Sarcasm

As we watched Sarcasm 101 by SNL in class this last week, I got to thinking about when sarcasm is funny, and when it crosses a line. There seems to be a couple of must-haves:

1) Everyone is in on the joke

2) There is one common target (preferably a dislikable or oblivious person)

3) The jokes stop when the target becomes pitiful

 In the skit, the two targets were Kevin and Marissa (might have butchered that spelling but she's not a real person so it's okay). When Kevin (the one that constantly repeats jokes as if they will get funnier) is ridiculed, it's funny because he seems unaffected by it and there is a collective sense of impatience everyone shares towards him. Basically, everyone is in place where they feel safe to comment on how stupid they think Kevin is. Isn't that what humor is about? Saying everything that's on your mind and sharing that with other's in the form of irony and wittiness that shows nothing is ever THAT serious? Additionally, they make fun of the new student in the class Marissa. The shared sense of hatred comes from her being a killjoy: she doesn't get the point of the class and she seems judgmental. It is funny to target her up until the point she is humanized and begins to cry, where she is no longer seen as a killjoy but as another person. That's when the sarcasm stops, and that is why it isn't cruel-it's funny.

In this clip in the Amazing Spiderman movie, spiderman-played by Andrew Garfield-taunts a criminal as he makes futile attempts at escaping from him and not the most thought out commentary as he tries to do so. This scene is funny because while the robber takes this encounter very seriously, spiderman is just fooling around with him. The audience is in on the joke because we all know and love spiderman's playful character, so we are sure nothing bad is going to happen to the criminal. We all have a common target who we find hardly relatable, a criminal who intended to harm spiderman if it came to it (with a knife), and spiderman stops making jokes when the criminal is left defenseless. The line of sarcasm is never crossed which is what keeps spiderman's character easygoing and relatable instead of cruel and unjust.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fleeting Memories

Image
Original Poem, by Briceida Cuevas Cob: Papalote El recuerdo es un papalote. Poco a poco le sueltas, disfrutas su vuelo. En lo mas alto se rompe el hilo de tu memoria y te sientas a presenciar como lo posee la distancia. Translation: Kite Memory is a kite. Little by little you let it go, enjoying its flight. At its height the string of your memory breaks and you sit and watch as the distance possesses it. I wish I had taken some poetic path to find this poem so I could write about it here, however that is not the case. I found this poem while looking online for something that connected to the current stage of my life: senior year, and my culture: latinx. That's when I encountered this poem about memories and nostalgia, written by a Mexican woman in 2010. I interpreted this poem multiple ways, which I think goes to show how simple and short poetry is often more complex than we realize, which is why it is my favorite kind. Dear Briceida Cuevas Cob,      My name is Ana Sofia ...
Read more

The art of repair and reshaping

Image
     Kintsugi is the act of repairing broken pottery with gold . The act of honoring, embracing, and celebrating the misfortunes, accidents, and struggles of life. It is a state of Zen that Siddhartha found by the end of the book and one we discussed in a harkness discussion in class.      As mentioned in class, it seems that to find enlightenment or inner peace, one must go through suffering. In order to find what he sought, Siddhartha had to suffer the loss of his son. Consequently, he realized that by letting go of his son he had let him grow into his own journey of grief were he would find his own enlightenment , ultimately turning a bitter detachment into a moment of learning. This is the moment Siddhartha turned his fragmented father-son relationship into a new masterpiece of hope , embracing the situation as what it was-improvement. Suffering seems to come with a sense of peace even in stories like  Across the Spider-verse.   Much like Sid...
Read more

Activities Desk

Image
Original Red and blue uniform Still and Unyielding, supervising  The cabinet. One item, missing unreturned, waiting for it's rightful place. Constantly lingering in the back of the mind the burden, that must be returned Gone for days, passed around, and what if  it remains unreturned? Broken Red/Blue-uniform Still/Unyielding, Supervising-The cabinet. One/item-missing unreturned/waiting for its/rightful/place. Constantly/lingering in the back/of/the/mind the burden that must/be/returned Gone for days- passed around. What//if unreturned- During my vacation in Cancun I constantly found myself forgetting to return a plastic ball I borrowed from the hotel's activities desk. I would usually remember after they had closed, and I distinctly remember the desk had a human sized statue of spiderman next to it, almost like it was looking over the remaining items. Still, much like how Rosal states that "A poet makes use of what’s ruined, discarded, or forgotten ", my cousin and I...
Read more