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Contextual Analysis of Humor
(15% -> 3-4 pages)

What? Think like Lewis by situating a particular text (e.g. book, movie, show, song, website) or phenomenon (e.g. trend, joke cycle) within the context of contemporary U.S. culture and writing a 3-4 page essay that emulates the major stylistic tendencies of Cracking Up.

When? We will have an in-class workshop on Wednesday to help you develop a topic and thesis. Please email a draft of your paper by Tuesday, May 27 at 11:59 p.m. On Wednesday, May 28 we will not have an in-class revision workshop because we’ll be preparing ourselves for Paper 4. But you will have the opportunity to sign up for an optional conference with me to take place on Friday, May 30. Whether or not you choose to have a conference, I will email you commentary on your draft sometime on Thursday, May 29. Your final paper should be submitted to turnitin.com on Sunday, June 1 by 5:00 p.m.

Why? As we’ve discussed, humor is a topic so broad that it’s profitable to use a variety of approaches to study it. Both Critchley and Provine acknowledge that context is important in understanding how humor works, and Lewis’s method allows you to get very particular about context. Also, if I may get on my high horse for a moment, as citizens of a digital world we consume a tremendous quantity of media messages (texts) on a daily basis. Most of them are intended to manipulate our opinions and behavior. Analyzing how they work on us and other people and whether we ultimately agree with them is a basic survival tool.

How? As we discussed way back when, Lewis’s method is mostly inductive, like Provine’s. He starts with a bunch of things and works up to a unifying explanation of them. This is somewhat different than Critchley’s method, which is mostly deductive (he asks skeptical questions about ideas until he gets down to a fundamentally true idea and then he starts drawing conclusions from that). So anyway, you need a bunch of things and the things you need are texts. But not all texts are going to be equally useful for this assignment; you have to be able to make some kind of argument that they belong to the contemporary U.S. context. So if you choose a bunch of YouTube clips of people getting punched in the balls, you need to be prepared to argue something about humor and physical harm and what it has to do with the lives of adolescent men in the U.S. or changing standards of decency in digital media, or whatever. So don’t choose anything that doesn’t seem to fit into a pattern of some kind. Another element of the choice will be whether you are going to look at a sequence or group of simple texts (like YouTube videos) or a single, more complex text (like a book or movie).

What am I arguing? Text A (B, C, etc.) is explicable by social/political context X (Y, Z, etc.). Features 1, 2, 3 (4, 5, 6, etc.) of the text(s) engage with the social/political context(s) by offering a fantasy that resolves some unpleasant aspect of the context(s), a criticism of the context(s) – perhaps a criticism of the typical fantasies that try to resolve it – or some combination thereof.

How do I organize the paper? Inductive arguments of this sort are generally organized by a sequence of examples and explanations that fit a central thesis which is usually finalized after the body writing is done and then reinserted into the introduction. It would help if each example connected to a slightly different aspect of the argument; nobody wants to read the same thing over and over again. You also have the option of arguing a personal opinion/judgment in the conclusion if you think it is warranted.

How do I match Lewis’s writing style? The good thing here is that this is the “real” Lewis; Cracking Up isn’t simplified for a broader audience. The bad thing is his jokes aren’t much better than Critchley’s and Provine’s, so tread carefully. Lewis also has a few particularly convoluted sentence structures, which is a bad feature of academic writing. The main positive trait you might notice in his style is that he is able to produce a wealth of ‘data’ through his examples and he always takes care to explain texts that his reader might not be familiar with. Since you will probably be using a lot of textual quotations, you should also take note of the way he incorporates them. He is also very good at separating opinion from analysis even though he does not shy away from having opinions. The other great thing about Lewis is how he is good at seeing different sides of an argument and different aspects of a text. The best way to achieve this is to get into an actual dialogue with a friend or classmate about your texts; this is the sort of dialogue I’ve been modeling in class.

How will this paper be graded? A “B” range paper will explain the features of a text or group of texts by linking it to a broader social or political context and conveying a reasonable approximation of the stylistic traits of cultural criticism. A “C” range paper will contain moments of good textual analysis and some insight into contextual patterns, but fail to convincingly link them together. An “A” range paper will, despite its short length, be a novel cultural criticism of contemporary humor. In other words, it will give me something new to think about and I will want to incorporate its ideas in future courses on this topic. A “D” or “F” range paper will fail to complete the assignment by turning in work that’s only halfway done or severely off-topic, or by not turning anything in at all.

Any add-ons? No. Please turn in your Lewis study questions by email or hard copy on or before Wednesday. Paste an acknowledgements and a reflection at the bottom of the final paper you submit to turnitin.com.

What are the turnitin.com codes again? See paper handout.

Speaking of neti pots, would it be asking too much if we wanted you to actually appear in a neti picture? Of course not, that is a perfectly reasonable request.