by Peter McGraw
Chapter 6: Scandinavia
1. Martin, The Psychology of Humor, 43–44.
2. John Morreall, “Comic Vices and Comic Virtues,” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 23.
3. Martin, The Psychology of Humor, 47.
4. Clark McCauley, Kathryn Woods, Christopher Coolidge, and William Kulick, “More Aggressive Cartoons Are Funnier,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1983): 817–823.
5. Lambert Deckers and Diane E. Carr, “Cartoons Varying in Low-Level Pain Ratings, not Aggression Ratings, Correlate Positively with Funniness Ratings,” Motivation & Emotion (1986): 207–216.
6. Willibald Ruch, “Fearing Humor? Gelotophobia: The Fear of Being Laughed at Introduction and Overview,” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research (2009): 1–25.
7. Paul Lewis, et al., “The Muhammad Cartoons and Humor Research: A Collection of Essays,” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research (2008): 1–46; Ted Gournelos and Viveca S. Greene, A Decade of Dark Humor: How Comedy, Irony, and Satire Shaped Post-9/11 America (Jackson: The University Press of Mississippi, 2011), 220.
8. Jytte Klausen, The Cartoons that Shook the World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 14.
9. Ibid., 107.
10. Ibid., 137–138.
11. Art Spiegelman, “Drawing Blood: Outrageous Cartoons and the Art of Outrage,” Harper’s Magazine (June 2007).
12. Klausen, The Cartoons that Shook the World, 125.
13. A. Peter McGraw, Lawrence Williams, and Caleb Warren. “The Rise and Fall of Humor: Psychological Distance Modulates Humorous Responses to Tragedy” (2013) (under review).
14. Alan Dundes, “The Dead Baby Joke Cycle,” Western Folklore (1979): 145–157.
15. Alan Dundes, “At Ease, Disease—AIDS Jokes as Sick Humor,” American Behavioral Scientist (1987): 72–81.
16. Alan Dundes, “Many Hands Make Light Work or Caught in the Act of Screwing in Light Bulbs,” Western Folklore (1981): 261–266.
17. Klausen, The Cartoons that Shook the World, 157.
18. Ibid., 152.
19. Catarina Kinnvall and Paul Nesbitt-Larking, The Political Psychology of Globalization: Muslims in the West (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011): 140.
20. Dacher Keltner, et al., “Teasing in Hierarchical and Intimate Relations,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1998): 1231–1247.
21. Thomas E. Ford and Mark A. Ferguson, “Social Consequences of Disparagement Humor: A Prejudiced Norm Theory,” Personality and Social Psychology Review (2004): 79–94.
Chapter 7: Palestine
1. Lloyd M. Bucher and Mark Rascovich, Bucher: My Story (New York: Doubleday, 1970), 348.
2. Mark Twain, Following the Equator (American Publishing Company, 1898), 119.
3. Christie Davies, Jokes and Targets (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 227.
4. Ulrick Marzolph, “The Muslim Sense of Humor,” in Humour and Religion: Challenges and Ambiguities, ed. Hans Geybels and Walter van Herck (London: Continuum, 2011), 173.
5. Ibid., 179.
6. Khalid Kishtainy, “Humor and Resistance in the Arab World and the Greater Middle East” in Civilian Jihad: Nonviolent Struggle, Democratization, and Governance in the Middle East, ed. Maria J. Stephen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 56–57.
7. Sigmund Freud, “Humour,” International Journal of Psycho-Analysis (1928): 4.
8. Davies, Jokes and Targets, 264.
9. Ibid., 251.
10. A. Peter McGraw, Lawrence T. Williams, and Caleb Warren, “The Rise and Fall of Humor: Psychological Distance Modulates Humorous Responses to Tragedy (2013) (under review).
Chapter 8: The Amazon
1. Paul Schulten, “Physicians, Humour and Therapeutic Laughter in the Ancient World,” Social Identities (2001): 71.
2. Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), 40.
3. Madan Kataria, Laugh for No Reason (Mumbai, India: Madhuri International, 1999), 11.
4. M. D. Shevach Friedler, et al., “The Effect of Medical Clowning on Pregnancy Rates After In Vitro Fertilization and Embryo Transfer,” Fertility and Sterility (2011): 2127–2130.
