The perceived value of "seriousness"

[Guest]

 

[LadyAria]

Honestly, I think it is harder to be successfully funny.

 

[carsonshepherd]

Who would you rather be noticed by? People who like to laugh, or people who are deadly serious?

A country singer-songwriter once told me that when something you've created makes people cry, you know it has power. Same thing, in my opinion, with making people laugh. Talented are the people who have the power to do both.

 

[Huckleman2000]

There's an old adage about an actor who, on his deathbed, was asked if dying was difficult.

"Dying is easy", he said. "Comedy is difficult."

You see this in the bias toward 'serious' films in the Academy Awards, which don't have a comedy or musical category.

To me, this seems the opposite of the bias towards formal structure that Stella mentioned. I don't doubt that Stella is right; I just think that most people don't realize how much formal structure there is in decent comedy. It requires not only a high degree of technical skill, but also a creative sense of nonchalance. You can't telegraph the joke too much beforehand, and you can't let the humor seem forced. The humor must occur to the reader as they are reading it, so it's somewhat an exercise in diverting or otherwise controlling their attention. It entails setting up patterns and breaking them, or using non-standard punctuation or sentence structure, or writing with a good ear for the spoken word. It involves breaking conventions, or calling undue attention to them. Comedy is highly technical, despite its lowbrow reputation.

It's also one of the few types of writing that rely heavily on writers' innate talents. It's awfully difficult to teach, I know.

 

[Boxlicker101]

I have written quite a few poems and some of them were quite well received. Most of them, however, don't get reviewed and don't get many votes or views. Most of them are basically dirty stories written in ryhme and meter.

I don't think I have ever seen a limerick that wasn't a joke. Somehow, a "serious limerick" seems like a contradiction.

I tried writing a few haiku and some double dactyls. The former just seem silly and the latter have a very rigid format. I will probably stick with sonnets and limericks in the future.

 

[S-Des]

So as not to hijack Charley's thread:



I think that's a very interesting insight, Stella, and it brings up something I've wondered about. I'm pretty proud of all of my humor stories (even if they were just random scribblings by a monkey in red jammies). Perhaps egotistically, it wouldn't have surprised me to get an "E" on one or two of them.

It did surprise me that I got an "E" on "The Cat Hater." It's not any better than "Lil's First Dance" or "Sock Love," it was written in exactly the same thoughtless, plotless fashion, so why the accolade?

The only conclusion I've been able to come to is that humans generally place more value on "serious" things than "fun" things. It's very nice to make people laugh, but you don't get noticed until you make people cry.

Thoughts?

I mentioned this privately, but I did enjoy The Cat Hater more. I don't know if this is prejudice on my part (feeling one type of story has more "value" than another), or just my tendency to be morose. I know my stories tend to be about drama and pain. I'm not sure if that's all I feel I'm good at, or if it's an attempt to work out inner demons, but I wouldn't even attempt a humor piece (I don't believe I could do it).

I liked Stella's comment about her poem, it was very interesting. The question of humor vs tragedy stories is equally thought provoking. Unfortunately, unlike Weird Harold, I don't have answers.

 

[Liar]

The only conclusion I've been able to come to is that humans generally place more value on "serious" things than "fun" things. It's very nice to make people laugh, but you don't get noticed until you make people cry.

Thoughts?

There are of course exceptions, but in general, artistic expressions that appeal too strongly to emotions have long been looked down upon by the high-brow. The general consesus there seems to be that sappy romance, tear-jerking melodrama and shock horror are often the most effective when applied in moderate terms. Or else we're in pulp novel land. It's easy to get tacky.

Humor goes against that, by having a much higher level of tackiness tolerance. Humor that doesn't get a little hyperbolic is often not very funny. But it's still treated the same way. It appeals to lower functions of of your brain. According to my high school psychology books, laughter is a subconscoius reaction to the confusion of seeing unlikely elements combined. And intellectuals don't want to get confused. They want their smartness confirmed, not challenged. They want to nod , snap their fingers and say "hear hear".

 

[rgraham666]

From my favourite book.

SERIOUS Proper to ideology, conformism, expertise, political correctness of all sorts. A form of social control. See: COMEDY

Which leads us to:

COMEDY The least controllable use of language and therefore the most threatening to people in power.

The COMEDY entry is actually a great deal longer, but I'm too lazy to type the whole thing in right now.

 

[Recidiva]

I think Stella is just modest. I have an E, and it wasn't the slightest bit serious. Whimsical.

Although there may be some that vote according to structure, I think that themes and depth have more to do with it, and Stella's an extraordinary author.

