Inscrutable Humor
July 26, 2011 by Amy Sundberg
I have spent much of my life insisting that I am not funny.
Which, it turns out, is all a big joke. But one that most people aren’t going to get at all. Because I actually think I’m quite funny. I amuse the hell out of myself on a daily basis.
In contrast, I don’t think a lot of traditionally funny people are very funny at all. You know how people feel this need to tell jokes? As in, they recite a pre-canned joke complete with punch line? I’ll laugh to be polite, but I rarely find them very funny. I can’t tell them myself to save my life. And I won’t remember them at all after a day. Same with sitcoms in which the main source of the funny seems to be people being dumb and getting themselves into big, stressful messes. Although there are exceptions, I mostly feel sad when I watch people being dumb. And I worry about them when things start to go really wrong. Or I just don’t care. But what I don’t do is find it very funny.
Very occasionally, I will find someone who thinks I am completely hilarious. My husband is one of these rare people. I met another one at Taos, a colleague of mine who “doesn’t understand humor.” For someone who doesn’t understand humor, she makes me laugh a whole lot more than almost anybody else I know. I have another local friend who will suddenly bust up laughing at something I said, while the rest of the room looks on in bafflement or doesn’t even notice.
I recently decided to investigate this strange phenomenon, and I reached a startling (for me, anyway) and exciting conclusion. It turns out that I have been practicing the art of
dry or
deadpan humor for most of my life. Yes, without even knowing it. Another fact I find terribly amusing.
The interesting thing about dry humor is that it takes a certain amount of attention to catch it. If, for example, you’re only half listening to what someone is saying, there’s very little chance of you noticing the little joke they drop in halfway through a conversation. Dry humor is subtle and purposefully lacking in cues. And it happens really fast, which means your wit has to be turned up to full in order to appreciate it before the moment has passed. It also tends to lose its comic value if it has to be explained.
When I deliver one of my little jokes, my vocal inflection often doesn’t change much if at all. Sometimes I myself am unaware that I’m making a joke until it’s already out of my mouth. I have trouble believing, knowing myself as I do, that I keep a completely straight expression. But on the other hand, I spend a lot of time smiling, so how is one to tell the difference between my habitual smile and my sly “I just committed some humor” smile? So again, not a huge red flag. The entire sense of the humor lies in the words I’ve spoken and their context.
The best part of dry humor? I can easily entertain myself. The worst part? When I laugh at other people’s unintentional dry humor, or the absurdity of a situation, and people become worried or offended because they don’t get the joke. Which is why most of the time, I’m laughing on the inside while keeping my deadpan smile firmly in place.
How about you? What do you find funny? Any fellow dry humor aficionados out there?
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The Practical Free Spirit 
Funny? What makes you think I know anything about funny? Lies, I tell you. All lies! I deny everything. Oh, wait, except for the funny parts. Those I want to be paid for. Thank you.
And I believe you *do* get paid for all those funny bits. 😉
You’re pretty funny. Your friend from Taos whose humour you laugh at is very funny, as much as she may pretend not to be. The only problem with her humour is that she doesn’t talk enough, so I can’t laugh more.
Also, by the way, your habitual smile and your “I just committed some humour” smile are different–subtly so, but anyone who’s actually going to catch the humour should also catch the change of expression. Which is part of the fun; dry humour isn’t just about what’s said and the context, but is also about the delivery. Timing makes a huge difference, and how subtly one’s expression changes (best, I think, is if one’s expression doesn’t change, but few manage that perfectly).
Dylan Moran is hilarious–particularly his stand-up routines. Monster is my favourite of them. He manages to look consternated and flustered, even idiotic, while saying some very sage and cutting things. I am also quite a fan of Steven Colbert, whose humour I find overt and deadpan at once.
Yeah, I suspected I’m not quite pure deadpan. I’m okay with that. 🙂
But the worst humor, in my opinion, is tryhard awkward humor. That’s why I could only survive the first disc of Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It was just so painfully awkward and forced that I barely managed a smirk across six episodes. It’s also why I dislike Michael Cera…
Ugh. Yeah, that doesn’t sound funny at all, although I’m not familiar with your example.
Yep, that’s me too.
One of my best friends tends to be slow to catch my dry humor sometimes because I deadpan so well. He’s known me for about a decade yet will still sometimes turn to me and – referring to something I’d said minutes before – suddenly exclaim “You were being sarcastic, weren’t you?!”
What has always bothered me about humor is that so much of it is terribly low-brow. Guys are notorious for “dick and fart jokes” and I’ve seen entirely too many guys claim a montage of nutshots is hilarious (American’s Funniest Home Videos seems to agree). Then there are shock jocks. Not to mention the nonsensical crude dead baby jokes.
My brain pretty much never shuts off and that extends to humor. Sarcasm, irony, puns, parody, satire, wordplay, referential humor, situational comedy. I LOVED “Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” because Douglas Adams would randomly deliver a page of backstory solely for the purpose of setting a one-line pun
So referential humor king Dennis Miller has always amused me, I love MST3K and Rifftrax, and some of Robin William’s Live On Broadway is hilarious (the sadistic origins of golf in particular).
Oh, I really like Hitchhiker’s Guide too. Which is rare, because a lot of “funny” books just don’t work for me, but that was a shining exception.
A lot of low-brow humor leaves me unmoved. Especially the rash of “stupid” comedy movies that have come out in the last ten years. The premises alone often make me cringe.
Hmmm… I don’t crack good jokes but a lot of people think I’m funny. More like slapstick comedy right here…Steve Carrell is my kind of guy. 🙂
I have to be in the right mood for slapstick, but when I am I really enjoy it. 🙂
See! This is why I like you! For YEARS, decades even, my sisters have told me I have no sense of humor because I didn’t think their mean-spirited “joking” was funny. And yet, I make my mom and friends laugh on a regular basis. I have a sense of humor, *they* just don’t understand it. 😀
Thank you for making me feel better about that!
No problem! I guess there’s no one-size-fits-all sense of humor. It feels great to find other people who appreciate the same kind of humor, though, so you can share the funny. 🙂
Yeah this is me too. Throughout high school I always had to say “I’m joking.” Now that I’ve been out in the world, I found people that also like this humor. Although sometimes I deadpan too well and my friends look at me to see if I have a smirk. I usually let them boil for a few seconds and then smile, to lead them off the seriousness. It adds to the laughing inside.
The timing can definitely make deadpan more amusing. 🙂