Essay Outline

Topic Proposal
Laughing Matters
Reasons presidents need to make fun of themselves
4 Questions
• What is the purpose of the argument? What does it hope to achieve?
• What appeals or techniques does the argument use - emotional, logical, and ethical?
• What shape does the argument take? How is the argument presented or arranged? What media does the argument use?
• What are the contexts - social, political, historical, cultural - for this argument? Whose interest does it serve? Who gains or loses by it?


The purpose of this argument is to show that the presidential nominees are not above and beyond everyone else. They want to see that the politicians have some kind of humor to them and want to see that they are also human and not superior to everyone else. In sense they are superior but that does not cross the voters mind if the candidates are making jokes. It has been proven that candidates need to enjoy some kind of humor to get elected. The argument hopes to achieve that the voters see there is at least a little humor in the candidate and not all the time serious.

The techniques used in this argument are both emotional and ethical. Some jokes can be emotional because when you laugh it is emotional. But sometimes when jokes are emotional they can be ethical and unethical. The jokes usually aren’t unethical because the script is practiced many times before it goes on air, therefore it does not hurt anyone’s feelings and cause the candidate to lose votes because of that.

This argument shows that candidates need to be on a comedy show in order to get elected. Not all of the presidents who got elected were on a comedy show but many of them were. It is shown in the text read and through past history and documentaries about the presidential elections. Many of the nominees have appeared on SNL, The Late Night Show, and several other comedy shows. By doing this, it shows that the nominees have a sense of humor and can relate to the audience. If they presidential candidates never relate with the audience then it will be hard for the voters to vote for them because they don’t know anything about them.

The contexts used in this argument are political, cultural, and historical. They are political because we are dealing with presidential nominees and that is what the political world revolves around. This is also cultural because the culture has changed drastically since the beginning of the elections and it shows because the candidates need to pretty much be in some sort of comedy before they are elected. Also it is historical because history shows that the presidents who appear in comedy shows are more likely to get elected and have gotten elected in many of the cases. It interest the people who have to vote because it gives them something to laugh about and relate, like a said above, to the nominee. The presidential candidates somewhat have something to gain but almost everything to lose. They can gain votes if they connect with the audience well enough and if they are humorous. But also they can lose everything because if they are offensive or not funny at all then they are not likely to get elected.

Reading Response 2

Chapter 3 of the Comedy Writing was pretty interesting. It starts off with the six ingredients to making humor. Without one of these ingredients, just like a food recipe, humor is just not the best it can be so all of the ingredients have to be there. They are all accurate and make sense as to what needs to be there for humor. The six ingredients are: target, hostility, realism, exaggeration, emotion, and surprise. The target he talks about is not the audience you are relating to necessarily. Using humor makes one feel superior to the other. If someone is making fun of something or someone else, it makes that person feel like that have an edge on whatever they are making fun of. The best target for humor is probably yourself. Many people will not get offended if you make jokes on yourself, whereas if you make a joke on other people they will get offended easier. Whether you make a joke about yourself or someone else, there will be at least one person who gets offended. It is more reasonable to make your jokes not so offensive but still funny where everyone can relate to them.

I thought this chapter was pretty interesting because it gives you the most ideas as to where and what to make jokes about. Some of the topics that are good to joke about are: yourself, sex, celebrities, places, products, and ideas of other people. One of the main things in this chapter that got my attention was the part about Hostility. That is the second part to the ingredients. Many people think comedy is cruel. When you ridicule someone, you think its funny but the person receiving the joke does not. There for it is cruel. That is why in comedy it is called “ridicruel.” When someone uses this type of comedy they feel superior over someone like mentioned above. They feel like they are on top of the world when in reality they aren’t. Many people enjoy these jokes because they are the best ones to tell. Admit it, they are the funniest. These are the jokes comedians tell the most. They really do not care whether it offends people and when they tell them, most everybody in the audience laughs because it’s hilarious. A lot of the topics that are harmful to people are race, religion, where one lives, etc. It is funny when it is not about you. When it is about you it is not so funny because you get offended.


An example: http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/940092/ (this one has bad words so we might not should watch this one)

Funny Eh?

In Comedy Writing, it basically tells you that the only way to write funny is to train your brain to think funny. Everyone uses humor to in one way or another. When you say something funny, you know right away whether the person or group you told the joke to think it’s funny. Comedy has been around since the beginning of time. Nowadays comics are being produced more rapidly than other professions because a lot of people think they themselves are funny. But the comics have to realize what the audience think is funny today. Different groups of people think different things are funny so you when on stage, you have to have a joke for everyone so everyone gets a laugh and not just one certain group. We laugh at many different things. Sometimes people are funny and they don’t even know they are funny.
Most of the stuff in the readings I understand. I think it is really cool that a person is able to be taught how to be funny. I thought it just came natural that someone was funny. Now some people are naturally born funny but that was one of the cooler things in the readings. Also I would have to agree that being in a classroom where it is not so boring and monotone is awesome. I have had experience in both classrooms and the ones with jokes in them are more fun. They are also easier to learn in because I get more involved in the conversation. The show time part of the reading in Comedy Writing was hard. I was trying to think of twenty jokes on the top of my head and I could barely do it. It was really hard but I think with more practice of thinking of jokes, it should be easier.
What I do not understand is the absence of feeling in the Laughing Matters reading. I do not understand how humor and laughing is an absence of feeling. Maybe I am not reading it or analyzing it right but it just does not make very much sense to me at all. I think it is just a habit to laugh when someone falls like the guy on the side of a road. Laughing becomes a habit when you are young in my opinion. Some people are born around people who make them laugh and others are born around people who have no humor at all. Although everyone has humor in their own minds, the ones who do not laugh do not find it funny. I do not really understand a lot of the Laughing Matters reading. It does not make sense to me because the wording of it is difficult for me. When little kids tell knock knock jokes, most people laugh because they make no sense. That gives the child a good feeling about themselves so that when they get older they will be able to tell jokes that actually make sense because they will start to hear ones and remember, “Oh I said they when I was younger.” Little kids never get tired of jokes and I think that is one of the main things that cause humor when someone gets older. If they are brought up in humor they are going to forever live with humor. It is the same as if you are brought up in athletics then you are going to like athletics when you get older.
Question
How long does it take for someone to be taught how to write funny?
I understand that people can be taught how to write funny but I do not understand how someone can be taught so fast. To me it feels like it would take a long time for someone to write funny. That is just my opinion so that is why I asked this question because I am wondering how long it takes different people to write funny. I know people with funny minds it would not take them long but how long for someone who does not think funny?