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Humor After A National Tragedy Essay

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“Does the use of humor after a national tragedy bring light to a dark time or is it seen as “too far”?”

There are many different forms of jokes comedians can use after a national tragedy, but the most common form includes insult humor. The comedian’s use of insult humor can impact audience members for better or worse because some may take offense to what the joke insulted. Psychological distance will also play a role in with the individual audience member depending on how close they are to the tragedy that occurred because if a member of the audience was attached mentally, they could view it as a stab or insult to that tragedy.

Background and Rationale
Humor is a mental state that can be characterized by the appraisal that something is funny, the positive emotion of amusement, and the tendency to laugh. As a whole, humor facilitates coping and helps smooth out social relationships. It can assist in keeping sanity and regaining perspectives. The processing of painful events can take some time to overcome due to the emotional and physical impacts it can have on the person. Through humor, one can rise above …show more content…
This theory is essentially the misfortunes or infirmities of others, at our own past follies, provided that we are conscious of having now surmounted them, and also at unexpected successes of our own. The whole idea is to feel as if the comedian is in control of the surrounding factors making him/her the superior. When approaching topics of national tragedy, comedians may use one-liners, much like Anthony Jeselnik. While some comedians may use a theory called incongruity resolution to reach their punch line of the joke, but still keeping the idea insult humor throughout the joke. Incongruity resolution revolves around the realization of incongruity between a concept involved in a certain situation and the real objects thought to be in some relation to the

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