Glossary of Terms

Over the years--and, by “years,” we mean centuries and, in fact, millennia-- humorists and comedians have employed a variety of techniques to get their readers or audiences to giggle, snicker, sniggle, chuckle, chortle, titter, and laugh. Some of the more common, defined, once more, courtesy of Webster’s dictionary, are the following.

A

Absurd: Inconsistent with reason or logic or common sense.*

Analogy: Drawing a comparison in order to show a similarity in some respect.

B

Burlesque: A form of COMEDY characterized by ridiculous exaggerations and distortion: the sublime may be made absurd; honest emotions may be turned to SENTIMENTALITY; a serious subject may be treated frivolously or a frivolous subject seriously. The essential quality that makes for burlesque is the discrepancy between subject matter and style. That is, a style ordinarily dignified may be used for nonsensical matter, or a style very nonsensical may be used to ridicule a weighty subject. . . . A distinction between burlesque and PARODY is often made, in which burlesque is a TRAVESTY of a literary form and parody a travesty of a particular work. It has been suggested that parody works by keeping a targeted style constant while lowering the subject, burlesque or travesty by keeping a targeted subject constant while lowering the style (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 74-75).

C

Comedy: A dramatic work in which the protagonist’s fortunes change for the better by the end of the story.

Comedy of Humours: The special type of REALISTIC COMEDY that was developed in the closing years of the sixteenth century by Ben Jonson and George Chapman and that derives its comic interest from the exhibition of CHARACTERS whose conduct is controlled by one characteristic or HUMOUR. Some single psychophysiological humour or exaggerated trait of character gave the important figures in the ACTION a bias or disposition and supplied the chief motive for their actions. Thus, in Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour (acted 1598), which made
this type of PLAY popular, all the words and acts of Kitely are controlled by an overpowering suspicion that his wife is unfaithful; George Downright, a country squire, must be “frank” above all things; the country gull in town determines his every decision by his desire to “catch on” to the manners of the city gallant. In his “Introduction” to Every Man in His Humour (1599), Jonson explains his character formula thus:

Some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his effects, his spirits, and his powers,
In their confluctions, all to run one way.

(William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 110).

Comedy of Manners: A term designating the realistic, often satirical, comedy of the Restoration, as practiced by Congreve and others. . . . The type concerns the manners and conventions of an artificial, highly sophisticated society. The stylized fashions and manners of this group dominate the surface and determine the pace and tone of this sort of comedy. Characters are more likely to be types than individuals. Plot, though often involving a clever handling of situation and intrigue, is less important than atmosphere, dialogue, and satire. The dialogue is witty and finished, sometimes brilliant. The appeal is more intellectual than imaginative. Satire is directed in the main against the follies and deficiencies of typical characters such as fops, would-be wits, jealous husbands, coxcombs, and others who fail somehow to conform to the conventional attitudes and manners of elegant society. A distinguishing characteristic of the comedy of manners is its emphasis on an illicit love duel, involving at least one pair of witty and often amoral lovers (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 111).

Comedy of Morals: A term applied to comedy that uses ridicule to correct abuses, hence a form of dramatic satire, aimed at the moral state of a people or a special class of people (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 111).

Comedy of Situation: A comedy concentrating chiefly on ingenuity of plot rather than on character interest; COMEDY OF INTRIGUE. Background is less important than ridiculous and incongruous situations, a heaping up of mistakes, plots within plots, disguises, mistaken identities, unexpected meetings, close calls (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 111-112).

Court Comedy: Comedy written to be performed at a royal court. . . . Characteristics include: artificial plot; little action; much use of mythology; pageantry; elaborate costuming and scenery; prominence of music, especially songs; lightness of tome; numerous and often balanced characters (arranged in contrasting pairs); style marked by wit, grace, verbal cleverness, quaint imagery; puns; prose dialogue; witty and saucy pages; eccentric characters such as braggarts, witches, and alchemists; much farcical action; and allegorical meanings sometimes in characters and actions (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 125).

D

Double-entendre: A word or expression admitting of a double interpretation, one of which is often obscure or indelicate. Mae West was a master of this device. “I used to be Snow White,” she once quipped, “but then I drifted.”

E

Euphemism: An inoffensive expression that is substituted for one that is considered offensive.

Exaggeration: The act of making something more noticeable than usual; making [something] to seem more important than it really is.

Extravaganza: A fantastic, extravagant, or irregular composition (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 209).

Eye Dialect: The misspelling of a word to suggest dialect. . . . In the sentence, “Ah cain’t kum raht naow,” “kum” is an eye dialect spelling (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 210).

F

Farce: A dramatic piece intended to excite laughter and depending less on plot and character than on improbable situations, the humor arising from gross incongruities, coarse wit, or horseplay. Farce merges into comedy, and the same play (e. g., Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew) may be called by some a farce, by others a comedy (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 213).

Fool: A court jester; in King Lear, Shakespeare labels this clown “the all licensed fool,” referring to the tradition that allowed jesters to speak frankly to the king or queen without fear of reprisal; thus the fool was not a “yes man,” and could serve as a trusted advisor (Pullman).

Framework Story: A type of narrative in which the main story is sandwiched between a prologue and an epilogue (Pullman).

H

High Comedy: Pure or serious comedy as contrasted with LOW COMEDY. High comedy appeals to the intellect and arouses thoughtful laughter by exhibiting the inconsistencies and incongruities of human nature and by displaying the follies of social manners. The purpose is not consciously didactic [educational] or ethical, though serious purpose is often implicit in the satire that is frequent in high comedy. Emotion, especially sentimentality, is avoided. If people make themselves ridiculous by their vanity or ineffective by their conduct or blind adherence to tradition, high comedy laughs at them. . . . Its higher enjoyment demands detachment (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 256).

I

Intrigue Comedy: A comedy in which the major interest is in complications resulting from scheming by one or more characters (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 279).

Irony: Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs (Pullman).

Dramatic Irony: (Theater) irony that occurs when the meaning of the situation is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play.

Situational Irony: The incongruity that results when a later situation upsets the expectations set up by an earlier situation.

Verbal Irony: The incongruity that results when what is said is the opposite of what is meant.

J

Juxtaposition: The act of positioning close together (or side by side) (Pullman).

L

Low Comedy: Low comedy has been called “elemental comedy,” in that it lacks seriousness of purpose or subtlety of manner and has little intellectual appeal. Some features are: quarreling, fighting, noisy singing, boisterous conduct in general, boasting, burlesque, trickery, buffoonery, clownishness, drunkenness, coarse jesting, wordplay, and scolding (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 303).

M

Malapropism: The unintentional misuse of a word by confusion with one that sounds similar.

Metaphor: A figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity.

O

Oxymoron: Conjoining contradictory terms (as in `deafening silence').

Onomatopoeia: Using words that imitate the sound they denote.

P

Parody: A composition that imitates somebody's style in a humorous way. See “Travesty.”

Pun: A humorous play on words; "I do it for the pun of it"

Punch Line: The point of a joke or humorous story. (Mark Twain called the punch line the story’s “snapper.”) (Pullman)

R

Realistic Comedy: Any comedy employing the methods of REALISM but particularly that developed by Jonson, Chapman, Middelton, and other Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists. It is opposed to the ROMANTIC COMEDY of the Elizabethans. It reflects the general reaction in the late 1590s against extravagance as well as an effort to produce an English comedy like the CLASSICAL. This realistic comedy deals with London life, is strongly satirical and sometimes
cynical, is interested in both individuals and types, and rests on observation of life. The appeal is intellectual and the texture coarse (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 431).

Romantic Comedy: A comedy in which serious love is the chief concern and source of interest. . . . Characteristics commonly found include: love as chief motive; much out-of-door action; an idealized heroine (who usually masks as a man); love subjected to great difficulties; poetic justice often violated; balancing of characters; easy reconciliations; and happy ending (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 455).

Running Gag: A humorous theme or situation that frequently snowballs as it is repeated and varied over time (Pullman).

S

Satire: Witty language used to convey insults or scorn.

Satire: A work or manner that blends a censorious attitude with humor and wit for improving human institutions or humanity. Satirists attempt through laughter not so much to tear down as to inspire a remodeling. If attackers simply abuse, they are writing invective; if they are personal and splenetic, they are writing SARCASM; if they are sad and morose over the state of society, they are writing IRONY or a JEREMIAD. As a rule, modern satire spares the individual and follows [Joseph] Addison’s self-imposed rule: to “pass over a single foe to charge whole armies.” Most often, satire deals less with sinners and criminals than with the general run of fools, knaves, ninnies, oafs, codgers, and frauds. . . .

. . Before the Revolution, American satire dealt chiefly with the political struggle. . . . Shortly after the Revolution, . . . [satire] attacked domestic political difficulties and the crudities of our frontier. . . . In the twentieth century. . . In America. . . [writers] commented satirically on human beings and their institutions. Satire is of two major types: formal (or direct) satire, in which the satiric voice speaks, usually in the first person, either directly to the reader or to a character in the satire, called the ADVERSARIES [a sort of straight man]; and indirect satire, in which the satire is expressed through a narrative and the characters who are the butt are ridiculed by what they themselves say and do. Much of great literary satire is indirect; one of the principal forms of indirect satire is the MENIPPEAN (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 464-465).

Formal satire is fundamentally of two types, named for its distinguished classical practitioners: Horatian is gentle, urbane, smiling; it aims to correct by broadly sympathetic laughter; Juvenalian is biting, bitter, angry; it points with contempt and indignation to the corruption of human beings and institutions.

Addison is a Horatian satirist, [Jonathan] Swift a Juvenilian (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 464-465).

Sentimental Comedy: . . . sentimental comedy became very weak dramatically, lacking humor, reality, spice, and lightness of touch. The characters were either so good or so bad that they became caricatures, and plots were violently handled so that virtue would triumph. . . . The sentimental comedy sacrificed dramatic reality in its effort to instruct through an appeal to the heart. The domestic trials of middle-class couples are usually portrayed: Their private woes are exhibited with much emotional stress intended to arouse the spectator’s pity and suspense in advance of the approaching melodramatic happy ending (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 477-478).

Simile: A figure of speech that expresses a resemblance between things of different kinds (usually formed with `like' or `as').

Situation Comedy: A humorous drama based on situations that might arise in day-to-day life.
Slapstick: Boisterous comedy with chases and collisions and practical jokes.

Straight Man: The partner in a stand-up comedy act or a situation comedy whose innocent or rational statements set up the comedian’s humorous responses or comments; George Burns was a straight man to his wife, comedienne Gracie Allen, just as Dick Smothers was a straight man to his brother, fellow comedian Tommy (Pullman).

Synecdoche: A trope [figure of speech] in which a part signifies the whole or the whole signifies the part. To be clear, a good synecdoche should be based on an important part of the whole and, usually, the part standing fro the whole ought to be directly associated with the subject under discussion (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 513).

T

Through Line: The series of aims that, united, propel a character forward in his or her effort to attain a more complex goal.

