July 2008 Archives
Why is this so funny? -Mikey
Dear Mike,
I'm delighted by your inquiry. You rightly assume that "Slow-Motion Laughing Baby" is funny, and though one can't possibly say definitively *why* it is funny (humor, it turns out, is far from universal), I can do my best to explain why it is funny to me. I welcome your response.
Most obviously, the humor of the video depends on a disjunction of sound and image: in this case the baby's face paired with a deeper, adult-sounding laugh. An ostensibly more popular, but less funny, point of reference here is Stewie of The Family Guy. A baby speaking with an adult voice, or doing anything babies can't physically do (remember Dancing Baby?), is usually funny. The almost debonair, casual-sounding laughter (an interpretation of the laughter as such is reinforced by the video's "Doonesbury" caption) continually counterpoints the irrefutable image of the baby's wild babydom. This, I might add, is a kind of highbrow/lowbrow play that has its most recent origins in much of the British sketch comedy (say, Python) that inspired and sustained the "alternative comedy" movement in the United States over the past few decades.
There's another layer of humor informing my laughter as I watch "Slow-Motion Laughing Baby" though, and for me that has something to do with the blobs of food on the baby's face. There is something messy, fecal, even *farty* about this video. I don't want to explain it away, but I do think there is a certain family resemblance between this video and a video like "Star Wars Trumpet Solo" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=Wffwg7pA0t8), in so far as its very, very simple premise is surprisingly resilient, able to generate consistent laughter in us, almost in spite of ourselves. This has something to do with the reason fart jokes are funny to us, no matter how erudite our comedic taste. There is something *farty* about "Star Wars Trumpet Solo," obviously, especially in so far as the trumpet sounds are wrong, embarrassing, emitted on stage for all to hear and see, etc.
A further explanation would fall under the purview of psychoanalysis. Let's not take that road.
Sincerely,
Andrew V. Peterson