Humor Dissonance: Difference between revisions
Replaced redirects
m (Mass update links) |
(Replaced redirects) |
||
(13 intermediate revisions by 5 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{trope}}
So a fictional setting has, as a plot point, something that is supposed to be very funny. The other characters treat this joke or show within a show as the funniest thing they have ever heard. The problem is, due to [[Sturgeon's Law]], few writers can actually write a joke that funny, and even a competent writer will have difficulty living up to the hype the characters give it. As a result, the joke just isn't that funny, and can become cringeworthy much more easily because the show is presenting it as the pinnacle of [[humor]].<ref>Or [[humour]].</ref> This is one of the cases where [[Take Our Word for It]] would have been a better way to present the story element.
Of course, this can be [[They Plotted a Perfectly Good Waste|done deliberately]], for example to make the audience think "My god, what kind of [[Crapsack World|twisted world]] is it where ''this guy'' is considered ''funny?''" Or, could also be either played for laughs or to present everyone as sadistic if laughter would actually be considered [[Dude, Not Funny|a downright inappropriate response]] to something.
Please keep in mind that this applies only to things the show explicitly labels as funny; this isn't a place to complain about normal jokes you didn't find funny or about the overuse of the [[Laugh Track]]. If we don't see the actual joke that is supposedly funny, it's [[Take Our Word for It]]. For the inverse, when genuinely funny jokes are ignored in-universe, see [[Tough Room]].
See also [["Everybody Laughs" Ending]]. May be a result of [[Trailer Joke Decay]]. Often an example of [[Stylistic Suck]].
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==▼
* ''[[
▲== [[Anime]] ==
▲* ''[[Lucky Star (Anime)|Lucky Star]]'': Konata decides to have a staring contest with Tsukasa and Kagami while at a fast food joint. The two of them burst into laughter at Konata's ability to stare unflinchingly, and tell Miyuki about it when she returns from the restroom. At their request, Konata (unwillingly) shows it to Miyuki, and Miyuki and Kagami make fun of her by suggesting she mention it while applying to college.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* In an issue of DC's ''[[Countdown]]'', Donna Troy calls Jason Todd "Re-Todd", [[Don't Explain the Joke|a pun on "retard"]]. Kyle tells her "good one", with a goofy expression as if it was an expert burn. Not only is a lame joke, it's entirely out of character for Donna and Kyle.
* Apparently a common deal with the [[Harvey Comics]]' character Jackie Jokers. [http://www.misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics38.html Some examples are further down this page.]
{{quote|
== [[
* Sometimes seen in bad [[Fan Fiction]] as well; In Stephen Ratliff's '[[
** Plus, some would qualify as [[Too Dumb to Live]] if people were in
* The writer of ''[[
{{quote|
'''B.C.''':"No..[[I Take Offense to That Last One|Nacho Cheese tortillas]], actually.." }}
== [[Film]] ==
* This is a problem in the [[Biopic]] ''The Life and Death of [[Peter Sellers]]''
* Subverted the ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'' skit "The Funniest Joke in the World" (later part of the film ''And Now For Something Completely Different''). There is a joke which, when read, kills people (they die of laughter). Subverted in that this joke is never read in English, but after being translated one word at a time into German, (one translator accidentally looked at ''two'' words, and fell into a coma for a month) it is broadcasted in German on a WWII battlefield, causing the German troops to, you guessed it, die laughing. When translated back to English by interested fans, the joke turned out to be [[As Long
* Absolutely and intentionally defied in ''[[Monsters, Inc.]]'' at all costs. Pixar had a very strict rule that they couldn't have any character laugh unless the audience is also laughing. As a result, a lot of the slapstick that causes Boo to laugh (and of course, her laughter is a major plot point) got considerably more violent and complex than it was in the storyboards.
* Lampshaded in ''[[Austin Powers]]'' where Dr. Evil and company's [[Evil Laugh]] goes on for so long, as if they are laughing at something genuinely hilarious, that it becomes a bit of an [[Overly Long Gag]].
* Used intentionally in ''[[
* Averted in the [[Biopic]] ''Chaplin''. The filmmakers use many actual clips of Chaplin's films, and Robert Downey Jr superbly matches Chaplin's physical capabilities.
* In ''[[Showgirls]]'', there is an overweight performer at the strip club who makes a string of self-depreciating jokes. While the patrons of the club are in stitches, the jokes themselves are painfully flat.
== [[Literature]] ==
* In Book 3 of the ''[[Inheritance Cycle]]'', ''Brisingr'', Eragon and Arya witness a group of spirit orbs turning a lily into a gem. Eragon points out that they literally gilded a lily like the phrase "gilding a lily" and thinks it's the funniest thing ever. Arya is only vaguely amused.
* Sometimes done deliberately in [[Discworld]]; most of the narration is absolutely laugh-out-loud, split-your-sides, pee-your-pants hilarious, but what characters point out as a joke is often just an [[Incredibly Lame Pun]], [[Running Gag|Or Play on Words]].
