I Was Only Joking

Blog 1: Comic Relief Chapter 2

So far I am not a fan of this book. It may be linked to the notion that I had that this book was going to be humorous. As of yet I have not found it humorous. Even the examples that the book uses to explain what a certain theory entails are not funny.  Morreall could have done a better job of using humor to explain humor. Even the cartoon at the start of Chapter 2: Fight or Flight-or Laughter is not humorous. I showed it to a few of my friends to see if they thought it was worth a chuckle but they agreed that it was not funny, just dull.

Nevertheless some of the statements Morreall makes are thought provoking. He begins the chapter by discussing humorous amusement in ancient philosophical times. While the author does not think Plato and Hobbes were correct in their assertions about humor, they were at least on the right path. They were in the right genre in that they figured laugher was linked to emotion. I think that our emotions do play a large role in our laughter. There are times when people are incredibly sad or grief stricken and do not laugh; but they also may be able to laugh at s joke or image that they normally would not find humorous. Our emotional state before the laugh is a major indicator or what we will laugh at.

Later in the chapter, Morreall discusses how humorous words do not always elicit a funny idea but the sounds they make can be the funny part. I would agree with this and think that most people would because we tend to laugh when people make a funny sound. This section made me think of my friends and I. Our interactions involve a lot of laughing. But sometimes it is not the idea of what someone said but how they said it. Or sometime the sound of their laugh is enough for us to laugh. I definitely think that Morreall was on the right track with this idea of a strong connection between sounds and laughter.

“I can’t be afraid of you or angry at you…and amused by you at the same time” (Morreall, 33). This quote is something I disagree with. I can be angry with someone and mad at them at the same time. My dad is an excellent example of this. I can be angry with him for doing something but when he makes a dumb joke I laugh and find him humorous. I am still feeling angry with him, but was able to be amused. I didn’t know if this was something unusual that only I was able to feel, so I asked my roommates and they agreed with me. They say that they believe they too can be angry with a person, but if they hear a funny story they are telling they can laugh along and be amused by this person. I think Morreall needs to reconsider this point, because as far as I can tell it is off basis.

The last major thing that stuck out from the reading was the disclaimer of “I was only joking”. I will admit that I am guilty of this at times. When I take a joke too far and see that someone is getting upset I use the disclaimer of “I was only joking”. I want an out so I can stop the joke without looking like the bad guy. One instance that came to mind while I was reading this was when my friends and I were out to dinner one night. We were at Rain Forest Café and had terrible service. They forgot our drinks, threw our food down on the table, never brought the ketchup we asked for, made us move tables halfway through our meal, and took 35 minutes to bring the check. It was a pretty bad meal. So when it was time to pay, my one friend only left a $1 tip and we all started laughing. She didn’t realize that leaving a dollar tip was a way of saying we had terrible service she just only had a dollar to leave. But we all still laughed for a good couple of minutes. But she could not take the joke or having us laugh at her, so we had to use the disclaimer “I was only joking”. (To this day we still laugh about it.)