Mary Douglas’ writing about the various takes on jokes, specifically the remarks she made assessing the roles of consciousness and control in defining jokes themselves particularly compelling (page 96). The idea that the comedy of a joke comes from the subversion of our brain’s perception of conscious control dynamics, in my opinion, speaks to the rise of witty workplace sit-coms in the twenty-first century. These concepts immediately made me think of the tumultuously-produced American television show Arrested Development, wherein the primary conflict for much of the show is real estate developer Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) attempting to clean up his white-collar felon father’s (Jeffrey Tambor) unethical business practices while his mother (Jennifer Walters) and father undermine and lie to him to further conceal their misdeeds. An excellent example of the show’s typical wordplay joke writing comes in the show’s second episode when, attempting to clear his father’s name but unable to find the company flight logs, Michael pleads with his father George to tell him where the logs are so that the family can access their accounts because they all need money. George responds, “there’s always money in the banana stand,” ostensibly telling his son to go work at their ice cream shack on the beach. Michael eventually realizes he has been forcing his son to work there just as George did to him, and the two younger Bluths decide to burn the stand in recognition of George Bluth’s manipulation. The banana stand joke is then completed at the end of the episode, with what seemed to be half senile, half out-of-touch boomer-esque financial planning advice from George has proven to be all too literal.
The brilliance of this show is in the running jokes over the course of the series. The banana stand, George Michael walking away to the Charlie Brown music, Michael always forgetting the name of George Michael’s girlfriend, etc. I love this example in conjunction with Douglas’ writing, as the misunderstandings throughout the family are often their greatest weakness.
I love when people bring up examples of modern day witty sitcoms from the twenty-first century, as it shows that although the medium of jokes and comedy seems like it has changed on the surface, a lot of the same concepts (like consciousness and control in defining jokes) remain the same once you dive in deeper. The brilliance of running jokes that overall end in a major miscommunication never fail to make laugh.