5. R. A. Martin, “Is Laughter the Best Medicine?: Humor, Laughter, and Physical Health,” Sage Journals (2002): 217.
6. Sven Svebak, Rod A. Martin, and Jostein Holmen, “The Prevalence of Sense of Humor in a Large, Unselected County Population in Norway: Relations with Age, Sex, and Some Health Indicators,” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research (2004): 121–134.
7. Carr and Greeves, Only Joking, 53.
8. “No More Clowning Around: It’s Too Scary,” Nursing Standard (2008): 11.
9. Cath Battrick, Edward Alan Glasper, Gill Prudhoe, and Katy Weaver, “Clown Humour: the Perceptions of Doctors, Nurses, Parents and Children,” Journal of Children’s and Young People’s Nursing (2007): 174–179.
10. Dacher Keltner and George A. Bonanno, “A Study of Laughter and Dissociation: Distinct Correlates of Laughter and Smiling During Bereavement,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1997): 687–702.
11. Charles V. Ford and Raymond C. Spaulding, “The Pueblo Incident: A Comparison of Factors Related to Coping with Extreme Stress,” Archives of General Psychiatry (1973): 340–343.
12. Michelle Gayle Newman and Arthur A. Stone, “Does Humor Moderate the Effects of Experimentally Induced Stress?” Annals of Behavioral Medicine (1996): 101–109.
13. A. Peter McGraw, Christina Kan, and Caleb Warren, “Humorous Complaining” (2013) (under review).
INDEX
Aarhus, Denmark: McGraw and Warner’s visit to, 132–40
Abbas, Mahmoud, 160
Abraham (biblical person), 156, 171
Abu Ghraib prison (Iraq) photos, 124–25, 141
The Act of Creation (Koestler), 49
Adams, Hunter “Patch,” 181, 183, 186–87, 191, 192, 196, 211
Addams, Charles, 56
advertising
creating humor for, 43, 51–54
about Paradise Island show, 136, 139
See also alcohol: humor and
Africa
See Tanzania
age: humor and, 35, 95
“Aha!” moment, 56, 199
Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 145
Al-Abi, 157
alcohol: humor and, 62–66, 208–9
Allen, Melanie, 48
Amazon, trip to
benign violation theory and, 205
clown brigade and, 175–76, 181–94, 205
McGraw and Warner’s, 175–76, 181–94, 196, 205, 211
McGraw and Warner’s lessons learned from, 200, 205
Amelia (survivor of laughter epidemic), 84, 86–88
Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient (Cousins), 122, 177
animals
laughter of, 79–81
Mohammad cartoons and, 143–46
Annual Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor Conference, 176–77, 178, 179, 180
Ansari, Aziz, 39–40
anthropologists: comedians compared with, 30
anti-Israeli jokes, 164–65
Arab comedy ladder, 158
Araki, Takahiro, 106, 116, 118
Ariely, Dan, 112
Aristophanes, 165
Aristotle, 6, 11, 84
Attardo, Salvatore, 26–27
attention-grabbing jokes, 54
audience: role of, 23, 32–34, 86, 200, 205
Awad, Manal, 160–61, 162, 165
Aykroyd, Dan, 27
Bartholomew, Robert, 90
batsu game, 116, 117
Bekoff, Marc, 81
Belén project (Peru), 181, 183–89, 191
Bell, Nancy, 129
Belushi, John, 27
benign violation theory
alcohol-humor study and, 63–66
Amazon trip and, 205
and balancing benign and violation, 200, 205
–6
C.K.-McGraw discussion and, 18
creativity and, 49, 52
criticisms of, 11–12, 13
development of, 9–13
everyday life and, 212
fly-down experiment and, 128
and humor as coping, 189
Japanese humor and, 205, 208
and Just For Laughs Festival invitation, 203–5, 206–10
laughter and, 72, 78
and pain as source of humor, 154
Palestine trip and, 205
purpose of, 201
Sarah Silverman Strategy and, 12
