This comedy element works best within stories where the audience is emotionally engaged with events. This way you can build tension up to the deceptive climax. In the Pink Panther series of films Inspector Clouseau institutes a training program where his hired assistant Kato must attack him “wherever and whenever I least expect it.” This becomes a running gag. However, because Inspector Clouseau is regularly in real danger, the audience is never sure whether it’s the villain or Kato who has just gotten the better of him, and laugh in pleasure and relief when it is Kato.

Comic horror movies regularly use this trope from The Evil Dead to Shaun of the Dead. The clever twist used in Shaun of the Dead was the audience would be shown something that was genuinely dangerous within the world of the film, the protagonists would at first feel threatened, then come up with an explanation that made their fear seem ludicrous and laugh, but the threat was real and they had just managed to unwittingly escape it.

In more dramatic movies you might find a character who upon being told they have cancer burst into fits of wry mirth. The laugh can be ironic or just the quickest way to cope. We may not get any physical relief from a traumatic situation, but the laughter provides the emotional relief that generates resilience and personal heroism.

Fear-relief humour can work for the individual raconteur on stage, and literature has made it work now and then. I remember one moment in the Harry Potter books where this was used. I remember many times laughing at silly ghost stories we used to tell when I was a kid at a slumber party. Probably the most effective media for this element are theatrical productions and film, where it is much easier to generate the sort of emotional focus and climatic tension necessary for big laughs. Give it a try sometime and let me know how you go.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

Elements of Comedy Introduction

Other unlikely combinations will also cause humour. Many comedy duos like to present a couple of characters who are distinct in ways that makes it improbable they would team up. The most common duo is the “Odd Couple”, where one character is clean and meticulous and the other is slobby and lackadaisical. This was made famous by Neil Simon’s play The Odd Couple, but we also see it in Lano and Woodley, Lister and Rimmer in Red Dwarf, and a number of sitcoms dealing with married life.

These combinations are not automatically people who are “opposites”, but rather people who have characteristics that are likely to cause differences to arise. A ballet dancer is not the “opposite” of a police officer, neither is a hippy, a
conspiracy theorist, nor a grandmotherly community activist, but you can easily imagine humorous scenarios arising from a clash in world outlooks between these combinations. In fact by not being “opposites” the audience is likely to be intrigued and perhaps touched by those times where the gap between these people is bridged, and they find they can cooperate, even if for only a few moments.

Other unlikely combinations may be a threat and what is required to overcome it: zombies succumb to plastic forks. Or the password to a gangsters lair: teddy bears. Or what pleases a potential partner: a particularly dainty young woman who swoons at being given power tools, or a butch young man joyfully accepting the latest issue of Tea Cosies and You. The list goes on. Most of these examples are playing around with cultural expectations and stereotypes. This is why they seem unlikely. More and more women are getting into DIY home renovation, so the humour in a woman happily receiving an electric drill is almost gone.  However, give that same woman a jack hammer and you will probably still get a laugh.

As a late Friday exercise (sorry, I’m moving house ) write:

1. an unlikely duo
2. facing an unlikely threat
3. with an unlikely weapon.

For example: a barmaid and a pixie are forced to rid their land of a dragon and all they have is a brightly coloured ostrich feather.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

Elements of Comedy Introduction

Transformations are when something or someone changes into something comically distinct. Usually comic transformations are fast, like a prince turning into a frog, but they can also be slow.

The film on which I completed the principle photography last year makes use of both slow and fast transformations. One character, the son of a bogan father, has caught an STD turning him into a fairy. Throughout the movie we watch as he suffers the embarrassment of gaining one fairy-like characteristic after another, such as poofy wings on his back. His transformation is a running gag. Also in this film are a horde of minion ninjas. When the ninjas attack, they are ultimately defeated by our bogan fairy, who with a wave of a sausage stick (his erstaz wand), turns ninjas instantly into harmless mascot bunnies.

The humour in transformations may come from the surprise factor. It may also come from that stage in our childhood development when we learned about the continuity of beingness. A can of beans will continue to be a can of beans, even if we turn away then quickly turn back. Therefore it’s funny to pretend that maybe it turns into a confused warthog. We now know reality doesn’t work that way, so it’s funny to intentionally get it wrong (perhaps a form of
rule breaking humour). This is the same reason why some people find the misplacement of apostrophe’s hilarious.

