Digressions on Humor Styles
Sep. 16th, 2010 06:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinueBurned out. Tension headaches pretty much all the time I'm awake; sleeping badly. My eyes don't work right either. I pretty much have to shove aside feelings of depression and hopelessness and label them "symptoms of burnout and not real emotions," because there is not anything I can drop right now. I am already not going to social events, pushing back all deadlines I can push back, not answering my phone, not cooking, not exercising, not doing any housework whatsoever, and not sending out any writing submissions. I've also mostly stopped listening to music with words or with electronic instruments, because for whatever reason that is easier on my brain.
This will all get better soon, as film tasks complete and as I shift to working my caption job from home, but for the time being I'm in continuous physical and mental pain. I wish there was more overlap between the skills at which I am exceptional and the skills people are willing to pay me for regularly. It would save a lot of time. If I think about that much longer, I'll get extremely angry, so I'll change subjects.
I read part of an interview with Charlyne Yi which I couldn't finish because I'm so upset by her style of comedy. This is not a knock on her or on people who like her work. But I can't handle discomfort comedy; the discomfort overwhelms the comedy for me. I have a similar problem with raunch comedy, and she does both. I can sort of tolerate a raunch/discomfort style from Sarah Silverman because she's so self aware; she's obviously trying to push my buttons and I can accept it as a persona. Yi seems much more emotional and unsophisticated, so that I can't tell whether she herself is able to separate the times when people laugh with her and the times they laugh at her. I don't trust that she'll be all right, basically, so I feel scared instead of amused.
I have double consciousness about the whole thing, because I myself can perform discomfort and raunch comedy very successfully, and have done in the past; although I don't find it funny, I understand the things about it which make other people laugh, and it's a useful hack when I need to reach an audience that doesn't respond to the humor that makes me laugh -- which is usually dryly absurd, rant-based, or both.
Watching Albert Brooks is troublesome, obviously, because he's dryly absurd, rant-based, and a discomfort comedian. I can't stand Finding Nemo because I'm too sad to laugh, and although I like Lost in America, I have to leave the room when they're in Vegas.
This will all get better soon, as film tasks complete and as I shift to working my caption job from home, but for the time being I'm in continuous physical and mental pain. I wish there was more overlap between the skills at which I am exceptional and the skills people are willing to pay me for regularly. It would save a lot of time. If I think about that much longer, I'll get extremely angry, so I'll change subjects.
I read part of an interview with Charlyne Yi which I couldn't finish because I'm so upset by her style of comedy. This is not a knock on her or on people who like her work. But I can't handle discomfort comedy; the discomfort overwhelms the comedy for me. I have a similar problem with raunch comedy, and she does both. I can sort of tolerate a raunch/discomfort style from Sarah Silverman because she's so self aware; she's obviously trying to push my buttons and I can accept it as a persona. Yi seems much more emotional and unsophisticated, so that I can't tell whether she herself is able to separate the times when people laugh with her and the times they laugh at her. I don't trust that she'll be all right, basically, so I feel scared instead of amused.
I have double consciousness about the whole thing, because I myself can perform discomfort and raunch comedy very successfully, and have done in the past; although I don't find it funny, I understand the things about it which make other people laugh, and it's a useful hack when I need to reach an audience that doesn't respond to the humor that makes me laugh -- which is usually dryly absurd, rant-based, or both.
Watching Albert Brooks is troublesome, obviously, because he's dryly absurd, rant-based, and a discomfort comedian. I can't stand Finding Nemo because I'm too sad to laugh, and although I like Lost in America, I have to leave the room when they're in Vegas.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-20 02:39 am (UTC)Have you seen Timer or The Baxter? Romantic comedies that don't suck. C was greatly irritated that he'd never heard of them yet had seen many hideous Aniston romcom commercials. Not brilliant, but dear, sweet movies for an evening when you're sad.