The following are my notes from an interview I did with some friends of mine over lunch.
What makes people laugh? - funny things, bad things happening to other people
Why do people laugh? - it makes us happy, real laughter is a response to something, fake laughter doesn't trigger the same emotions
What about the Joker? Why does he laugh? - he's crazy, he takes pleasure from other peoples' pain
But why isn't that funny to us? - because we don't think that way
So is there a universal standard of funny? - no
Why not? - people have different experiences, different cultures value different things, no two people think exactly alike
Their answers here are very similar to the discussions we had in class last week where we discovered that there is no standard for what defines a civilization. Different cultures place emphasis and value on different things. During the age of exploration the Europeans placed value on technology and innovation. But the native peoples had a completely different standard for what made them civilized. Don't believe me? Watch Pocahontas.
In the same way, there is no single standard for what makes something funny. I personally don't find America's Funniest Home Videos funny after the first couple of episodes; I think it gets repetitive. But I know people who could watch it for hours.
So what does that mean for those of us who consider ourselves funny (and I, maybe not so humbly, include myself among them)? I think it should give us pause to know that people find us funny because we meet their (subconscious) criteria for "humorous", and, should we find ourselves in a different time or culture, we might not enjoy the comedic successes we do now.
