On Wednesday, March 21, 2007, at 10:57 PM, Robert Torres wrote:
>
> the audience may be laughing, but I certainly don't find it funny for
> someone that always claims to be fair, kind and generous to have them
> yell at you and being told to 'shut up', especially someone that makes
> the frequent claim that the audience are the final arbiters.
You've pretty much summed up there an example of the use of irony in
humour. So perhaps broadening the discussion a little into what I hope
will be a potentially more interesting area...
It's often said that the difference between British and American sense
of humour (humor for our American friends!) is that the British love
ironic humour. And that's why a lot of British comedy doesn't translate
to American markets. A lot of the humour in JAM is definitely ironic,
almost all of the material around Nicholas certainly but a lot of other
stuff as well. My favourite line when Aimi Macdonald is counting up
"one, two, three...:" on the subject roulette, and after a wrangle over
a challenge, Peter Jones says "can we get on, I'm very anxious to get
into the 30s!" That is an excellent example of ironic humour.
Much of the humour of Kenneth Williams is highly ironic. The shouting
about his gold-spun hair, the way he will praise Nicholas one minute and
call him a "great nit" the next, etc etc.
I've never been sure that irony isn't a part of American humor though.
For example, I'm just watching this week a DVD of The Cosby Show and a
lot of the humour there is through the characters teasing each other
ironically.
I hear people say who they think is funny - the reality is we all have a
different sense of humour and to say someone "simply isn't funny" always
seems to me to be a dangerous comment to make. The British TV comic,
Benny Hill was hugely successful for a very long time. For those who
haven't seen him, his humour was based around him chasing after, or
being chased by buxom young women, and on double entendre. To me the
humour is stale and repetitive - but millions if not billions found him
absolutely hillarious.
Perhaps any Americans on the list might like to comment on the
differences as they see them between American and British senses of
humour, and perhaps why they feel themselves they like this very British
comedy show JAM. I rather doubt the average American would find Kenneth
Williams funny - or Paul Merton or Clement Freud for that matter. Or do
you think they could have made it big in the US if opportunity had
struck.
And what else makes you laugh - especially American comedians/comedy
shows...