That’s not funny
Maybe I’m too literal-minded, but I have a hard time getting many types of humor. To me, it’s all personal. I love puns and word play, but have trouble with a lot of the types of comedy I see. Most people have become aware enough to be offended by racist and sexist jokes, but other things that pass for humor slip by without people thinking about it.
I strongly dislike the Three Stooges, for example. To me it’s cruelty, not humor. Poking people’s eyes out, etc. is just meanness, and I can’t help identifying with the victim. My aversion extends to most types of physical comedy, like Dick Van Dyke’s tripping over the ottoman and the Chevy Chase’s pratfalls. Someone’s getting hurt here and people are laughing at them for their clumsiness or some other failure that they can’t help. “America’s Funniest Home Videos” is the worst of the lot. Again, I identify with the victim. What happened to empathy?
Then there’s Lucille Ball’s “wacky hi-jinx.” The scene so many people love is the factory assembly line. She’s helpless and crying, yet people are laughing at her. Her emotional vulnerability is something to be used against her. “Rickie, I want to be in the show.” Of course he knows best and when she connives to be a part of it anyway, she is humiliated. Ha ha.
It’s related to pathos humor. Mr. Bean is another in that category. He’s so gentle and earnest that seeing him crushed makes me cry, not laugh. He can’t win, no matter what he does and I want to take him aside and protect him from the world.
I also don’t get Monty Python and other “men in drag” bits; to me it’s mocking women by making them caricatures defined by stereotypes. In high school, it was a staple at pep rallies and people roared. I don’t see any humor in high pitched voices, prancing around in high heels and exaggerated gestures, things that supposedly mark women as women. What’s so funny about bouncing breasts made of balloons? I guess maybe it’s supposed to be ridiculous that any man would want to be a woman. This bothered me long before I became aware that there are men who prefer to dress in women’s clothing and some who feel they are women. In that light, it’s even worse.
Helpless men under the thumb of women is another staple in stand-up comedy. Women are manipulative bullies, and men are too blinded by their lust to realize it until it’s too late. They don’t want what’s best for someone else–they want to control and exploit. Why would any man want one of these creatures? It mocks both men and women and reduces them to stereotypes.
Perhaps the most upsetting to me are jokes and films that mock overweight and/or older women for their sexuality. The commericals for the “Big Mama” movies break my heart. The idea that a fat woman, or a woman with white hair, might consider herself beautiful is portrayed as hilarious. Even funnier is the idea that she might believe that someone else finds her attractive. The woman is so oblivious to her physical state that she doesn’t know she’s repulsive. Those poor beleaguered men, relentlessly pursued by a disgusting mound of old flesh that revolts them. These women have no right to self-esteem or pleasure. They’re jokes waiting to happen and they don’t even know it.
“Shallow Hal,” with all it’s touching moments, is a twist on this. He’s in love with a fat woman and doesn’t know it. It points out his obliviousness while he learns everything he’s missed before in his inability to see past appearances. That was masterful. What bothered me were the brief scenes of Gweneth Paltrow sucking down vast quantities of food and the image of her tossing her oversized panties at him in joyful abandon. Most people laughed at that. I didn’t. All I could see was her happy embrace of the love and passion she thought she’d never know. With a few minor cuts, it could have been a truly wonderful movie.
I do like gentle humor that doesn’t mock or exploit. I love humor in self-awareness, that “aha!” moment in which people learn and become better people for it, such as the previously mentioned “Shallow Hal.” I liked “Dogma” for how it turned stereotypes on end. I like stand-up comedy that pokes fun at self-delusion, such as routines about the things parents don’t know before they have children. None of it is laugh-out-loud funny, but it makes me smile and feel good.
I guess for me it comes down to the maxim that we laugh rather than cry. I can’t get to that point. I just feel like crying at most things that many other people think are funny, so I don’t rent many movies labeled as comedy. They depress me. Maybe I’m extra sensitive to it, since I fear being the butt of jokes myself.
Or maybe I’m just a humorless old prude.

