Wen Zhan Tengyu
Life is full of laughs, but it's hard for us to really feel happy anymore.
In December 2020, Beijing, at the Blue Harbor Light Festival "Monster Carnival", a large and funny monster face installation illuminated the night sky. (Figure/IC)
What is Happy Planet? The one you're stepping on right now is.
Around you, a large group of people show their abilities, coaxing and coaxing, full coverage, no dead ends, trying to make you happy.
You see, cross-talk sketches, sitcoms, stand-up strips, comedy films, earthy videos, sand sculpture broadcasts, street farces and Internet clowns; more memes than talking, social news that is more than a paragraph; famous scenes of humor masters, the moments of comedy rookies breaking the circle; the wit of talk shows, the golden sentences left in the comment area, the memes encountered while surfing; the wealth code your dad found, the ancient recipe for health care dug by your mother; the macro theory of the frog at the bottom of the well, the performance of the shameless fanatic, the honest man who makes a serious comment under the fishing post...
Even if you don't look for laughter, laughter will hit you like raindrops.
You'll find that while everyone's understanding and expression of humor is very different, it always ends up making people laugh — and the probability of being a fish that slips through the net is slim.
The reason is nothing more than that the Internet's overwhelming information flow has too many scattered and conclusive laugh points. Whether these laughs are high or low, there is always a suitable one for you. Often walking by the river, you will inevitably step into the water that makes you laugh until you drown.
Ridiculous things are everywhere, but people can't laugh
To put it shallow, it is really not difficult to simply want to make people laugh: don't be facetious, the whole thing is weird, you can do it. This simple and easy-to-get "nipple music" promoted by major short video platforms is surrounding us - the BGM that is released by the subway uncle's mobile phone and makes people san value crazy, you know that canned laughter and three vulgar paragraphs are coming, and the cheap happiness has increased. This pervasive "humor" is like running naked on the street, and you don't see it, and it's not.
Deeper down, laughter is a comprehensive ability that is related to your understanding, experience, vision, emotional intelligence, and even cultivation—not only the ability to make laughter, but also the ability to face and judge laughter. For example, you can make normal jokes, you can capture subtle laughs, and you have a sense of boundaries.
Laughter is the same as song lists and book lists, which can be used to distinguish different groups of people, confirm whether a person has a tacit understanding with you, and whether he is reliable. Trick: The next time you go on a blind date, try to share a passage that you think is the funniest. If the other party is not smiling, then hurry up and pay the bill and leave.
The most embarrassing thing in the world is that he wants to pour the latest earthy poison into your brain, but you are still sharing the old passages from ten years ago; he feels that sexy and cute are vulnerable in front of the sand sculpture, but you are still reserved and hesitant to laugh out loud - forget it, laugh together, no fate.
The term "laughter point" usually has several understandings: one refers to the baggage (stem) in comedy forms such as cross-talk, sketches, and talk shows; the second refers to people's ability and threshold for laughing at things; and the third refers to covering all broad and ridiculous people, things, and things.
Comedy in its traditional form has not gotten any better over the years, so many people miss the classic jokers of the past, such as Stephen Chow and Zhao Benshan, as well as classic works that they themselves cannot surpass. We say that Chinese laugh more and more, more referring to the third meaning mentioned above: ridiculous things are everywhere, and you can't see them. Whether clever or clumsy, the original intention is to try to make people laugh.
But with that, comedy has been frequently searched for in recent times under the guise of laughter. In the end, everyone couldn't laugh.
Fan Zhiyi copied his famous scene of spitting on the national football team in "Spitting Conference" and fiercely criticized a Chinese men's basketball team, which triggered fierce debates from all walks of life. This was originally a performance that won a full house online and offline, Fan Zhiyi showed his true temperament, as an amateur talk show performer, his stage scale is quite in place.
However, the paragraph exploded, and public opinion also exploded. What followed was a classic contemporary Internet trilogy: he was out of the loop, he got into trouble, he was silenced. Then, the program was suspended and the storm gradually subsided.
Everyone went from laughing to not daring to laugh. The focus of the discussion on this matter has long shifted to the following points: Is the Chinese men's football team qualified to ridicule the Chinese men's basketball team? Why do a group of sports players lose the ball and smile together on the stage? The big guys went from joking to pinching each other, who are you going to stand for?
A period of real and false spit makes insiders mix with outsiders, big men in the circle and ordinary people in the circle, the official agency believes that it is humiliation, the foot and the basket are not happy on both sides, and they feel that this is an offense that crosses the line, shameless entertainment and a conspiracy to provoke confrontation.
So, does anyone remember that this is a simple comedy performance that the complainer and the complainer have already agreed to? Does anyone judge Fan Zhiyi's performance from the perspective of comedy expertise? Can anyone calmly talk about things?
Not anymore.
Above: On March 17, 2021, the sports special session of the "Spit Conference" was controversial, resulting in the suspension of the next episode of the "Spit Conference" sports session and triggering public discussion.
Below: On December 2, 2015, the last video scene of "Kangxi Lai", "Kangxi Iron Triangle" Xiao S, Cai Kangyong and Chen Handian took a group photo. (Figure/IC)
More factors break into the context of comedy,
Laughing becomes less easy
As we all know, Yang Kasa, as a symbol that triggers gender antagonism, has also slowly deviated from the original pure comedy scope.