Inversions have a similar comic impact as transformations, but the change must be swift in order to be funny. Someone at the top of a tall ladder who unexpectedly, but safely, falls to the bottom is funny. Someone at the top of the ladder who climbs down in a minute or two is not.

Usually, someone in a high position suddenly moving to a low position is the funniest inversion. A king instantly
becoming a street sweeper we find funny because it speaks to our frustration and desire to see those above us fall below us. However, someone being given a balloon and improbably being jerked up, such that they are flailing around in a panic—that’s funny. It’s also funny when a bunch of tough guys are all fighting over a prize, thereby making it possible for a little bespectacled geek to go from zero to hero and carry off a trophy twice his size. Mind you, the tough guys have been brought low, but it has been made funny by the exaggerated change in circumstances for the geek.

Inversions can be horizontal as well as vertical, or any directions you like. It’s a matter of going from one extreme to another: old to young, short to tall, weak to strong, etc.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

Elements of Comedy Introduction

Ignorance and enlightenment are a matter of who knows what when. Usually the audience is in on the joke. Let’s say Aaron has been dating a big glam-rock star’s daughter. The relationship is quite a sweet one. When Aaron thinks he’s hanging out with a group of roadies and tries to impress by bragging about this relationship, he doesn’t realise that one of them is his girlfriend’s father without the makeup and glam gear. As the audience we watch on in horror and amusement as Aaron shoves his foot unwittingly further and further down his throat. The humour might be compounded by a friend who is frantically waving at Aaron to stop, since he’s understands the situation.

The next step in this scenario might be the girlfriend turns up chirping, “Oh Aaron, you’ve been introduced to Daddy!”  Aaron has now been enlightened as to his predicament and he needs to figure out how much he has given away and begin the painfully humorous effort of trying to dig himself out. When the father becomes enlightened to parts of the situation, as well as the girlfriend, these will also provide moments of uncomfortable humour involving poor silly Aaron.

Some Like It Hot ends with the character of Osgood, who has been determinedly offering marriage to Daphne, finally becoming enlightened that she is a man. He then utters the film’s memorable last line, “Well, nobody’s perfect.” This
enlightens the audience that perhaps Osgood’s sexuality is a bit blurred or that he’s desperate, and gets a laugh. Here the element of ignorance and enlightenment overlaps with the element of surprise and may in fact be a distinct subset.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

Elements of Comedy: Introduction

Imagine what a busy intersection would look like if we had no traffic rules. The crash repair guys would love it. These rules frequently feel annoying. Perhaps you are late for a meeting and would dearly like to be going 100k in a 60k zone. Even worse, some guy cuts in front of you and you want  to rev the car up and smash his back bumper.

The rules of physics are equally as annoying. Fumble your mother’s chinaware and next thing you know you’re cleaning up a broken teapot for which you will be paying for the rest of your life…damn that gravity.

We all need humour to help us blow off some steam from the frustration of obeying or being subject to rules. We aren’t laughing at awkwardness here, as with inappropriate action. This is frequently the pre-meditated stuff.

One comedic trope is to put a big shiny red button into a room with a big sign saying “DO NOT PRESS!” You know before long that button is going to be pressed and the results are going to be disastrous and funny. The title characters in The Blues Brothers are considered heroes because they freely break rules in service of their higher calling: to get the band back together. Some similar humour is often had when a pregnant woman is being taken to a hospital to give birth: parking laws, speed laws, etc are all broken without a second thought.

But you don’t actually have to have a good reason to break rules. Warner Bros characters are endlessly breaking the rules of physics by, for instance, stepping out of an elevator before it hits the ground such that elevator is trashed, person comes off unharmed. We love the absurdity of breaking these rules, especially since they make the world a safer place.

Mind you, many people enjoy living vicariously through stand-ups who flirt with danger. The  comedian will tell stories about breaking various laws or standing up to figures of power such as police officers or even big bikies to a thunderous response. We are getting closer to wish fulfillment here.

Don’t think you actually have to break any rules in order to talk about it for a laugh. I have one friend who had a routine about dealing with a tax audit. He’s never even been in a tax office. However, I would happily stand beside George Carlin and break the law censoring free speech by reciting the “Seven naughty words you can’t say on TV.”

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

Elements of Comedy Introduction

Even usually savvy characters can have an innocent moment when they act outside of expectations. A man could be brushing on a layer of paint and when he accidentally spills some, absent-mindedly wipes it up with his handkerchief.
When his girlfriend decked out in a business suit ready for a job interview sneezes, he could just as absent-mindedly offer her that same handkerchief resulting in her getting paint all over her face. No rules are broken here, but he has unwittingly compromised his sweetheart.

