| All humans
in all recorded cultures have the ability to laugh, to find something
‘funny’ and have what is generally called ‘a sense
of humour’, that is the faculty to perceive comedy. It's part
of being human.
Some people are nervous about putting humour or comedy in their
presentations. There's a joke in the public speaking world that
says you should only use humour in your presentations if you want
to get paid. This reminds us how important it is in a presentation
to appeal to the audiences emotions. Comedic elements are more memorable
than dry facts and that use of comedy in education aides retention
of information. This could be borne out by the way teenage children
are able to recall word for word comedy routines from television
comedy sketch shows and sitcoms (like Monty Python, the Fast Show
or Blackadder) but are not so able to do so with dry drama and struggle
to remember anything from more formal presentations.
But comedy is totally subjective and its success depends on a variety
of factors such as the setting, culture, language, delivery and
context. This is why in most cases 'jokes' should be avoided as
few jokes transcend all barriers to appeal to others without extensive
translation or explanation. For comedy to work a shared history
is also needed between the comic and the audience.
An excellent way of increasing your
creativity and lateral thinking capabilities is to analysise what
you find funny (or what you find unfunny where others are laughing!).
Take a joke and break it down, see how it works, what does it play
on, what information is needed to 'get the joke'?
There are a few key concepts that categorise comedy which include
incongruity, repressed desires or fears and an establishment of
superiority.
The concept of superiority is perhaps the most primordial form of
comedy with humour derived from failures, weaknesses or deformities
or either the comedian or another group. This also forms the basis
of ‘slapstick’ (physical comedy and clowning) where
the audience laugh from relief at someone else’s misfortune
or idiocy. Repressed fears and desires have been a common feature
of both the sexist joke (such as jokes about ‘the wife’
or ‘mother-in-law’) as well as homophobic and racist
jokes which play on peoples fear of the unknown.
It's clear to all but an idiot not to use possibly offensive material
in your presentations. The rule is - if it's possible an interpretation
could offend - leave it out. The same goes for using profanity.
Although a staple diet in most stand-up clubs, big business deals
have been lost because most people do not want to hear rude words
in a business context. One story goes that when a speaker was turned
down for a training session he explained that he would obviously
take out the swearwords from his material for that particular client.
The client replied that they wanted to book a trainer who didn't
have swear words in there in the first place.
Incongruity of either language or action involves the surprising,
illogical or unexpected juxtaposition of ideas or situations which
are often referred to as ‘surreal’. The comedian Vic
Reeves is possibly the ultimate expression of this type in his UK
1990-91 television programme ‘Vic Reeves Big Night Out’
which was so incongruous that it divided the nation into those who
gave him comedy god status and those that thought it was shoddy
rubbish. Witnessing ‘Noodles the Comedy Duck’, an obvious
glove puppet regurgitating prawns when one of the ten commandments
was recited or listening to a man with a stick wearing a paper helmet
covered in complaints to his local ombudsmen about coloured lights
coming out of his taps requires a certain lateral thinking mindset
in the audience. One of Reeves’ catch-phrases was the interesting
“very poor” which confessed the obvious shoddy nature
of the presentation which added an extra ‘in-joke’ to
the faithful which drew them in even more.
Memory plays an important role in comedy. The comedian Harry Hill’s
trademark routines involve setting up an enormous number of running
gags with seemingly no point to them, only to refer back to them
much later in the act. An example is he would mention that he saw
three bunches of roses available for sale for a pound. Much later
he would say, incongruently, in the middle of another story, “great
big bunches they were” and then much later, again out of the
blue, “three bunches for a pound? Where’s the profit
margin in that?”. The comedy comes from the fact that the
audience feel pleased to have been able to be ‘in’ on
the joke, having remembered the references from earlier. This works
because Hill is imprinting each chunk of gag using deep processing
by getting the audience to question its meaning and look for a correlation
with something he may have said earlier. He's playing on the shared
history concept.
Humour is useful because it allows the audience to relax into behaving
as a single unit were laughter can become contagious. In many ways
the comic works a form of hypnosis on the audience. Being a group,
the audience will take greater risks and may even feel comfortable
‘heckling’ or participating where they would not in
a non-comedy or less collective group.
As mentioned earlier, humour enhances creative problem solving.
Other claims have also been made of the physiological effects of
observing or listening to comedy such as the strengthening of the
immune system, increasing pain thresholds and reducing stress. It
has even been found to reduce ageing.
All good reasons to look into livening up your presentations with
humour or going to see some stand up yourself - for the sake of
increasing your income and improving your health!
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