Mind's Eye Re: Having a larf? Is humour cruel?

I have to say most material billed as humour or comedy just isn't.
The phrases Hollywood Comedy. Romcom and the rest should be replaced
by 'boring rot'. British farces with Brian Rix were haplessly
unfunny. Laurence and Hardy were funny. Jacques Tati wasn't.
Personal choices, but I'm sure there's a theme. The French film
'Mario et Jeanette' is gloriously funny. Watch Tinker, Tailor,
Soldier Spy last night, Sue collapsed laughing - it was so dire it was
funny - until I realised we'd paid £5 to see it in HD! {miserly Scot
joke]
In Greek theatre, tragedies didn't have happy endings, as opposed to
comedies. I was sickened once in a Sheffield theatre because the
awful middle class audience was laughing at working class stereotypes
(now we have Shameless) and in a Watford club watching the working
class laugh with Jim Davidson. South Park is funny, the Simpsons was,
Family Guy and American Dad can be but go gross too often instead.
Monkey Dust was a riot. All good sociology - though most students
under 30 don't get why. Teaching economics is a tragedy and farce at
the same time - my lectures end up as shaggy dog stories. Years ago I
found a guide to passing police exams written by a civil servant that
was both funny and a great help. His claim was you could pass with no
practical knowledge at all and a set of key phrases like 'a police
officer in uniform (2 points) may (1 point) arrest (1 point)' and
similar. That year my LL.B exam contained the question 'W shoot his
wife and claims he thought she was a clay pigeon. Comment on his
legal liability'. Such humour seems to have deserted us. Now we have
"competence based" exams which test one's ability to regurgitate words
on key answer cards. Mother in law jokes get you sacked.

On Feb 1, 2:42 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
> My child hood was littered with jokes.  How do you keep an Irishman
> busy all day - put him in a barrel and tell him to micturate in the
> corner.  The Germans bombed our chip shop and had no sense of humour.
> In France, the Belgians are the butt or "Irish"  jokes; elsewhere the
> Poles.  Jokes often rely on 'taking the Micky' - ridiculing someone
> else.  In Englishmen, Scotsmen and Irishmen jokes it was common for
> the English and Scots to be the suckers to a sharp and cunning
> Irishman.  Even the holocaust has been subject to joking - often by
> the victims.
>
> I have taught Kierkegaard as an example of dark, lengthy Danish humour
> (and can point to books on same).  There is an affinity in his  work
> with the Monty Python poverty joke in which each in turn recalls a
> childhoods in greater poverty than the last.  Eventually, just as one
> thinks the guy claiming to have lived in a shoebox on the central
> reservation of the M6 has 'won' the game another bloke says,
> "Shoebox?  You had a shoebox.  Luxury!"  Kierkegaard does this with
> Christianity.
>
> My own humour is dark, but it's rare I mean anyone harm.  I used to
> think that satire offered some hope of change, but in recent years
> have come to see it as merely part of the problems we have.  It is of
> the Establishment and feigns resistance.
>
> I think humour might be part of a way out of chronic illusion; but it
> is often merely cruel and parochial.