Anti-humor

Anti-humor (or anti-comedy) and anti-jokes^[1] (also known as unjokes) are a kind of humor based on the absence of an expected joke or punch line in a narration which is set up as a joke. This kind of anticlimax is similar to that of the shaggy dog story.^[2]

In anti-comedy the gist of the humor is in how poor the joke is or how poorly it was told.^[3] The humor derives from the subversion of the audience's expectations of a familiar joke or joke structure. As it derives from an audience's familiarity with the conventions of humor, it can be considered a form of metahumor, in that it is a joke that explicitly draws attention to the medium of joke telling and humor.

A common form of anti-humor involves a seemingly humorous setup leading to a non-sequitur "punchline" such as "No soap, radio" or deliberately subverts a conventional joke form such as: "A man walks into a bar. He is an alcoholic and it's destroying his family." Another form of anti-humor is poking fun at bad humor by the way of parody. An example is Jim's Journal, a comic strip by Scott Dikkers, co-founder of The Onion, whose four-panel strips end without any sort of punchline. Alternative comedy, among its other aspects, parodies the traditional idea of the joke as a form of humor.^[4] Comedians known for their anti-humor are Tim and Eric, Norm Macdonald, Ted Chippington, Neil Hamburger, Jimmy Carr, Andy Kaufman and Bill Bailey.

See also

• Anti-art
• Dadaism
• Meta-joke
• Nonsense verse
• The Aristocrats
• Shaggy dog story
• Koan

References

1. ^ Paul Lewis, "Joke and Anti-Joke: Three Jews and a Blindfold", The Journal of Popular Culture, 1987, Vol. 21, Issue 1, pp. 63-73
2. ^ Warren A. Shibles, Humor Reference Guide: A Comprehensive Classification and Analysis (Hardcover) 1998 ISBN 0809320975
3. ^ "The Humor of Anti-Comedy, The Shock", by Killian Fox, May 16, 2010
4. ^ Andrew Stott (2005) "Comedy", ISBN 0415299330, p. 119