I
teach in a large city high school, where the core curriculum is basically fixed
and largely tragic in nature. In
the tenth grade International Studies English which I teach, Things Fall Apart, an African novel about change and the
dissolution of old ways, ends with the suicide of a tribal warrior.
Nectar in a Sieve, also a featured novel in the curriculum, follows
the story of an Indian woman through famine, the deaths of two children and
exile from the land. Through
basically hopeful in nature, the book is a bitter commentary on life for the
peasant classes in an industrialized world.
Then we read Julius Caesar,
fraught with political wrangling and death, and Antigone, the Greek tragedy which leaves the stage strewn with
bodies. Students may recognize the
inherent worth of our selections, but complain of the sadness in all these
pieces.
This was, in part, a main reason for my selecting
“Comedy” as my class with the Pittsburgh Teacher Institute.
It is clear to me that we choose tragedies for the bulk of our in-school
readings (and the other levels are no different than the tenth grade) because
they are there. There are simply
far fewer comedies of quality than there are tragedies.
Perhaps there is something in the nature of us as human beings that must
see and speak of the terrors of the world, to cope with them.
Life, inherently being filled with death, and unfortunately also with
war, natural disasters, illness and other personal tragedies, perhaps
necessitates that writing address and give witness to these issues.
I have read far more autobiographies that made me weep, than made me
smile. I think of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden and Girl Interrupted, as ones that touched me.
While it is interesting to pursue the why’s of the preponderance of
well-written tragedies, I am fairly certain that the proportion, leaving
comedies on the short stack, is correct.
As an occasional writer, I know that it is more difficult to write humorously of childhood, than to follow a vein of the fears, bullies and disappointments of those years. Furthermore, when my students write from their own pasts and decide that they will reveal nothing of import (thankfully, a small number), and that they loved all their Christmases anyway, what comes forth is pap…boring pap. Life when ‘normal’, uneventful and easy…”My day at the office was fine, Honey”…is difficult material from which to create a scene on paper that anyone wants to read. It can certainly be done, with gentle humor and a close lens, but it is not easy.
Basically, this paper and corresponding curriculum unit will focus on the writing of comedy. This means excluding the comparative work, which could be very useful in an international studies curriculum, and could center on the question of how comedy changes from country to country. It also precludes looking at how time has maintained certain elements of humor while other factors are simply no longer funny. One example of this might be Punch and Judy, originally published in 1860 and generally run as a puppet show. As the two battle and bash at one another, Mr. Punch beats both his child and his wife to death in one scene,
“He, he, he! (laughing). To lose a wife is to get a fortune.
Who’d be plagued with a wife
That could set himself free
With a rope or a knife,
Or a good stick, like me.”
We joke about the excesses of being ‘politically correct’, but such humor as this, and the caricatures of blacks and Jews that easily can be found in our not too distant past, are not sadly lost. Both of these aforementioned avenues, of a worldview, and of the changes in comedy wrought over time, would be useful, but what I intend to study is the elements in basically modern writings which give rise to humor. In short, what makes writing funny and how those elements can be shared with students, enabling them to translate some of their experiences into the writing of comedy? Along with analyzing a few current works, among them such authors as Woody Allen, P.G. Wodehouse, Lewis Nordan, James Thurber, and Sandra Cisneros, I will apply the classic studies of comedy such as works of Frye, Meredith, and Bergson to these pieces, to help clarify the elements we see. Inductively then, I hope we can discover and generalize elements of comedy and to begin to settle on those aspects which could be replicable. Along with these, I would want the humor of Garrison Keeler and of John Cleese included in the actual curriculum, though not analyzed in the paper, which means we will venture into radio and film. The curriculum will include a set of readings and daily-writing assignments designed to move a student through various kinds of comedy.
Based on what we had covered in the first two classes of our seminar, I gave my creative writing students a few parameters to utilize in their writing of a short play. There is present in a great many comedies, I told them, conflict between an older character and a younger one (with the younger character being the more heroic of the two and the older being mired in an outmoded tradition), and a resolution at the end that often includes everyone being brought together, or at least an ‘up’ feeling of goodwill. They have also been shown that historically, many comedies end with a feast or a dance. In retrospect, it seems clear that students must first read more of these dictums as real pieces of writing before they have internalized them enough to use them in their own writing. We had some with conflict and a no-humor piece (a bullying customer), some with too small a conflict for any character to be invested in a solution, one where the older character ended up victorious and one charmingly moronic discussion over the merits of pudding over Jell-O. As my parameters in writing class, I found some students fighting off the sense of comedy (one turned to a cheating husband; another settled for a cheating boyfriend), though they knew our concept of comedy was loosely defined, as even something which could elicit a smile. As angst in poetry feels like a normal state to many teens, so melodrama, i.e. the young, pregnant woman cast out by her family, is where many want to go. I believe that much more specific assignments will allow students continued success in comedy writing, certainly handled with greater ease than my initially large and relatively generic one did.
It might seem a logical beginning to try to determine what makes us laugh, but as Susanne Langer found, “…people have tried to analyze it [humor] in order to find the basis of that characteristically human function, laughter; the chief weakness in their attempts has been, I think, that they have all started with the question: What sort of thing makes us laugh?…Humor is [just]one of the causes of laughter.” Langer discusses Marcel Pagnol, who wrote about theories of laughter in a small book titled Notes sur le rire, where he says those prior to him, Bergson, Fabre, and Melinand, made the mistake of looking for the nature of laughter in situations, instead of in the subject who laughs. Langer quotes Pagnol as saying, “Laughter always—without exception—betokens a sudden sense of superiority…a song of triumph.” She feels this is too narrow a definition, too narrow a concept to feel our own superiority as we sense others’ irrationality. “A sudden sense of superiority entails such a ‘lift’ of vital feeling. But the ‘lift’ may occur without self-flattery, too; we need not be making fun of anyone.”
Steve Allen, in his book, How to Be Funny, quotes first Aristotle as stating that now familiar idea that the pleasure we derive in laughing is an enjoyment of the misfortune of others, due to a momentary feeling of superiority. Cicero too said that the ridiculous rested on a certain meanness and deformity and that a joke had to be at someone else's expense, though Allen adds that Cicero acknowledged that “the funniest jokes are simply those in which we expect to hear one thing and then hear another.” That element of surprise is what makes ‘Elephant Jokes’ (now enjoying a resurgence) funny. “Why does an elephant have wrinkled feet?” “From lacing his sneakers too tight.”
