Chapter 45 & 46

Summary of chapter 45:

In chapter 45, Humor and Communication by William F. Fry Jr, Fry looked at what humor is and how we find humor funny. Fry said that humor is seen as a play, and this will give the audience the signal that the humor is not "real" but "unreal" for the funny aspect of it. There must be punch lines and climax to the joke, there are no rules as to how but there must be one. Fry also talks about the sudden reversals in the jokes. The reversals are there to enforce the punch line and humor. Fry also says that this punch line "carries an implicit metacommunication". Metacommunication is communication about communication. In the reading after this passage Berger shows a chart that shows the techniques of humor. There are 45 of these, some examples are absurdity, parody and puns.


Summary of chapter 46

In chapter 46, On Comedy by Aristotle, he writes on what makes a comedy different from other styles, such as a tragedy. There are 3 differences to these to genres taht are, the medium, the objects and the way of imitation. A comedy, aims at representing the man at his worse while a tragedy uses higher levels in life. A comedy is an immitaion while the tragedy looks at the serious side.
The reading after the passage looked at the theories of Aristotle and his thinking of mimetic theory which is that art is an imitation of life and relating this to televsion today.