after you have heard the first few words.” Both quotations and clichés are effective because the audience knows what to expect, so the comic writer will then suddenly deviate from that expectation in the punch line.

  Breaking the pragmatic rules of language use in communication situations will also generate laughter. In Taking Laughter Seriously, John Morreall discusses the work on the rules of conversation developed by the philosopher Paul Grice and demonstrates how humor can be generated when we deviate from these rules.

  Pragmatic Rules of Conversation 1. Make your contribution as informative as is required for the purposes of the exchange.

  2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

  3. Do not say what you believe to be false.

  4. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

  5. Avoid obscurity of expression.

  6. Avoid ambiguity.

  7. Be brief.

  8. Be orderly.

  Deviations from Pragmatic Rules of Conversation That Will Generate Laughter 1. It is humorous when a person’s contribution to a conversation is not informative or helpful.

  2. The person who gives too much information is comic. (Louis in Ghostbusters).

  3. We are often amused by lies and characters who lie.

  4. The wild speculation or guess inserted into a conversation can be funny.

  5. Obscurity of expression humorously hinders or prevents communication.

  6. Ambiguity can be the cause of humorous misinterpretations.

  7. The person who doesn’t know when to stop talking is funny (Louis in Ghostbusters).

  8. A confused person is often a comic character.

  HUMOROUS SITUATIONS “Drama is not the opposite of comedy; it is part of it. In any situation comedy there is always jeopardy. It heightens the humor. So in any story you tell—even a funny story—you need to look for trouble. You look for the worst thing that could happen.”

  — Gene Perret, Comedy Writing Handbook

  D.H. Monro, in Argument of Laughter, asks the following questions. “What is the common element in laughable situations? How does the common element in laughable situations fit in with human behavior in general? What is the relation between the common element in laughable situations and the physical concomitants of laughter? Monro classifies humorous situations into the following ten types, all of which can be conceived to involve sudden radical deviations from expected patterns of behavior:

  1. Any breach of the usual order of events. This is a sudden radical

  deviation from the natural order of things in the world. 2. Any forbidden breach of the usual order of events. This is a sudden radical deviation from the social norms of appropriate behavior.

  3. Indecency, which could be considered as a deviation from the moral codes of appropriate behavior. 4. Importing into one situation what belongs to another situation. Universe changing is a very important factor for humor. Things that are normally associated with one context appear in another radically different context.

  5. Anything masquerading as something that it is not. This is a deviation from expected role behavior or type behavior.

  6. Word-play, a deviation from expected linguistic behavior.

  7. Nonsense, which is a deviation from the expected linguistic behavior of semantic meaningfulness.

  8. Small misfortunes. We laugh because things could be much worst, and no one was seriously harmed. 9. Want of knowledge or skill, which is a deviation from the expectation that a character should not be ignorant when dealing with a situation.

  10. Veiled insults, which is a deviation from the rules of appropriate social interaction. One technique that can be used to construct a humorous situation from a non-humorous state of affairs is to reverse the intention of the primary character to the opposite intention. For example, if a man appears extremely angry, reverse his intention to that of trying to help the other character in the scene. The misunderstanding generated by the other character will cause people to laugh. Humor is generated by incompetent actions that characters do when trying to overcome obstacles to their objectives. The characters could under-prepare for an obstacle that turns out to be enormous, over-prepare for an obstacle that turns out to be insignificant, or irrelevantly prepare for an obstacle that turns out to be completely different from anticipated.

  HUMOROUS CHARACTERS In morality plays, characters “were named after, and made to personify, human vices and virtues: Lust, Sloth, Hypocrisy, Pride, Avarice, Honor, Prudence, Temperance, Charity, and so on.”

  — Raymond Hull, How To Write A Play

  “What my comedy is all about is envy, greed, malice, lust, narrowness and stupidity – John Cleese.”

  — Melvin Helitzer, Comedy Writing Secrets

  A source of character humor is found in deviations from expected role behavior or social behavior. In Taking Laughter Seriously, Morreall discusses humorous characters.

  We also laugh at the absentminded professor, who is intelligent in theoretical matters, but who is forgetful o
r doesn’t have practical intelligence. A stock way of getting a laugh in a play is to have some character speak or act in ignorance of some fact that we in the audience are aware of.

  Moral shortcomings, too, have been a standard object of laughter throughout history: the miser, the liar, the drunkard, the lazy person, the lecher, the gossip, the coward, the hypocrite – these are all stock comedic characters.

  Bergson, commenting on the comic plays of Moliere, states that the “comic character is simply a man with an obsession. The joke is to see how this obsession crops up again and again in the most varied situations, so that he always behaves in a manner inappropriate to the circumstances as others see them, but entirely appropriate to his own ruling passion.”

  Pretense is a common trait of many humorous characters. The audience will laugh at any character who lacks self-knowledge, who are frauds, or who try to publicly present themselves as something other than what they really are.

  Humans that take on animal characteristics and animals who act like humans, such as the Cowardly Lion and many of the Walt Disney and Warner Brothers cartoon characters, are also examples of deviations from expectations. Their behavior deviates from what is expected of different kinds of creatures, humans, and animals.

  Characters involved in embarrassing situations, pratfalls, and small misfortunes, are humorous and will generate laughter. Chevy Chase made a career from this type of comic behavior. Successful comedians develop a persona, a character with an essential incongruity at the core of their personality. Judy Carter, in Stand-up Comedy, The Book, states that “a persona is when a comic has one specific emotional attitude for their entire act, and all of the material hangs on that hook.” As examples, she includes Rodney Dangerfield (“I don’t get no respect”), Jay Leno (“Here’s something stupid”), and Richard Lewis (“I’m in pain”).