Jamel's Opening

My comments on your comments.


Introduction.

Here are my replies and comments on all your submitted comments on Jamel's Opening.

(Unintended) Dick Joke Commentary.

First, I did receive a lot of great (unsolicited) analyses of "how my dick taste" and "dick residue" jokes and about the bad quality of a girlfriend being her ex, and the whole rest of Jamel's routine AFTER 0:16. These responses were sophisticated and excellent analyses about the sexual politics, the different insecurities of men vs women, etc.

Multiple students wrote that an audience of (straight) men makes jokes against women seem more funny (to them); whereas women might not find them equally funny. Indeed, two people noticed that the camera captured an uncomfortable, certainly unamused, woman with a staring man with her, him apparently thinking about the V attributed in the joke, making it true and real by the example shown reiterating the point of the joke. Brilliant. Also someone reported (her?) boyfriend watching the videos with her and he laughed harder (at the dick jokes?) than (she?) did. That is real data, the most valuable thing in science!

Someone pointed out that Jamel is making fun of people who make fun of women, rather than himself making fun of women (This could create a distance that enables an N perspective. If "they" are bad then "we" can be good, and that is N+V in the form of moral superiority.)

Someone else made a difference between a 'positive subjective moral violation' (like feminism) vs a 'negative subjective moral violation' (like female serial killers). I think they missed the point that violations are negative and non-violations are neutral or positive. So a positive violation is a contradiction in terms.

Mostly people were on point, they got the idea what N and V mean, and they could say why some aspects of the situation made it seem N and V to at least some people.


(Intended) "I do the jokes now" joke commentary.

Now, let's discuss the actual intended joke, though, which was Jamel saying "I do the jokes now", in the 0:00 to 0:16 section of the video.

Bad answers, and why

I found 10 ways you could have done better. See which applies to you. It'll suggest how to do better, or if you already did perfect it'll help you teach it to others by understanding different ways of tripping up. Because I'd like you to be able to both use this and teach it too!

Good answers, and why

Here were some good answers collected together (many came from multiple sources).

Jamel saying "I do the jokes now" is variously:

All these answers are good, if they work for someone that laughed. If you "got it" (found it funny), and your reasons were in here, you got a correct answer. Is there only one correct answer? No.

My own analysis of the audience member, Kevin Hart, professional comedian, who said "That's pretty damn funny" in the video -- and perhaps found it funnier than anyone else in the audience -- is that Kevin could empathize with Jamel's portrayal of comedic death (V) and paralysing stage fright(V). A successful (N) comedian "kills" (N), while a failing (V) comedian "dies" (V) as they are booed off the stage (V). In a few seconds Jamel portrayed a blocked (V), self-unblocking (N), stumbling (V) comic staring comedic death in the face (V); a death that is comprised of failure to do their job (V), which happens while they are valiantly still trying (N), within their incapacity (V), to do their job (N). It's full of paralysing (V) stage fright (V), somewhere from terror to discomfort or nerves (V), that the comic has to go through, standing up at the mic; Jamel was representing that terror (V) by performing a slight and self-conscious violation (V) of how you're supposed to go about doing a comedy routine (V), really a simplification to the barest bones, an abbreviated representation of the whole routine (N). An actor that can only recite the title of a scene is a failing actor, a comic that can only do that is a failing comic, right? (V) But Jamel is playing that as a role, isn't not actually him (N), as indeed he shortly pops out of it and proceeds (N). Also it's [not [a terrible fail](V) ](N) yet; he hasn't totally lost his audience and getting booed off yet, (thus relatively N), he's merely making a neutral and descriptive statement of the place in the program (N).

Okay that's my take, but I've been doing this for a while. Please use these examples to refine your own skills at finding the inner emotional essences in every kind of situation. I think it will make you more empathetic, wiser, diplomatically skillful, in a way detached and therefore unattackable, and even perhaps a little funnier, though mostly people who do humor research are not the least bit funny.


To read everyone's responses (individually identifying information removed) using your browser menu system do "Show Page Source" on this pace and read below here; the data is in a long HTML comment so you can look at it if you want to.


Created: November 28, 2021.