Tone: The quality of something (an act or a piece of writing) that reveals the attitudes and presuppositions of the author

Travesty: Writing that by its incongruity of treatment ridicules a subject inherently noble or dignified. . . . Travesty may be thought of as the opposite of the MOCK EPIC, because the latter treats a frivolous subject seriously and the travesty usually presents a serious subject frivolously. . . . In general, PARODY ridicules a style by lowering the subject; travesty, BURLESQUE, and CARICATURE ridicule a subject by lowering the style (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 529).

U

Understatement: A statement that is restrained in ironic contrast to what might have been said.

* Unless otherwise indicated, definitions are from Webster’s dictionary, a work in the public domain.

Humorous Techniques: Mark Twain

Copyright 2009 by Gary Pullman

Mark Twain’s humor involves every technique known to humorists: absurdity, analogy, burlesque, exaggeration, eye dialect, farce, high comedy, low comedy, irony, parody, puns and wordplay, satire, slapstick, travesty, understatement, and others. His work cannot be understood without a good knowledge of the vocabulary of humor.

He remains unmatched by other humorists. A study of his work is a must for anyone who aspires to writing humor. Many of Twain’s books are travelogues or contain generous passages that involve long journeys by one or more characters. A Tramp Abroad, Following the Equator, The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, Life on the Mississippi, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are some of his major literary works that are either based upon or include domestic or foreign travel.

In his actual life as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Twain traveled frequently, both in the United States and abroad; his characters frequently did the same. The humorists’ journeys allowed him to compare and contrast the habits and customs of the denizens of one region of the country with those of the residents of another region of the country or the habits and customs of foreigners with those of Americans.

His travels were occasions for him to expose the glaring differences between the claims of travel guidebook authors and his own actual experiences as in visiting them as an unbiased and objective observer.

His voyages also permitted Twain to lampoon local traditions, beliefs, institutions, people, languages, art, and religions as he traveled through Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere. The expeditions themselves unified his sketches and essays, providing a needed backbone for his pieces and allowing his tone to range from whimsical to irate, from appreciative to annoyed, from delighted to outraged.

Sometimes, the travels that Twain’s characters undertook were fanciful, as in “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven,” “Three Thousand Years Among the Microbes,” and Satan’s visit to paradise in A Pen Warmed Up in Hell. These excursions were journeys of the mind through theological, philosophical, and social landscapes, constituting examples of high comedy with a more intellectual than sentimental or moral perspective and concern.

Another of Twain’s techniques was to evaluate the past through the eyes of the present. By having a character from nineteenth-century America travel into the past, visiting King Arthur’s Court, he could judge the persons, places, and things of the past, including the hypocrisies and abuses that resulted from and were maintained by the class distinctions between the nobility and the peasantry and the sanctimony and fraudulence of a greedy and politically entrenched clergy. At the same time, he could contrast modern Yankee ingenuity with medieval technology and hardheaded rationalism and realism against superstitious beliefs and the Middle Ages’ aristocracy’s and clergy’s fondness for fantasy.

Much of Twain’s humor also resulted in mistaken identities or masquerades. When a prince and a pauper trade places, each learns how the other lives and, at the same time, Twain provides himself with the opportunity of criticizing both the abuses of power and the conditions that sustain poverty and misery among the peasantry (a stand-in, perhaps, for the lower classes of his own day and ours). 

Likewise, when Huckleberry Finn poses as a girl whose true gender is surmised by the old lady whom he tries to deceive, Twain suggests that much of one’s identity, including his or her gender, is affected, consisting of mere convention, tradition, and habit which are learned rather than innate. The true self is the will, Twain suggests, as it is exercised in moral deliberation, for it is at the climax of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that the protagonist is faced with the decision to do the right thing, as both church and state dictate, and report Jim’s whereabouts to a mercenary posse or to remain loyal to his friend. This revelation of the true self would not be possible in the novel had Twain’s humor not first established both the goodness of Huck (and Jim) and the wickedness of the society in which he lives and the corruption of the callous institutions that are supported by this society. Next: A Glossary of Terms

Humorous Techniques: Erma Bombeck

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Before we consider specific examples of humorists’ writings, let’s summarize the principles and techniques that we’ve gleaned from our review of the history of comedy and humor and those who have perfected these forms of entertainment.

The Old Comedy of ancient Greece involved bawdy humor, humorous references to body parts and bodily processes, social criticism, puns and wordplay, and the satirical parody of famous men, such as the philosopher Socrates. Middle Comedy and New Comedy replaced the coarse humor of Old Comedy with a comedy of manners and with romantic intrigue that ended in marriage, and established many stock characters. In the fabliaux of the Middle Ages, earthy, even obscene and pornographic, humor returned, in poetic, rather than dramatic, form, as did the biting satire against authority and aristocratic figures, especially hypocritical and sanctimonious clergymen. Modern history’s contribution to comedy and humor takes the form, primarily, of the situation comedy, in which recurring stock characters are involved in amusing situations. Whether two, three, or four acts in length, such comedies tend to follow a circular pattern, offering a twist, at their ends, on the situations and themes with which they began.

In general, as Harman and Holman observe in A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, humor results from a display of “incongruity of speech, action, or character. The incongruity may be verbal, as with a play on words; or bodily, as when stilts are used; or satirical, as when the effect depends upon the beholder’s ability to perceive the discrepancy between fact and pretense exhibited by a braggart. . . . Viewed in another sense, comedy may be considered to deal with people in their human state, restrained and often made ridiculous by their limitations, faults, bodily functions, and animal nature.”

Twain’s humor often offers social criticism as well as burlesque, satire, irony, and parody, which unifies his work and elevates it above mere humor for humor’s sake. His works are also unified through travel, cases of mistaken identity, the commission and solving of a crime, specific historical periods as settings, the use of recurring characters, and the fictionalization of personal experience. Erma Bombeck’s humorous essays are often made coherent by offering comments upon various aspects of an analogy, explicit or implicit, that she draws between one realm of human experience and another or between a realm of human experience and a natural order or phenomenon, as when she compares psychology to ethnology, motherhood to prostitution, or family activities to sadomasochistic bondage and discipline pursuits. Humorous essays must also adhere to a central point of view and to a dominant tone; indeed, the point of view may comprise a refutation of a theological or a philosophical proposition, as Voltaire’s Candide and the Marquis de Sade’s Justine do.

In addition to the topics and themes of comedy and humor that ancient Greek playwrights identified, modern humorists have added process analysis, or “how-to” humor; verbal duels between friendly or romantically involved, but diametrically opposed, characters who are confined to close quarters with one another; ironic fables; teen angst; and grotesque or absurd situations. The more avant-garde humorists reveal the surreal undercurrents that are often active just below the conscious level of the modern mind and its mindset.

Now that we have considered the principles and techniques that apply in general to comedy and humor, let’s look at those which such famous humorists as Erma Bombeck and Mark Twain employ in their work.

How does a writer go about starting a humorous essay? How does he or she introduce the essay’s topic, capture the reader’s interest, and establish his or her tone? Once begun, how does a humorist unify his or her thoughts and humor, and how does he or she structure the essay?

Many humorous essays begin with a confession or a claim, a statement that piques the reader’s interest and lays the foundation for the rest of the piece. These opening sentences are short. Sometimes, they are pithy as well. Ideally, they are themselves funny, although not all of them are. Here is an example, the opening sentences of Erma Bombeck’s “Dieting Is a Losing Battle,” published March 21, 1978:

It’s no use for me to diet. I know that now.

With these sentences, Bombeck:

• Announces her topic (dieting)
• Suggests her attitude toward her topic (dieting is useless)
• Implies that she has learned a lesson from personal experience (“I know that now.”)
• Suggests a plaintive, perhaps humble, and defeated tone.

As we track through Bombeck’s essay, we note that she uses short sentences to form short paragraphs. In addition, she writes in a colloquial, or informal, style that tends to employ short words. Many of her sentences are actually fragments that begin with “And” or “But,” a technique that prevents compound sentences from becoming longer than they would be were they written as correct grammar dictates. She uses contractions, such as “I’m” instead of “I am.” Except for a few necessary functional sentences, such as those which introduce topics, provide transitions, or set up a situation as a way of introducing a punch line, each and every sentence--or, at the very least, each and every paragraph--of her essay contains a humorous phrase, creates a funny situation, or makes a joke.

Having piqued her readers’ interest and established her topic, tone, and point of view, Bombeck next introduces a pair of personifications, as she lets her body do the talking; her knees whisper, and her mouth speaks:

All those years when my knees rubbing together whispered “no, no”but there is a
“yes, yes” in my mouth, I fought the battle.

These personifications indicate body parts (knees and mouth) that are in conflict with one another, and the end of the sentence introduces the analogy upon which Bombeck will develop her essay: dieting = battle, which ties in with the essay’s title, “Dieting Is a Losing Battle.”

She next offers an example of her persistence in fighting her “losing battle”; in doing so, she introduces an element of the absurd, exaggerating her weekly weight problem by locating her loss of weight in her “neck” and her “bust”:

All those years when I lost 10 pounds every Monday (five in my neck and five in my bust), I hung in there.

By repeating the phrase “All those years” and a variant of “I hung in there” (“I gave it my all”), Bombeck continues to suggest her persistence, the humor in the sentence that follows stemming from an absurd metaphor that equates her embracing of “cottage cheese” to a “religion”:
All those years when I embraced cottage cheese as a formal religion, I gave it my all.

Having provided her reader with two examples of her persistent battle, she reiterates her essay’s theme: she is losing the battle.

But after yesterday, I have to admit, I’m beaten. I’m fighting the battle alone.

She says “It started in the morning.” By “it,” she means her loss of her battle to lose weight. Her placing of her hand over her heart and her substitution of the phrase “allegiance to hunger” for “to the flag of the United States” is humorous because the cause to which she allies herself, hunger, is a natural and instinctive drive that needs no allegiance and because such an “allegiance” pales in significance to confessing loyalty to one’s country. Humor often works in this manner, by substituting the trivial for the important. Her “allegiance to hunger,” rather than to dieting, represents a turning point; now that she has decided to give in to “hunger,” she can feel “virtuous” in defying her diet:

It started in the morning when I faced the refrigerator with my hand over my heart and once again pledged allegiance to hunger. I poured myself half a glass of tomato juice mixed with half a glass of buttermilk and tossed it down. I felt virtuous.

Although this is a short paragraph, it is longer than most of the others in Bombeck’s essay. Therefore, it highlights itself. It is important to her theme, because it sets up Bombeck’s rebellion against dieting, something that she equates, implicitly (by placing her hand on her heart and swearing “allegiance to hunger”) with patriotism; it is an act not unlike the founding fathers’ revolt against the tyranny of England. This analogy makes her essay’s title more significant, for the “battle” of which it speaks seems now to be associated with the Revolutionary War.

It seems that Bombeck will suggest that her “allegiance to hunger” rather than to dieting is a courageous and honorable one, akin to the colonists’ revolt against the British crown, but, instead of extending this analogy, she abandons it, the remainder of her essay exemplifying how she continues to add to and enhance the simple meal that she’s prepared for dinner and blames her husband for her having done so (to punish him for being late, she adds “whipped potatoes to the meal,” and to distract him from “the small main course,” she prepares “a robust appetizer,” and then accuses him of not caring “about other people at all” or “how they look”).

