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These are the daily assignments that keep us talking and thinking. I’m way too busy with my own work to assign you busywork. This class will be driven by discussion, not lecture, so I expect you to come to class having read all assigned materials. Read slowly, read carefully, read more than once, and please, please, please read with a pen in your hand. Underline, circle, star, flow chart, start a dialogue with the author and tell him when you like something or when you think it sucks. If you can’t or won’t write in your books, take notes on index cards or post-it notes and stick them between the pages. Reading with care and attention does wonders for your own preparation for the overall quality of our class discussion.
Believe it or not, students in my previous classes have said that the discussion questions were the most useful assignment, because they helped them organize their thoughts as they were reading and got their brains churning before the essay deadlines really sunk in. Many successful students used whole sentences or paragraphs from their discussion questions in their papers. You should always try to answer all of the discussion questions in writing before the start of class. They won’t be graded for grammar or content, but I may check to see if you’re completing them, and you’ll turn them in with your paper drafts.
I will specially assign each question to one person, which will rotate through the entire class. This doesn’t mean that the rest of you shouldn’t be prepared to answer the question, just that this one person should be more prepared to answer the question. Sometimes I’ll give you the discussion questions for the next session at the end of class, but other times I won’t even think of them until after we’ve talked, so they’ll be posted to the listserv and the website later that afternoon.
![Q28: What role does the scatological (bathroom) humor play in Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay? Is it essential to the core of the movie or extraneous? Is it fulfilling a fantasy for the audience(s) or challenging that fantasy? Both? Why?
Q29: What role does the political/racial humor play? Is it essential to the core of the movie or extraneous? Is it fulfilling a fantasy for the audience(s) or challenging that fantasy? Both? Why?
Q30: What role does the sexual humor play? Is it essential to the core of the movie or extraneous? Is it fulfilling a fantasy for the audience(s) or challenging that fantasy? Both? Why?
Q31: How does the title of the book suggest that Lewis is taking a different approach than Critchley and Provine?
Q32: According to Lewis, "partisans on all sides of the culture wars are likely to cry foul when a particularly pointed or edgy joke crosses what they see as a line of good taste" (5). Thus he argues that the "the edgy-jokes-lead-to-angry-criticism-and-countering-defense-moves dance" (6), a.k.a. the "butt war" (7), is a common "ritual of public discourse" (6) in the contemporary U.S. Using the terms "joke" and "antijoke" as defined on 13, describe the sequence of a butt war that has occurred in the time since "Cracking Up" was published in the fall of 2006. Alternately, describe a butt war that has recently occurred amongst your friends/family/classmates/associates, etc.
Q33: Why do you think Lewis includes the middle paragraph on 19?
Q34: Do you think there is a formal difference between "liberal" and "conservative" humor in the present-day U.S., or do you think that "liberal" humor is simply humor applied in the service of liberal arguments/principles and "conservative" humor is simply humor applied in the service of conservative arguments/principles? In other words, do you think there is a difference in the style and/or intention of the two types of humor, or just a difference in their political premise? (Please note that when I use the terms "liberal" and "conservative" here, I mean their meaning in the context of present-day U.S. political debates. Historically, and to people in other countries, these terms have meanings that are quite different and sometimes even the opposite.) I just noticed that Lewis actually asks this question on 140.
Q35: Give an example of a "killing joke" (24) different or more recent than the ones Lewis cites. It doesn't have to literally involve violence, but it should produce "antisentimental detachment" (25). Do you think this joke is actually harmful or 'just a joke'?
Q36: Compare Lewis's writing technique to that of Critchley and Provine. I don't only mean "writing" as in the way he writes sentences (which you can definitely analyze), but also the points he makes and the types of evidence he uses.
Q37: What would Critchley say about killing jokes "fantasies of suicide and humanicide" (51)? Compare his theory of theory of the pure laugh to the alternate theory that Lewis discusses on 45-47.
Q38: Give an example of the ‘positive humor movement’ that you have encountered outside of class. Does it fit Lewis’s descriptions? If you can’t think of one, try the websites mentioned on 68-69. You might also (hint, hint) look at pg. 33 of this week’s New University.