Our culture has so many shifting expectations and norms that we find a sense of relief when we can laugh at someone else who “gets it” even less than we do. These people can also become likeable anti-heroes. The film Napoleon Dynamite celebrates its lead character’s good-natured freedom from social convention. We laugh at and admire Napoleon at the same time, so it’s not solely an issue of superiority.

This element of comedy offers the possibility of subtlety and a means by which to build our understanding and sympathy for a character as a loveable doofus.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

Elements of Comedy Introduction

Nonsense is probably one of the earliest forms of comedy to which we are all exposed. How many of you have read Dr Seuss? How about watched Bugs Bunny, The Monkees, Bannana Splits, or more recently, Sponge Bob Square Pants?

One of my first jobs was with Intructional Media Services at my university. My job included going out to classes, fiddling with media equipment, and showing films, videos, or slides on the cue of the lecturer. I even had a card to show I was qualified to run 35mm projectors. One of the courses for which I played projector monkey was in childhood development. I was amazed to see that much of what makes us laugh has to do with our cognitive evolution.

If as adults we were presented with the sheer volume of new and alien experiences that a child does, we might find ourselves overwhelmed and fearful. Children sometimes react this way as well, but they also have a great capacity to blink a few times in amazement then laugh.

The whole world is already nonsense to a child, the point is that they are learning how to make sense of it by engaging with the new and strange. Retaining our capacity to be amazed rather than fearful of new experiences makes it possible for us to continue to grow, learn, and enjoy life. Those who stop playing with nonsense stay at home and watch cop shows; those who continue have it in them to go flying off to India and see the Taj Mahal, even though the most foreign thing they’ve dealt with before is a burrito from Taco Bell.

In the US nonsense comedy is primarily relegated to media for children. Though, recently we’ve seen shows such as Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies exploring the fanciful (the marvelous  Bryan Fuller created both). Great Britain has long supported Absurdist and Surreal comedy as adult entertainment. I will make one caveat. No doubt many of you immediately thought “Monty Python”.

When I was a child my brother, sister, and I loved Monty Python. We would be laughing our heads off. My father, who loves laughing himself, would get quite angry because he couldn’t see the humour. We were laughing at the absurdity and Dad was looking for something more in the line of Benny Hill. We were based in the US. I have now lived in Australia for twenty years and have spent some time in London. Many of the jokes North Americans have laughed at in Monty Python, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and the Discworld series of books as absurd are in fact intended to be satirical.

Probably the most nonsensical TV series I’ve seen since Mork and Mindy is the British show The Mighty Boosh <http://www.themightyboosh.com/>. Not only do the characters fly off to other planets in search of the bathroom shower of youth, they will engage with anthropomorphised objects such as a human fire or a human calendar. I adore it when people rummage around in their imaginations and come up with creations that are unexpected and original. Hats off to creators Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding for working so hard to make this show possible. I remember when they came out to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and won the Barry Humphries Award. My friend Janet McLeod who works with the festival was emailing all of us to go see Autoboosh, the stage precursor to the TV series.

What nonsense humour reminds us in comedy is that anything goes when it comes to our imagination and creating laughter. I feel a large part of the artistry of humour comes from nonsense.

Today’s exercise: Come up with three totally outrageous absurd ideas.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

Elements of Comedy Introduction

• Nonsense
• Inappropriate action
• Breaking rules: eg physics, society…
• Ignorance and enlightenment
• Transformations and instant inversions
• Unlikely Combinations
• Fear followed quickly by relief
• Surprise
• Exaggeration: overstatement and understatement

You may ask: why are inappropriate action and breaking rules separate elements? You could have a character who every time they see a bug, they squash it. This breaks no rules of society or physics. Let’s say this character is at the same hotel as an entomology conference. Suddenly, stomping on bugs can become very inappropriate and very funny.

Similar questions could be asked as to why I have made “fear” and “surprise” separate elements and have not separated “overstatement” and “understatement”.

I’ve decided to take my microscope out and examine each of these elements in turn over the next several weeks. In that time you may begin to see the logic behind my selections. Hopefully, we can have a bit of fun while we are at it. I especially look forward to your feedback.

Peace and kindness,
Katherine