Response to Amal's lead blog

I found it is not that interesting when watching the first part of the video since I did not regard the John as a kid who has not built his own values, but it becomes much more fun when I saw him in the Ellen show. In the first part, all I saw was a child who kept lying to his mom that he did not eat the sprinkles. Although he looks cute, he still should not lie again and again, and he should at least admit he ate it when his mother found evidence. I know that sounds too strict to a child, but I did not realize it when I watch the video. There is a detail veiling the truth that he has not built his moral outlook. Since he can opened his mouth when his mother want him to do so, I felt like he can totally understand what his mother said, therefore, lying should be the intentionally behavior that should be corrected. When thinking about this, he makes me feel like he is not that adorable. However, when I watched his response in the Ellen show, I found out that he answered all the question with "yeah", but he obviously did not understand all the question. Then, I realize he is just a three-year-old child who has a little world for himself, which is called pure and innocent. 

It is hard to find humor if we kept using our adult perspective to interpret his behavior. Lying was not a social acceptable behavior when communicating with others, so it is not easy to get laugh when we treat the little child as a person who have same moral standard with ourselves. He is funny because he is a young kid, who do not know right and wrong and who do not know how serious it will be to become a lier. On the Ellen show, he showed no interest in the conversation of the adults and also did not care the question Ellen asked about his age. In his world, the focus is always candies. We can see his reaction when seeing a mountain of candies showing up and waiting for him. That is the thing he valued in his world, which is simple and pure. That is the most sweet period in every human's life. 

Responses to Connor's Blog

The show is funny because there are always answers that surprised people. Due to the rule of this game, there are two family member that compete each other by guessing the most popular answer of 100 people. The number of same answer in the survey will be showed on board as scores. The family which gets higher total score wins the game. In the game, the family members should think about answers from the perspective of both themselves and other 100 people. The rule itself is like a constriction that prevent people from thinking too far. Therefore, their answers should not be too absurd for others. After understanding the rule, audiences will not simply regard their answers as family member's own opinions. In other words, the game is aim to let people say the answer in other people's eyes. Therefore, this rule kind of reduces the embarrassment of answering awkward questions. There are questions are designed to make people think about something strange and those question are sometimes not proper to ask in the public. People usually will not answer those questions if they only represent for themselves, however, in this show, their answers are supposed to represent more people. Family member will say the repressed ideas in public in this situation. Due to the relief theory, if the answer they answered are the ones that always be repressed in the moral world, people will feel relieve and then laugh.

When watching the audiences struggle with guessing the right answer, we found them funny when they answer the answer too far from the best answer. Since every question have time limit, people will say the idea first came to their mind, which is always surprising and hilarious, even if it will embarrassed themselves. The time limit forces people to say their original ideas. Due to the superiority theory, the more embarrassing those ideas are, the more hilarious audiences will found. In this video clip, when he said gynecologist in the last second, people cannot help to laugh, because this answer is a little bit awkward for a man, but it is not a bad answer for this question. It like he was forced to say something embarrassing and this idea makes people laugh due to relief theory.

Responses to Kendalls' Lead Blog

Physical comedy is also one of my favorite type of comedy, since the purpose is pretty simple which is making fun of people. The funnier those people are, the more successful the show is.

I feel relax when I watch this kind of comedy, because I do not need to feel sympathy. Superiority theory says people feel sudden glory when something bad happened to others. It is true that we can feel happiness when feeling we are much better than others; however, it is also easy to feel pity about them if those people are really poor or in the tough situation. Therefore, I always found when I laugh at others, I have burden on my shoulder that told me to stop. When watching physical comedy, I knew those people are volunteer to this show, which means, although they know they might have a really bad ending, they still want to try it for fun. That shows they do not care loss face, and in some way, I feel like they want to be laughable, because that is the aim of the show. Therefore, when watching people fail in the show, I always laugh so hard without feeling sympathy. Laughing is like a favorable response to this show, and I use laugh to support this show. 

In my opinion, the most hilarious one is the No.9 player, because he is really serious when observing the rotating obstacle. I  think he was trying to keep calm and stay cool even though he knew he would not jump on it successfully. I can see that he was confused by the obstacle but he was still trying to find a right spot just like solving math problem. Then, I laugh harder when he failed.

