Comedy Techniques

Incongruity - Link

Often identified with "frustrated expectation," a concept we owe to Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who says that humor arises "from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing." More is implied here than merely surprise: the suggestion is that humor consists in the violent dissolution of an emotional attitude. This is done by the abrupt intrusion into the attitude of something that is felt not to belong there, of some element that has strayed, as it were, from another compartment of our minds.

www.msu.edu/~jdowell/monro.html

Incongruity Theory Continued

Humor frequently contains an unexpected, often sudden, shift in perspective, which gets assimilated by the Incongruity Theory. This view has been defended by Latta (1998) and by Brian Boyd (2004).^[1] Boyd views the shift as from seriousness to play. Nearly anything can be the object of this perspective twist; it is, however, in the areas of human creativity (science and art being the varieties) that the shift results from "structure mapping" (termed "bisociation" by Koestler) to create novel meanings.^[2] Arthur Koestler argues that humor results when two different frames of reference are set up and a collision is engineered between them.

1. Brian Boyd, Laughter and Literature: A Play Theory of Humor Philosophy and Literature - Volume 28, Number 1, April 2004, pp. 1-22

2. Koestler, Arthur (1964): "The Act of Creation"

Superiority

Schadenfreude: Pleasure derived from the misfortune of others.

Can take the form of laughing at others weaknesses; common in slap stick humor. Often an inability to adapt to a situation is the focus of comedy; we need to be flexible and adaptable to survive.

For Aristotle we laugh at inferior or ugly individuals, because we feel a joy at being superior to them. Socrates was reported by Plato as saying that the ridiculous was characterized by a display of self-ignorance.

Poetics, 1449a, p. 34-35.
Plato, Philebus 49
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Laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.

Thomas Hobbes