It seems clear that attempting to determine what makes us laugh may be an exercise in futility. There may be truth in the laughter of relief as we see someone slide on a banana peel or miss their chair. Henri Bergson, in his often-quoted essay “Laughter”, has said, that there must be an “absence of feeling which usually accompanies laughter….look upon life as a disinterested spectator: many a drama will turn into comedy.”
Buddy Nordan, the University of Pittsburgh’s fiction writing chairperson, is one of the funniest writers I know. His advice to writers includes not only finding the lie that makes a story work, but also finding the dark side of that proverbial sunny day. His best selling book, Wolf Whistle, contains some amazingly funny characters totally miserable in their own worlds. Humor continually circles around the tragic event of Emmett Till’s murder in Mississippi. Comedy as a way of social commentary, as an exposer of posers, is a gift I would like for students to find in their own writing.
One of my favorite parts of Wolf
Whistle is the discussion about and by the vultures.
The personification of these ugly birds is certainly a piece of the humor
(a technique which runs all the way from
Mr. Ed back to the Fables of Aesop), but more than that is going on her; a piece of the
South itself is here. (This works
as an example of how to capture a place while presenting a character, whether or
not the character is a bird.) The
vultures become a vehicle for discussing the losses of the Civil War, the white
ghetto termed Balance Due, and the black ghetto, the Belgian Congo.
Over all this, the flock of vultures perch, on lamppost after lamppost.
Amazingly, the glorious history of the South becomes a history of these
birds who ate the war dead. Humor
with a sting, that whispers of ignorance and danger, and one from which we
certainly distance ourselves, as Bergson stated.
“Balance Due, the white-trash ghetto, ran right into the Belgian
Congo….There were no trees here, only house after house, shack after shack,
all the same, on both sides of one long straight Delta road.
Power lines swagged from post to post, high above the muddy streets,
…On top of each light post, high above the street, perched a buzzard, many
buzzards, one right after another, post by post, down the road, as far as you
could see, to the railroad tracks, an enormous flock that slept at night in a
cypress swamp not far away…The big birds were slick and black with rainwater
where they sat with hunched shoulders and wattled necks like sad old men in dark
coats.
…The birds were descendants and remnants of an ancient flock, attracted
here long ago by the corpse-stench of a Civil War battle,…a significant
Mississippi defeat. Cannon shells
and belt buckles and maybe a finger joint still turned up, from time to time,
…
These birds were part of the glorious history of the South. They were written, now and then, …in newspapers all across
the state of Mississippi. Photographs
taken almost a hundred years ago by anonymous photographers with big, boxy
explosive cameras and tripods…stood behind glass in display cases in the Old
Capitol Museum in Jackson.
Historians studied the century-old photographs and even named the birds
in the flock. Schoolchildren from
all around…visited the museum in Jackson, and even visited this dangerous
street in Arrow Catcher, on field trips, to view the historical vultures.
Some of the birds on the light posts…were as ancient as the historical
battle itself, older, ninety, a hundred years old, a few of them, so historians
and ornithologists reported, and so, as part of this same flock, those
birds…had actually fed on the flesh and eyes and tongues and nutritious organ
meat of Confederate troops, fallen, hungry, frightened boys before they were
made buzzard bait…
…The buzzards were named Vardaman and Bilbo and Hugh White and
J.P.Coleman and Ross Barnett and other names of past and future governors and
senators of the sovereign state of Mississippi.
Other birds of the light posts, youthful by comparison, possessed only
blood-memories of the ancient feast, genetic egg-yolk longings for distant,
unremembered culinary ecstasy and freedom from deprivation, and sat with hope in
their bird hearts and nothing at all in their bird brains, for many years,
decades really, a human lifetime and long…whiling away all of their
valuable…years in the sad innocence of poultry patience during this lean
century since the glorious Festival of Dead Rebels long ago, and they were
content for now with roadkill.
The vulture named Ross Barnett, ancient and ugly, had excellent eyesight.
Far away in the distance, at the lucky spot on the rails where the Katy
crossed the Dog, Ross Barnett espied an armadillo, not moving.
Ross Barnett closed in prayer his heavy-lidded buzzard eyes and sucked
swamp air inside his lungs to savor the fragrance of loss.
…Ross Barnett didn’t like to be greedy, he was as good-natured and
open-minded and as willing to share the riches of Mississippi as the next old
buzzard, but with an armadillo, well, no, he didn’t think so…it was just a
better idea for him to head on over towards the cypress swamp as if he were
calling it a day and then, when the others were settled in, sucking in swamp
poisons with their sleepy, vulturely snores, he would circle back around to the
crosstracks of the Katy and the Dog and discover just what sweet surprise this
little armor-backed Delta dumpling had hid away from him, deep inside the
shell.” (Nordan, p.67-71)
There is a great deal going on here. The names are themselves funny, as
Mississippi governors and senators become vultures.
The whole description of the younger birds with dim, blood memories of
the “Festival of Dead Rebels”, is again the bird gorgings made glorious by a
name; their waiting and longing made at once larger than human and funny by the
description: “hope in their bird
hearts and nothing…in their bird brains”.
They wait in “sad innocence of poultry patience.”
Finally, we are given the old Ross Barnett, rationalizing just how
Mississippi good-hearted he was, as he kept the “little armor-backed Delta
dumpling” to himself.
The vultures are the personification of ugliness with
“hunched shoulders and wattled necks like sad old men”.
To then call these creatures, these “remnants”, who were attracted by
“corpse-stench”, --to call them “part of the glorious history of the
South” is tongue-in-cheek funny. They
are studied and revered—subject to field trips, in one breath and in the next
described as feeding on “eyes and tongues”.
The juxtaposition here of the “glorious” and the physically ugly
having rapacious eating habits, is close to awful—a dark humor, but humor
nonetheless.