Moreover, I like it because I can laugh as hard as possible in order to reduce pressure. Due to the relief theory, people laugh to unpack their repressed feelings. In the reality, sometimes we cannot express our true feelings due to our identity or situation. When seeing people have higher position make some dumb mistakes, we usually cannot laugh because it is offensive. When hearing the joke our friends said, we might laugh because we do not want to disappoint them, even if it is not funny. In order to survive in the society, we must control our feelings to become socially acceptable. However, this comedy enables us to laugh sincerely. We can laugh at anyone who failed or struggled in the game without considering punishment or other's feelings. 

Response to Cawood's Lead Blog

I really like these two videos in that they opened up a new route for our topic, which is mimicking. They use human voice lip-sync animal's original voices, and give audiences an unexpected result.

The first scene is the most hilarious one for me. While the black bird saying something like "Dai Dai", he used his wings to cover his face and then remove his wings, which remind me of the game mom played for their kids. When babies have not learn the "object permanence", which is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be observed, moms always put their hands on their faces to pretend they are not there and then remove their hands to bring themselves back, which always make babies happy. Before I saw this video, I thought the game should only played by human, but when the human voice added into the video, I start to believe they were really playing the same game. On the one hand, I was surprised that the human language fit so well in the animal; on the other hand, I found it amazing that animal can maybe talk about same topics with us! Who knows?! That uncertainty is the most interesting part of the videos. We do not know if they really have languages to communicate and we also do not know what are they talking about if they do? Do they talk about the same topic with us? This ambiguity gives us a lot of imagination, and makes audiences curious about the fact. It also makes me realize how little I know about other animal's world, and perhaps their daily life as interesting as mine. Although I knew, in the biological perspective, human is also animal, just like other species on the earth, I still feel like we are superior than others since we have higher intelligences. Therefore, I feel unbelievable when I start to think about animals can also talk while the videos make so many senses.

Moreover, I was impressed by BBC due to their creativity. Everything seems changed completly after conferring meanings to animals' nonsense voices. I saw some of the scenes before, but I never use the human perspective to interpret their behaviors. When I saw the bird cover their face, I will not thought about the game, because I unconsciously separate other animals with human and enlarge the distances between human and other species. Living in the city for most of my life, I hardly have opportunities to really feel the beauty of nature and do not even talk about get in touch with animals. Therefore, I always admire people who can always try to empathy with animals or try to build relationship with other species. I would love to try to understand animals later, just like communicate with people. I am sure I will have more fun in my life in this way and thank Cawood for showing us these videos. I do learn a lot!

Lead Blog --- Things Bilingual People do

Hi, everyone! Welcome to my blog! Hope you guys can enjoy the video and have fun~ Hoo Hoo!

This video, made by international students in America, lists almost all the situations of using foreign languages. Bilingual people can change their languages whenever they want to say secrets, describe their feeling in a better way, or even switch in the mid sentance. Some situations in the video remind me of my past experiences in my daily life. For me, I choose to use either English or Chinese due to the person I speak with. However, when I was talking with my American friends and Chinese friends in the same time, Chinese words sometimes just jumps out of my mouth and my American friends will get confused. I never mean to do this, but if that happens, I will translate what I just said into in Chinese, since I know people around will feel frustrating and uncomfortable.

However, when watching the video, the subtitle enables me to understand every language they are speaking without feeling confusion. Therefore, I don't feel sad when people cannot get the meaning and try to guess the meaning, and the more confused they are, the more hilarious I felt. For example, when I saw Steven was suffering from listening the girls says random negative words, I knew he has the illusion that the girl is complaining about him, and he might even try to recall if he did something wrong recently. For him, the foreign language is like a secret code which has latent meanings, and probably those meanings are not friendly. However, by reading the subtitle, we knew the conversation is just about the boring class and awful meal, which have no relationship with him. The ability of understanding inside story gives us superior feeling that enables us to laugh at the characters without being confused.

