Non-Sequiturs and Pop-Culture References

A bad video? You're calling "Take On Me" a bad video?! Were you dropped on your head as a child?

If one has to resort to dropping pop culture references for humor, that simply displays that one has very little else from which to draw. A sad display, to be certain. I'll never understand that success of "Seinfeld" or "Everybody Loves Raymond" or any of the other televised pap. To be more truthful, I should restate it more like this: I understand it, but I'll never stop being saddened by the low-level intellect of the teeming masses around me.

So... the joke was that the A-Ha video for "Take On Me" is cheesy and uncool? Wow. How cutting edge. What balls they have to point that out. If they're going after hard targets like that, I can't wait for the episode where they rip on Pat Boone.

I'm chortling already.

Someone needs a hug.

Agreed. And for the record, I never said or implied anything about the people who watch and enjoy such shows. My complaint is more with how ubiquitous that style of humor is among the comedy shows aimed at people my age. It just makes me want to go, "Y'know, Cartoon Network, not every 18-25 year old is baked off his ass every night at 9pm."

[Edited on Aug 16, 2005 by Keith]

LIES!

i dont know from everybody hates raymond, but seinfeld did nothing to reference any other culture, seinfeld's main joke was to take pet peeves or sociological quirks to the heigth of ridiculousness. it is the opposite of the random humor, incredibly dense and structured events.

i WAS a child when that video was made.

Man I wish!

Am I right, eh? Am I right?
Hey, where did everybody go?.....

Dammit, you’re right. There apparently isn’t enough of a distinction in my brain between sequential humor that relies on shock value and humor that relies on random non-sequiturs. Shocking clearly is funny when it connects to some sort of story (and including cuteness and violence in the mix never hurts), and the few episodes of HTF I’ve seen have even included something at least masquerading as a punchline at the end. I suppose I won’t shed any tears for you, s5, but I still don’t personally enjoy HTF’s brand of comedy. Mark Twain’s claim that humor doesn’t exist in heaven has always struck a nerve with me; the humor of HTF seems born of the same fear and shame that make fart jokes “funny”. It feels more like a defense mechanism than a genuine response to the subject matter, and rather than venting my discomfort at such things with laughter, I prefer the stark realism of hating the universe and whatever twisted creature created it. That may not be for everyone, though.

Rather than watching this devolve into a Silliness thread, I’d greatly prefer to steer it toward a discussion about what humor actually is. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but what are its heart and mind? Is shocking funny, and if it ties into a larger plot does humor increase at the same rate as shock value? Can humor exist in the absence of the element of surprise? Why do some people really feel non-sequiturs are hilarious while the rest of us laugh at them? Tastes are always going to differ (and tastes in humor may diverge more greatly than tastes in anything else), but can we at least get the fat part of the Bell curve to agree on some kind of objective criteria regarding what’s funny and what’s just lame, or is any kind of consensus a lost cause?

As an aside to anyone now sneering, moaning, rolling their eyes or willing to take up the “it’s just a cartoon” or “humor shouldn’t be analyzed” banners, I say this: I take comedy seriously, BITCHES!

No, you didn't imply anything about the people who enjoy and watch such shows.

I did.

I think one of the reasons non-sequitors are funny is that one of the most basic elements of comedy is creating an expectation and then doing something else. That's the definition of a joke with a punchline.

I think part of the appeal is that non-sequitor is often just good old-fashioned silliness like the kind we laughed at when we were kids. I think when people try to find "reasons" why something is funny, they tend to look down on things that are funny just because they're completely ridiculous or absurd.

And in defense of pop culture references, I'll say this:

During the 80's and most of the 90's, the dominant form of comedy on tv was the sitcom style, which was basically just a collection on one-liners, insults, wacky misunderstandings and people saying funny things as they entered or exited rooms. The humor was very watered down to appeal to the greatest number of people possible. If there were ever refrences, it was usually just the repitition of some popular movie catch-phrase; something that EVERYONE would get.

Like I mentioned earlier, the Simpsons was one of the first shows to really break from those conventions. I remember when I first saw the 1993 episode where Homer goes to college and talks about playing Dungeons and Dragons with a group of nerds. Even though they were making fun of D&D (which I played at the time) I remember busting out laughing over this, simply because you would NEVER here a sitcom character mention it, over fears that some guy in Podunk, Kansas might not understand what they were talking about. I think a lot of people younger than me might not realize how revolutionary it was to have characters on TV talking about the "nerdish" things we were into.

While I don't find every reference on Family Guy funny (the lack of context for some of them can be irritating) what I do admire about the show is that the writers will reference anything (80's videos, the Electric Company, The Chronicles of Narnia) and they clearly don't care if everyone or even anyone gets them, THEY find them funny, and thats all they care about. To some that might be a negative, but I am definately of the Andy Kaufman school of comedy, in that a comedian should say what HE finds funny, and if people don't get it, oh well. The moment a comedian starts modifying his act so that a greater number of people find it funny, it loses something.

Amen to that. Kaufman and Lenny were incredible. . .but neither would go over well in today's world o' cheap yuks. Hmmm. . .or would they? Have you ever sat through Kaufman's "Breakfast with Blassie," aquinasfilter? Clearly, only Lenny is enjoying the humour, and it's a very subtle humour. Kaufman, ultimately, bombed in his day - would it be any different today?

dammit, aquinas, you make a good point.