Seinfeld Strategy and, 12, 15
timing and, 205–6
Warner’s thoughts about, 210
and what makes people funny, 18
and what makes successful comedians, 38–39
Berg, Alex, 39
Bergson, Henri, 157
Between Heaven and Mirth (Martin), 156
bin Laden, Osama, 160
Binder, McKenzie, 35
birth-control campaign, 52, 53–54, 167, 205
black comedians, 35
“black swan” arguments, 167–69
bladeless fans experiment, 120
Bloomberg, Michael, 42
Bodden, Alonzo, 201
boke (Japanese comedy partner), 106, 205
Boosler, Elayne, 20
Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life (Martin), 30
bowling-ball cartoon (Kanin), 47, 55–58, 64–65
Brady, Jordan, 31
Brockovich, Erin, 90
Brooks, Mel, 163
Brown, Tina, 45
Bruce, Lenny, 25, 36, 63, 112, 120
Bucher, Lloyd, 153–54
Bukoba, Tanzania: McGraw and Warner’s visit to, 73–75, 83–85
Burgdorf, Jeffrey, 80–81
burlesque show, African, 75
Carell, Steve, 27
The Caricature Crisis (Larsen), 138
caricature.dk (website), 148
Carolla, Adam, 108, 109
Carr, Jimmy, 36
Carter, Erin Percival, 38
cartoons
aggressive, 124
“Aha!” moment for, 56
and aspiring cartoonists, 54–58
captionless, 49
context for, 56
and definition of cartooning, 47
disadvantages of, 142
fact-checkers for, 56, 58
as failures, 128–30, 132
Gruner’s views about, 123–24
McGraw and Warner’s lessons learned from, 206
Mohammad, 124–30, 131–32, 133–37, 138–39, 140
See also the New Yorker cartoons
The Cartoons that Shook the World (Klausen), 127
cat-as-sex-toy story, 9, 10
censorship, 130, 160
Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), 169
Central Casting (Los Angeles), 33–34
Chaplin, Charlie, 112, 113
charging woman: in Denmark, 119
Cheezburger Network, 13
Chesterfield, Lord, 123
children, 84–85, 193–94
See also laughter epidemics; Tanzania
church raffle–Hummer story, 4, 10
C.K., Louis, 17–18, 40, 72
“clash of two mutually incompatible codes,” 49–50
cleverness: creativity and, 50
Clinton, Bill, 63
Close, Del, 28
clowns
Amazon trip and, 175–76, 181–94, 205
benign violation theory and, 205
and Glick’s Parkinson’s disease, 191–92
image of, 187
McGraw’s views about, 188–89
nose of, 182–83, 187, 196, 198, 211
as outsiders, 187
training for, 186
The Colbert Report (TV program), 62, 111
Colbert, Stephen, 27
Collins, Robert Merrifield, 120
comedians
audience relationship with, 23, 32–34, 86, 200, 205
earnings of, 35, 106
as inherently unhappy, 37
Jews as, 30
as outsiders, 30, 72, 199, 201
production process impact on, 59–62
therapy programs for, 36
and who is funny, 17–41, 199
See also specific person
comedy
“bibles” about creating, 48
and comedy writing as orgasm, 48
commonalities among types of, 29–30
comparison of American and Japanese, 117–18
compartmentalization of, 102
context of, 30–32, 103–4, 128
creation of, 41–66
diversity in, 93
emotions as key in, 60
and exceptionally difficult circumstances, 169–72
experience and experimentation as key to, 25, 40
failures of, 128–30, 200
formal instruction about, 25
humor differentiated from, 117–18
Koestler’s views about creating, 48–50, 51
performing environment for, 31–32
truth and, 28, 30
unexpectedness in, 7
worldwide popularity of, 113–15
See also humor; joke(s); laughter; type of comedy
“Comedy Bang Bang” (UCB stand-up show), 39–40
Comedy Central, 35, 105
comedy club
what is a, 31–32
See also specific club
Comedy at the Edge (Zoglin), 34
Comedy Nest (Montreal): McGraw’s stand-up comedy routine at, 197–202, 206–10
