Comedyblog

In my opinion, the Incongruity theory is probably the best explanation of most instances of comedy. The reason for this, I believe, is that the positive emotion of humor is separated for other positive emotions by it's spontaneity. Take hope for example, both of these are produced from the fact that we are expecting something good to happen according to plan or as desired. However, with humor, it is not expected but unexpected outcomes which make us laugh. Therefore, if humor is fundamentally spontaneous positive emotion, it seems that this can only be produced by means of some unexpected pattern emerging between incongruous events. In addition to this, is seems that the Incongruity Theory is able to include the other theories as well. For example, the theory of superiority states that one feels a sense of greatness at seeing something or someone humbled or made silly in one way or another. Whether or not this is right, I find that in comedy this is done by equating something or so...

My favorite comedy I have seen recently would have to be "The Quest for the Holy Grail" from the  Monty Python series. I believe that many of the different theories of comedy are portrayed in the film. For example, the Incongruity theory is exemplified in the scene involving the anarchist workers that verbally taunted King Author. Historically, the Middle Ages(the context of the movie) is so far detached from any 19th century Russian style anarchism that the connection of the two ideas completely unexpected, i.e. Incongruous. It is hilarious to see King Author bewildered by this group completely rejecting his Kingship and, in fact, any concept of kingship in an age when the idea of kingship was not even questioned. At the end of the scene it escalated so much that King Author was yelling "Shut up!" to a peasant who was screaming "Help, help I am being repressed by the system!" In addition to this, one can see quit Herbert Spencer's interpretation of th...