"The protagonist Jim Hawkins — a nod to the slaver-cum-British naval commander John Hawkins — begins as a fatherless hooligan on the outskirts of the galaxy before he is sucked into adventure."
I would have thought that the movie was a play on the Robert Louis Stevenson novel Treasure Island, a main character of which was a boy named Jim Hawkins....though I suppose both Jims could be based on John.....
1) Reading this essay was a trip. I immediately remembered a conversation with a girl after school, shortly after two of our friends had started dating. I don't remember how we got to talking about your friends, but shortly after it came up, she told me, "Your friend could really do a lot better." The first thing I realized was that I had no sense of which guys the girls found attractive, but once I got over that, I realized how vicious a comment it was towards her friend! Guys in our group would celebrate a friend's new girlfriend, even if they liked the girl themselves, and to realize that the girls weren't doing the same thing was deeply unnerving as a kid. My dad showed me Mean Girls, which is something made by people who had to be funny enough to hang with the hot people.
4) I really enjoyed that episode! I think Tyler's point about controlling comedy is deeply true. You can see this not only with the people who criticize comedians, but comedians themselves! A comedian's job is to be funny, and that's pretty deeply tied to surprising people, but comedians want to have their cake and eat it too, letting everyone know that they at least want the audience to feel comfortable. Many comedians, spanning superstars to open-mics, attempt to navigate this divide is by spending a minute or two lamenting how woke/PC/etc. is ruining comedy in order to get applause, or to prep the audience for a trans joke. As a fan of comedy, this is my least favorite part of any special, not because it's wrong but because it's hack! If that speech is done just for applause, it's a reminder of the horrors of the world, and if it's not, it spoils the joke.
For examples of funny, uncomfortable comedy I recommend Jerrod Carmichael's "8" and this Brandon Wardell bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scKHfa_xfZc , both examples of discomfort as a source of humor.
In Robin Hanson and Kevin Simler's book The Elephant in the Brain there is a chapter on the evolutionary purpose of laughter, which is mostly about laughter as a signaling mechanism. It is explained, mostly, as a spontaneous utterance to signal to others and oneself that you are ok and still in a play mode. There is more to it, but this is a lot of the basics of what can be funny with a lot of comedy. A lot of comedy in the present and recent past as viewed through a screens is built upon this and has to do with the construal level and with norms. This is why I agree a lot on the woke stuff and the norm shift being a part of the story, but I have yet to see anyone talk about the change in the construal level.
The best two examples of this construal level effect being present in comedy and joke telling are the tired old joke about dropping the soap in prison, and this is supposed to be funny to those not in prison because they are at a safe remove from that situation. The other is the Mel Brooks quote about how "Tragedy is when I cut my finger and comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die." This is why you can see something on twitter that is hilarious, but would probably be a minor tragedy if it happened in your own life in private. This actually all relates to what Tyler says with regard to more neuroticism and depression and control because with social media and smart phones as a new social technology there is a significant change in the construal level of many things and how people relate to them. I quite liked your comedy article and it was the initial reason I subscribed.
To hopefully clarify slightly, I don't think of jokes as necessarily being construal level jokes in and of themselves, although I suppose this element could loom larger or smaller within something that is humorous. Just that it is easier to see the construal level being present in these examples including Soviet era jokes. I think of it more as a type of psychological distance. I am not confident enough to say that all humor and jokes have a construal level element, but it does seem to be present in a large amount of what is funny and why we laugh. Take for example the movie This Is 40 that you wrote about your wife and you laughing to tears during. I don't wish to psychologize you or claim insight I don't have, but aside from laughing because you could relate were you not also laughing because of the psychological distance from the situation. It was all happening to someone else while you were safely at home at a remove from this comedic reflection of parts of your reality.
"The protagonist Jim Hawkins — a nod to the slaver-cum-British naval commander John Hawkins — begins as a fatherless hooligan on the outskirts of the galaxy before he is sucked into adventure."
I would have thought that the movie was a play on the Robert Louis Stevenson novel Treasure Island, a main character of which was a boy named Jim Hawkins....though I suppose both Jims could be based on John.....
Yes no doubt and I should have said that!
1) Reading this essay was a trip. I immediately remembered a conversation with a girl after school, shortly after two of our friends had started dating. I don't remember how we got to talking about your friends, but shortly after it came up, she told me, "Your friend could really do a lot better." The first thing I realized was that I had no sense of which guys the girls found attractive, but once I got over that, I realized how vicious a comment it was towards her friend! Guys in our group would celebrate a friend's new girlfriend, even if they liked the girl themselves, and to realize that the girls weren't doing the same thing was deeply unnerving as a kid. My dad showed me Mean Girls, which is something made by people who had to be funny enough to hang with the hot people.
4) I really enjoyed that episode! I think Tyler's point about controlling comedy is deeply true. You can see this not only with the people who criticize comedians, but comedians themselves! A comedian's job is to be funny, and that's pretty deeply tied to surprising people, but comedians want to have their cake and eat it too, letting everyone know that they at least want the audience to feel comfortable. Many comedians, spanning superstars to open-mics, attempt to navigate this divide is by spending a minute or two lamenting how woke/PC/etc. is ruining comedy in order to get applause, or to prep the audience for a trans joke. As a fan of comedy, this is my least favorite part of any special, not because it's wrong but because it's hack! If that speech is done just for applause, it's a reminder of the horrors of the world, and if it's not, it spoils the joke.
For examples of funny, uncomfortable comedy I recommend Jerrod Carmichael's "8" and this Brandon Wardell bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scKHfa_xfZc , both examples of discomfort as a source of humor.
On comedy.
In Robin Hanson and Kevin Simler's book The Elephant in the Brain there is a chapter on the evolutionary purpose of laughter, which is mostly about laughter as a signaling mechanism. It is explained, mostly, as a spontaneous utterance to signal to others and oneself that you are ok and still in a play mode. There is more to it, but this is a lot of the basics of what can be funny with a lot of comedy. A lot of comedy in the present and recent past as viewed through a screens is built upon this and has to do with the construal level and with norms. This is why I agree a lot on the woke stuff and the norm shift being a part of the story, but I have yet to see anyone talk about the change in the construal level.
The best two examples of this construal level effect being present in comedy and joke telling are the tired old joke about dropping the soap in prison, and this is supposed to be funny to those not in prison because they are at a safe remove from that situation. The other is the Mel Brooks quote about how "Tragedy is when I cut my finger and comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die." This is why you can see something on twitter that is hilarious, but would probably be a minor tragedy if it happened in your own life in private. This actually all relates to what Tyler says with regard to more neuroticism and depression and control because with social media and smart phones as a new social technology there is a significant change in the construal level of many things and how people relate to them. I quite liked your comedy article and it was the initial reason I subscribed.
Maybe macabre Soviet era jokes are another example of construal level jokes
Come for the comedy, stay for the…? Glad to have you!
To hopefully clarify slightly, I don't think of jokes as necessarily being construal level jokes in and of themselves, although I suppose this element could loom larger or smaller within something that is humorous. Just that it is easier to see the construal level being present in these examples including Soviet era jokes. I think of it more as a type of psychological distance. I am not confident enough to say that all humor and jokes have a construal level element, but it does seem to be present in a large amount of what is funny and why we laugh. Take for example the movie This Is 40 that you wrote about your wife and you laughing to tears during. I don't wish to psychologize you or claim insight I don't have, but aside from laughing because you could relate were you not also laughing because of the psychological distance from the situation. It was all happening to someone else while you were safely at home at a remove from this comedic reflection of parts of your reality.