Anthropology Final Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Anthropology Final - Essay Example It aims at creating a concrete feeling of enjoyment for an audience, most commonly manifested in a physical display consisting of displays of pleasure including smiles and laughter.† 1 Another definition of humour, â€Å"is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement† 2 Not all people are talented enough to be humorous. Someone needs to be creative and imaginative. In this case, there is what we call â€Å"humour formula† Root components of humour are being reflective of or imitative of reality and surprise/misdirection, contradiction/paradox, ambiguity. Therefore, methods to create humour include hyperbole, metaphor, farce, reframing and timing. 3 Our society has evolved in different angles. We have learned from our parents, siblings and friends knowing which laughable jokes are and which are not. Sometimes when people are stressed from their work, when they laugh at jokes, it gives them a relaxing feeling, releasing stress. It is therefore healthy to laugh at jokes. But that is not the focus of my paper. I just want to make this paper an informative material to others who may be reading this in the future. I laughed and I learned humour. In our subject Anthropology 2040-1, I thought we will just study how to create jokes and learn the tricks of being a stand-up comedian. It was more of a deep understanding about the origins of humour and how Jewish people are important in the anthropological study of humour. But why did our forefathers like Plato, Socrates and others became curious about the elements of Humour. Who doesn’t want to hear jokes? Of course everyone does. But sometimes people became abusive of their sense of humour. Having a sense of humour is a great talent. It means that you can make everyone laugh, and sometimes people make money for this ability. In some television shows, competition is always present. So, instead of naming the person or show, they use jokes against thei r competitors. Especially if one T.V. show claimed they are number 1 in the ratings, others react and use other means to prove to people they are number 1 too. Humour is sometimes used by people who think they are more superior to the others. Like in schools, the usual scenes are some rich kids prank over poor kids, good looking students prank on not so good looking students. But how far is too far when it comes to humour? Honestly, we are influenced by our society when it comes to humour verbals and visuals. We selectively and consciously laugh at areas we found defects or we found out of the ordinary. Anything that is not perfect in our subconscious is not ordinary and therefore we can say, we laugh about it sometimes because it is not how we expect it should appear. According to Ted Cohen, when a joke involves logic running wild, the joke will present an absurdity – an absurdity in itself or an absurd response to a normal overture or a kind of doubling of absurdity. 4 Reli gious humour is by far the most controversial part of our modern society. Most of the readings about this concept points towards Jewish people. But before we go to Jewish people, let’s first understand why religion entails humour by defining religious