Waiting for the Punchline: Senses of humor should be treated like genres


(Katie Zhao | Daily Trojan)

Whenever conversations on art arise, genre can be a necessary and helpful tool for artistic categorization. Genre allows us to sort works — music, literature and film alike — into groups based on shared motifs, stylings and concepts. We use genre as a reference point for new works, as well as a means of deciphering our own preferences.

For mediums such as music, film and literature, genre is king. In fact, it feels nearly impossible to have a conversation about a title without invoking genre. Think about trying to describe “Knives Out” without the term “whodunnit.” Or, try recommending Kanye West’s “Jesus Is King” album (a hard enough task as is) to a friend without using the term “gospel.” It’s really hard, right?

It’s for this reason that I don’t understand why the concept of genre isn’t used as much to talk about comedy. You wouldn’t ask your friends to catch a movie with you without knowing what types of movie you want to go see. It’s rarely asked: What kind of comedy is it? What kind of jokes will they be telling? Should I invite my mom or should I have never even considered sharing an experience like this together? With comedy, audiences are much more likely to be content with simply going to see “a comedy show.”

The thing is, comedy does have genres. Dark comedy, slapstick comedy, blue comedy, observational comedy, deadpan comedy and cringe comedy are all separate, legitimate genres. Still, we treat comedy as a different, more easily accessible art that doesn’t require the bookish categorization across the board that other art forms do. 

Dave Chappelle (right) and Donnell Rawlings (left) are both comedians whose styles would be considered “blue comedy,” a genre known for its observational and dirty jokes. (Photo courtesy of Senior Airman Tom Brading Dave)

This casual sentiment toward comedy exists because it’s the one art form we create every day when we crack jokes with our friends. Because of this familiarity, most of us consider ourselves to be intuitively good judges of comedy. When it comes to jokes that we don’t particularly enjoy, we’re much more likely to declare them bad than to simply concede that the joke’s not for us — that it is not our genre of comedy.

We also tend to forget that all of us have had an embarrassing situation where we’ve tried telling a joke to someone and failed at getting a laugh. Someone may have thought your joke was stupid or simply did not understand it. Either way, it’s a microscopic but significant blow to the ego that not many people willingly experience. Most people just fake laugh as an easy patch when the joke doesn’t land. However, when the person conveys their disengagement with the joke, you know one thing: The joke didn’t work.

There is one rarely used and vastly underrated phrase that can be used to approach a clash of humor. It’s a completely respectful way to signal that the joke didn’t land for one reason or another. 

“I’m sorry, it’s just not my sense of humor.”

This one phrase conveys the message, but why don’t we use it often? For one, most people tend to think they’re funny and most people’s conception of funny is a near-universal sense of humor. Most people typically use humor to connect, not categorize people by their own circles of humor. But this, in essence, is what a sense of humor is. A sense of humor is not simply enjoying all kinds of humor relatively the same amount — it’s having a defined idea of the kinds of humor you click with the most and the least.

Think in terms of music. You may enjoy a great jazz composition from time to time, but what you really like is rock and hip-hop music, thus, you listen to and search out the latter more. You wouldn’t go to a Jason Aldean concert if you knew that you didn’t like country music. Why would you go to a shock comic’s show if you don’t typically enjoy edgy or provocative humor? You can still go — just know what you’re getting into and understand that it might not be exactly what works for you.

It’s funny — most people think of a good sense of humor as a tendency to enjoy any and all jokes that come their way, but is it a sense of humor if you don’t have a sense of the kinds of humor you truly connect with?

With this in mind, don’t panic if you don’t really “get” a joke or if someone doesn’t love yours. One can still connect with and show appreciation for a joke without disingenuously laughing, putting it down or feeling slighted. There are plenty of jokes in the world to tell and enjoy. This one just might not be your sense of humor.

Matthew Philips is a senior writing about comedy. His column, “Waiting for the Punchline,” runs every other Thursday.