Although Bombeck, in abandoning the implicit metaphor she creates by likening her “allegiance to hunger” to the colonists’ revolt against British tyranny as a stand-in for the tyranny, as it were, of dieting, her essay, having pulled readers in, continues to amuse, which shows that, once a humorous essay gets started, it can proceed, even if it unexpectedly and irrationally changes direction in midstream. After all, readers are looking for humor, not logic. However, an essay that does both--amuses and stays true to its implicit rationale--would give readers the best of both possibilities and, arguably, would, therefore, be of superior quality. Bombeck is a master at setting up the humorous essay. We can learn a lot from her techniques for doing so. As we saw, many humorous essays begin with a confession or a claim, a statement that piques the reader’s interest and lays the foundation for the rest of the piece, and Bombeck is adroit at such beginnings.

However, she also uses plenty of other ways to open her essays.

One is the surprising statement. She opens “Hello, Young Mothers” with the declaration that “Once. . . just once. . . I’d like to be dressed for an emergency.” Since one does not dress for “an emergency” and because, even, if one were wont to do so, an emergency, by its very nature, would not allow one the time (or clarity of mind) to pick out an outfit to wear for the occasion. Therefore, her expressed desire to dress for crises is as unexpected to readers as it is ludicrous. By surprising her readers with such an odd and irrational statement, Bombeck makes them want to read further. Therefore, the sentence is an effective opener.

“Birds, Bees, and Guppies” opens with a declaration to which all parents would be likely to assent, although it addresses a topic that they’d probably be just as happy to avoid altogether, were it possible to do so: “The sex education of a child is pretty important. None of us wants to blow it.” Since her comment addresses a sensitive, potentially embarrassing topic, readers may read on to see whether the famous humorist can transform her subject matter into something more lighthearted than somber. Perhaps humor will put the matter of “the sex education of a child” into perspective. By suggesting that she can use her humor to cut such a serious subject down to size, so to speak, Bombeck reassures parents who may soon have to instruct their own children in this difficult subject.

In “Outgrowing Naps,” Bombeck resorts to an effective strategy for broaching her essay’s topic while hooking her readers: without humor or fanfare, she simply states the situation that her essay will proceed to develop: “A group of young mothers huddled around the kiddie pool the other day discussing children’s naps.” She tries the same gambit for “How to Communicate with Toddlers,” writing, “A father in Champagne, Illinois, is enquiring how to communicate with toddlers.” Her reputation as a humorist alone promises that something funny will come of this situation. For those who have not yet garnered such a reputation, a different, more obviously humorous approach might be a better way to start an essay; Bombeck uses this approach to initiate “I’m-Not-Going Syndrome”: “I’m at the age of my life where every time I buy something of any value, I have visions of my kids marking it down to $2 at a garage sale.”

Bombeck also uses a rhetorical question, on occasion, to start an essay. Often, in doing so, she puts the question into an invented character’s mouth, as though someone other than she were posing the query. “Disposable Diapers” opens this way: “The question being asked by baby boomers isn’t, ‘Is there life after throwaway diapers are abolished?’ but, ‘Is that life worth living?’” “Alaska Cruise and Smoked Salmon” opens in a similar manner: “Last spring, my husband looked up from the travel section of the newspaper and said, ‘Have you ever thought of what it would be like to catch and smoke your own salmon’?” More rarely, Bombeck herself, or her stand-in persona, will ask the question directly, as she does in “The Instead-of Cookbook”: “Why doesn’t someone write a cookbook for the suburban woman with one car that is used by her husband?”

She also starts essays with dialogue which is often intriguing in itself or becomes so within a few lines. “I don’t want to go to grandma’s” (“I Don’t Want to Go to Grandma’s”), “You don’t love me!” (“I Loved You Enough to. . . “), and “‘Hey, if you write a column for a newspaper,’ said the voice on the telephone, ‘how come you don’t tell women how to get stains out of their stainless steel sinks?’” (“Household Hint”).

Some of her essays begin with a complaint: “I don’t know what my husband thinks I’m made of!” (“Soap Operas”); “There is no delicate way to say it. My social life is somewhere to the right of a sedated parrot” (“My Social Life”), Occasionally, a sentence will serve as a sort of straight man so that the one that follows it can deliver a humorous punch line. Bombeck opens chapter three of All I Know About Animal Behavior I Learned in Loehman’s Dressing Room with this technique, with her use of exaggeration effecting the humor: “I have come up with a wonderful solution to end all wars. Let men give directions on how to get there.” She uses the same approach to open chapter fifteen of the same book, again using exaggeration to deliver the humor: “I was never caught up in the jogging/running movement that swept the country in the seventies and eighties. Face it, I call a cab to go to the mailbox.” More rarely, a sentence that itself contains the setup for the joke it contains is used to open a chapter or an essay.

The first half of such a sentence sets up the joke, which follows in the second half of the sentence. Chapter eight of All I Know About Animal Behavior I Learned in Loehman’s Dressing Room begins with such a sentence: “Compared to the IRS when they cash your check, the cheetah is standing still.”

Like her books, Bombeck’s essays are often built upon an analogy, and she uses familiar figures of speech--metaphors, personifications--in unexpected, and, therefore, humorous ways to make her points as she presents the central “argument” that her essay’s title suggests. All I Know About Animal Behavior I Learned in Loehmann’s Dressing Room equates “animal behavior” with human conduct, suggesting that by using the principles and techniques of ethnology, she can better understand the behavior of her fellow human beings. In other words, her book is based upon the analogy that “people are animals.” To maintain this analogy, she starts each chapter with a tongue-in-cheek epigraph from a spurious ethnological treatise. Frequently, this epigraph creates a point of departure for Bombeck’s comments concerning a specific human habit, practice, or behavior.

For example, chapter seven of her book deals with human packrats. She opens the
chapter with this epigraph:

Many animals tend to store things. The bowerbirds of Australia and New Guinea
decorate their courting grounds with everything from beetle wings to pilfered
car keys. They will hoard anything. After mating, the male splits and the female
raises the brood by herself.

This counterfeit quotation provides the jumping-off point for her wry observations on concerning her need to collect everything and to part with nothing:

Lest you confuse me with some amateur collector, I must tell you there are levels of savers. There’s the common garden variety who hoard rubber bands like they’re never going to see another one. And the bread tie disciples who don’t have a clue what they can use them for, and of course the proverbial plastic margarine container freaks who use them to store leftovers that they are going to throw away in three day. They’re novices.

No, I’m talking about a woman who still has her report cards from the third grade. . . food coupons that have expired. . . Single earrings. . . boots with a hole in one of them. . . and a wildlife calendar from 1987 because February shows a bear in a party hat.

This same pattern is repeated throughout the book, as Bombeck offers her take on courtship, reproduction, potty training, eating, and other activities, showing how human conduct parallels animal behavior and suggesting that it is not necessary to go, as Jane Goodall went, into the African veldt, to study the human species; it’s enough to be a wife and mother.

Like many other humorists, Bombeck’s books, if not her essays, have extremely long titles. Such titles are themselves ludicrous, since they fly in the face of the conventional requirement of publishers and the natural tendency of writers to keep their titles as short as possible. A list of some of her works makes this technique clear:

• Just Wait Till you Have Children of Your Own!”
• Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression
• The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank
• If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits
• Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession
• Family: The Ties That Bind. . . and Gag!
• I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise
• When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It’s Time to Go Home
• A Marriage Made in Heaven. . . Or Too Tired for an Affair
• All I Know About Animal Behavior I Learned in Loehmann’s Dressing Room
  

Next: Mark Twain

Stand-up Comedians, Part 2

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Woody Allen is better known as a movie producer, but the funnyman started his career as a stand-up comedian. As such, he created a stock character unique to modern sensibilities. Known for expressing the angst of the set-upon everyman, Allen portrayed the putz, a nerdy, needy egghead who is unvalued and misunderstood. Typically, his character is a neurotic, if philosophical, lost soul. Much of his comedy involves an existential take on things. Much of his comedy alludes to psychoanalysis, reflecting the three decades that he spent on the Freudian couch. In his early years, Allen was also a comedy writer for Herb Shriner, Sid Caesar, Candid Camera, and other comedians and comedy shows.

According to Willy Loman, “spite” is the word of Biff’s “undoing.” This may or may not be true--Willy was hardly a good judge of character, after all, but one can say with certainty that “disrespect” is the word upon which Rodney Dangerfield built his career as a stand-up comedian. After a succession of failures--as a singing waiter, an acrobatic diver, and an aluminum siding salesman, Dangerfield came to understand that he needed an “image,” or a persona that would both define him as a comedian and resonate with his audiences. He found himself as a comedian when he complained that he didn’t get any respect from anyone. He often began a joke with his trademark grievance, “I get no respect,” following his protest with a humorous example to prove his contention: “When I was a kid I got no respect. The time I was lost on the beach and the cop helped me look for my parents I said, "Do you think we'll find them?" He said, "I don't know, kid, there's so many places they could hide.” Dangerfield’s career demonstrates how a simple gimmick, properly employed, can establish a comedian’s career.

Flip Wilson, one of the first black stand-up comedians, also banked on a well-established character--in his case, a female alter ego named Geraldine, who was, as it were a regular guest star on the Flip Wilson Show. Outspoken and irascible, a daughter of the ghetto, Geraldine delivered hip, modern maxims and proverbs, including “When you’re hot, you’re hot” and “The devil made me do it.” However, Wilson’s comedy sometimes offended some African-Americans who viewed his routines as fostering stereotypes of black culture. Some also did not appreciate the dialect in which some of his onstage characters spoke.

Although he wasn’t a comedian, major league baseball player and manager Yogi Berra misused the English language unlike anyone since Mrs. Malaprop and is unequalled in his use of malapropisms except, perhaps, by former president George W. Bush, and his fractured phrasing should be a continued inspiration to humorists and comedians for years to come. A few quotations demonstrate the comic effect that is derived from the oddly appropriate, but misspoken, quips for which Berra is famous:

• “Ninety percent of the game [of baseball],“ he contended, “is half mental.”
  
• His reason for foregoing meals at Ruggeri's, a St. Louis restaurant: “Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.”
  
• His take on when to call it quits: “It ain’t over till it's over.”
  
• Giving directions to Joe Garagiola as to how to get to his New Jersey home, which could be reached by two alternative routes: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
  
• On the benefits of observation: “You can observe a lot by watching.”
  
• Concerning the need to attend friends’ funerals: “Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't go to yours.”

George W. Bush is also known for his mangling of the English tongue, although not all of the former president’s misstatements take the form of the malapropism. Again, a sample of his tongue twisters shows the humorous effect of such speech:

• “One of the very difficult parts of the decision I made on the financial crisis was to use hardworking people's money to help prevent there to be a crisis.”
  
• “I'm telling you there's an enemy that would like to attack America, Americans, again. There just is. That's the reality of the world. And I wish him all the very best.”
  
• “I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.”
  
• “I've been in the Bible every day since I've been the president.”
  