For Susanne Langer, there would be here the sense of “life force” she believes comedy can give us, a feeling of “lift”. There is certainly the material here to help us “become reconciled to mortality”, which is another benefit Langer sees to comedy. Wolf Whistle has the whole of life here, that dark side and an ending after the death of ‘Bobo’ which sees two woman making their way through Swami Don’s Elegant Junk. “They spoke, finally, from their hearts. Maybe, finally, they did weep together, and maybe held each other tight. Nobody but Bobo knows for sure what happened next, but maybe, behind Alice and Sally Anne, the crystal ball…shone with the bright blue light of empty interiors and of faraway and friendly stars and all their hopeful planets and golden moons.”
Woody Allen has also been one of my favorite comic
writers, discovered long before his movies made the scene.
We can see many elements that make his works comedic, such as his dealing
with analogy via hyperbole, as in “On Seeing a Tree in Summer”.
“Of all the wonders of nature, a tree in summer is perhaps the most
remarkable, with the possible exception of a moose singing ‘Embraceable You’
in spats.” (W. Allen, p107)
He also uses details as political spotlights to highlight stupidities of
both sides in a conflict. “In perpetuating a revolution, there are two
requirements. Someone or something
to revolt against and someone to show up and do the revolting.
Dress is usually casual and both parties may be flexible about time and
place but if either faction fails to attend the whole enterprise is likely to
come off badly. His matter-of-fact
discussion, which in another context could be seen as reasonable, is part of the
humor. “…The ‘oppressors’
generally get to wear suits, own land and play their radios late at night
without getting yelled at.” (Allen, p. 111)
The surprise of a ridiculous comment that follows what might be genuine
information, is the crux of this humor.
Allen’s take on his own ‘Fractured Fairytales’ has resulted in his
“Fabulous Tales and Mythical Beasts” which he says in the preface he will
anthologize and publish with Ramainder & Sons once the “Norwegian
Shepherd’s strike” is settled. The Nurk, he describes as “a bird two inches long that has
the power of speech but keeps referring to itself in the third person, such as,
‘He’s a great little bird, isn’t he?
Persian mythology holds that if a Nurk appears on the windowsill in the
morning a relative will either come into money or break both legs at a raffle.
Zoroaster was said to have received a Nurk as a gift on his birthday,
although what he really needed was some gray slacks.
The Nurk also appears in Babylonian mythology, but here he is much more
sarcastic and is always saying, “Ah, come off it.” (W. Allen, p191)
Here again, Woody’s stock-in-trade is combining the familiar with the
ridiculous and has, with his “Mythical Beasts” also given human
characteristics to animals. The Nurk has both the voice of the affected snob as he uses
the 3rd person, and the cranky landlord (or super or uncle or
whatever) uttering “Ah, come off it.”
The Fream, is “a sea monster with the body of a crab and the head of a
certified public accountant.” Again—the
surprise 2nd half of a line. “Freams
are said to possess fine singing voices which drive sailors mad when they hear
them, particularly on Cole Porter Tunes.”
The humor here stems from not just the unexpected, but the addition of a
famous contemporary (at the time—1972, at least a nearer contemporary than in
2002) reference, in a mocking light.
“Death (A Play)”, examines in an existential setting (or the satire
of one); a man (Kleinman) awakened at 2:30 am by a group of men he knows, to
hunt a “maniac”, only no one will let him in on the plan.
Not only is he left clueless, he is totally unaware of the rash of
murders which has the others out acting as vigilantes.
He is the naïve outsider suddenly hauled into chaos.
As a matter of fact, he is the vehicle by which Woody Allen satirizes the
genre of the theater of the absurd.
Hacker: Everyone’s terrified.
People can’t walk the streets at night.
John: Streets nothing! The
Simon sisters were killed in their own home because they didn’t lock the door.
Throats cut ear to ear.
Kleinman: I thought you said he was a strangler?
The matter-of-fact discussion of horrors is cut in on by the detail
police, one who ignores the emotional impact of a situation to get the facts
straight. Kleinman’s wife then
enters as he is babbling to himself about the ridiculous situation, and scares
him:
Kleinman: For God’s sake, don’t creep up on me like that.
Anna: I heard voices.
Kleinman: Some men were here. All
of a sudden I’m on a vigilante committee.
Anna: Now?
Kleinman: Apparently there’s a killer loose--it can’t wait for the
morning. He’s a night owl.
Anna: Oh, the Maniac.
Kleinman: So if you knew about it, why didn’t you tell me?
Her reasons focus around the fact that Kleinman was always too involved
around work to ever listen. …
Kleinman: Meanwhile, where’s my tie:
Anna: What do you need a tie for?
You’re going to hunt a maniac?
Kleinman: Do you mind?
Anna: What is it, a formal hunt?
Sarcasm, the mocking tone about either your own travails and behaviors,
or the foibles of another, are at the heart of what is funny in this play and in
all of Woody Allen’s work. He is,
of course, the master of self-deprecation, the ultimate eiron, and not bad at
letting others in for their share of well-deserved ridicule.
While much of his shtick has the feel and sound of New York Jewish, to
the point of being nearly anti-Semitic, there is always something for those who
aren’t part of that scene. Currently,
Garrison Keeler, host of A
Prairie Home Companion, the one radio show that harks back to “The Golden
Age of Radio”, uses that same tone of self-mockery, but in a much gentler way;
perhaps it’s the Lutheran way, as this is a big part of the Minnesota persona
presented. The finest storyteller around, Keeler makes much of being a
shy person in Lake Wobegon, “the little town that time forgot, where all the
women are strong, the men are good-looking and all the children are above
average.”
Here,
while the laugh is on us, it is one that says we are all on the inside of this
joke.
The
baking powder biscuit ‘advertiser’ is touted as being particularly good for
giving shy people the courage to go on.
Another of my all-time favorite writers of comedy is P.G. Wodehouse, who
of his own writing says, “I believe there are two ways of writing novels.
One is mine, making a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring
real life altogether; the other is going right deep down into life and not
caring a damn.” He did actually
write lyrics for eighteen musical comedies, but I’m not sure if I find even
his looniest characters wholly outside of ‘real life’.