* An in-universe example occurs in ''[[Harry Potter and
** In ''[[Harry Potter and
*** Considering at this point they don't her like this has some....implications
== [[Live
* ''[[
* One of the causes of the downfall of ''[[Studio 60
** This may be one reason ''[[30 Rock
* A helluva lot of Joey's routines on ''[[Full House]]''.
* Early episodes of ''[[Seinfeld]]'' would open and close with samples of Jerry's stand-up that typically weren't even ''close'' to the caliber of humor in the actual show, yet still had the audience in stitches.
* The entire premise of the ''[[Mad TV]]'' sketch "Coffee Twins" revolves around this. A woman at an office setting cracks an incredibly lame joke, and then she and her another female co-worker break out in laughter, as if it was the funniest thing they've ever heard. Everyone else at the office doesn't see the humor, so when the original worker [[Don't Explain the Joke|futilely tries to explain the joke]], she gets angry and throws a fit.
* In the final episode of ''[[Police Squad!]]!'', Frank Drebin goes undercover as a stand-up comedian for a nightclub. His jokes are pretty basic (and nowhere near as good as the material Zucker, Abrams and Zucker wrote for the rest of the show) yet the audience is falling out of their seats with laughter, and the management of the nightclub tells him that it was the best performance he'd ever seen.
** Most (all?) of what you see is Frank delivering punchlines, and most of those punchlines come from infamously filthy
* In a ''[[3rd Rock
* Played with in ''[[
* ''[[The West Wing]]'' [[Tough Room|is normally one of those shows where everyone is super witty and spends all day firing hilarious remarks back and forth, and hardly anyone ever cracks a smile]]. The teaser of the episode "He Shall, from Time to Time..." calls for the senior staff to be standing around laughing so that the mood can be shattered by the sound of the president collapsing with a crash in the other room. The joke that causes them to lose their poker faces for one of the only times in the series? Sam lamenting, "I'll never live it down!" in reference to a typo the president caught while rehearsing his State of the Union address. Ho, ho, ho.
* Played with in ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'':
** Barney sets up an anecdote as ''the funniest thing you will ever ever encounter [[Department of Redundancy Department|ever]]''. The real joke is that causing Marshall to have to attend an important meeting ''sans'' trousers is not nearly as funny as he thinks it is.
** Then there's the joke that's "the funniest joke ever", but only if you're a guy. "What's the difference between peanut-butter and jam?" Barney tells it to Lily, who is so disgusted that she refuses to see or speak to Barney for a month. The guys, while upset that the group has been divided, still think it's the best joke ever. The punchline of the joke is never uttered out loud on the show, but if you look it up on the web, it definitely fails to live up to hype: {{spoiler|"I can't peanut-butter my dick up your ass."}}
* Used rather well in ''[[News Radio]]'': Everyone keeps telling Dave that Lisa's ex-boyfriend Stewart is one of the funniest people they've ever met. When Dave and Lisa go out to lunch with Stewart, he gets her rolling with a number of inside jokes and references to things Dave (and the audience) has never heard of.
* There was an episode of ''[[Star Trek:
{{quote|
** It's even worse, As [[SF Debris]] pointed out in his review of the episode (The Outrageous Okona) the joke that appears is actually a rewrite, the original joke (which he actually reads out) is even worse: ''My job here places me under some obligations, like a vow of secrecy. I can't repeat anything I hear or see. Now the obligation of the patron is to tell the truth otherwise I'm being placed under a commitment to keep a secret about nothing. That's not fair, it's called wasted honour. Do you understand?'' Yeah really, that's the joke, check it [https://web.archive.org/web/20150809014019/http://blip.tv/sf-debris-opinionated-reviews/tng-the-outrageous-okona-review-5167604
*** What makes this really bad is that Guinan is played by [[Whoopi Goldberg]]. Couldn't they have just asked her to adlib? Chances are it'd at least elicit a chuckle or two!
** On the other hand, Data's ''failed'' jokes, which are ''supposed'' to be unfunny to demonstrate his failure to understand humour, are, if not actually good, at least capable of eliciting a smile, and at any rate are better than the jokes that the audience is ''supposed'' to laugh at.
* ''[[Babylon
** Like the ''Robocop'' example above, this was deliberate. [[Word of God]] is that Rebo and Zooty were meant to reflect how standards of humor change over time, not to mention that a lot of humor is based on cultural references and mores that you have to be familiar with to get the joke, so that what's funny to a society in the future would be incomprehensible to present-day audiences (or to alien audiences).
*** Also lampshaded in the show by Rebo/Penn saying lines to this effect after he makes an incomprehensible joke that the Minbari find funny but nobody else even understands.
* In vintage adventure or dramatic series, a common way to end an episode was to have [["Everybody Laughs" Ending|entire cast laughing at someone's joke, which was never really funny.]] This is often parodied these days, notably in ''[[Harvey Birdman]]''.