• “This thaw--took a while to thaw, it's going to take a while to unthaw.”
  
• “Anyone engaging in illegal financial transactions will be caught and persecuted.”
  
• “The people in Louisiana must know that all across our country there's a lot of prayer--prayer for those whose lives have been turned upside down. And I'm one of them.”
  
• “Throughout our history, the words of the Declaration have inspired immigrants from around the world to set sail to our shores. These immigrants have helped transform 13 small colonies into a great and growing nation of more than 300 people.”
  
• “I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office."

Next: Applying Humorous Writing Techniques

Stand-up Comedians

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Stand-up comedians also provide many examples of how to get laughs that can assist the humorist who is more interested in writing than in enacting or delivering funny lines. In humor, as in comedy and all other forms of entertainment, all is grist for the mill, and the humorist should learn continuously from as many sources as possible, adapting others’ methods and techniques to his or her own purposes and needs. For this reason, it is helpful to consider such the method in the apparent madness of such brilliant stand-up comedians as Lenny Bruce, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Woody Allen, Rodney Dangerfield, Flip Wilson, Jonathan Winters, and such unintentional comics as Yogi Berra, George W. Bush, and Mrs. Malaprop.

Lenny Bruce was regarded as an iconoclast by his peers. Columnist Herb Caen characterized the stand-up comedian in this fashion:

They call Lenny Bruce a sick comic, and sick he is. Sick of all the pretentious phoniness of a generation that makes his vicious humor meaningful. He is a rebel, but not without a cause, for there are shirts that need un-stuffing, egos that need deflating. Sometimes you feel guilty laughing at some of Lenny’s mordant jabs, but that disappears a second later when your inner voice tells you with pleased surprise, ‘but that’s true.’

Critic Albert Goldman describes Bruce’s Carnegie Hall Concert as “the greatest performance” of a “rapidly rising young comedian” given to improvisation and the fine art of adlibbing:

Lenny worshipped the gods of Spontaneity, Candor and Free Association. He fancied himself an oral jazzman. His ideal was to walk out there like Charlie Parker, take that mike in his hand like a horn and blow, blow, blow everything that came into his head just as it came into his head with nothing censored, nothing translated, nothing mediated, until he was pure mind, pure head sending out brainwaves like radio waves into the heads of every man and woman seated in that vast hall. Sending, sending, sending, he would finally reach a point of clairvoyance where he was no longer a performer but rather a medium transmitting messages that just came to him from out there--from recall, fantasy, prophecy. A point at which, like the practitioners of automatic writing, his tongue would outrun his mind and he would be saying things he didn't plan to say, things that surprised, delighted him, cracked him up--as if he were a spectator at his own performance!

Bruce’s freewheeling style and his penchant to include a good deal of profanity and obscenity in his adlibbed monologues got the performer in trouble on more than one occasion. He was arrested and for indecency several times and was finally sentenced to four months’ incarceration in a workhouse, dying while his sentence was being appealed.

He is often held up as an example of the free speech that humorists claim that they deserve. In fact, many humorists contend that they should be exempted from the politically correct restrictions on free speech that ordinary men and women experience because they are, as it were, the “all-licensed fools” of whom King Lear speaks, referring to the tradition that allowed court jesters to speak frankly to the king or queen without fear of appraisal; thus the fool was not a “yes man,” and could serve as a trusted advisor.

Modern authorities, promoters, audiences, readers, publishers, and societies have been at times reluctant to extend comedic carte blanche to today’s equivalents of the court jester, or fool, as Bruce’s case and that of others, including David Letterman’s, indicate, and humorists should not simply assume that they have such license. Instead, they should determine which topics, language, and treatments are acceptable to their audiences or readers and which are taboo.

Red Skelton’s stand-up comedy routines reflected his gentle spirit. Having honed his comedic talents in vaudeville and on various radio programs after earlier performing as a circus clown, Skelton starred in many movies (comedies, of course) before starting his own television comedy-variety show, The Red Skelton Hour. His acts centered around characters he created, which became familiar to an audience of millions: Freddie the Freeloader, a tramp; singing cabbie Clem Kaddiddehopper; the Mean Liddle Boy; besotted Willy Lump-Lump; Sheriff Deadeye; and even a pair of seagulls, Gertrude and Heathcliffe. His characters endeared him to the public, as did his laughing at his own jokes and his sign off, “Goodnight, and may God bless.” Like Bill Cosby, Skelton eschewed profanity and obscenity, believing it not only inappropriate, but unnecessary, for a comedian to resort to vulgarity to get laughs. Some of his skits involved pantomime, and Groucho Marx regarded Skelton as comedy’s heir to Charlie Chaplin.

The successor to Johnny Carson as the host of National Broadcasting Company’s (NBC’s) The Tonight Show, Jay Leno delivered a nightly monologue, Monday through Friday, on topical events, often political in nature, lampooning presidents and senators as often as he did fads and follies. He also bantered with his band leader and engaged in repartee with the political and celebrity guests of his talk show. Unlike some stand-up comedians, Leno himself is an able writer, and, during a writer’s strike, he wrote the material for his own monologue. He also writes a monthly column for Octane, an online magazine that concerns itself with “the world’s greatest classic and performance cars.” In one article, afraid that he will be stopped by a police officer for speeding on his Morgan three-wheeler, while “screaming down Mulholland Drive,” he is surprised when the officer informs him that, rather than traveling at a speed of seventy miles per hour, as he’d thought, he was going only thirty-five miles per hour--ten miles per hour under the speed limit. Leno’s columns’ style reflect the boy-next-door charm, the slightly goody humor, and the easy identification with middle America that make him popular as a comedian and a humorist, both on the screen and the printed page.

Leno’s competitor, David Letterman, hosts Columbia Broadcasting System’s (CBS’) Late Show with David Letterman. Letterman is often caustic in interviewing his guests. Once, he said to Joaquin Phoenix, who was relatively unresponsive during his interview, “I’m sorry you couldn’t be here.” Letterman also sparred with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, host of The O’Reilly Factor, and with such other celebrities as Cher, Shirley MacLaine, Charles Grodin, and Madonna. Once, wearing a Velcro suit, he leaped onto a wall covered in the same material, becoming stuck several feet off the ground. Like Leno, he delivers a monologue. Letterman also performs brief skits, and his show features several regular spoofs and send-ups, including “Stupid Pet Tricks” and its spin-off, “Stupid Human Tricks.” His “Top Ten List” is also a regular feature, during which he recites a list of the top ten things pertaining to a specific topic, such as “Top Ten rejected James Bond Gadgets,” in reverse order.

In June 2009, Letterman caused a controversy when he made a joke about Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Willow, being impregnated, or “knocked up,” by New York Yankees’ player Alex (“A-Rod”) Rodriguez while she was attending a baseball game with her mother. Letterman’s attempt to clarify the issue by apologizing for any offense the governor and her family might have felt and insisting that it was Palin’s eighteen-year-old daughter, Bristol, whom he’d intended to lampoon, not Willow, Letterman only made the situation worse, and his show was picketed by angry former fans. Many of his sponsors heard from irate viewers as well, some of them canceling their sponsorship of the show. In addition, Rodriguez also called for an apology from Letterman, saying, “Not funny, funnyman. Time for you to man-up and say you're sorry to me, the Yankees, the fans, and to ball players all over the world. We may love women, but we're not all womanizers.” Michelle Malkin and others characterized Letterman’s joke as “pedophile” humor, and Palin herself described Letterman as “pathetic.” This incident, like the arrest and incarceration of comedian Lenny Bruce, demonstrates that the “all-licensed fool” of whom Shakespeare’s King Lear speaks is not “all-licensed” in politically correct times such as ours, if ever, in fact, he was so “licensed.” (A fool was a court jester, or joker, a clown to whom a king traditionally granted the privilege of speaking frankly, without fear of reprisal; thus the fool was not a “yes man,” and could serve as a trusted advisor.) Like comedians, humorists would do well to remember that the Constitution may guarantee free speech, but it does not guarantee that such speech can be exercised with impunity in the court of public opinion.


Next: Stand-up Comedians, Part 2

Situation Comedy

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Like playwrights and screenwriters, television situation comedy writers often receive short shrift. They work behind the scenes, not on stage or behind the camera. As a result, many of them remain relatively anonymous. However, one can learn a tremendous amount from them as to how to write humor, even though their media are more visually than textually oriented.

There are too many situation comedies to review in anything less than several volumes, but we can learn much from considering the genre itself, its conventions, techniques, and some specific illustrations of each of these elements.

As the name “situation comedy” (or “sitcom,” as it is often abbreviated) implies, these stories emphasize comical situations, or sets of circumstances, over characters. As a result, their dramatic personae tend to be stock characters of the type which Durant identifies with respect to the ancient Greek’s New Comedy (“the cruel father, the benevolent old man, the prodigal son, the heiress mistaken for a poor girl, the bragging soldier, the clever slave, the flatterer, the parasite, the physician, the priest, the philosopher, the cook, the courtesan, the procuress, and the pimp”); which we have identified with regard to contemporary humor ( the country bumpkin, the con artist, the egghead, the fish out of water (displaced person), the hypocrite, and the blowhard); and which people the pages, as it were, of “An Excerpt of Character Writings of the 17th Century” (see Appendix A). These characters recur on a regular basis, often in a specific setting that reflects a location that is familiar with a wide audience. Homes and workplaces, schools and public places are frequently the settings for such comedies.

The sitcom tells a story, and, although the story is slight and often superficial, it is the occasion for the jokes, humorous anecdotes, and amusing situations that ensue. The story acts much like the string upon which beads or jewels are strung to make a necklace, with the beads or the jewels themselves representing the jokes, humorous anecdotes, and amusing situations. Thus, a sitcom is, at least potentially, doubly delightful: it offers both a comical story and plenty of laughs along the way. Sitcoms have been a major influence on modern humor, both in the United States and around the world, with hundreds and hundreds of them having been produced since their debut, which, arguably, was 1928, the year during which Amos and Andy was launched on American radio. Since their inception, situation comedies have taken on nearly every aspect of contemporary life, from domestic bliss to irascible bosses, from macabre neighbors and busybodies to sentimental slobs, from cute, precocious kids and rebellious teens to battling in-laws and quirky roommates. Therefore, anyone who is interested in writing hilarious humor needs to be aware of the conventions and techniques of the sitcom writer, for, even if one has no intention him- or herself ever of writing a sitcom, the genre has shaped and reshaped comedy and humor, changing audiences’ and readers’ expectations as to what should be regarded as funny. That doesn’t mean that a humorist must write only in the same vein as sitcom writers, but it does mean that the humorist should be aware of the major influence that sitcoms have had on humor in general and comedy in particular.

In The Comic Toolbox: How To Be Funny Even If You’re Not, John Vorhaus, a film and television writer with over 20 years of experience, offers tips concerning how to write speculation scripts, or “specs,” for television situation comedies. Some of his advice applies to humorists of every stripe. For example, Vorhaus advises his readers to “play to your strengths”: “Do you have a knack for gags? Then you want to spec a gag-driven show. Do you have ‘heart’? Then you want to write a sample for a show that has lots of ‘heartfelt’ moments. Can you write kids well? Write a kids’ show spec.” He also reminds his readers to remember that every sitcom has a “rule” that governs how the story will be told. A “rule” for Married. . . With Children, he says, is “that Al Bundy always loses.”