Take for example, the tale told by one Peter Burns, rich nice-guy of The
Little Nugget, as he is about to assist one Cynthia Drassilis, his fiancé
since last night’s party, in the kidnapping of Ogden “an extraordinarily
unpleasant little boy” who when compared to his portrait “art having its
limitations…[it] gave no hint of his very repellant manner.”
(Wodehouse, …Nugget, p.
13)These complexities of plot are part of the fun of Wodehouse, as is his
understated cynicism. As Peter
Burns says, “I have no illusions regarding my character…Nature had given me
the soul of a pig, and circumstances had conspired to carry on Nature’s work.
I loved comfort, and I could afford to have it.
From the moment I came of age and relieved my trustees of the care of my
money, I wrapped myself in comfort as in a garment.
I wallowed in egoism. In
fact, if, between my twenty-first and my twenty-fifth birthdays, I had one
unselfish thought, or did one genuinely unselfish action, my memory is a blank
on the point.” Having been jilted five years before by a sensible girl he
loved and treated as a “beggar maid [who] shall be my queen”, he describes
the moment as having “dynamited my life.”
It left “my pigsty in ruins about my ears, face to face with the fact
that even in a best of all possible worlds, money will not buy everything.”
(Wodehouse, …Nugget, p.31)The wonderful language that brings together the soul of
a pig, wallowing in comfort, and a pigsty in ruins, is a humor that allows for
introspection and growth of a character and the pleasure of a reader sharing in
this poignant silliness. It is true
that Wodehouse cavorts with the uppercrust English, and that there, is something
of a Noel Coward dance through them all. Nonetheless, I find some of ‘real life’ here, being poked
fun at while it is lived by some gently bizarre characters.
The Little Nugget was an early writing of 1913.
In one of his later books (he published more than seventy), Plum
Pudding (1967), his narrator, Lancelot Bingley, describes a character in the
short story “A Good Cigar is a Smoke” (from a Muriel Cigar commercial?)
“whose rugged features he was about to record on canvas” as “features,
particularly the three chins of an undisguised opulence, and his body was in
keeping with his face. Colonel
Pashley-Drake was, in short, a stout man…He learned from reading My
Life with Rod and Gun, that the Colonel when hunting big game, had
frequently hidden behind a tree. To
conceal him in this evening of his life only a California Sequoia would have
served.” The humor with Wodehouse
lies in the names, in the imagery, in those wonderfully complex turns of plot;
and in the kindly, lovable, but slightly inept heroes rescued by a strong,
bellowing aunt, a strong, smart sweetheart, or in Bertie Wooster’s case, the
ever brilliant butler, Jeeves. The
latter has had such a long and brilliant run that even a web search engine bears
his name, Ask Jeeves.
Consider, by way of illustrating the ever thickening plot, that Lancelot
has come to the Colonel’s country home ostensibly to paint his portrait, but
in reality to gain his good graces, so he could marry the niece, whose family
fortune depended on the Colonel’s OK of her soul mate.
Out too long for an evening stroll, Lancelot finds the front door locked,
“a blow which might have crushed a weaker man”.
Finding the back door locked as well, he broke a window and lets himself
down into what “from the smell he took to be the kitchen.
And he was about to grope in the darkness in the hope of finding the door
when a voice spoke, a harsh, guttural voice which jarred unpleasantly on his
sensitive ear, though the most musical voice speaking at that moment would
equally have given him the illusion that the top of his head had parted from its
moorings. It said rather curtly:
‘Who are you?’
Suavity, Lancelot felt, was what he must strive for.
‘It’s quite all right,’ he said obsequiously. ‘I was locked out.’
‘Who are you?’’
‘My name is Lancelot Bingley. I
am staying in the house. I am an
artist. I am here to paint Colonel
Pashley-Drake’s portrait. I would
not advise waking him now, but if you inquire of him in the morning, he will
support my statement.’
‘Who are you?’
Annoyance began to compete with Lancelot’s embarrassment. If voices asked questions, he felt, they might at least take
the trouble to listen to you when you answered them. His manner took on a stiffness.
‘I have already informed you in a perfectly frank manner that my name
is Lancelot Bingley and that I am staying in the house in order to paint—‘
‘Have a nut,’ said the voice, changing the subject.
Lancelot’s teeth came together with a sharp click.
Few things are more mortifying to a proud man than the discovery that he
has been wasting his time being respectful to a parrot.” (Wodehouse,
Plum Pudding, p.170)
Follow this with Lancelot disconcertedly mistaking the Colonel’s
bedroom door for his own, and flinging himself into bed, which in reality meant
onto the Colonel’s stomach, and you have a true Wodehouse situation. It’s funny because of the character’s mistakes, and his
continual attempts to maintain composure and his bearing, through one fiasco
after the other. The ‘hero’
always attempts to think on his feet, and we all find, to our amusement that
this is a skill at which he has only minimal ability.
I have been a James Thurber fan, though to a lesser extent than with the
others thus far mentioned. His most
famous pieces are probably “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and “The
Night the Bed Fell”. Walter Mitty
is a schlemiel, a poor soul in the same sense that many of Woody Allen’s are,
though he has little insight into himself or his own life, just a strong fantasy
world into which he escapes, to compensate for his forgettings and inadequacies.
We laugh with him more than at him.
“’Back it up, Mac – look out for that Buick!’
Walter Mitty jammed on the
brakes.
‘Wrong lane, Mac’…
’Gee, yeh,” muttered Mitty.
‘Leave her sit
there…I’ll put her away.’
They’re so darn cocky…they think they know everything…The next
time, he thought, I’ll wear my right arm in a sling…”
Trying to remember what else his wife had told him to buy, “She had
told him twice, before they set out from their home for Waterbury.…
‘Perhaps this will refresh your memory.’ The District Attorney
suddenly thrust a heavy automatic at the quiet figure on the witness stand,” (Thurber,
…Carnival, p49) and Mitty becomes
another heroic figure, like the Commander:
“’We’re going through!’ The Commander’s voice was like thin ice
breaking…’We’re going through!’ The
pounding of the cylinder increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa.” Only to have his daydream popped by Mrs. Mitty:
“Not so fast! You’re driving too fast!
What are you driving so fast for?”
