"I can't hear you, there's a banana in my ear."

There are many forms of humor, from parody (Young Frankenstein) to Irony. As mentioned in the last post, we will cover Irony in class tomorrow, but Irony in humor is slightly different. Ironic humor is when the speaker's meaning is opposite to the words actually stated. Stand-up comics use this all the time. It's one of the fundamentals. The joke is funny because you use your imagination to "get it." Irony is also the basis for another type of humor, the "Banana in My Ear" genre. The joke goes:

"Hey, you've got a banana in your ear!"
"What?"
"I said, YOU'VE GOT A BANANA IN YOUR EAR!"
"What? I can't hear you; I've got a banana in my ear!"

"The preposterous situation in which a person complains of being unable to hear helpful advice, because the advice he's not taking prevents him from hearing it, represents a prototypically American form of irony expressing both amusement and frustration" (WordIQ definition). Here is an example of what may be called a "Catch 22." A Catch 22 is an impossible scenario or one of extreme irony. (You should all familiarize yourselves with the novel of the same name by Joseph Heller.)

Define the following types of humor in your journal. Refer back to this writing whenever you realize an example of each:

Satire, Parody, Anecdote, Caricature, Irony, Joke, Repartee (or Banter), Hyperbole and Pun. Know these terms (we'll add more), but let's finish with the term Pun.

Interestingly enough, even the gospels contain a good deal of good-humor. In Matthew 16:18, Jesus states: Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church. In Greek (in which the gospels were written) Petros, the Greek equivalent of the name Peter, means "rock." Matthew's intent as a writer was clearly to use this "play on words" or pun as an effective way to get Jesus' point across. Although this statement is one of an important and serious nature, it shows that the gospels are full of wit and wisdom and are truly literary.