Likewise, “on Murphy Brown there’s often a gag, or even a running gag, about a secretary, but. . . the stories are never built around a secretary.” These rules, he says, affect every element of their respective sitcoms:

A show's rules extend to all aspects of that show. Which character gets the main story? Who gets the secondary stories? Is someone a straight man? Do characters tell jokes and make wisecracks, or do all the laughs come from the characters' comic perspectives? What sort of language do these people use? What topics are taboo? Do they make reference to the outside world, or do they live within a hermetically sealed sitcom bubble? Will given characters act the fool?

Vorhaus also offers excellent instruction as to how the typical sitcom is structured and how he himself applies the genre’s strict guidelines as to how such a comedy should be put together:

Situation comedies are structured either as two-act or three act tales. Mad About You, M*A*S*H and Married. . . with Children are two-act structures; Murphy Brown and The Simpsons play in three acts. Each act ends with an act break, a big dramatic moment which (one hopes) creates a sense of expectation and dread strong enough to hold the viewers' interest across the commercial break and bring them back for more. . . .

. . . In three-act structure, as in two-act structure, it's necessary for the moment before each commercial to have some real drama and urgency, to carry the viewer over the break. I like to think of my three-act act breaks in terms of trouble is coming and trouble is here. At the end of the first act, the characters know that a bad, bad thing is looming on the horizon. At the second act break, the consequences of that bad thing have been brought home. This second break corresponds roughly with the moment of maximum dread in traditional two-act structure. . . .

No matter what happens in your story, remember that situation comedies are essentially circular; things always end up more or less back where they started. If a
character gets fed up with his family and moves out of the house, clearly the act break is the moment when he leaves.

Just as clearly, the story will end with the character having moved back home.

Many sitcoms, Vorhaus points out, have a main story and a secondary, related story, the two of which may (or may not) be connected by their sharing of a common theme:

Many, though not all situation comedies slice themselves up into a-story and b-story. The a-story is the main story, the big problem, the heavy emotional issue with which a given half-hour of television reality chooses to concern itself. Typically, the a-story is given to the star of the show, the main character. Also, the a-story explores the theme of the episode. Whether that theme is, "tell the truth," or "be true to your school," or "don't do stupid things," it's played out in the largest, deepest, and most dramatic sense in the a story.

The b-story is much smaller and lighter than the a story. It usually involves secondary characters. It carries far less emotional weight and gets less screen time than the a-story. In a well crafted sitcom, there's a thematic connection between the a-story and the b-story, in which the b-story comments on and amplifies the meaning of the a-story.

Vorhaus also offers a “shortcut” for writing sitcoms that reveals the basic structure of this genre and provides the humorist with yet another tool for his or her humorists’ toolbox:

. . . I'd like to introduce yet another quick-and-dirty way to get a line on your sitcom story. To use this shortcut, think in the following terms: introduction, complication, consequence, and relevance. The introduction to a sitcom story is the thing that gets the trouble started or puts the tale in motion. An out-of-town guest arrives. An old girlfriend turns up. A first date looms. A driver's license expires. A party is planned.

The complication is the thing that makes the bad situation worse. If the introduction is one character taking cough medicine, the complication is another character bringing the boss home for dinner. If the introduction is one character running for school office, the complication is another character entering the race. If the introduction is a character weaving a lie into an English essay, the complication is that essay winning a major prize. If the introduction is Mr. Wacky going to the doctor, the complication is discovering he only has three weeks to live. The consequence is the result of the conflict created by the introduction and the complication. If two people are running for the same office, then the consequence is the outcome of the election. In the cough medicine story, the consequence is when the cough medicine blows up, so to speak, in the boss's face.

The consequenceof Mr. Wacky facing death is his coming to terms with his mortality, only to discover (since we'd like to run the series for another five years or so) that he's not actually dying after all. The relevance is simply a statement of the story's theme. Stand by your friends. Do the right thing. Don't fear the future. Stop and smell the roses. Accept your own mortality. Shower the people you love with love; that sort of thing.

Earlier, we identified some of the common stock characters of humor and comedy. Using the television sitcoms in which these characters appear as examples, we can get a better idea of how actual sitcoms were developed by referring to the summaries of these shows that are provided by the TV Land website.

The Beverly Hillbillies: Jed and Jethro (front seat); Elly May and Granny (back seat)
For our example of the country bumpkin, we used Jethro Bodine, a character on The Beverly Hillbillies. This show is based upon the premise that Jed Clampett, attempting to kill game he’s hunting near his mountain cabin in Bug Tussle, unearths an underground oil reserve, making him instantly wealthy. He and his family load up their truck and move to Beverly Hills, California, where life, for them (and everyone they encounter there) is decidedly different. TV Land describes the series as “always rich in the absurd”:

. . . The Beverly Hillbillies was chock full of lowbrow but hilarious situations. As sitcom humor would have it, Jed and his brood move next door to the greedy banker, Milburn Drysdale, who in an effort to make his financial institution the home of the Clampett millions, takes the fresh-off-the-farm family under his wing. Most of the early shows revolve around the impossible adjustments the poor mountain folk must make to city life, and Jed Clampett's backwoods brand of wisdom always wins out in the end. Despite their brand-new mansion with its cement pond and indoor plumbing, the Hillbillies stay true to their rustic roots. Many episodes center around
Drysdale's attempts to keep the Clampetts in good spirits in their big city setting (thus keeping their money in his bank). Enrolling Jethro in elementary school, buying Jed a movie studio, letting Granny open a medical practice and finding Elly May a beau are just a few of the silly but entertaining storylines.

Our example of the con artist, Mr. Haney, is taken from the sitcom Green Acres, in which attorney Oliver Wendell Douglas, wanting to get back to the basic way of life that he believes made America great, purchases a run-down farm, complete with ramshackle house and barn, from Mr. Haney, who is forever afterward selling the new farmer an assortment of junk that Douglas does not want or need. The show’s gags result from Douglas’ attempt to farm the unproductive land, producing sparse crops of miniature vegetables that are the laughingstock of his neighbors; the house’s lack of basic utilities, facilities, and utilities, such as a telephone, a closet, and dependable appliances; Douglas’ socialite wife Lisa’s ineptitude as a housewife and her longing to return to Manhattan; the Douglas’ incompetent employee Eb; zany neighbors; Douglas’ naiveté about country life; and his occasional trips to Hooterville.

TV Land describes the show:

Successful lawyer Oliver Wendell Douglas. . . longs to leave behind the complications of modern society and life as a Manhattanite, and despite the protestations of his glamorous, socialite, Hungarian wife Lisa. . . , Oliver buys a farm, sight unseen, from swindler Mr. Haney. The couple says “goodbye[,] city life!” and take up residence in Hooterville, U.S.A. While there is some debate amongst the show's fans as to the actual geographic location of Hooterville, one thing is clear; it exists in a state of mind-bending logic and hallucinatory natural laws, and is inhabited by an eccentric population that includes favorite son Arnold Ziffel, a multi-lingual, television watching pig. The farm Oliver has purchased is a shambles, the farmhouse in a state of advanced disrepair. Along with hired hand Eb, Oliver tries to make a go at being
a gentleman farmer.Meanwhile, Lisa settles in to her new surroundings despite herself, and attempts to bring gracious living and the finer things to the oddball residents of this off-the-map town.

The sitcom M*A*S*H supplied our example of the egghead character in the person, so to speak, of Major Charles Emerson Winchester III. This comedy is set in Korea, during the Korean War. It involves the medical and support personnel of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, or MASH. Commanded by Colonel Sherman T, Potter (who is later replaced by Lt. Col. Henry Blake), Dr. Hawkeye Pierce and Dr. John Francis Xavier McIntyre, who goes by the nickname “Trapper John,” are unconventional doctors who, despite their hatred of war (and the Army), do their best to save the lives of wounded soldiers by practicing “meatball surgery” under less-than-idea conditions. To maintain their sanity, they flaunt Army rules and regulations, play practical jokes on one another, and tease Major Frank Burns and his paramour, Major Margaret (“Hot Lips”) Houlihan, who, despite their affair with one another, insist that everyone else should do everything strictly by the book. Pierce and Honeycutt get away with their unorthodox behavior--keeping a still in their tent, wearing Hawaiian shirts instead of uniforms, and displaying a general lack of disrespect for their superiors--because their surgical skills are not only necessary but extraordinary. Besides Blake, Burns, Houlihan, and Winchester, other characters in the series include Corporal Maxwell Q. Klinger, who sports a dress and wears high heels and carries a purse in the hope of receiving a psychiatric discharged; Colonel Water Eugene (“Radar”) O’Reilly, a clairvoyant clerk who announces that casualties are “incoming,” even before he receives official word; and Father Francis Mulcahy, a Catholic priest.

TV Land describes M*A*S*H from the protagonist’s point of view:

For Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, love and war, politics and
prose, collide at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. He was named Hawkeye
after a character in The Last of the Mohicans.

Hawkeye is originally assigned to work with Captain "Trapper John" McIntyre, the two become fast friends as they figure out a way to mix hi-jinks and humor with the stark reality of war. He forms a bond with seemingly psychic Corporal Walter "Radar" O. Reilly, Corporal Maxwell Klinger, who would do anything to be sent home, including dress in drag, and mild mannered Father Francis Mulcahy. After Trapper
is discharged Life at camp returns to normal for Hawkeye with the arrival of new best friend, Captain B.J. Hunnicutt. Growing more learned by war, through out his tour Hawkeye transforms from a wise cracking practical joker to a man of conscious; but perhaps his biggest strength is the ability to find humor, sanity and humanity in time of war.

We exemplified the fish out of water, or displaced person, character with Will Smith of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and with Jethro Bodine and the Clampetts of The Beverly Hillbillies. In Fresh Prince, Will, living in Philadelphia, starts to have trouble with members of a street gang, so his guardian aunt sends him to live with the Banks, well-to-do relatives who live in in Bel Air, California. In his new surroundings, as he is exposed to situations and characters he’d never dreamed of, Will struggles to develop a sense of identity that can include other people’s values, ways of life, beliefs, and concerns and to adjust to his new environment. He is changed for the better by his encounter with his uncle, a judge, his aunt, and their children, Will’s cousins dimwitted Hilary, pedantic Carlton, and young Ashley, just as they are changed for the better by him. Much of the series’ humor comes from Will’s struggle to fit in, from his encountering new ideas and situations, and from his conflict with his uncle and his cousins

Our examples of the hypocrite and the blowhard, Tartuffe and Sir John Falstaff, were taken from dramatic comedies, Tartuffe and King Henry IV, Parts I and II and the Merry Wives of Windsor, respectively, rather than from television sitcoms.

(Because sitcoms’ theme songs often provide a humorous way to introduce the concepts, or premises, of their respective shows, we have included the lyrics of several of them in Appendix C.)

