Humor is subjective, and we know it when we try to pull off a crass joke at a formal dinner party or we tell a highbrow quip at a baseball game. We know it when we flop. We know it when we land a funny, kill, hit the funny bone, too, but how is it that we were funny?How did our funny jokes go over so well?
We don't have to take the substance out of funny jokes to consider what makes funny jokes funny, really. We just have to have the thick skin and miserable childhoods and caustic, bantering mentality that compose a comic sense of humor'and give a few nods to the elements of a good joke.
The Element of Surprise
When the unexpected'the absolutely bizarre or unpredicted'suddenly appears, the shock elicits [inappropriate] laughter.
You have likely seen (in an old movie, in a melodramatic TV show) a woman slap a man for kissing her. Consider the show, Third Rock from the Sun. Dick Solomon (played by the genius of quasi-slapstick, John Lithgow) is an alien commander sent by The Big Head to study earth humans. Everything is new or daunting or perplexing to him. In the first episode, he is at a gathering with Mary (played by the brilliantly witty Jane Curtain). They end up in the restroom together and he inappropriately kisses her. She slaps him. He looks wounded. Then he slaps her back. He thinks it is part of the earthling ritual. Hysterical, that unexpected out of the norm behavior.
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