Comedy Blog - Olivia Dixon

The Importance of Being Earnest is chock-full of "high" and "low" comedy, both of which I find funny. It's the kind of humor that makes the ends of your lips turn up ever so slightly but doesn't leave your stomach hurting. Wilde's punchlines come as a surprise and that's what makes them funny. For example, when Algernon asks Jack, "Got nice neighbors in your part of Shropshire?" you expect him to answer pleasantly and instead he insists, "Perfectly horrid! Never speak to one of them." ...oh. Also, when discussing Lady Harbury, she says "I never saw a woman so altered; she looks quite twenty years younger." You would expect a woman who lost her husband to look aged and weary, but Lady Bracknell describes the contrary.

The host of "America's Funniest Home Videos" once said "fun" is "laughing at one's pain knowing it's not your own." I think this is true when we find a character's misfortune amusing. For example, Algernon tells Lane "I don't know that I am much interested in your family life" which is a horrible thing to say to someone but we the reader find it funny because the joke was not at our own expense. In one instance, Lady Bracknell is extremely insensitive to Jack when she says, "To lose one parent, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both seems like carelessness." There is no sympathy in this statement; instead, she dismisses his pain completely. I mean... seriously?"

I also love the misconception Algernon and Jack have about marriage. Algernon exclaims, "Good heavens! Is marriage so demoralizing as that?" when Lane says, "in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand." We see where his priorities lie... Later, he complains that "the amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous." The idea of a loyal spouse seems like a foreign concept to him. Perhaps the most frustrating comment Jack makes is "the truth isn't quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl" and Algernon adds, "The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to someone else, if she is plain." -_-

I laugh at pretty much everything so its hard to describe my sense of humor. My favorite movies are Pitch Perfect and 21 Jump Street if that helps. I appreciate a good pun but slapstick is what really makes me laugh, like when Channing Tatum is told by his professor that he can say whatever he wants and he chooses "fyato," which is not a real word. Or when Jonah Hill performs in a poetry slam (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qxJ6bznkNI).

And I've watched these 100+ times...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRnWEnZjXVE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7ls9vtWleQ