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You have a lovely home (thelemmy.club)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/whitepeopletwitter@sh.itjust.works
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[+] -6 points 3 months ago* (3 children)

nobody should be punching anybody

I cannot think of a joke - except for puns - that do not have a victim.

A newly wed couple is going on a 14-day cruise for their honeymoon. The husband pulls over on the way to the Port. "Why are you stopping?" asks the wife, "Oh I'm just picking up some condoms from this pharmacy - although we just got married we said we'd wait a year before starting a family?" "OK, but pick me up some dramamine too so I don't get seasick." So the husband goes to the pharmacist and asks for a 14 condoms and 14 dramamine tablets. The pharmacist says "If it makes you feel so sick, why do you keep doing it?"

Men in general / the husband is the victim of the punch line here. Or maybe pharmacists?

Much like dramatic narrative, from Shakespeare to Ted Lasso, all rising tension is resolved by a winner and loser.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I think you completely missed the point. "Nobody should be punching anybody" isn't about jokes, but discrimination. The answer to discrimination against women isn't to add discrimination against men. I'm pointing out that feminism is about liberation from discrimination rather than redirecting it to the "right group". The system should be the focus, not the people.

    Also, it's not all victim this, winner that. It's not pie. Everyone can win, everyone can lose. Again, it's the system that's the problem, not the people.

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  • [–] -5 points 3 months ago

    I'm speaking dramaturgically. There's no literal Romeo and Juliet getting hurt, but in the story they both die.

    That's what is meant by "punching."

    Every rising action is met by a falling action. In a comedy format the tension rises to a punch line, where the punching happens, the fall is the release of laughter, and then resetting for the next joke.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I cannot think of a joke - except for puns - that do not have a victim.

    You either don't hear enough jokes or you have a bad sense of humour. Either way this is just objectively wrong

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  • [–] -5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 child)

    it's not just jokes (again, excepting word play) - all narrative forms adhere to this. The concept of all stories is essentially based on conflict, where a platform is established, corrupted and reset.

    "Punching down" means making jokes at the expense of vulnerable people. But all jokes have a punch line of some description- so it is impossible to be both a joke and have no resolution.

    Some surreal humor relies on subverting this form somewhat, but the tension is usually released in other ways (i.e. a "straightman" or "fish out of water", commenting on it or else a structural change like cutting to a different scene)

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

    There's no punching done in this joke, no winner or loser. It's just observational humor. The pharmacist draws a mistaken conclusion from his observation.

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  • [–] -1 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    it's "winner" and "loser" not winner and loser.

    If Cinderella, Cinderella is the loser to the step sisters, the winner to the prince's affection, the loser to time constraints, the winner to the final slipper fit.

    It's a method of discussing rising and falling action in Aristotlean poetics w/r/t narrative mores.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Well it's a pretty inane method then

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  • [–] -3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I mean it's how our brains are wired after roughly 10,000 years of oral storytelling tradition, and you can draw a direct line of storytelling methodology in most cultures back about 4000 years. These methods are what constructed the odyssey, the Iliad, the aeneid, the plays of Aesceleus, Euripedes, Sophecles, Aristophanes... all the way up to modern comic books, superhero movies and telenovellas.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago* (1 child)

    First of all, you're telling me aesceleus euripedes et al were talking about "winners" and "losers" as the fundamental dynamic of literature?

    And second of all, that's all one western tradition you're talking about. And i was raised on it too read translations of the classics and all that. But now that im older, ive since realized that the legacy of the ancient Greeks through the Renaissance to the modern West is simply not innate to humans, it's just the way one specific culture evolved.

    One big realization for me was that all the characters in the Illiad are colossal pieces of shit slave owners who are more concerned with first their ego and second the monetary value of their enslaved humans kept as chattel. (With the possible exception of Hector, who seemed to really put others above himself and was doing what he thought was necessary to save his people.). And yet walk into any university in the west and they indoctrinate freshmen with the idea that these were honorable men we should hold up as role models.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    First of all, you're telling me aesceleus euripedes et al were talking about "winners" and "losers" as the fundamental dynamic of literature?

    No, I'm saying that when we as modern readers discuss dramaturgical theory, we recognize that a key element of the path to a resolution of a narrative necessitates conflict in the vast majority of narrative theory. Can you name a narrative without conflict?

    now that im older, ive since realized that the legacy of the ancient Greeks through the Renaissance to the modern West is simply not innate to humans, it's just the way one specific culture evolved.

    Which cultures are you referring to that doesn't have stories that follow a narrative path, or have narrative paths without tension and resolution?

    I'm afraid I can't see why Achilles being a bad person disproves that narratives have a structure and across cultural and language barriers those structures hold for at least a few thousand years.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    that narratives have a structure

    No, you were saying it's all about winners and losers and now you're saying your argument is just that narratives have structure.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 child)

    edit: oh I see where I said winner and loser.

    You're right. I guess I don't know a better shorthand way to say, "At the denouement - regardless of whether it is a single line, joke, beat, scene or whole narrative - rising tension and falling tension is resolved with an outcome for two characters in which the outcome is given meaning by that resolution having different values which affect the situation those characters reside in"

    edit2: with the exception of pure word play, exposition, etc...

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago* (1 child)

    Fair enough, i guess i would add that the dualistic nature of western literature is a unique socially constructed cultural choice, and not anything actually innate to how human beings think. In other words, there are several human literary legacies independent of it.

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