Your Mom’s a Day 3

Today, we reviewed the theories of humor and applied them to other films and quotes. We started off the class by analyzing the quote "Your mom's a Day 3", which was something Mr. Rivers heard a student say in the hallway. What makes the quote funny? There is a reason is funny that falls into each of the theories of humor. According to the superiority theory, this is funny because it is looking down upon and making fun of the person mom. Incongruity theory says this is funny because it is connected to unconnected things, making an incomprehensible statement. The last theory, relief theory says this is funny because it is talking about something socially unacceptable, which makes it easier to laugh at.

The next thing we discussed was tragedy and comedy as original genres. How did that Ancient Greek know whether you will laugh or cry 2500 years later? We find the same things in comedies and tragic films today.  There are many conventions and patterns across texts such as structure, that determine how the narratives are shaped. For example, tragedy always has a fall over time. To practice determining if a film was tragic or comedic, we watched the trailer for The Emoji Movie. We determined that it was trying to be a comedic film and we connected the scenes to the theories of humor once again. In short:

• Relief Theory: Poop not washing hands, socially unacceptable in society
• Incongruity Theory: Highfive eating candy after saying he wouldn't, unexpected.
• Superiority Theory: Hive Five guessing names, the emoji getting hurt

Link to trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_nfdzMhmrA

The last thing we did in class was we each read the last paragraph of different Shakespearean comedies on Wikipedia. After we read them, we discussed with our classmates to find a common connection between all of the plays. We discovered that structurally what makes a comedy is chaos to cosmos. In the case of the plays, it went from lies and deception to family and love. 

P.S. Remember to bring a phone to record with, a Chromebook, and a plan for our first podcast this Friday.