 

[Guest]

The only conclusion I've been able to come to is that humans generally place more value on "serious" things than "fun" things. It's very nice to make people laugh, but you don't get noticed until you make people cry.

Thoughts?

the only conclusion...the only serious conclusion is:

make them laugh until they cry.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

I mentioned this privately, but I did enjoy The Cat Hater more.

I liked the Cat Hater... but I LOVE the sock-lovin' series... they tickle and delight me beyond belief...

and I'm in the camp that believes that humor is a helluva lot harder than writing sad stuff... I'm the queen of unhappy/ambiguous endings... those are easy... writing humor!? now that's a challenge...

but I think Jammies is right about people viewing "serious" subject matters more as "serious" works of literature. It's unfortunate, but true.

 

[cantdog]

From my favourite book.



Which leads us to:



The COMEDY entry is actually a great deal longer, but I'm too lazy to type the whole thing in right now.

Comics are the fools of the twenty-first century.

 

[rgraham666]

Comics are the fools of the twenty-first century.

Which is why those with power hate them so. They can't stand to be laughed at.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I don't know. I think comedy is pretty easy. At least silly comedy is easy. Serious comedy is tough.

Comedy's also a lot like porn and horror. It's of the moment and non-heuristic and has no reward but itself. What do they say? Life's a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel. Comedy's like Pop-rocks. Feels good but doesn't nourish you.

It's interesting, though, that both porn and horror tread a fine line and are always in danger of stumbling and degenerating into unintentional comedy. Don't know why that is, but there's nothing funnier than a bad horror or porn movie. It's like all that serious emotion just explodes into laughter.

And then, a lot of great comics do comedy to escape their own terrible sadness. You never hear of people doing tragedy because their ives are just so damned funny.

 

[NoJo]

Anyone who thinks that comedy is funny doesn't know the first thing about it.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I think that Dr. M. has nailed it. There's "serious comedy" and light comedy, and they achieve different things. They also succeed in different ways.

I'd call "serious" comedy a unified work that uses comedy to achieve an end and "light" comedy a work, sometimes disjointed, in which laughter is itself the only end. Catch-22, for example, is in my opinion one of the funniest books ever written. It's also taken quite seriously by critics because it's a "serious" comedy; the humor works to support a central insight, and it pushes you relentlessly toward that conclusion. Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court works the same way, as do Swift's satires and many of Dickens' novels, and they also have gained critical respect.

Light comedies I think get less attention partly because they aim for less, and partly because they can fail in more ways and still make their way into the world. A non-humor short story (or television show) that entirely lacked a coherent plot, good characterization, and effective use of style would have a rough time getting published or produced, but a comedy with the same problem can still have a few laughable jokes scattered through it, in much the same way that an action movie could still have a few cool explosions and special effects. Any of those genres can produce excellent work, but it's easier to get some types of bad work out than others, and the bad tends to make people leery of the good.

Or so I ramble.

Shanglan

 

[Guest]

 

[BlackShanglan]

Interesting, Doc and Shang, but what I'm groping for is the reason why we think comedy is less important?

Why is making people cry of more value than making people laugh?

My own personal theory is that it's a peculiarly American idea handed straight down from our Puritan forebears. Fun is evil, suffering is good. Therefore, making people laugh isn't nearly as valuable as making people cry.

I guess I'm saying that I don't think we value comedy less than tragedy, or laughs less than sobs. I think that we tend to value works with thematic goals as well as emotional ones more highly. Comedy just has an easier time working the non-thematic end, because more people will enjoy a few jokes with nothing to really drive them than will enjoy a few sobs without anything to hold the plot together. Ergo, we get more comedy that shoots only for the emotional effect.

There are sad things that do the same, and I think that they get about the same respect. Soap operas, which thrive on drama and misery, are valued about as much as situation comedies going for laughs, because both aim mostly at emotion and little else. Humor that aims for a deeper message (like the works I mentioned above) tends to get the same respect as tragedy or drama heading the same way. I think it just gets written less, because more people will buy comedy that doesn't strive for a thematic effect.

Shanglan

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Why is making people cry of more value than making people laugh?

I don't think the idea is to make them cry. I think the idea is to make them think and feel more deeply. Laughter is just one segment of the spectrum of human emotions, and the opposite of comedy isn't seriousness. The opposite of comedy is bathos or gratuitous tear-jerking, and like light comedy, the goal of bathos is purely to elicit an emotional response: comedy makes you laugh, bathos makes you cry. In between comedy and bathos is the whole spectrum of human feeling and emotion you're calling "seriousness". That's a big area, and it's where most of us spend our lives. What you call "serious" literature has to do with such out-of-fashion concepts as truth and beauty and insight. That's some pretty valuable and important stuff. Fiction is how we try to make sense of the chaos of our lives.