* Ususally averted in Irish show ''Custer's Last Stand Up'', where a teenager is trying to succeed as a comedian. In one episode where he was diisguised as a grown-up to perform at an adults only gig he attempted to write what he thought grown-ups would laugh at. When it fell flat he started tearing off his disguise and telling silly humour about being a spy instead, and was far funnier. There was actually quite a bit of deconstruction of the effect of humour. Another episode had a veteran comedian trying to coach him into being a better comedian, telling him all the time that his material isn't funny enough. It turns out at the end of the episode that he wasn just trying to steal his jokes so he could tell them himself. The "funny" stand-up segment segments were absolutely the funniest part of the show.
* Played for laughs in a scene in ''[[Titus]]''. Chris and other mechanics laugh at completely random sentences. Erin wonders why and Chris mentions They've been up for two days working on a car and will laugh at anything.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* There was an entire episode of ''[[Arthur (
** The ''Arthur'' example might be a bit of playing with the trope; only a select few people thought the joke was funny, but Buster's imagination sure thought it was the reason Binky got a higher grade. It's revealed at the end that Buster studied the wrong topic for his report.
* An episode of ''[[Jimmy Neutron]]'' had Jimmy alter his father's brain to make him "500% funnier." An example of one of the jokes he told under said influence: "I can smell the learning, oh wait, that's Butch. Do you ''ever'' shower?"
** Well, 500% of 0.000001 still isn't much.
* An episode of ''[[Recess]]'' has a lot of this for a movie everyone except Vince has seen. Possibly justified in that Vince not knowing the context of the quotes is the driving force of the plot.
* The ''[[
** Particularly if one had seen the "real" Honey in the Bosko cartoons, who basically just prances around going "La,la,la!"
* Satirized in ''[[
** Well of course not. Her delivery was awful.
* In ''[[The Simpsons (
** Parodied in another episode. At the dentist, Lisa ends the episode by making a ridiculously cringeworthy "tooth/truth" pun. The rest of the family, and the dentist, burst out laughing as though it's the greatest joke ever told...at which point the dentist realises he's accidentally left the laughing gas on.
* Invoked intentionally in one [[Family Guy]]. Peter tried to impress [[Dan Ackroyd]] and [[Chevy Chase]] with a flat joke. The two comedians and Lois recognized it as unfunny, but absolutely everybody else in the show's universe thought it was the most hilarious joke ever.
{{quote|
* ''[[
** Jimmy is supposed to be a very funny stand-up comedian that all the other characters find hilarious. He has yet to tell a single joke that is funny. In the episode "Fishsticks," Jimmy coming up with (and Cartman taking all the credit for) what is supposed to be the funniest joke ever. It goes thus: "Do you like fishsticks ([[Don't Explain the Joke|fish dicks]]) ?" "Yes." "Do you like putting them in your mouth?" "Yes." "What are you, a gay fish?" The joke makes the rounds in all the talk shows and becomes a nationwide phenomenon. The only person not to get it is rapper [[Kanye West]], who is so self-centered that he takes it as being called gay and starts looking for the originator of the "rumors".
** The "Funnybot" episode features a robot that is programmed to be the perfect comedian, but it tells lame cut-and-paste tabloid jokes, mostly ending with the punchline "Awkward!" It sells out amphitheaters across the world. The Funnybot is so successful that the world's most famous comedians are rendered unemployed and destitute, and an angry mob consisting of [[Conan O
* The Joker played with this in ''[[Batman: The Animated Series
* This is mostly averted in ''[[The Fairly
* Every single episode of ''[[Widget, the World Watcher]]'' (not to be confused with a [[Widget Series]]) [["Everybody Laughs" Ending|ended with everyone laughing]] at some "cute" thing someone said that was distinctly not even remotely funny.
* ''[[The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack]]'' has an entire episode of this trope, beginning with Peppermint Larry telling some jokes consisting of truly awful puns and continuing into a joke-telling contest between Larry and another character. Eventually said other character speaks ''[[Rapid-Fire Comedy|entire sentences]]'' in [[Hurricane of Puns|nothing but puns]], soon after which it curves in on itself, implodes, then becomes genuinely funny.
* ''[[
** Not only that, but then
* The ''[[Tom Goes to
* During an episode of ''[[
* Used deliberately in an episode of ''[[Dave the Barbarian]]'', where the extraordinary unfunny Ned Frischman, a man from the future, travels back in time to the middle ages in order to tell his jokes before they have turned old. He manages to become the funniest man in recorded history by using simple "Why did the chicken cross the road"-class jokes (recorded history having begun two weeks earlier).
* On ''[[Jimmy Two-Shoes]]'', Jimmy is described as being able to cheer up anyone and make them laugh, even in [[Hell|Miseryville]]. Yet the things he does seem like stereotypical grade-school stuff. It's [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] at the end of "The Mysterious Mr. Ten", when Lucius can't believe Jimmy is funny.
Line 100 ⟶ 98:
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Laughter Tropes]]
[[Category:Informed Attribute]]
Line 105 ⟶ 104:
[[Category:Audience Reactions]]
[[Category:Unexpected Reactions to This Index]]
[[Category:
▲[[Category:Trope]]
|