Thurber and Wodehouse were contemporaries on opposite sides of the
Atlantic, and while one would never mistake their writing, there is, in the
complexities of events set down, much resemblance.
In “The Night the Bed Fell”,
there is, in addition to the narrator who sleeps on
an army cot, a houseful of eccentrics (excluding Grandfather, gone missing, as
he had before, but who is expected to return in “six or eight days…frowning
and out of temper, with the news that the federal Union was run by a passel of
blockheads…”). The narrator had
in his room a visiting cousin, Briggs Beall, who felt he would suffocate in his
sleep and as a consequence doused himself with camphor at the critical moment
that night and had to put out a window with his fist to catch a breath.
Aunt Sarah Shoaf feared a burglar would get in and blow chloroform under
her door. To waylay such an event,
she piled her valuables outside her room. Another
aunt with a burglar phobia piled her shoes near the door in order to chuck them
down the hall at potential robbers when she heard them, which she did each
night. The father, who for some reason wanted to get
away from all this went up to the attic to sleep, though the bed was known to be
wobbly and the heavy headboard would likely crash on his head and kill him, or
so the mother thought. In short,
the narrator tips over the army cot, leading his mother to believe that the bed
had fallen on father. She shouts,
“Let’s go to your poor father.”, whereupon brother Herman, thinking she
was hysterical, calls repeatedly, “You’re all right.” The narrator, after
hearing Briggs gasping and breaking glass, and the calls of the others,
thinks he must be the one in danger, perhaps entombed in a mine, and so
bawls, “Get me out!” By this time mother, Herman, brother Roy from across the
hall, Rex the dog, Briggs, still “floundering in his camphor”, but shouting,
“I’m all right!”, thinking the commotion was for him, had all arrived at
the attic door, which stuck. Father
in the attic thinks there is a fire. Then
Rex catches sight of Briggs, whom he never liked, and “jumped for
him—assuming that he was the culprit in whatever was going on---and Roy had to
throw Rex and hold him.” The
door is yanked open. “My mother
began to weep when she saw him. Rex
began to howl. ‘What in the name of God is going on here?’ asked
father.” (Thurber, p.181)
What is going on is the fun of someone else’s disorder, set right at
the end. It should be added that
Thurber’s drawings, many of which appeared in the New
Yorker,
add to the pleasure of his pieces.
He has one article, titled “The Pet Department” which is an advice
column for people with problem pets, who send in a drawing to illustrate their
problem. One of the funniest is a
rather befuddled looking fish with pointed ears.
The question reads:
“We have a fish with ears and wonder if it is valuable. Joe Wright”
The
answer is:
“I find no trace in the standard fish books of any fish with ears.
Very likely the ears do not belong to the fish, but to some mammal.
They look to me like a mammal’s ears.
It would be pretty hard to say what species of mammal, and almost
impossible to determine what particular member of that species.
They may merely be hysterical ears, in which case they will go away if
you can get the fish’s mind on something else.”
The joke here is on all the answer columns (which may not have existed when this was written), but more on all the experts who must waffle over answers they don’t know.
Objectives
There are many objectives I would have for students involved in this curriculum unit. I would hope they would discover new authors and in the process come to enjoy some very different types of humor than they had so far discovered. This would, of course, lean to the communication standard asking students to use a variety of methods to make sense of complex texts.
Students would also be expected to respond orally to the texts, sharing with the class their take on why any work has been considered funny. As we do this, we must clarify who we are as readers, and why the background, gender, etc of each individual colors his/her response to any literature. Making certain that students are aware that there is no one objective analysis of a work, is terribly important in giving them a sense of both the validity of their own readings, and, in some cases, why their reading is so heavily influenced by who they are, that they have lost a sense of the original writer. Not only is the standard of effective group communication addressed here, but so is the unwritten one of coming to know ourselves more clearly.
Within much of the writing, students will get a sense of the writer’s particular take on an issue. This is especially true with satire. While the writer is afforded the right to any opinion, so students must come to understand where bias exists and where statements inconsistent with the evidence might be present. This concept of making critical judgements is one of the central communication standards.
In addition to the above, which involve reading and discussion, is the heart of this unit—writing. It is a given with the art of writing as with any other art form, that practice of a skill will produce, in the long run, a higher quality piece. Students will write a great deal here, using models and their own imagination. We will work to see elements in humor that extend all the way back to Aristophanes; we will look at Shakespeare for those continuing elements he uses to not only produce humor, but to give an audience, a reader, that gentle rise in feeling so essential to comedy. By using some of the classic critiques of comedy, we will analyze and explain what elements seem common to all works and perhaps, which of these traditions have been superceded by modern authors. Our own writing, as we struggle with the concept of humor, as we work to find just the right situations, the precise language, the clearest translation of behavior and voice into the characters we write, will grow and change. Students may not find their places in the halls of comic genius, but they will become better writers, more skilled readers, and hopefully, more clearly aware of who they are at this time in their lives. Imagine, finding humor in a school day!
Strategies
We will focus on discussion of what is funny: what is the funniest movie students have seen, what is the funniest scene, the funniest TV program, funniest writing etc.
Will students have progressed beyond the toilet humor of their middle school years? It is doubtful that has been totally lost, since a long car ride with four sophisticated grad students who happen to be marvelous writers, yielded up what seemed like hours of discussion about farts and fart jokes. Nonetheless, having discovered the various aspects students find funny, and favorites of their teacher, who has a penchant for British humor, we will categorize these and keep adding to the categories
Reading of pieces of humor, with small group and class discussions, will be a second strategy, focusing again on what is funny here. Beyond that, we will be looking at not only what an author has done, but how, from a writer’s perspective, this has been accomplished. We will look at language, at pacing, at voice; we will discuss how characters have been developed and whether or not these characters can prod us into empathy or whether, if humor is to be maintained, we must remain separate from them, as some critics say.
We will, as an addendum to the above, use small reading circles, each using different books, where responsibility for different elements of the reading is shared among group members. Class performance and presentations of these pieces will ensure the extension of all our reading repertoires.
Along with reading, we will watch, for variety sake, films and videos, checking out some of the old classics of Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy and others, as well as more current pieces such as the works of Monty Python and other John Cleese classics, such as Faulty Towers. We will look into The Simpsons and, if we can find a clean enough part, South Park, which prides itself on being politically incorrect, rather the same pride a child has in violating parental constraints on language.