At the beginning, Yang Kasa's advantages and disadvantages were not as obvious as those that were later magnified. To be fair, she is a talk show performer who is bolder than SiWen, Zhao Xiaohui, Yan Yi, yan Yue, has a full sense of humor, and dares to touch sensitive topics, but there are many flaws in technical handling.
Understanding her identity and position, understanding the nature of comedy as offense, affirming her courage and aggression, rationally discussing her technical abilities, these issues could have been separated and should have been separated, but now it is long impossible to discuss her in this way – the power of feminism, the opinion of men, the influence of commercial endorsements, more and more factors trying or having broken into the context of comedy, laughter, it has become less easy.
Laughing or not laughing has become a problem.
Now after listening to a joke, we are not only not so happy, but also more and more likely to feel angry and offended. The laughter point is too low, the sensitivity point is too high, and it is customary to treat an event as a joke first, then into a farce, and finally rise to an irreparable social event.
Imagine that Wilde, Maugham, and Wang Xiaobo live in the current Internet era, with sharp tongues and countless golden sentences, what kind of network violence will they suffer because of which sentence they have said? How long can they live on contemporary social media? Is it to spray with netizens and become more and more uninteresting or be stigmatized by netizens, or to quietly withdraw from the Network?
Wilde's sentences in "The Portrait of Dowling Gray" and "The Ideal Husband", and Maugham's spit on men and women and marriage in "Creative Impulse" are most likely to be drowned in saliva if placed in the context of the current social media. For example, Wilde said, "If a man marries a woman he deserves, then life will be a mess." ”
Nowadays, who cares if this sentence is humorous or not? People will be more concerned about who this sentence is alluding to: what is worthy, and why should we discuss the question of whether it is worthy of such a materialized man and woman? Who ended up making the days a mess? Why only discuss marriage, not marriage, the perspective is biased!
Many people don't care about humor, they care more about right and wrong, and they care more about picking thorns, rather than laughing at each other and understanding each other. So Wang Xiaobo said: "After removing the sense of humor, from the past years, I have come to a conclusion, that is, people live in the world, there can be no deviation; and it takes a little effort to keep themselves on the track of rationality." ”
The enduring imitation show variety show "Changeable Big Coffee Show". From the era of television to the era of online video, this show, known for imitating and spoofing celebrities, with exaggerated stage effects, has always been popular.
What makes us laugh?
Humor is a deconstruction of everyday life, with the aim of dissipating the boredom and heaviness of everyday life, rather than bringing more boredom and heaviness. The reason why we often laugh and laugh and can't laugh is that the humor of the moment is forcibly given various meanings — the point is, forced.
We often see such low emotional intelligence back and forth:
- So funny, you don't laugh?
- Yeah, I just don't think it's funny. What's so fun about that?
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——Hiding so deeply, is to make people happy, beautiful, pretend.
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Why do you emphasize that this is a man? Yes, our man is a cannon, you give me a laugh?
So, what exactly is it that makes us laugh?
First, it is overly sensitive. The essence of comedy lies in proper offense, but there are many people who can't accept the slightest or even suspected offense, like to sit in the victim's position, confuse the performance effect with real opinions, and involuntarily launch a counterattack against the suspected attack until it deviates from the original meaning.
The second is to impose meaning. Emphasizing the imperceptible social, political, and cultural malice behind this joke (or guessing blindly), reinforcing the conflict and contrast between this joke point and the laugh point.
The third is to strengthen controversy. In this day and age, controversy is the topic, the amount of visible attention and subsequent resource tilt. Under this premise, platforms, voicers, and communicators are all actively or passively reinforcing the most controversial part of a paragraph until the controversy is irreparably fermented.
The fourth is to follow the trend and take sides. Some people like to take sides and are easily gullible, or just have the three problems mentioned above, so they are willing to join a certain faction, mix in, and increase the volume.
Fifth, there is insufficient literacy. This is the most central issue, specifically, humanity and humor literacy – if one knows that comedy is inherently offensive, knows the criteria by which comedy is good or bad, knows the difference between performance and reality, knows how public issues should be discussed, can detect whether the goodwill or malice conveyed by the other party is true, or even at the very least, can think a little about the consequences before opening his mouth to scold people, the ending will be completely different.
Laughter is inherently free. Writer Miao Wei said: "Laughter is inherently to disintegrate rule and leadership. Can you laugh? Can something be ridiculed? It's about the degree of freedom. He cites the example of "Good Soldier Shuaike", "There will always be a group of people who do not agree with the form of power, who will accept to rule, but they drink beer, tell jokes, care for each other, laugh at the ruler, and laugh at themselves."
Humor is inherently inextricably linked to offense: offense to the powerful, offense to the vulnerable; offense to others, offense to oneself. If you can't jump out of the dimension of "yourself", you have to force "yourself" into the paragraph to do too much empathy and play, and make fun things not fun.
What is innocuous? Damage people under the agreed premise and attack within the acceptable range of the other party. What is laughter and generosity? Treat private humor as public humor, sloppy judgments as opinions, and raise the problems of the technical field to the public domain.
In fact, why is it so hard to laugh? Increasing humor literacy (of course, this is a long and difficult process), everyone laughs at each other, why bother with each other, compete for a high or low? Most people actually lack the ability and qualifications to think complexly and make opinions, so why not live a simpler life and laugh more spontaneously.
Leave a suitable place and relaxed environment for laughter, and leave a little room for humor and others. In this way, we can continue to sing "Laugh one, success is not the goal" and easily say "The paper airplane of childhood is finally flying back into my hands now".