HUmor Elective Class

I need a paper contrasting 2 separate types of humor like trevor noah feel free to include 1 or two more who is a master at satire in political views versus ethnic/cultural humor like fluffy iglesias, russel peters.
You should choose examples that you will be able to discuss
and analyze in terms of the ideas and theories you have studied in this course.
In your Presentation, you are required to make:

2
references to any concepts or ideas that you learned in this course
EXCEPT FOR the 3 theories of humor. For example, include any of: the element of
surprise/incongruency in humor; what is a “true comedian’s” joke? sense and
non-sense in jokes; or any others.
More info about the 3 Theories
of Humor: Superiority, Relief and Incongruity
The so-called ‘theories’ are simply elements or ingredients that
are present in every joke to make it successful.
SUPERIORITY: A brief example: you see someone walking ahead
of you all of a sudden slip up on a banana peel — you laugh, you find it
funny. Why? Because: 1) it’s not you; 2) the way the person tries to catch
their balance while falling down. In other words, we laugh because we’re at a
safe remove from the unfortunate person and thus feel ‘superior’ to them, while
experiencing their awkward gestures of falling.
This safe ‘superiority’ distance can be found in relation to how
you used to be in the past or a day ago. When you remember something funny from
your past, you may realize it was not funny to you at the time when it
happened, but now with time providing a distance from that moment you find it
funny. So you feel ‘superior’ to your old self and can make fun of
yourself. Many stand-up comedians do that – someone like Kevin Hart is very
good at making fun of his past experiences (because he is no longer in that
place). Any joke requires that psychological remove through time or physical
distance, otherwise it is just too painful. Does this make sense?

RELIEF: We enjoy comedy because laughing puts us in a happy mood.
We all know that but why is that?? When we laugh we release mental pressure and
stress that we normally live with. At the end of a long day, when we laugh at a
joke we instantly feel better not necessarily because a joke is funny but
because a little laughter releases inner tension, for however briefly.

INCONGRUITY: Every joke is constructed according to Incongruity
principle, meaning that there is something that goes against our expectation or
is INCOMPATIBLE with what we think should happen. If a joke follows the same
rules and norms as everything else does, then there will be no laughter because
that’s what we expect to happen in the first place. Every joke contains a grain
of incongruity in regards to the social rules/customs we live by. When Kevin
Hart makes fun of his height it is incompatible with the norm because in a
polite society we do not laugh at short persons. Absurd jokes is the ultimate
example of incongruity.
Satire:
As mentioned
before, it is a form of criticism that relies on humor to make criticism more
palatable and entertaining. The goal of this funny criticism is to change the
world, to make it better. Satire makes fun of immorality, faults, shortcomings
of a person or society in order to correct them. As we saw in “SantaLand
Diaries”, satire is used to expose people’s prejudices, weaknesses and
imperfections where it is least expected. Political satire, for example,
is definitely used in this way — to expose the faults of politicians. Today’s
political comedy is everywhere but one can argue it is used more as a form of
entertainment than to bring about tangible improvements.
Dark humor is highly popular on the internet
today. The reason may be that the internet provides anonymity the way a live
show with an audience (or a family in front of TV does not). One can post on
the internet the most provocative statements/memes without any
consequences.
Dark humor is also popular because of its
shock effect. It catches our attention more quickly than other forms of humor.
Anything disturbing or outrageous triggers deep and strong emotions in human
beings.
However, originally (way before the onset of
technology), dark humor aimed not at shocking or entertaining people, but at
pushing the limits of what was acceptable in a society. Dark humor was in a way
therapeutic because it allowed to laugh at painful, tragic events in one’s life
in order to overcome them, to make difficulties more bearable. To use an
extreme example, laughing at death was not meant to shock the audience but to
make death less of a taboo topic and more acceptable to talk about, so that
people could overcome the pain of it.
Absurd humor implies that logic is a mere
convention, a practicality and a custom that we have been habituated to and
don’t question anymore. Think about how logic is perceived in different
countries and cultures: in one culture what is considered “logical”
(aside from 2+2=4) may not be the same as in another part of the world. So
absurdity/nonsense questions this habit and suggests that rationality may not
be “natural” but simply imposed on us for practical reasons.
Lastly, absurd humor (like dark humor)
undermines the idea that there is meaning in the world. It seems to say the
world/reality makes

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