Comedy is great, of course, and laughter is probably the next best thing to sex (at least that's what women often tell me when they see my penis), but when I think about the books and movies that have really changed my life and the way I look at things, they've all been what you'd call "serious".

Stephen King makes the same complaint about his horror stories--why doesn't anyone take them seriously as literature? And the answer is the same. His stories can be great entertainment and contain brilliant and imaginative writing, but they rarely give you the kind of life-changing wisdom and insight you get from from what's considered real literature.

But like Shang and Joe say, you can have serious comedy too. Oscar Wilde was like that, and Joseph Heller, and Thomas Berger.

 

[NoJo]

Comedy, Thrillers and Science Fiction sell really well. The First Rule of Snobbishness dictates that they are therefore inferior to less popular genres.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Comedy, Thrillers and Science Fiction sell really well. The First Rule of Snobbishness dictates that they are therefore inferior to less popular genres.

I don't think snobbishness is the answer, and for the same reason as Dr. M. cites with Stephen King. Works in these genres are not inherently bad, but they don't often set their sites on substantial insight into the human condition. When they do, they are as powerful as anything else; Robert Silverberg's Dying Inside has always struck me as an excellent novel, and some of the great works of the Western canon - Gulliver's Travels, Utopia, Beowulf, 1984 - are fantasy or science fiction. They're valued not because of their genre but because of their depth and insight.

I don't think that there is anything wrong with setting out to entertain or amuse on a purely emotional or "spectacle" level. I like a good bit of light entertainment; it's pleasant and it makes people happy. But I think it's disingenous to take that as a goal and then complain about not being taken seriously. Either one values powerful insight into humanity and strives for it, or one doesn't. Either goal is fair, but there's no point in deciding to write light entertainment and then complaining that it's not taken seriously.

Shanglan

 

[CharleyH]

So as not to hijack Charley's thread:



I think that's a very interesting insight, Stella, and it brings up something I've wondered about. I'm pretty proud of all of my humor stories (even if they were just random scribblings by a monkey in red jammies). Perhaps egotistically, it wouldn't have surprised me to get an "E" on one or two of them.

It did surprise me that I got an "E" on "The Cat Hater." It's not any better than "Lil's First Dance" or "Sock Love," it was written in exactly the same thoughtless, plotless fashion, so why the accolade?

The only conclusion I've been able to come to is that humans generally place more value on "serious" things than "fun" things. It's very nice to make people laugh, but you don't get noticed until you make people cry.

Thoughts?

Good for you! Hard to hijak one who ... gives a shit.

 

[NoJo]

I don't think snobbishness is the answer, and for the same reason as Dr. M. cites with Stephen King. Works in these genres are not inherently bad, but they don't often set their sites on substantial insight into the human condition. When they do, they are as powerful as anything else; Robert Silverberg's Dying Inside has always struck me as an excellent novel, and some of the great works of the Western canon - Gulliver's Travels, Utopia, Beowulf, 1984 - are fantasy or science fiction. They're valued not because of their genre but because of their depth and insight.

I don't think that there is anything wrong with setting out to entertain or amuse on a purely emotional or "spectacle" level. I like a good bit of light entertainment; it's pleasant and it makes people happy. But I think it's disingenous to take that as a goal and then complain about not being taken seriously. Either one values powerful insight into humanity and strives for it, or one doesn't. Either goal is fair, but there's no point in deciding to write light entertainment and then complaining that it's not taken seriously.

Shanglan

But the writer's motive, or the sights set, is not so important (Shakespeare's motives were not grand).

I'm aware of the strong American tradition that grew out of Romanticism, which somewhat dishonestly edifies a "true" writer's honest, raw emotion and passion to mythic proportions. And I don't buy into that mythology. I'm reminded of the hilarious British film "The Rebel", which gently lampoons a frustrated bank clerk's attempt to become another Jackson Pollock.

Let me get what I get from a story. My own tastes in fiction (and music, movies and painting) are a mixture of lowbrow and highbrow, which I think is quite common.

Usually, it's something quite obvious, like the vocabulary and writing style, which we use to differentiate "serious" from less serious stuff.

 

[Zayrina]

Still smarting over ROE and his incomprehensible (to me at least) style that got heaps of praise?

I feel that serious has more appeal because it tends to be more universal.
Humor, OTOH is more individual and personal. I despise the humor of the 3 stooges, Abott and Costello, and Jerry Lewis as examples, yet it is obvious to me that they hold a lot of appeal to a large segment.

Thus I ramble....

 

[Guest]