Writing, both using pieces as models and via specific exercises as discussed under classroom activities, will be an additional and critical strategy. It is, in fact, the primary focus of this unit. Can we learn to write in ways that cause others to smile, that raise the spirits and look at life’s difficulties as humorous and things to be overcome. While anything can be an object of humor, we will not take upon ourselves the difficult task of turning every tragedy into comedy. Though, having just read Israeli jokes pervading their country which deal with suicide bombers, it would seem that anything is possible. To summarize, we will write increasingly longer pieces, beginning with exercises and ending with a short story.
Many of these activities focus initially on exercises
to give students time to try to learn what something funny feels like as it is
making its way onto paper. Part of
these attempts at humor will involve the reading of comedy.
As Steve Allen, in his book, How to
be Funny, puts it, “…you should read funny books simply because it’s
so much fun. Anyone who can afford
it ought to purchase every book ever written by Robert Benchley, James Thurber,
S.J. Perelman and Woody Allen.” (p5)
These classroom activities owe a heavy debt to Allen’s book.
Two preliminaries that have to do with seeing the
world and oneself in new ways:
Overheads made of cartoons by B. Kliban (see Never
Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head and Other Drawings) and of The
Far Side, by Gary Larsen, to get a sense of off-the-wall, no rules, fresh
ways of seeing the world, and connections of the incongruous.
Look for the elements in real life—jot down ideas to use, if you were a
cartoonist.
Read
together from Norman Cousins books, who says, “I was greatly elated by the
discovery that there is a physiologic basis for the ancient theory that laughter
is good medicine…I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly
laughter had an aesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of
pain-free sleep.” Try to give
yourself a daily ten minutes of laughter based on film, print or tapes of old
radio comedies. Keep a record of
your energy level and health—noting any benefits.
The following are activities thought to be useful in
this order:
1.
Make a
list of situations, movies, TV shows or jokes that you laugh at or find funny.
What elements can you find that they might have in common?
Can you categorize any of them? Secondly,
Describe anything or anyone you’ve seen that someone around you thought was
incredibly funny, but you did not. Try
to discover what was going on and why the reactions were so different.
This is homework.
2.
Study the
following concepts for creating humor and then categorize the jokes that follow
as to type. We will attempt each
day to locate these and other elements present in our reading.
A. Play on Words
(note use here in essays of S.J.Perleman, found in Russell
Baker’s Book of American Humor)—Use of homonyms, of a second meaning for
a word rather than what was logically intended, misusing the intended
definition, break apart an intended definition, etc. (See Allen p29)
B. The Reverse Formula,
which involves saying the opposite of what, is expected.
C. Exaggeration
(not every exaggeration is, of course, funny) Fred Allen:
That scarecrow was so scary the crows not only stopped stealing corn,
they brought back corn they had stolen two years earlier.
D. By Implication—a
leap must be made here between the last part of the statement and the implicit
meaning of the line. (see Allen p36) E.
The I’m Not So Dumb Formula. There
are 3 steps here. First you refer
to a common but rather stupid belief. Then
you assert that you are simply too intelligent to believe such a thing. Finally you confess to some other equally stupid opinion.
F. Visualization—an
exercise of the visual imagination. G.
The Juggling Formula—manipulation of separate factors of a
statement so that a new relationship among them is perceived.
H. Random Rhyme.—finishing a sentence in a way other
than it would logically have been finished, often as a rhyme. Using a good
collection of jokes, such as Leo Rosten’s Carnival
of Wit, try to find examples of all eight type of humor.
Then write one joke of your own of each type, not worrying if they
don’t seem initially to be hysterically funny.
3.
Watch
Charlie Chaplin films and discuss The
Great Dictator in terms of character types historical in comedy: the eiron
(the self-deprecator) of the little Jewish barber, and the alazon (the impostor)
of Hynkel/Hitler. Watch also Modern
Times for evidence of the mechanization of man producing a comic effect
because he has stopped being human—parallels to our modern man forced into
inelasticity by bells, schedules, deadlines, etc.
Use at this point a few salient points from Bergson, who initially makes
this point. This, of course would
be several lessons and purposely inserted to stretch students into thinking of
comedy beyond the writing of the short and funny previously begun.
4.
Study the
comedy interview via clips from various work by Art Linkletter, Steve Allen and
David Letterman. Using the
straighforward, logical lawyerlike approach (see Allen, p 61) create an
imaginary interview with a man identifying himself as from Indianapolis, part of
a Moose convention in Pittsburgh. Use
the misinformation approach (“English is so full of idiomatic expressions that
automatically turn into jokes when subjected to straight-faced analysis.”
(Allen, p62) Then try these
techniques on other students. Tape and analyze.
5.
Pretend
you are on radio or TV and do a play-by-play of everything you experience or
observe. It’s an exercise in
chatter and the ad-lib. Try doing a
running commentary while in a car. Tape
and transcribe the best one.
6.
Tape
commercials from radio or TV. Try
ad-libbing extra material onto them to make fun of them.
Take an article from any encyclopedia and try extending and twisting what
is actually said so that you are stretching what is there.
Listen to Garrison Keeler in his opening monologue about a new city that Prairie Home Companion is broadcasting from for ideas.
7.
To
practice developing an ability to see humor and communicate it, Allen suggests
that you “Keep fueling your brain with basic information.
Read every issue of Time and Newsweek.
Read your best local paper [and the NY
Times]. Watch the best network newscasts” and generally know what
is happening locally and in the world. Use
the juggling formula (see above) to frame a joke around a bad snowstorm, a quick
weight-loss diet or being locked out.
8.
Write
briefly about an awkward or embarrassing moment from your not-to-distant past
and give several ways humor might have gotten you out of it.
9.
You’ve
just addressed a large group of people and must now introduce the next speaker.
Between the time you stepped on stage and this moment, three things have
happened: a piece of scenery crashed to the floor; four slides in your
presentation were in the wrong order; the microphone went dead several times.
Write an introduction that takes one or more of these events into
consideration. (Allen, p112)
10.