Comedy Store (Los Angeles), 19–21, 107
Comedy Store (Tokyo), 107
complaining, humorous, 190–91
computers: creativity and, 50–51
condom jokes, 53–54
conflict situations
improvisation and, 28
successful comedians and, 38
conservatives: sense of humor of, 112
context
for cartoons, 56, 128
of comedy, 30–32, 103–4, 128
of humor, 200
Cook, Dane, 104
Copenhagen
See Denmark
coping/relief, humor/jokes for, 7, 8, 12, 134, 163–64, 167, 173, 189–91, 200, 206
Cosby, Bill, 7
Coser, Rose, 85–86
Cousins, Norman, 122, 177, 179, 196
creativity
in advertising, 43, 51–54
benign violation theory and, 49, 52
“bibles” about, 48
as “clash of two mutually incompatible codes,” 49–50
cleverness and, 50
communal/team-based, 57, 199
complexity of, 128
computers and, 50–51
humor as help to, 50
Koestler’s views about, 48–50, 51
and mass-produced comedy, 41–62
and McGraw and Warner’s lessons learned from travels, 199
New Yorker cartoons and, 41–46, 54–58
risk and, 144, 147
as solitary, 57
in stand-up comedy, 57
terrorism and, 60–61
cruel joke cycle, 135
culture
influence on humor of, 93–118
joking relationships and, 95
sense of humor and, 95
and worldwide popularity of comedy, 113–14
Cycowycz, Gizelle, 162, 163, 164, 170
Daiku, Tomiaki, 104–5, 106
The Daily Show (TV program), 54, 60, 62
dark humor, 119–48, 200
dating profiles: humor and, 109
David, Larry, 35
Davies, Christie, 95–99, 167
Davila-Ross, Marina, 79–80
Davis, Susan, 121, 122
“Day of Rage,” 126–27
Day, Spring, 107–8
dead-baby joke cycle, 1
35
dead-monkey joke, 8–9
Dean, Greg, 23–25, 26, 49
Debatable Humor: Laughing Matters on the 2008 Presidential Primary Campaign (Stewart), 111
DeLuca, Rudy, 19
Democrats: comedy and, 111–12
Denmark
charging woman in, 119
and “Day of Rage” activities, 126–27
derogatory jokes in, 169
McGraw and Warner’s trip to, 119–21, 124–25, 130–42
Mohammad cartoons and, 124–30, 131–32, 133–37, 138–39, 140, 141, 142, 145
Muslims in, 125–26, 131–32, 138–40, 145, 148
Warner/McGraw–police exchanges in, 130, 132, 133
See also specific person
Denver Art Museum: as comedy club, 32
Denver, Colorado: Squire Lounge in, 1–2, 5–6, 13–15, 202, 209, 211
Denver Laughter Club, 178
derogatory jokes, 142, 169, 205
DEviaNT (Double Entendre via Noun Transfer) program, 50
Dice Clay, Andrew, 20
Dick, Andy, 35
dick jokes, 117, 118
DiGiovanni, Debra, 198–99, 206
“digit affair”
See Hawaiian good luck sign
Diller, Phyllis, 7
dirty jokes, 7, 11, 29, 121–22, 163
disparaging jokes, 142
doctor-wife joke, 24
Dotombori district (Osaka, Japan), 102–3
Downtown (Japanese comedy act), 106–7
Drescher, Fran, 33
Du Bois, W.E.B., 30
Duchenne, Guillaume, 77–78
dumb-blonde jokes, 96–97
Dundes, Alan, 134–36
Dunham, Jeff, 104
earnings: of comedians, 35, 106
Ebert, Roger, 45
Edwards, John: Huckabee comment about, 112
Ellen DeGeneres Show (TV show), 32
Ellner, Jordy, 201
emotions: as key in comedy, 8, 60
“encrypted humor,” 111
Encyclopedia of 20th-Century American Humor, 13
Encyclopedia of Humor Studies, 6
everyday life
benign violation theory and, 212
how humor is used in, 29
laughter of, 72, 92
in Palestine, 173
evolution: of laughter, 76–79
“F” parking lot cartoon, 45
fact-checkers: for cartoons, 56, 58
failures, comedy, 128–30, 200
Fallon, Jimmy, 27
Farajin, Imad, 160
Farashat, Bashar, 171, 172–73
Feingold, Alan, 22
Fernbach, Phil, 35, 45, 53
Ferrell, Will, 27
Ferri, Sam, 55
Fey, Tina, 27
Fiqh Council of North America, 127
fireworks show gone wrong, 204