Next: Standup Comedians

“Luann”: A Situation-Based, Character-Driven Comic Strip

Copyright 2009 by Gary Pullman

“Luann,” by Greg Evans, features the teenage exploits of Luann DeGroot; her parents, Frank and Nancy; her brother Brad; Brad’s girlfriend Toni Daytona; and his buddy T. J.; and Luann’s friends and high school classmates, including her best friend Bernice Halper; her romantic rival Tiffany Farrell; and her nerdy admirer Gunther Berger. Occasionally, other characters appear in the strip, including Aaron Hill, the boy upon whom Luann has an unrequited crush; Toni’s abusive ex-boyfriend Dirk; and Bernice’s handicapped, wheelchair-bound ex-boyfriend Zane.

The comic strip is aimed at teenage and young adult readers, although its situations and humor appeal to a general audience. Much of the conflict is situation-based and, as the Internet website Toonopedia’s article on the comic strip points out, concerns “the ordinary hassles of teenage life,” such as Luann’s or Brad’s interaction with their family and friends, but, some sequences include serious or “touchy” issues such as menstruation, “drug abuse,” “drunk driving,” and “cancer” (“Luann”). With the exception of October 25, the theme for the sequence of the comic strip that appeared from October 25 through October 31, 2009, focuses on Halloween and shows the characters’ personalities as they are revealed by their reactions to problems and conflicts that arise from ordinary, everyday situations.

Halloween is a quintessential children’s holiday, and, since “Luann” appeals primarily to teenagers and young adults, its creator focuses most of an entire week’s worth of his comic strip on this festive occasion. The exception is the Sunday, October 25, 2009, edition. All of Evans’ Sunday strips are stand-alone works. They are not part of the daily sequence. Therefore, they must make sense by themselves. The strip for Sunday, October 25, 2009, shows Luann and her friends standing shoulder to shoulder at the front of their classroom. Behind them, the theme of the day’s lesson is written on the chalkboard: “Day of Service--How will you help others?” As their teacher, Mr. Fogarty, looks on, the students tell their peers what each of them intends to do during the Day of Service. Luann is the next to the last in line; Tiffany stands to her left. Each of the students except Tiffany plans to perform a more-or-less significant act of kindness and assistance. Bernice announces that she intends to “visit” a “disabled neighbor.” Crystal plans to “give manicures at the senior center.” Knute will “mentor at the skateboard park.” Delta hopes to “start a citywide volunteer corps.” Gunther intends to “donate extra time at the library.” Luann is going to “clean up litter.” Since all the other students have a relatively important and meaningful task in mind for the Day of Service, the reader anticipates that Tiffany, the last in line, will also have a noble and helpful task in mind. However, her announcement surprises both Luann and the reader. When Tiffany declares that she will do all that she “can to look incredibly gorgeous,” Luann turns to her, in the next panel, and asks, “How does that help others, Tiffany?” Although her explanation is obviously ludicrous, it reflects her shallow and narcissistic character, and, juxtaposed to her peers’ more important plans to help others, is amusing.

The rest of the week focuses upon Halloween. In the October 26, 2009, strip, Frank and Nancy, seated across from one another in their living room, discuss what to hand out to visiting trick or treaters. Nancy confides to her husband, “I didn’t buy Halloween candy. I hate it that kids gorge on sweets, but I don’t know what to give. Carrots? Toys? Dimes?” Her practical husband suggests “garage stuff.” His response seems to surprise Nancy. “What?” she asks him. “We have junk in the garage we plan to sell,” Frank tells her. “Give it to the kids. Win-win.” Unimpressed, Nancy illustrates the absurdity of Frank’s suggestion. Pretending to give the garage items to visiting trick or treaters, she says, as if she were speaking to them, “A bent golf club for you, an ugly tie for you, a half roll of wallpaper for you, a broken lamp for you.” Her humorous protest prompts Frank to response, “See? It’s even kinda scary.” This strip uses a problem--children’s stuffing themselves with “sweets”--to set up a humorous attempt by the characters to find a solution. Nancy’s suggestions for alternative treats (“carrots. . . toys. . . dimes”) are serious, but Frank’s (“junk in the garage”) is both playfully self-serving and humorous. The strip combines a serious health issue with an everyday situation (cleaning out the family’s garage) and a holiday (Halloween) to appeal to a wide audience, which includes both children, adults, parents, and homeowners.

The October 27, 2009, edition of the comic strip continues the situation that the previous day’s installment established: what to give visiting trick or treaters on Halloween. Again, Frank and Nancy are seated opposite one another in their living room. Nancy opens the conversation between them: “I think I’ll bake sugarless bran muffins for Halloween treats.” Frank offers an interesting alternative. At first, it sounds ridiculous, even a bit cruel: “Here’s a better idea. Take one of our 500-piece jigsaw puzzles and give each kid a handful of pieces.” However, in the next panel, he explains his reasoning, and the idea doesn’t seem as absurd: “The kids will have to get together to assemble the puzzle. They’ll make new friends! It’ll strengthen the very fiber of our neighborhood!” Nancy’s response is based upon a play on the word “fiber” that Frank has used. “My bran muffins are all about fiber,” she observes. “Yeah,” Frank replies, “but it’s the kind that tends to separate people.” His response suggests that the fiber in the muffins will facilitate the children’s need to use the bathroom, since fiber has a laxative effect on people, and their doing so will cause them to “separate” rather than to “assemble.” This strip shows that both Nancy and Frank care about the welfare of children. Nancy has their health in mind, whereas Frank is concerned with their social wellbeing. Their proposed solutions to the problem of what treats to hand out to children on Halloween also show them to be creative. The conflict between them is gentle and rational, rather than harsh and emotional, showing that they are mature and logical adults. Like many of Evans’ other strips, this one, based upon a specific situation, reveals the traits of his characters’ personalities.

The October 28, 2009, edition of the comic strip continues the same situation, as Frank, discovering a kitchen “drawer full of rubber bands from the newspaper” to which they subscribe, suggests to Nancy, as she pours a cup of coffee, “Let’s give these out to the trick or treaters.” She asks a logical question in response, wondering what the recipients “are supposed to do with a rubber band.” In the next panel, Frank explains, “Honey, they’re kids. They’ll think of things.” Nancy agrees, but her rejoinder suggests that the “things” of which the children are apt to think to do with the rubber bands may be undesirable and, potentially, hazardous: “Yeah. Like zing you upside the head as you close the door.” Frank’s suggestion is based upon his understanding that children are imaginative, but Nancy’s comeback addresses another facet of adolescent behavior. Children, she suggests, are also unruly, and their rowdiness could cause unpleasant or dangerous results. It is evident that both characters, as the parents of Luann and Brad, understand children well. The strip also seems to imply that, in caring for children, two heads are better than one, because both Frank and Nancy contribute to an awareness of the nature of children which is truer and more developed than either of their perceptions would be by itself. Children are imaginative, as Frank points out, but they are also immature and disorderly at times, as Nancy indicates.

The October 29, 2009, edition of “Luann” is atypical in that it is not humorous in itself. Rather, it sets up the strip that is to appear the next day and, as the inclusion of a web address in the lower right corner of its single panel indicates, it is more of a public service effort than it is an attempt to tell a joke or to express humor. This time, the action, such as it is, occurs in Luann’s bedroom, as her dog Puddles sleeps on her bed and her best friend Bernice, reading a magazine or a book, lounges on the floor, her back against the side of the mattress, while Luann contemplates a large collection of books in her bookcase. Bernice reads to Luann some facts that have captured her attention: “Wow. In America, kids collect almost 3 billion pieces of candy on Halloween.” She finds this information disturbing because of the hazards to children’s health that it represents: “That’s a lot of hyper, obese, bad-teeth kids.” Luann, contemplating her bookcase, says, “Look at all these old children’s books of mine. Wonder what I could do with them?” A teenager, she has outgrown the “children’s books.” What were once welcome diversions are now undesirable clutter to her. However, possibly because they have sentimental value to her, she doesn’t appear to want to simply discard them, for she wonders what she “could do with them.” The strip for the next day will provide the solution to her problem.

In the October 30, 2009 strip, Frank and Nancy are still trying to resolve their problem as to what to give trick or treaters in lieu of candy. This time, they are seated at the dining room table. Nancy names “apples” and “stickers” and other possibilities. Frank, once again, suggests an absurd alternative: “paper clips.” As her parents struggle with the issue, Nancy listing their ideas on a sheet of paper, Luann approaches them, carrying a tall stack of books. “How ‘bout givin’ my old children’s books?” she suggests. In the next panel, the parents are alone again, Luann having left the stack of books on the table. Her mother and father stare at the books, speechless. In the last panel, Nancy tosses her crumpled list as Frank offers the strip’s punch line: “It’s scary when she’s more clever than we are, isn’t it?” Although this strip, considered in isolation from the previous editions in the sequence, is not all that amusing in itself, its humor becomes funnier because it builds upon the continuing situation that previous days’ editions of the strip have developed, this one becoming, as it were, not only amusing in itself but the punch line for the whole series of related strips to date. Because Frank and Nancy have considered a series of possible alternatives to the giving of candy to visiting children as Halloween treats without success, Luann’s casual resolution of their long-running dilemma is also amusing, since she is a teenager, while they are adults. Usually, the parents solve problems, but, in this strip, the roles of parents and child are reversed, which helps to fuel the amusement.

The October 31, 2009, edition of the comic strip represents the culmination of the Halloween-based series as children visit the DeGroot household to trick or treat. Luann hands out the books. “Just for you,” she says to a girl in a witch’s costume, naming the title of the book she is giving her, “If I Ran the Zoo.” Her announcement of the book’s title brings her father running, as he cries out, in horror at the thought of the loss of the book, “That book is inscribed by Ted Geisel inside!” His announcement shocks Luann, who stares wide-eyed and speechless. “Ted Geisel” is the actual name of the author who has written a popular series of children’s books under the pen name “Dr. Seuss.” The fact that he has “inscribed” the book that Luann is giving away suggests that the volume may be worth a fair amount of money. As such, it is not something that is appropriate to be given away to a child, which explains Frank’s horror and the speed with which he intervenes as well as Luann’s own shock. Luann’s diplomatic way of resolving this crisis is to offer the child two books for the one that she originally gives her, and the girl gladly accepts, so that, at the end, everyone--the girl, Luann, and Frank--is content with the outcome. Luann’s actions show her to be sensitive, kind, and tactful. She may be a teenager, but she is maturing well emotionally and morally, her behavior suggests. She is also witty, because her dialogue, constituting, as it does, a rhymed couplet, in her offering of two books for the one she originally gives the girl, resembles the rhyming couplets in which Dr. Seuss’ books are written.

