swampgallows:

seriousjones:

comedy side of tumblr: what’s the distinction, like, stylistically, between the “fuck your cartoon hotdog husband” kind of joke and the much-maligned *holds up spork* random kind of joke? i fucking love the fuck your cartoon hotdog husband kind of joke but i’m having a hard time thinking about it academically or whatever. i keep trying to articulate the Artistic Difference Between the Absurd and the Random in my brain but i’m afraid to reach a place of irreversible pretentiousness

for example ‘fuck your cartoon hotdog husband’ has an implied narrative, which allows greater accessibility to a plausibly rational but otherwise absurd scenario. *holds up spork*, waffles!!, etc. is a jarring exclamation meant to alienate the audience and provide the spork-holder an egocentric sense of otherness; the novelty is dependent on this exclusion and otherness rather than the ‘hot dog husband’ ’s almost desperate attempt at including the audience.
i cant believe im about to bring up mark twain and delve into the place of the aforementioned irreversible pretentiousness, but in his essay ‘how to tell a story’ he writes: “The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it [“hot dog husband”]; but the teller of the comic story [*holds up spork*] tells you beforehand that it is one of the funniest things he has ever heard, then tells it with eager delight, and is the first person to laugh when he gets through. And sometimes, if he has had good success, he is so glad and happy that he will repeat the “nub” of it and glance around from face to face, collecting applause, and then repeat it again. It is a pathetic thing to see.“