124264 KO Critical Media Analysis (2025S)

"Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it." - E. B. White

In this class, we're not going to be dissecting any actual frogs, so no worries there, but we will be taking a critical look at humour in Anglophone media. Humour plays, and always has played, a crucial role in cultures around the world. Plato saw humour as a lowbrow form of cruelty, an expression of superiority, a kind of pleasure mixed with malice. Contemporary comics and humorists like John Oliver, Wanda Sykes, Stephen Colbert, George Saunders or Patricia Lockwood might say humour is a tool for dismantling hypocrisy and cultural forms of oppression, and one of the most effective modes of removing moral blind spots and promoting democratic debate. Tig Notaro, Patton Oswalt, and Mel Brooks might argue that humour helps us to endure rather than to suffer, to laugh at death, tragedy, and senseless brutality instead of becoming overwhelmed with dread and victimhood. And Hannah Gadsby or Lynda Barry might say that humour is the very gateway into confronting avoidance; a kick in the pants to come clean with who we are and who we want to become. In this course, we will study traditional and nontraditional theories of humour, and look at different examples from the various media at our disposal: films, television shows, stand-up comedy and, of course, memes.

The goal is to offer a comprehensive overview of the different theories of humour, ranging from Plato to Freud all the way to Nicholas Holm.