In the first scene, it shows that bilingual people can use their own language to say secrets in public; however, everything will go well until others start to talk with you in your own language. It is always surprised to know people can speak our own language. One day, the cook in DH said Thank you in Chinese when I has already got ready to say "You are welcome". I was suddenly amazed that he can speak Chinese, and then when I try to answer him in Chinese, I failed, because it is so hard to change languages in a second, so I just spoke in English like usual, but he then said," I am sorry, I thought you are Chinese." At that moment, I was a little embarrassing, but after I explained, we both laughed and felt it is so interesting to speak in different language. Although there are more and more people learn foreign languages, we still use Chinese to say a lot of personal experiences in the public. For example, my friend and I sometimes talk about our private life in the public just like greeting for each other, while others just thought we are saying how are you or hello.

This video makes me recall many similar experiences happened in my life. The reason I shared this video is not just because it is interesting, but also because I think although America is very racially diverse, it is not that linguistically diverse. I hope this blog can help you guys know how amazing it is to speak multiple languages, and I am glad to hear your experiences or thoughts on this topic.

Response to Katty's Blog

It is so true that we sometimes buy so called "healthy food" without considering thoroughly about its reliability. Although the thinking process will probably just take several seconds, we still do not want to consider it due to the fact that we need this so much, and we want to try it even if it has risk that it is not as good as it says. 

In my own experience, after graduated from high school, as getting older, I started to think of my appearance. When seeing the pretty girl dressing short skirt and shows her long and slim legs, I was so jealous that she has such good figure so that she will never refuse to buy her favorite clothes because she cannot fit in. Therefore, I cannot ignore the fact that I am fatter than them and not thin enough to become beautiful. Meanwhile, I realized it is time to do something about my body weight. However, whenever I saw the delicate desert or anything looks delicious, I never have the idea to stop  eating or even try to eat less. How can I lose weight without set limit for food? I thought maybe losing weight is just not my thing because my principle of life is enjoying it, and I really cannot think about losing weight when I saw good meals. However, I did not find out how impulsive people are when they saw something that really attractive until I saw a product. It is a kind of medicine that made of herb which is healthy and it often used for help models keep slim, in other word, this is the medicine that cannot be bought on the market because it is only sale to models who need to become slim immediately before the show. Besides, it says it can help me lose weight without eating less but drinking water as much as possible. I heard a lot of news about how people become unhealthy by taking some weird medicine, but at that time, I gave myself a lot of excuses unconsciously so that I made up my mind and bought it finally. It takes me 400 RMB, which is not a small number for a student. Then, on one day, I told my mom, who is a nurse, about my medicine. She told me a story about some patients she met before. They are thin and seem healthy but their intestines are actually  turning black under awareness because they are having so called "healthy" slimming pills. After hearing this story, I really believe my former guess that the reason I should drink a lot of water is because the harmful substances will actually stay in my body and continue hurt my organ. My mom's argument was strong enough to help me keep a clear-head and realize how stupid I was.

In conclusion, the decision we made when we are exciting is always muddle because we always highlight the favorable part but ignore the questionable ones. The reason why we buy something like my pills is because of my strong will of weight. I will probably buy anything that seems works for me, and it is all about timing. If I saw it in the other time, I might not buy it but trying to figure out what exactly in it.

Response to Emma's lead blog

I did not watch this movie before, but I kind of get the idea about what is it and the style of it. It is the movie showing how a girl grow up in the harsh environment where girls are competing all the time. The idea that taking lesson while watching movie is reasonable. Nobody will likes the lecture on what we can or cannot do, so comedy is the form that encourages audiences to watch happily without focus on the meaning behind the film, but do know there is a latent lesson unconsciously.

In fact, most of people also run into the problems of bulling or verbal attacks more or less. Those problems are not particularly appear in one particular school, but almost all the high school. Therefore, when watching the movie, it is easy for people to recall their memory or sad experiences in their high school. The people who always bullied others will also start to review their history when seeing social queen do the same thing like they did before. If there is no humor in the movie, all those memory flooded into their mind will influence their feeling toward the movie. Maybe the one who saw the another self in the movie will became so regretful that do not want to watch it anymore. Although it does give audiences lessons by showing how bad influences they made to others, it may be too straight forward to give audiences good feelings.

