The incongruitiy of the universality of humour
Humour is universal - exists in all cultures.
Humour is not universal - people from different cultures will laugh at different things; we do not all find the same things funny.
posted by Hooch | 5:48 pm
Humour Archive
Scraps of humour research presented here for your consumption. Comments welcome.
My area of study is religious humour. Some of the links above are to cartoons which some people may find offensive. For instance, the 'Jesus and Mo' cartoon and the Mohammed Image Archive depict the prophet Mohammed. I intend no offense in linking to these sites.
2 Comments:
At the risk (once more) of taking a tangent, this puts me in mind of a conversation I had recently in which someone was asserting that jokes only target minority groups.
We can definately think of lots of examples of this but I was sure that there must be some cases of humour targetting the majority. The only thing I could think of at the time was the way in which the British can make fun of how reserved and uptight they can be as a whole nationality.
Issues of majority versus minority puts me in mind of power relations and to try and link this to religion I ask this: Will a religion be more or less likely to frown upon humour if that religion is well established? Is humour more useful to the powerful or to those lacking power?
Daniel, you are awesome to comment. v. thought provoking.
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