In
preparation for writing a comic monologue, you must first practice dealing with
voice, since no one character would sound the same. Write a long paragraph as a 90-year old woman whose memory is
going as she gives a list of products she might want, to her caregiver.
Keep a bit of distance or you will be too sympathetic to make her funny,
though you aren’t so worried here about humor as about reality of voice.
Write also as: a teenager in
constant trouble giving advice to a cousin, new to town, on how to deal with
school.
11.
Read
pieces of Neil Simon plays to determine the difference between real dialogue
(generally so dull no one would want to read it) and realistic dialogue.
Listen to people talking to each other.
Try to take down some of what gets said, without being obvious about
eavesdropping. Your purpose here is
to get the rhythm of real speech while becoming aware that too much of it is
filler to work well in writing.
12.
Create 5
funny names for products and commercials to go with it or lines on funny names
of products already out there (No-Nonsense pantyhose; Hotpoint for a
refrigerator, etc.)
13.
Create
two what-if sketches. What if a
book salesperson found himself in the camp of Atilla the Hun, or a socialworker
was suddenly having lunch with Cleopatra, or take a famous person and put
him/her into a trivial domestic situation which nearly gets in the way of a
famous discovery or invention or moment ( ex. Edison thinking he has the light
bulb working only to have to deal with his mother wanting help rearranging the
furniture).
14.
Write
some dialogue for a comedy sketch involving a conservative middle-aged
businesswoman and a punk-rock teen bicycle messenger trapped together in a stuck
elevator.
15.
Read the
selection given in the narrative from P.G. Wodehouse’s Plum Pie, for further discussion on the embarrassing moment, even if
no one is around to see it. Try
writing a sketch about someone in the middle of a muddle, feeling like a fool
and getting in deeper with each attempt to get out. Read more Wodehouse.
16.
Read
James Thurber’s The Thurber Carnival,
especially “The Night the Bed Fell” to get a sense of the comic
autobiographical essay. Create a
short, comic autobiographical essay about an incident that happened to you in
grade school or any experience you had within the last week.
Good selections found also in Russell
Baker’s Book of American Humor.
17.
Check
out those who write of mundane daily events, such as the columns of Erma Bombeck.
Create a short column dealing with some facet of homelife or on how to
solve one of life’s ordinary problems. We’ll
look at one Steve Allen wrote on what to do or say, in an office, when you keep
running in to the same person again and again for the course of one day.
18.
For
the opposite of the above, events so unusual they are most funny when recounted
in straight-faced way, we will watch videos of John Cleese, particularly his
“Ministry of Funny Walks” and Faulty
Towers, as well as going back to P.G. Wodehouse.
Write a sketch where bizarre things are going on, possible, but bizarre,
and use a simple straightforward voice in recounting the event.
19.
Before we
try writing satire, there are differences between comedy and satire that must be
internalized. “The writer of
comedy is usually dealing with the same sort of materials as the writer of
satire. Like the satirist, he is
very much alive to the follies and imperfections and faults of men and women; he
sees us falling short in one way or another of the standards to which
he…subscribes….The writer of comedy accepts the natural and acquired folly
and extravagance and impudence which a bountiful world provides for his
enjoyment; he is a sort of human bird-watcher, detached and attentive.
(Sutherland, p2) Allen makes the
point that mild social commentary is not satire (p138), and Sutherland goes on
to say that “It is…the mark of the satirist that he cannot accept and
refuses to tolerate”…that he is “driven to protest….For him, …they
must be exposed, held up to derision.” This
having been said, some of what we will do initially involves poking fun at.
We will read S.J. Perelman, Robert Benchley and Woody Allen.
Begin by satirizing your favorite, or least favorite sitcom. First, you must list the elements in the show you plan to
make fun of, then write a brief sketch.
Then try a satirical look at the world of detectives.
Listen to the character on Prairie Home Companion, Guy Noir.
Create your own situation using one or two detectives or use Allen’s:
Begin with the following “what if” premise:
What if the two “good guys” were a nagging, possessive,
overprotective—but well-meaning—widow and her “Mama’s boy” son who had
just taken over a detective agency formerly run by the father, who had recently
died. An
additional hint: “Try to think of
everything about the subject that lends itself to parody…incorporate as many
of details of the original as possible. (Allen p165)
...The best satires are those which make use of a great many components
of the target’s overall makeup, rather than just pulling out a particular
aspect or two.
20.
Take a
shot at political satire, for want of a better word.
Work at satirizing some issue you truly feel is wrong, going about it in
the same way as the gentle comedy that simply pokes fun at something, while not
necessarily wanting to change it. First
list all the details of whatever it is you are going to change.
We will need to read some of the political satirists that have been
present in American culture: Mark
Twain, Mike Royko, Russell Baker, Calvin Trillin, Art Buchwald, Molly Ivins.
I’ll close with a couple more quotes from the one individual I’ve
found most helpful when it came to attempting to write humor, Steve Allen.
“…being funny is not one thing.
Funniness can—and does—take a thousand and one forms.” (ix)
“It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about death, religion, God,
cancer; no matter how serious, solemn or tragic the question at hand, it can
always be dealt with in a humorous fashion.
This is not to say that to do so will always be socially appropriate,
merely that the thing is possible.”(xi)
“Queens has some really Catholic neighborhoods.
I mean exceptionally Catholic.
Even the praying mantises don’t just pray.
They say novenas.”
Bibliography
for Teachers
Cohen,
Ted. Jokes: Philosophical
Thoughts on Joking Matters. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1999. Written
by a philosophy professor, this is a book of jokes and about jokes.
Focus is on how and why jokes are funny and when they don’t work.
Corrigan,
Robert W. Comedy: Meaning and Form.
Milwaukee: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1981. An excellent
resource which includes the best of written critiques on the spirit, form,
characteristics, nature and psychology of humor.
Freud,
Sigmund. Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious.
New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 1960. Rather a heavy text,
but one every library on humor should have, equating the “joke-work” with
“dream-work”.
Johnson,
Donald M. The Psychology of Humor and Wit. Santa
Barbara: Fithian Press, 1999.
A tiny work, filled with interesting discussion on what makes humor and
how to write jokes, written by a psychology professor.
