Asimov describes humor as taking you out of your rut. Everything that’s ordinary, that happens as you expected, is just part of the rut. Humor moves your POV to something you never thought of. “I wonder what my dog named me?”
If you figure out the killer before the show reveals it, you’re not surprised, you’re not taken out of your rut. If you’ve heard the joke a thousand times, it has no power.
SIde-splitting humor requires a MAJOR blow to your way of thinking. Something unexpected. Something off the wall.
When Carol Burnett finished filming Annie, she was exhausted. She’s on the screen for a LONG time. At the end, Tim Curry asked her what she was going to do after all that work.
“Honey,” she said, “I’m going to go home to Hawaii and watch whales fuck.” He laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe.
Humor is an interrupted defense mechanism. We’re threatened, we laugh it off.
LIBERAL humor is an effort to challenge one’s ideology, one’s thinking, cultural norms, societal cues, gender roles. “Excessive force in the apprehension of the Blues Brothers, has been approved.”
CONSERVATIVE “humor”, for lack of a better term, does not challenge your thinking. It’s actually meant to reinforce your beliefs and biases. “Four hippies went over a cliff in a Volkswagon… And they all died and went to Hell. HAHAHAHA!”
You laugh because the joke doesn’t threaten your bedrock beliefs. Just strokes your hair and tells you you’re right. All is well. Heh.
No wonder you don’t feel paralyzing humor. THe stuff you let yourself watch it’s all reinforcing you and your rapture expectations.