Just as she earlier solved her parents’ dilemma concerning what to give trick or treaters instead of candy, Luann now resolves the crisis of reclaiming the book she originally gives a child in a diplomatic, and even witty, manner. Although her parents are obviously mature adults--Frank provides for the financial necessities of a family of four, just as Nancy keeps house for them, and both parents show an understanding of and a concern for both their own children and children in general--both Nancy and Frank can also act childishly on occasion, as is indicated by Frank’s panic at the possibility of losing a book signed by a famous author and his grabbing it out of Luann’s hands the moment she retrieves it from the trick or treater and Nancy’s earlier insistence that her bran muffins were superior to Frank’s suggestion for a Halloween treat because her muffins would be “all about fiber.” The comedy of “Luann” springs from Evans’ display of his characters’ personalities through their responses to the problems and conflicts which arise from specific situations related to everyday life. Such humor appeals to children, teenagers, parents, and other adults alike.

Works Cited

Evans, Greg. “Luann.” Comic Strip. The Las Vegas Review-Journal.
25 Oct. 2009-31 Oct. 2009: C8. Print.

Markstein, Don. (2009). Luann. Don Markstein’s Toonopedia. Retrieved November 4, 2009, from http://www.toonopedia.com/luann.htm.


Next: Situation Comedy

Cartoonists and Other Humorists

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Although cartoonists, illustrators, stand-up comedians, and comedic television and movie stars are not literary humorists per se, they have contributed to the form and have much to offer those who would adapt their techniques to the needs and purposes of literary humor. Included in this group of humorists are cartoonists and illustrators such as James Thurber, Charles Schultz, Greg Evans, Gary Larson, Chic Young, and Norman Rockwell; situation comedy writers; standup comedians such as Lenny Bruce, Red Skelton, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Woody Allen, Rodney Dangerfield, Flip Wilson, and Jonathan Winters; television and movie stars such as Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, W. C. Fields, Groucho Marx, Charlie Chaplin, Bill Cosby, Roseanne, Jerry Seinfeld, and Ray Romano.

Typically, cartoons are either single-panel or multiple-panel illustrations. Single-panel cartoons, which may not, but more typically do, include a caption, or line of text, at the bottom (often to deliver the punch line, or the point, of the joke), portray a simple, humorous situation. Multiple-panel cartoons often consist of three panels, in which the first sets up the situation, the second makes a commentary on the situation, and the third delivers the punch line. However, multiple-panel cartoons can also consist of one, four, or some other number of panels. Normally, with regard to newspaper cartoons, or comics, the daily strips are one-panel or three-panel, with the Sunday versions running to several panels which depict and narrate more complicated jokes and humorous situations.

There is a great competition among cartoonists. There is a limited market, even with the hundreds of newspapers and magazines published weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, and annually in the United States and elsewhere, and there are many talented illustrators and writers vying for the available space. Therefore, a cartoonist must find a slant, a topic, or an approach that will connect with a sizeable body of readers but, at the same time, will be unique or at least different enough from the usual fare to earn his or her work a place among the many strips that are already being printed on a regular basis. Competition among such humorists has enriched the genre of humor writing for cartoonists and other humorists, as it has for their readers as well.

We have sought to capitalize upon the competition among cartoonists and other illustrators by selecting a few, past and present, whose works exemplify the diversity within the field and, at the same time, have had staying power with fans. By discerning the techniques and methods of such humorists, one can expand his or her own concept and understanding of humor. James Thurber, a cartoonist on the staff of The New Yorker, drew simple cartoons in a wavering hand. He had poor eyesight, which failed more and more as he aged, and his fluttery drawing style reflected his poor vision. It also happened to complement his vision of the world, which was surreal and fantastic, rather than realistic or mundane. Fellow humorist Dorothy Parker described Thurber’s drawings as resembling “unbaked cookies,” and Thurber himself admitted that others likened them to illustrations drawn under water.

Like many other humorists, Thurber fictionalized his own experiences in plotting his short stories and cartoons, many of which are collected in My Life and Hard Times. Such stories as “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and “The Cat-bird Seat,” like his Fables For Our Time are well-known examples of his work, as are cartoons he frequently published in The New Yorker.
He drew and wrote of ordinary people who sought to escape the tedium of everyday life, often through imaginative flights and fancies. Often, his protagonists are shy, timid men who long to live heroic lives or milquetoasts who wish that they, not their wives, ruled their roosts.
His Is Sex Necessary? or, Why You Feel the Way You Do is a send-up of self-help psychology books (as is Bombeck’s Aunt Erma’s Cope Book). Thurber also wrote several books of contemporary, satirical fables with punch lines instead of morals.

Children are a popular theme among cartoonists. Charles Schultz, who drew the Peanuts comic strip, peopled his work with such well-known characters as Charlie Brown and his kid sister Sally, Lucy van Pelt and her little brother Linus, Pig-Pen, Woodstock, and Charlie Brown’s pet beagle, Snoopy. Although he himself claimed to be a “secular humanist,” Schultz was brought up in the Lutheran faith, and Robert L. Short detected enough of the Christian worldview in Schultz’s work to write The Gospel According to Peanuts. Since millions of the strip’s readers, both in the United States and worldwide, are either themselves Christians or are, like Schultz, familiar with and, perhaps, influenced by, Christian theology and doctrine, it is likely that this religious and cultural subtext adds to the strip’s universal appeal, as does the fact that Schultz’s “gospel” is never presented in a heavy-handed fashion but remains subtle and nuanced, as most do not want a side order of sermon with their humorous fare.

Peanuts was also popular because of the characters themselves. Each of them, it might be argued, is, in his or her own way, archetypal, representing various personas of the reader’s own self. Like Charlie Brown, we are all shy and clumsy; we are all put-upon “losers” more often than we are winners--or apt to feel that we are--and, yet, eternal optimists, we remain determined, believing that, somehow, this time, to kick the elusive football. Likewise, we, like the arrogant and self-absorbed Lucy, can be cynical and cruel, bullying and insensitive, loud and loutish. There is also a bit of the compassionate and caring, nurturing Linus in all of us. We are all these characters, at times, overtly or covertly, just as there are elements of the loyal Sally Brown, the artistic Schroeder, the neglected Pig-Pen, and the dominant-submissive, aggressive-passive duality of the Patricia (“Peppermint Patty”) Reichardt and Marcie duo. Humor with which we can identify personally is appealing to us, even when--or, perhaps, especially when--it points out our foibles and our follies, if it does so in a gentle and tolerant manner.

The relationships between the various Peanuts characters also make the strip--and its humor--attractive. Charlie Brown, who is arguably the strip’s central character--has many friends in his community, despite his awkward, shy demeanor and his low levels of confidence and self-esteem, and he is often matched up against Lucy van Pelt, Linus van Pelt, and the Little Red-Haired Girl upon whom he has a crush. Likewise, there is a one-sided, budding romance between Lucy and Schroeder, and Lucy often is paired against her brother Linus, Charlie Brown, or Snoopy.

The strip also features running gags (humorous themes or situations that frequently snowball as they are repeated and varied over time) such as Lucy’s operation of a “Psychiatric Help” booth, from which she dispenses self-help wisdom for a five-cents fee; Charlie Brown’s attempts to kick a football that Lucy holds for him and always jerks away at the last instant; Charlie Brown’s unsuccessful attempts to fly a kite, only to have it fall victim to another “kite eating tree” or some other mishap; Lucy’s unrequited love for Schroeder, who cares only for Beethoven and his piano; and Linus’ annual attempts to greet The Great Pumpkin as it rises from the pumpkin patch to deliver gifts to girls and boys throughout the world, only to have his hopes dashed, once again. (Persistence in spite of dashed hopes is a major theme of the strip as a whole.)

Greg Evans, the creator of the newspaper comic strip Luann, often involves his protagonist or other characters in crushes: Luann long sought to land her heartthrob, Aaron Hill, or to decide whether she likes Aaron, nerdy Gunther Berger, or suave Miguel Vargas better. Aaron himself had a girlfriend, Claudia, but that didn’t stop him from flirting with Luann, Tiffany Farrel, and other girls. Likewise, Luann’s brother Brad seems eternally to court fellow firefighter Toni Daytona, although, prior to her, he briefly dated other girls, including Diane. As often as not, once the teens hook up, they break up, as Aaron and Claudia did, as Brad and Diane did, and as Luann’s friend, Bernice Halper, and Zane did. Teen romance is one of the strip’s backbones, but the conflicts that arise between the characters also unify the strip. Much of the conflict results from Tiffany’s narcissistic interest in herself and her rivalry with Luann over boys.

Toni’s former boyfriend Dirk stalks Toni, whom he abuses emotionally, and attacks Brad. Ann Eiffel, a feminist and Bernice’s former employer at Borderline Books, caused a riff between Bernice and Zane when she became jealous of Zane. It was implied that Ann was herself infatuated with Bernice. The strip’s villains represent the types of threats that Evans sees as menacing teens and young adults and these dangers and risks also help to bring additional unity to the strip’s otherwise rather episodic character.

Gary Larson’s now-defunct single-panel strip, The Far Side, provided an offbeat, even bizarre, take on ordinary life, delving beneath the accepted and the “real” to show the absurd, the fantastic, the bizarre, and the eerie underbelly of human experience. Many strips feature anthropomorphic animals--cows are a favorite of Larson’s--presumably because they, being animals rather than humans, can get away with saying and doing things that people could not do without annoying or offending readers and because there has always been something innately amusing about casting animals in the roles of human beings. In one strip, Larson featured a boy attempting to enter The School of the Gifted by pushing a door, despite the presence of a sign indicating that the door must be pulled to be opened. In another cartoon, labeled “A Pigeon’s View of the World,” humans were shown from above, a bull’s-eye painted atop their heads.

The use of chickens, chimpanzees, cows, dogs, and other animals as stand-ins for humans has not always let Larson off the hook in depicting situations that some readers found too gory, politically incorrect, or otherwise offensive to some readers. One that caused controversy hinted at bestiality between ethnologist Jane Goodall and a chimpanzee. While being groomed by his mate, the female chimpanzee finds a human hair in the male’s coat, and asks, rather archly, one imagines, “Conducting a little more 'research' with that Jane Goodall tramp?”

Although humorists are given much wider leeway in making jokes or telling anecdotes than is the case with ordinary men and women, there is a limit even on what readers will accept from such once “all-licensed fools,” as we shall see even more clearly when we discuss the David Letterman-Sarah Palin controversy concerning Governor Palin’s 14-year-old daughter, Willow.

Chic Young created the Blondie comic strip, which, like many newspaper comics, spawned a movie. This strip, which began in 1930, originally featured a spunky, independent young flapper with golden locks named Blondie Boopadoop and her raccoon coat-clad, pork-pie-wearing boyfriend, Dagwood Bumstead. Over the years, as times changed, they traded in their Roaring Twenties togs for more contemporary clothing, Blondie became a stay-at-home mother, raising two children, and a dog, Daisy, completed their happy family. Meanwhile, Dagwood went to work as an executive for J. C. Dithers Construction Company. The strip’s props show the passage of time by constantly updating the characters’ allusions, dress, and possessions, Dagwood, for example, buying a flat-screen monitor for his home computer and foregoing the wearing of a hat and garters for his socks.

