As I am nearing the end of my string of posts about humor in Texts from Last Night, so I thought it would be appropriate to reflect on general trends that have revealed themselves to me after reading pages and pages of texts. One of most commonplace type of jokes are the "sucker jokes" (which sometimes also include good news/bad news jokes and even anti-romantic jokes that make the naive person the sucker). Even in my posts, many jokes can be traced back to this format that provokes us to laugh because we are not in an unfortunate situation or because it makes us feel especially clever.
Classic example from our never ending source TFLN: (708): He fell asleep and they duct taped him to the floor. He's pissed.
For this text, 2295 people thought it was a "good night," while only 255 people thought it was a "bad night," according to the "good night"/ "bad night" buttons. This means that only about 1 in 10 people sympathized with the guy that was duck taped. Meanwhile, an overwhelming majority aligned themselves with the tricksters and thought the prank hilarious. Comments included "Classic prank. Funny every time," "I'd do that if my friend passed out on the floor..." and "A real winner would have taped him to the ceiling..."
Does this mean that Americans are just sadistic people? Possibly. But that would be oversimplifying the reaction to these jokes. So, let's break it down.
In the middle of writing this post, I actually browsed my classmates' blogs, desperate for inspiration. I found Julia's post (I think its hers) about Tom and Jerry, a favorite of mine from childhood. Why did I find that funny? I mean, if you go beyond the instinctive laughter that inevitably escapes your lips no matter what age you are, the cartoon is just Tom and Jerry hurting each other. Those injuries are not funny. We don't see people getting beat up and instinctively laugh as we would while watching Jerry run backwards into a piece of Jello to launch himself forward and throw a candle stick at Tom, thereby setting him on fire. Therefore, it's not the violence nor Tom's unfortunately burned tail that makes us laugh.
In that one skit, besides the result, there's only the means of which Jerry injures Tom left. I think that is where the funny lies. This is to say that it is the cleverness or even the creativity in the method in which this violence was incurred that evokes laughter. And really, that is the difference between a prank and a deliberate act of injury. A prank causes pain (sometimes) in a creative, not-as-direct way. Thus, when we laugh, we are enjoying the creativity and cleverness of the plot more than the end result.
Going back to the joke we started with, we don't laugh because the person is pissed or is stuck. However, it is funny that the person was probably ducked taped to the ground like a silver mummy.
Consequently, classifying these sucker jokes may be an oversimplification of the joke's form.
...Or maybe I just don't want to believe that people have a sadistic side to them.
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