In Katherine's blog, she talks about how Jim Gaffigan is an amazing comedian due to his relatable nature and self-deprecating jokes. I throughly enjoyed her analysis of his style of comedy because it put into words exactly how I feel about him. She perfectly describes how he is both superior to the people that he criticizes but also self-deprecating, which creates a relatable person for the audience to enjoy listening to. She uses a certain joke as an example regarding how Jim goes to the gym and works out for a while until he realizes that he has done virtually nothing. This vague description alone is funny, and then the comedy from his delivery nails the joke. Gaffigan also has a mostly clean style of humor, which I know many people enjoy. Personally, I don't care, and although I usually prefer when comedians curse as I think it can add to the humor, Jim is one of the few comedians who doesn't regularly curse and still makes me die of laughter constantly. His constant deprecating jokes about either other people or himself make the audience fall in love with him and feel as though he isn't above them, he's just like them, which is part of what makes him so appealing as a comedian and a person.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlz8DVn1Mjc My favorite TV show is The Eric Andre Show. It's a tv interview parody show with extremely niche, random, absurd, and insane humor. The show can appear very stupid and silly at first, but watching many of the sketches or interviews will quickly convince you of Eric's humor. One of the best parts about the show is that the skits always evolve as they're happening. In this skit, at first, Eric simply appears to be a crazed man who works on Wall Street. However, it quickly spirals out of control and just turns into Eric vomiting on command and screaming about abortion. This is the main appeal of the show. It's random and crazy and unpredictable, and, scientifically, we laugh hardest when we are surprised or don't expect something. This continually changing skit embodies that idea, and Eric's show reflects that as a whole. As for the reading, I would say that Eric's humor falls under relief humor. The show is essen...
Awesome post, Theo! I thought is was interesting that you brought up the fact that Gaffigan doesn't often curse. It's surprising to think of the small number of successful comedians who have a comparatively clean style of humor. Perhaps this is because others rely more on relief humor (with crude topics) in order to entertain the audience.
ReplyDeleteI think you hit on something interesting about how he doesn't curse, and how that might mean that he has to use self-deprecation more. I often wonder if superiority theory in general is really a subspecies of relief, and so both obscenity, denigration (of self or others) would be part of that. What do you think?
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