Response to Amal's lead blog post - last blog post! :(

I absolutely love Ellen DeGeneres chat show, and she always makes me laugh with her sarcasm and witty humor. This was the first time I had seen the clip of the little boy eating sprinkles and it amazed me that such a simple thing can receive over 1 million views. This raises the question as to how could a video of a little boy who simply eats sprinkles and lies about the fact that he did, go viral. I can definitely say that one of the reasons I loved this video was because of the cute little boy’s face and how the camera zoomed in on his big innocent eyes. You could see all the sprinkles dotted around his face, yet he still insisted that he had not eaten them. It was funny to see that he thought he could get away with this lie and how he thought he was fooling the ‘silly adults’. One of the reasons that I find child humor so funny is because it amazes me how witty some kids can be at such a young age. They don’t mean to be funny but some of the things that little kids say is hilarious because it is so random and weird. For example when the kid was on the show with his Mum, he continued to lie about an imaginary dog named “Tick”.  No adult would ever let their imagination run wild and be so free and careless that they could say whatever they wanted. Due to his innocence we can laugh at the fact that the little kid was continuously lying rather than become angry with him. I feel that the most obvious theory of comedy to explain why I laughed would have to be incongruity theory. This is because his answers were so different to what a typical adult would answer. Even on live TV he persisted to be rebellious and lie to thousands of people while trying to convince us all along that he was telling the truth.

Response to Family Feud

I thought that this clip was very funny indeed for a number of reasons. The answers by the participants are not planned or thought through which makes it the humor seem natural and not staged, which for me makes it even funnier. The reason for this, is that in a movie or show where the scene is scripted I know that the actor just read the words of a piece of paper and did not come up with the humor themselves so I can't give them as much credit for being funny as for example a person on a live show where they don't eve have time to think of what to say. Straight rom the start it is obvious that the underlying theory of comedy here is incongruity. The words that came out of the man's mouth were so random that it did not fit with 'the norm'. In this case the more obscure the answer and different from a 'boring typical answer' the funnier it was. Furthermore, the fact that it is on live television increased the extent of the humor, as even if an inappropriate word was said, you know that they cannot change or cut anything out. 

Response to Wipeout

Wipeout is a very popular show both here in the US and also in the UK. It is basic and stupid humor but I cannot lie to myself and pretend I  don't enjoy it because it is indeed pretty funny to watch. The fact that the participants do it to themselves and enter a competition where they know they will be filmed falling and crashing into things is amusing. The falls are so unexpected, as you have no idea when a "giant hammer" will come out and knock you over. I also find myself anticipating whether or not the person is going to make it. I found the funniest falls the ones that were the most bizarre, such as when the lady did a flip because it was not a classic fall. I would disagree with Kendal in the fact that the humor here most closely relates to superiority. If it were to relate to superiority theory, then surely it would be funny to see them fall extremely badly and injure themselves. However this is not the case because any significant fall where it looks like they may have hurt something, I wince at the pain they may feel and become sympathetic. I think that the humor here relates to incongruity theory because you don't know when they will fall over and the most absurd falls tended to be the best. Furthermore, the commentators add to the humor as they come up with the most bizarre comments and also the sound effects create more excitement and drama. 

Response to Cawood - talking animals

I absolutely love this video of the talking animals and have seen it a countless number of times. This clip went viral in the UK after it was first shown on TV and everyone could not stop talking about/reenacting parts from the clip. I find the idea of talking animals hilarious, but to add to this was the fact that BBC did so well in choosing precisely the right voice just to fit the personality of that animal. My amusement certainly came from the unexpectedness of the voices, and wondering, "what type of voice or saying is going to come next?” The dialogue and chosen words are perfect to fit the mood and situation of the animal. The animals project the feelings of humans that we don't expect to come from an animals mouth. We percieve animals as innocent, but to see another side of this makes us think,"do animals also think the same things that us humans do?". It puts a spin on nature and may change what we think, next time we hear a pellican scream. 

Shortly after this clip became popular, it also started a longstanding tradition in the UK. While at a Festival, a man name 'Allen' went missing. Due to almost everyone knowing about this clip, people started going around just like the chipmunk in the clip, shouting "Allen, Al, Al, Allen". However, this tradition has now stuck, and now every time you go to a British festival, people still shout this constantly, as if they are still searching for "Allen" who got lost several years ago. 

Response to Sara's Blog - Bilingual people

Sara's blog was very interesting and entertaining. I was highly amused due to the fact that I could relate to the situations presented. I grew up in a boarding school, which naturally had a lot of international students, especially those from China. It always amazed me how they could speak English just as well as me, having only learnt it for several years and on top of that, speaking a whole other language perfectly. From time to time Chinese kids would speak to each other in their own language and then start laughing hysterically. I could not help but to assume they were bitching about my friends and I, but I always wandered if this was actually the case. Like in the video clip, we always used to think that when they spoke in their native language, they sounded extremely angry and I remember thinking "wow, they must hate England". Now however, thanks to this video, my uncertainties have been confirmed! 

I also have cousins living in Switzerland who speak 4 languages fluently. Apparently the only word for this is 'multilingual' (I was hoping for a cooler word) which sadly doesn't seem to justify how impressive this is. Anyway, every time we sat at dinner, they would constantly change from fluent German, to English to French and then into Italian. I found this remarkable, as I sat there thinking of the few words I could conjure up in French. 

This clip makes you realize how useful learning another language can be and also highlights the fact that us British-speaking people are extremely lazy, as everyone else speaks English, yet out foreign language skills are so poor. When we go to another country, we automatically expect them to speak perfect English, without even trying to understand or learn other counties languages.

Response to Emma's Blog - Mean Girls 

The movie 'Mean girls' is definitely an all time favorite of mine. It is an easy film to watch and follow the plot, as well as having many 'laugh out loud' moments. It is one of the few movies that never get old and almost anyone in this generation could real off a quote from it.

Coming from England, this movie represents what we imagine to be a stereotypical American high school - lots of 'red cup' parties and cliquey friend groups. However, I agree with Emma, in the fact that there is a moral to the story: being mean to others can lead to your own negative consequences, (a.k.a Karma). It also aims to teach the viewers that everyone should be their own person and that one should not pretend to be someone they are not. This movie embodies every aspect of the problems people face growing up, in a typical American high school. It is the ‘crème de la crème’ of todays ‘Chick Flicks’.

The comedy that is most evident in this movie is closest to that of relief theory. After everyone finds themselves in a huge mess, we are relieved to see that they all end up relatively happy, even though their social statuses have gone completely downhill. This proves the underlying point that, in order to be ‘cool’ and happy, we do not need to ridicule and bully others.