Wednesday 1 February 2012

Funny T-Shirts That Dip Into The Absurd

By Tim Thatcher


There are many ways to tell a joke and just as many ways to interpret that joke. You can say, "Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side." or you can say, "Why did the chicken cross the road? Because he loved mangos." Both of these jokes are structured the same, have the same premise, but are completely different. The appeal of the first lies in the chuckle the listener gets when he realizes that the punch line is extremely obvious. The second joke gets its laugh from sheer absurdity. This second type of joke is the kind I've always loved and admired, and I enjoy it just as much when read on funny t-shirts.

Funny t-shirts are, if you'll excuse the pun, a funny thing. When you usually want to share a joke, you know your audience and you know what joke may work on some friends and not on others. When you wear a funny t-shirt, you let that joke hang in the air indefinitely. You wait until someone snatches it from the air, examines it, and then you wait to see if they laugh. It is a system based on pure faith that your funny t-shirt is hilarious enough to make anyone laugh, regardless of their comedy preference.

Delivering the untruth of absurdity is complicated and much more difficult than just telling a joke outright. You will undoubtedly run across many people who just smile wanly and stare stupidly at the funny t-shirts you wear, if you decide to delve into the absurd. This is a bit gratifying in its own right, because the people who don't get the humor are people you know the funny t-shirt is ridiculing. Making people think outside of their normal train of thought is the whole goal of absurdity.

Someone whom I think would have loved the funny t-shirts I wear is Eugene Ionesco. He was the author of several plays that were so bizarre, that he invented a whole new form of theater. Ionesco was dubbed the king of the Theater of the Absurd, and his plays forced people to think about how insane the conversations we have every day really are. His whole point was to use the absurd to mock conformity and useless conversation.

Absurdity is an art form. It is a mystery because of its irregularity to normal comedy. People have to actually work to understand the joke, and many people are simply too lazy to appreciate it these days. Can you imagine a world where anything could happen? Pioneers like Ionesco and the guys from Monty Python could, and they invited you to come and join them. Funny t-shirts are something simple that anyone can wear, but when you mix the truly absurd into the fray...well, then the hippos really will have won.




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1 comment:

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