Q39: What does Provine think of the positive humor movement (see 189-208)? Would he agree that, “because humor is a multidimensional concept, simple assertions about what it is and how it functions are necessarily flawed” (69)? Would Critchley?
Q40: “Far from repudiating all hostile, critical, or targeted jokes,” Lewis says that he “treasure[s] the role of humor, satire, and derision in mocking and assailing appropriate targets” because it is “a weapon that can be wielded against injustice and folly” (70). But he also says that “disparagement humor creates a normative climate of... discrimination” (123). Can he have it both ways?
Q41: Lewis eventually concludes that positive humor and killing jokes are prevalent because both are “variants of gallows humor at a time when this ultimate, if transitory, emotional relief and the denial or distance it serves seem to be much in need” (111). He also says that Americans are “dug in, pissed off, threatened and committed” (132). Do you think these assessments of the contemporary moment are accurate or merely hyperbolic? To put it another way, I’ll refer to Lewis’s title. Is contemporary American humor the result of “a time of conflict”?
Q42: Summarize the opposing positions of Oring and Boskin (especially on 115, but also 116-22). Make an argument supporting one of them against the other.
Q43: Thinking ahead to your next paper, what is a particularly interesting humorous text (e.g. movie, show, song, website, joke cycle, event, phenomenon) you would like to analyze? What context will you place it in - the contemporary U.S. in general, or a more narrow context?
Q44: “Can political jokes help society at large find... solutions and cures?” (159). Or do you agree with Leno that “jokes by their very nature are neither didactic nor instructive” (157)? What would Critchley and Provine say?
Q45: Notice Lewis’s use of the word “unpack” to mean “analyze” on 162. Never do this. It is horrible. Whoops, this isn’t a question. Ummm... isn’t Lewis’s use of the word “unpack” to mean “analyze” on 162 just horrible?
Q46: Lewis accuses Limbaugh, with some pretty convincing evidence, of “us[ing] a veneer of comedy to lower resistance to his arguments and provide cover when they are assailed” and using “I was only kidding” as “a defense strategy... when his accuracy is challenged” (167). But he praises Stewart for being “unwilling to be randomly amusing” and “determined to use humor to make a point he seriously believe[s] in” (204). Watch the full Carlson-Stewart interview here. Do Stewart’s statements match Lewis’s analysis, or is Stewart in fact employing the same defense as Limbaugh?
Q47: Lewis argues that “humor can promote intellectual relaxation or distraction, opening audiences up to illogical and factually insufficient forms of persuasion” (169), and cites examples of Reagan, Clinton I, and Bush II using it strategically. My favorite instance of Bush II’s humor strategy can be seen here (sorry, no video). If Bush II is in fact stupid, he’s stupid like a fox. Lewis observes that as of late 2005, he had won the “butt war” that began with his rise to national prominence in 1999, and indeed achieved “the greatest butt shift... in the history of American humor” (171). Is Bush’s more recent unpopularity a consequence of a reverse butt shift or is the reverse butt shift the cause of his recent unpopularity?
Q48: “Should we... want a president to have a sense of humor” (170)? Can you find instances of McCain, Obama, and/or Clinton II using “political satire [to] exert influence less by changing than by strengthening opinion” (193)?
Q49: You guys were pretty young at the time, but can you cite any particular instances from personal experience in which the 9/11 attacks “suck[ed] the oxygen out of public joking” (174)? When did it first become acceptable to joke about this event in your own family or group of friends, if ever? And how? What are the subjects that are too serious for joking in 2008?
Q50: Lewis argues that “humor is not a universal experience that necessarily draws humankind together but a malleable force in communication” (205). As for what we are communicating, it seems that Lewis is saying that we communicate our individual and collective judgments about what is or what should be (“Where you draw the line is less important than knowing that it needs at times to be drawn”). Would Provine and Critchley agree with this assessment of humor? Do you?](Questions_files/shapeimage_38.png)