Levin,
Harry. Playboys & Killjoys. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1987. This
Harvard professor, a major literary critic, has written a very readable book,
crammed with takes on ancient concepts translated to modern vehicles; he
isolates two fundamental aspects…the ludicrous playboy and the ridiculous,
pretentious fool or “killjoy”.
Rourke,
Constance. American Humor: A Study of
the National Character. New
York: Harcourt, Brace and Company,
Inc., 1931.
Using her wide knowledge of American folk tradition, this author focuses
on what is purely American in our humor.
Sypher,
Wylie, ed. Comedy. Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956.
Along
with essays of his own, Sypher
gives us the two classics in writing about comedy:
George Meredith and Henri Bergson. This
was used as a class text, but was not so varied or helpful as Corrigan’s.
Waugh,
Evelyn. The Loved One. Boston:
Little, Brown and Company, 1948. . A
wicked satire on Hollywood and the establishment or death and money.
Wisse,
Ruth. The Schlemiel as Modern Hero. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1971. This
is a well-written, easy read that documents the comic character in Jewish
fiction and folk tale, the weakling-fool who never gives up.
Bibliography
for Students
Allen,
Woody. Without Feathers. New
York: Ballintine Books, 1972.
Short stories of the early, very funny Allen.
Nordan,
Lewis. Wolf Whistle. Chapel
Hill: Algonquin Press, 1993.
Tale unfolding around the murder of Emmett Till, filled with
extraordinarily funny characters, a sense of magic realism, and the pain of a
South filled with poverty and bigotry.
Shakespeare,
William. Twelfth Night. New
York: The New American Library,
1963.
A Midsummer-Night’s Dream.
(use any) While use of these plays in entirety is questionable in a
writing class, still students need to be made aware of the techniques of
mistaken identity and the skill of character building and language
in
both of these.
Thurber,
James. The Thurber Carnival. New
York: Harper & Brothers, 1931.
Short stories of an old-modern master of gentle humor.
Wodehouse,
P.G. Plum Pie. New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1966. The
British equivalent of Thurber, this master of upper-crust dementia, has written
a very funny collection of short stories.
Bibliography
for Classroom
Allen,
Steve. How to be Funny. New
York: McGraw-Hill Book Company,
1987. An easy read reference book
taking the art of comedy down to simple steps for the wolf-be writer of humor.
Allen,
Woody. Side Effects. New York:
Ballantine Books, 1975. This
was a best seller, short pieces filled with the quirky humor that has been
Allen’s hallmark
.
Baker,
Russell. Book of American Humor. New
York: W.W. Norton & Company,
1993. This is a huge collection of
American radio plays, jokes, essays, excerpts from novels, etc., by a funny
author and columnist.
Bernays,
Anne and Pamela Painter. What
If? Writing Exercises for Fiction
Writers. New York: Harper
Perennial, 1990. This is a handy
book of exercises for the aspiring writer.
Carter
Judy. The Comedy Bible. New
York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.
While this doesn’t seem as useful as Steve Allen’s book, this is a
useful how-to for a student to pick and choose from; the emphasis here is on
making humor a career.
Goldberg,
Natalie. Writing Down the Bone. Boston:
Shambhala, 1986. The best of the exercise books for any writer; it gives
permission to subtract rules and to try, to fail, and to know that a great deal
of worthless material will come from any writer’s pen before something of
quality is created.
Helitzer,
Melvin. Comedy Techniques for Writers and Performers. Athens, Ohio: Lawhead
Press, 1984. This is another of the writing for a career books, very well done
and incorporating work by many authors. It
goes several steps further in actually attempting to discuss theory and
technique.
Kott,
Jan. Shakespeare and Company. New
York: W.W. Norton and Company,1964.
A
useful addition to any look at Shakespeare, which helps find and analyze his
plays, including where and how the humor is created.
Lee,
Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird. New
York: Popular Library, 1960.
An excellent book in itself, and a good place to look for the gentle
humor of a family, in a very specific time and place.
Loomis,
Paul. Pure as the Driven Snow. New
York: Samuel French, 1939.
A funny example of a tried and true melodrama, where the characters are
stock and the jokes are broad.
Nordan,
Lewis. Music of the Swamp. Chapel
Hill: Algonquin Books, 1992.
Wonderful short stories by University of Pitt head of fiction department,
filled with poignant and very funny characters of the South in which Nordan grew
up.
Rosten,
Leo. Carnival of Wit. New
York: Plume Press, 1994.
A fascinating book by a wonderful writer of humor, which, according to
the book jacket, “is a connoisseur’s alphabetically arranged collection of
more than 5,000…of the funniest things people have said and written over the
centuries and over the world.
Scanlin,
David. Comedies. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1971. Five
plays written from the eighteenth century to 1965:
Sheridan, Shaw, Saroyan, Giraudoux and Pritchard.
Swift,
Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels. London:
Penguin Books, 1726. A
wonderful example of satire in the guise of adventure story.
Twain,
Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. New
York: Tom Doherty Associates Book,
1986. Satire and story at its best
Twain,
Mark.
Mark Twain’s Best.
New York: Scholastic
Books, 1962. Short stories with the
wry humor of Twain.
Wodehouse,
P.G. The Little Nugget. London:
Penguin Books, 1913. One of
many Wodehouse books students could be introduced to; this a novel of a
kidnapping involving marvelous characters from the craziest of the uppercrust.
While these have really been addressed in the section on objectives, they will briefly be listed here. All are part of the Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening strand.
2. All students read and use a variety of methods to make sense of various kind of complex texts. Many different pieces will be used, individually, in small group settings and with the class.
3. All students respond orally and in writing to information and ideas gained by reading narrative and informational texts and use the information and ideas to make decisions and solve problems. Again, readings will be critiqued for elements and categories of humor. Part of our written responses will involve creative pieces, modeled on aspects discovered in the originals.
4
All
students write for a variety of purposes, included to narrate, inform and persuade, in all subject matters. Yes. All these
purposes will quite likely be utilized. Certainly,
political humor can be intended to both inform and to persuade, and, as has been
previously stated, one of the objectives of the unit is to write social comedy
which functions as an exposer of posers.