A cavalcade of other characters were added, including son Alexander and daughter Cookie; Mr. Beasley, the postal carrier who collides with Dagwood every morning as, late for work again, Dagwood rushes to meet his fellow carpool participants; the Bumsteads’ neighbor, Herb Woodley, with whom Dagwood plays an occasional round of golf, and Herb‘s wife, Tootsie; Dagwood’s boss and colleagues; the pesky neighbor boy Elmo Tuttle; Mr. Dithers’ wife, Cora; and the owner of Lou’s diner. In addition, Blondie has started her own catering business.

Like many other comic strips, Blondie features a number of running gags: Dagwood’s famous sandwiches, sofa naps, collisions with Mr. Beasley, Dagwood’s interrupted baths, Dagwood’s being fired by Mr. Dithers (only to be rehired when the boss cools off), Dagwood’s insomnia, Dagwood and Blondie seated in armchairs that face in different directions while they occupy themselves with separate pastimes or tasks, Dagwood’s chronic lateness to work; Dagwood’s having to run to catch the carpool vehicle, and Dagwood’s demand for a salary increase that Mr. Dithers refuses to honor.

From Blondie, humorists can learn both the need to keep humor contemporary and the techniques by which to do so. By staying current with the changes that come with changing times, the strip retains its relevancy and appeal as new generations are introduced to the strip. Were its creator and present staff to ignore such changes, it is like that their strip would soon become as obsolete as Blondie’s flapper togs or Dagwood’s raccoon coat. In addition, new characters keep the strip fresh, while the familiarity of recurring characters and running gags make readers feel as if they know the Bumsteads and their acquaintances.

Norman Rockwell is not a name that one necessarily associates with humor, although many of his paintings--and not merely those that depict April’s Fools states of affairs--depict humorous situations. His is a gentle sense of humor, teasing a smile of recognition from his admirers rather than a sense of outrage, annoyance, chagrin, or embarrassment. We laugh at the boy who, standing upon a chair, his pants and underpants pulled half way down, anxiously peruses the diploma of the family doctor who, loading a hypodermic syringe, is about to administer a shot, for we ourselves have been in the boy’s place and understand his apprehension.

Likewise, we identify with the plight of the young runaway, his knapsack laid on the floor beside his stool as he sits beside the policeman who has napped him treats him to an ice cream sundae; with the sailor who visits a tattooist to have the latest of his girlfriends’ names added, above a series of cross-out feminine names, below it; and with the worry of the little girl who watches the family physician as he listens intently to her doll’s chest through his stethoscope.

Rockwell’s humor touches the heart, capturing the simple, sincere emotions of the young and old, depicting, for his generation, the essence of marriage, family, patriotism, love, and faith, his art showing that humor can be gentle and subtle and tender and nostalgic, or even melodramatic, just as it can be sardonic, caustic, and satirical. Certainly, it can be primarily visual as well, as he and other artists have demonstrated.

We can learn from humor, wherever it occurs, and, for this reason, humorous advertisements should not be overlooked. Rockwell painted many himself, although none were as sassy and sexy as many of the ones that appear in today’s magazines.

Because magazine advertisements are more visual than linguistic in their communication of their messages, it is helpful to know the techniques by which they communicate their meanings. Otherwise, their messages may be perceived unconsciously, without one being aware of how he or she is being manipulated. Many advertisements use humor to get their messages across, and, by understanding the means of indirect communication that an advertisement employs, the reader can better appreciate both the act of communication itself and the advertisement’s humor.

As is the case with regard to other commercials, a printed advertisement’s purpose is to sell a product or a service. However, they often seem to be about something else, such as an emotion or an experience. Such advertisements imply that the product or service will make the buyer feel a certain way or have a particular experience. The emotion or experience is apt to be pleasurable and desirable. By equating the product or the service that is being advertised with such an emotion or experience, the advertisement attempts to persuade its viewer to purchase the commodity.

The language that advertisers use is primarily visual; however, it also includes minimal text. The text is usually the key to the meaning of the advertisement, suggesting how the drawing or photograph should be interpreted. Many times, the text uses a pun, or play on words, as a clue to how the visual component of the advertisement should be understood. The advertisement’s text, which may be no more than a caption, a phrase, or, sometimes, even a word, typically uses such rhetorical devises as allusions, double-entendres, metaphors or similes, and symbolism to convey the meaning of the advertisement’s image. In reading an advertisement, it is usually best to start with its imagery, or the visual component of the advertisement. In doing so, keep in mind that everything in an advertisement is planned. Nothing is there by accident.
Advertisements cost hundreds, thousands, or, in a few cases, even millions of dollars. Because they are expensive and because advertisers want to sell their products or services, every detail of an advertisement is carefully designed. Nothing is left to chance. Therefore, in reading an advertisement, one should consider every detail, both individually and in relation to one another and to the advertisement as a whole.

Most advertisements feature one or more models. When there is more than one model, the figure who is nearest to the center of the advertisement (and, often, the one who is also bigger or who stands out in some other way) represents the advertisement’s central focus. It is with him or her that the advertiser wants the viewer to identify. The advertisement invites the viewer to imagine that he or she is this figure. Besides placement and size, the advertisement’s central figure can be made to stand out from other models by being shown in the brightest area of the picture, by wearing colorful or fashionable costume while the others are wearing plainer costume, by having other models’ gazes focused on him or her, by smiling while others are not smiling, and by many other ways. However the advertisement makes the central figure stand out from other models, the technique will involve contrast. By making him or her look different than everyone else in the picture, the advertisement highlights him or her.

In reading an advertisement, ask yourself how and why the main figure stands out from others. Consider everything you can think of concerning the central figure. Is this model male or female? Older or younger? Wealthy, of the middle class, or poor? What type of costume does he or she wear? Is the costume formal, semi-formal, or casual, and is the fabric silk, satin, velvet, synthetic, or cotton? Are properties (props) involved? If so, what are they? If the central character is male, does he wear a hat, a scarf, a necklace or other jewelry, a cape? Does he carry a cane or smoke a cigarette, a cigar, or a pipe? If the central character is female, does she wear makeup? In what style is her hair done? Does she wear a hat, a scarf, or jewelry? What kind of purse does she carry? Is it large or small, expensive or economical? Does it match the rest of her outfit? Do her shoes have high heels? Are the pumps? Are they flats? Is she wearing tennis shoes or sandals? Does she smoke? What other props are shown in the picture? Are there cars, a beach, mountains, a sunset, posters, a bottle of whiskey, beer, wine, or champagne? Is there food? Where is the model or models? In a restaurant? At a resort? In a living room? In a bar or nightclub? In a bedroom? In a bathroom? In a swimming pool? On a highway? In the mountains? In a desert? In a jungle? What does the advertisement’s setting suggest about the central figure’s values and lifestyle?

Answer the same questions with regard to the secondary, or supporting, figures in the advertisement. Also consider how they are related to the main figure. Are they equals? Subordinates? Are they of the same sex, the opposite sex, or are they in mixed company (both males and females)? Is the central figure the same age, older, or younger than the other models? Do their expressions suggest the type of relationship they share? Is it romantic? Competitive? Friendly? Parental? Dependent? How would you characterize their relationship and why?

Readers read from left to right and from top to bottom, and, in general, viewers are apt to do the same. People also remember best what they hear or see last. Next, they tend to recall better what they hear or see first. What they see or hear in between is remembered least. Artists use various techniques, but chiefly contrast, to move the viewer’s eye, or gaze, across the “canvas” of the page. Where does one’s gaze enter the picture? What pathway does it follow as the viewer considers the advertisement’s picture? Where does the gaze pause or double back for a second look before continuing? Where does the gaze end? In what order were the objects and other elements in the drawing or the photograph encountered? Was a relationship among them of some kind suggested? If so, what and how? (Pay particular attention to contrasts.)

Consider the text. Is it a paragraph? A sentence or two? A phrase? A single word or a series of words, each of which is capitalized and punctuated as if it were a sentence? Is the style formal or informal? Is the language scientific, professional, or scholarly, or is it the language of everyday speech as used in ordinary discourse? Does the text contain jargon (highly specialized vocabulary used to communicate specialized knowledge) or slang? Is it original or trite? Colorful or plain? What types of figures of speech (allusion, hyperbole or exaggeration, irony, metaphor, parody, personification, pun or play on words, quotation, reification, sarcasm, satire, simile, symbol, synecdoche, understatement, zoomorphism) does the advertisement’s text employ?

Consider the advertisement as a whole. What is the dominant emotion it seeks to convey? What basic metaphor does it suggest? What pun or play on word occurs in the text, and how does it relate to the advertisement’s picture? What type of product or service does the advertisement sell? To whom does the advertisement seek to sell the product or service? (Hint: the viewer is supposed to identify with the central figure in the advertisement.)




Here is an example of how to use these techniques to read an advertisement. This advertisement, which appeals to men of the same approximate age as its female model, shows a young woman from behind, as she walks along a trolley station. Her face is not shown. Therefore, the emphasis of the picture is on her body, rather than her face, on the physical rather than the personal. She is an object, rather than a person. She is dressed very simply. She wears a simple, green top that exposes her midriff, a charm bracelet, and a white mini-skirt. A small, simple, black purse is slung over her right shoulder.

She is the largest object in the picture, and she is the closest to the image’s center, her positioning within the picture, like her size, emphasizing her over everything else that is depicted in the advertisement. Next to the figure of the young woman herself, the most outstanding prop in the picture is her skirt. It is short enough to reveal the lower portions of her buttocks, which are bare, suggesting that she either wears a thong or no underwear at all. The exposure of these parts of her anatomy draws the eye, as does the apparent fringe that adorns the bottom of her skirt, some of the tassels of which are missing, revealing the parts of her buttocks that show.

There is something else odd about the fringe: the tassels, which are short, rectangular strips, bear printed text that is too small to read. However, on the seat of her skirt, in red cursive lettering, below which is an arrowhead, pointing downward, is the message, “My number.” This message makes it clear to the advertisement’s viewer that the text printed on the tassels identifies her telephone number. Her skirt is itself an advertisement of the sort that includes, along its bottom edge, a series of tags that are printed with a telephone number to which those who are interested in the product or the service that the advertisement promotes may respond. Essentially, the model is saying, to all interested parties, “Call me.” It is based upon a play on words, alluding to the common phrase, “I have your number.”

The accompanying text at the bottom of the advertisement, which is printed in smaller font than the message on the model’s skirt, indicates that the image that the advertisement creates--of a nubile young woman who is available to anyone who is interested in calling her--is a fantasy: “Let us keep on dreaming of a better world.” The advertisement has a playful tone, suggesting that the “better world” to which it alludes would be a fun place to be, and the fun would be of a physically intimate variety. Following this fine print, as it were, is the logo that identifies the product that the advertisement is selling, Ché, a “men’s magazine.”

The model seems to represent the sort of fantasy girl that the magazine is apt to feature on a routine basis. By purchasing or subscribing to this magazine, customers gain admittance to the “better world” of fun-loving, available dream girls. The train represents opportunity. The model is approaching the station. If the viewer were present, he might meet her, and, if he were to join her on the trolley, the train might convey him--or, rather, him and the young woman--to a common destination. The silent text of the advertisement seems to be. “Don’t miss the train!” and represents a call to action, or, in the language of the trade, the closing sales pitch.


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