{"id":11223,"date":"2024-10-01T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-01T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11223"},"modified":"2026-01-04T13:20:43","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T18:20:43","slug":"so-you-think-thats-funny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11223","title":{"rendered":"“So you think THAT’s funny?!”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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You ever wonder what is the world\u2019s funniest joke? You aren\u2019t alone. In its 19 August issue devoted to stories about humor, The New Yorker<\/em> resurrected Tad Friend\u2019s 2002 coverage of the efforts of UK psychologist Richard Wiseman (not wiseguy, note) to identify the world\u2019s funniest joke. (You can read about his team\u2019s work here<\/a>.) Not so easy, it turns out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tackling this conundrum led him to think about why we find certain things funny, or not. Friends have probably asked you to recommend a good movie, and you may have learned the hard way that your suggestions about dramas and crime stories work out pretty well, but it\u2019s practically useless to recommend a comedy\u2014people\u2019s senses of humor are too different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, Friend notes the many unanswered questions about what makes us laugh. There are esoteric issues and basic ones, like \u201cwhether any woman, anywhere, ever, has appreciated the Three Stooges.\u201d Friend’s line made me laugh, though, because I\u2019m a charter member of the Three Stooges Unappreciators. Nor do I like Neil Simon-type comedy where I can see the next one-liner barreling my way. Duck! And, mean-spirited sitcoms, arrrgh! \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing the UK researchers did notice is that, if you tell the same joke about a talking animal, and switch out the animal, the funniest one will turn out to be a duck. Maybe it\u2019s the letter \u201ck\u201d there, a reputedly sure-fire staple in comedy lore. Now, feel free to proceed with your day, having learned something, or two somethings, completely useless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apparently, our humor processing system is complicated. Electric stimulation of various parts of the brain can make a person smile or cry, but Wiseman says it\u2019s very hard to make them laugh. A different set of researchers has learned that some types of humor (the kinds of stuff you need to think about) are processed on the left side of the brain, some on the right. It\u2019s as if the left side sets up the joke, and the right side\u2014the emotional side\u2014\u201cgets it.\u201d Or, \u201cWhile the left hemisphere might appreciate some of Groucho\u2019s puns, and the right hemisphere might be entertained by the antics of Harpo, only the two hemispheres united can appreciate a whole Marx Brothers routine.\u201d Says Friend, neither one, apparently, \u201cthinks much of Chico.\u201d (I laughed again.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among many other attractions, this issue of the magazine also has nostalgic short bits about Robin Williams and Richard Pryor early in their stand-up careers, and a lovely reminiscence by Zadie Smith. Pieces that make you smile and sigh at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, our local movie theater showed 1942\u2019s The Palm Beach Story<\/em>, a classic screwball comedy starring Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor, and Rudy Vallee. Princeton English professor Maria DiBattista gave a short pre-film talk. Her book Fast Talking Dames<\/a> <\/em>is about a type of cinematic character she calls an American original. The Palm Beach Story<\/em> has two of them and, DiBattista says, every kind of comedy imaginable\u2014slapstick, one liners, mistaken identities, double entendre. We loved it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you can tolerate a little ethnic humor, here\u2019s a quick joke, courtesy of the entertaining Netflix program, Somebody Feed Phil<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A nine-year old boy rushes home from school, calling, \u201cMom! Mom! I got a part in the school play!\u201d
\u201cOh, that\u2019s wonderful, darling! What part did you get?\u201d
\u201cI play the Jewish husband!\u201d
Waving him away, she says, \u201cGo back and ask for a speaking part.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

To end on contemporary note, Emma Allen a New Yorker<\/em> cartoon editor, reports that \u201cOne of the few things A.I. can\u2019t do well is write a joke\u2014a fact that we can all cling to when we\u2019re sent into the mines by our robot overlords.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You ever wonder what is the world\u2019s funniest joke? You aren\u2019t alone. In its 19 August issue devoted to stories about humor, The New Yorker resurrected Tad Friend\u2019s 2002 coverage of the efforts of UK psychologist Richard Wiseman (not wiseguy, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"What one person thinks is funny makes another one yawn. The quest to find out why something's funny. And a joke. ","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1288,1821,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-humor","category-the-morgue"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2V1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11225,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11223\/revisions\/11225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}