Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Topic Proposal #1

Stooping to Conquer: Why Candidates Need to Make Fun of Themselves

What is the purpose of the argument? What does it hope to achieve?

This argument’s purpose is to tell why it is beneficial for a political officer to sometimes poke fun at themselves to relieve some of the pressure created everyday by the media. Some candidates do questionable things, and to help them deal with them and let the public see that are a normal, everyday person, they need to just laugh at what they did. In doing this, they are encouraging the public to laugh with them on this subject, not at them. This argument hopes to persuade the reader to believe it is beneficial for politicians to make jokes about themselves in the public media.

What shape does the argument take? How is the argument presented or arranged? What media does the argument use?

The argument takes the form of a few past occasions of political officials making fun of something that they did and how that later helped them recover popularity in the eyes of the public. Mainly, this argument is just a couple stories about candidates in the past that helped restore their names with comedy. Examples of what the candidates did was shown and explained how other individuals followed after them and restored their honor amongst society. The argument uses examples from television and newspapers.

Who is making the argument? What ethos does it create, and what values does it assume?

A writer from a newspaper wrote this article and formulated this argument. This creates a little bit of a question as far as the morals are concerned, because reporters most of the times are just looking for more people to read their material when they write it. The validity of the argument is somewhat questioned when the reader finds that it was written by a newspaper reporter.

Monday, January 26, 2009

SWA #2

Throughout the reading, I have found many topics that I feel strongly about, but the one idea that I feel the strongest about is the fine line between making people laugh, and pissing them off, or making them sad. “What most of us consider tragic is fairly static, though something tragic can be made funny by comic techniques such as repetition.” The main point I have chosen is that there is a fine line between humor and tragedy. One situation could be tragic, but change a few of the details around and that same story could be funny. This interests me because it is so true. When you think about it, a tragedy is something that makes a person sad or cry. Humor is something that also, in a way, can make a person sad or cry. People need to be able to understand what this fine line is, in order to be funny. Other people are in charge of what is funny, the person telling the joke has no control over what other people will think until he or she tells it. One must understand other people and how they could feel about a certain event. This text exemplifies my point perfectly. Cholesterol is the subject of this text. A lower cholesterol is better but down 280 points is extremely absurd. This same picture could be tragic if it said 280 points higher or something like that, but the author knows it is impossible for cholesterol to go down 280 points, so it is funny. I could use this comic to back-up my opinion about the fine line between humor and tragedy that is introduced in Laughing Matters on page 50-62.

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2008-10-24-cartoonmorty.jpg

Monday, January 19, 2009

Reading Blog #1

Chapter one in Comedy Writing Secrets was a basic overview and guide on what comedy is and how to carry comedy through writing, while being successful at it. There are basically two views on comedy and how it is present in the world today. One is that “funny” people are naturally good at it, with some being more “gifted” than others. This book offers up a new theory: that anyone can be funny, there are just a few keys things that can be practiced in their writing to make them good at writing with humor. Basically, this chapter breaks down a few of the important things about what exactly makes things funny. The material of which the jokes are on is very important, but not the only important thing concerning humor. The audience to which the material is presented is a major factor. The audience has to find common ground with the material in order for them to relate to a particular joke being funny. Also, the way the presenter of the material puts the joke out is very important to the success of the joke.

The reading on pages 2-12 in Laughing Matters helped to discern what exactly humor is and why some things are funny and others are not. Laughing and humor is only present in human beings and thus greatly separates us from animals. Humor requires an extra bit of intelligence than just plain old everyday life. Also, this excerpt goes into how comedy isn’t an organized idea, it is composed of many different ideas that are all over the place, there is no one thing that is funny, it is a combination of many different things that makes something humorous. That is what I got from this excerpt, it was a very in-depth analysis of humor and comedy. This selection went much deeper than someone’s everyday idea of comedy.

The last selection set a fine line between comedy and tragedy. Similar situations can mean totally different things in humor. A certain situation could be funny, but when one small thing about it is changed, it can just as easily be a tragic situation. The secrets to comedy are just as random as comedy itself. There is no set formula either, certain things present together just make comedy funny.

I enjoyed this reading. The theory that people are just naturally talented with humor and others just are not funny is the best theory I believe. I thought about it and I just can’t see some people being funny at all. And what makes a person funny cannot be taught, it just has to be innate in their brains upon birth. People cannot “try” to be funny, you either are or you aren’t. I just do not see how it can be a learned behavior. Maybe this class can prove me otherwise. I did find that these two pieces may have analyzed a little bit too much, which was somewhat humorous.

How can humor be taught to a person?