Writing a play is like educating children. Parents cannot remark on their children's behaviors so directly without any modify, because it will sound like order them to follow rules. Children will be hurt or even develop a rebellious mind if their parents are too strict with them. However, if parents can use another ways, like telling fairy tale, children will accept the meaning unconsciously and even glad to learn more.

Response to Kirsten's lead blog

This “Try Not to Smile or Laugh” challenge makes me laugh so bad in that it is funny not only in the short videos but also in those participants' reaction. In my opinion, the boy in the green T-shirt is the most hilarious one among them. When watching the concert one, which shows the audience is so excited that sing really terrible, he criticized her seriously and said that 'if she wanna sing, she gonna sing right'. Although I cannot figure out why he said that, the way he reacted is totally out of my expectation. And there are other people who try as hard as possible to suppress their desire to laugh always have suffering faces, and some of them even try to change their facial expression into surprising. These unusual and unnatural facial expression become other sources of my laugh. If I track the theory behind my laughing, I think that would be superiority theory, because I laugh that they cannot release their original feelings like me and although they challenged successfully in the end, I got more happiness than they got. Therefore, I had the same feeling with the boy who said, “The idea of a laugh challenge makes me laugh.”


In addition, I watched this video twice. The first time was watched by myself, and the second time was with my friends. I found it is much easier to laugh when there are people surrounded. My friends are not usually laugh as easily as I do, so whenever they found it is funny, I unconsciously laugh harder, just like when I saw the participants laugh. When we were laughing, these videos suddenly become the link which bond us together. It is not important about what was showing, but the connection between my friends and I. At that moment, comedy is like the tool of communicating. It has magic to bring people together just by laughing out loud, and in this way, audiences who laugh together can know that they have same type of laughing which maybe suggests that they have same interest and they are same type of people.

Response to Whit's lead blog

This one is really funny and it caught my attention when Bruno Mars started singing. I never thought he is so talented that can imitate so many voices of famous singers. There are two reasons why I laugh so hard.

First of all, due to the superiority theory, people will laugh when they observe ones' disadvantages, and those singers are perfect target to laugh without feeling bad. The popularity of songs ensures audiences know exactly what the differences and similarity between these two versions so that they can easily get the point. He not only did a good job on the voices but also make a lot of fun by exaggerating those singers' typical facial expressions or movements. When Bruno Mars sang Justin Bieber's song, he acted showily which perfectly stress the Justin Bieber's character and people laugh it like laugh at a popular "secret".

Second of all, some of the characteristics he showed are knew by audiences unconsciously. Sometimes, people will ignore the imperfections of the celebrities because they are much better than ourselves and we do not think we have ability to judge. However, when listening Bruno Mars' performances, we are not only laugh but also share his professional point of view about those singers. Because of his popularity, people can laugh without thinking about if it is wrong and feel like they are judging from a professional perspective. This gave audiences opportunities to look down to those famous people and feel superior.

Moreover, the plot is super simple but also necessary, because it is that connect all the parts together without feeling awkward by singing different songs randomly.

Response to Charlotte's blog

This blog is so thoroughly that almost covers everything I want to say. However, even after reading analysis for several times, I was still impressed by his new perspective on marriage proposal. 

I never think about why we should marry before, because this is a significant affair I knew from little and was asked to obey in my life. We are supposed to adapt the society by following the rules and sacrifice part of freedom. The so-called regulation is not always reasonable, but efficient. In order to establish good order in society, government must deal with the basic needs for human's nature. For example, one's sexual desire is necessary for human reproduction which will ensure we have enough labor force to work and develop. However, if we do not control this natural desire, social problems, such as excess population, orphans, chaotic relationship will appear. Therefore, in order to make better and peaceful life, the society decides to limit people's desire by doing some silly arrangements. Once we set up rules of marriage, the basic structure "Family"is created. In this small group, children can be took care by their parents and parent have responsibility to satisfy children's need of education and surviving. This small unit divides society into small part that everyone can be cared and controlled. 

If we do not have the regulation for human's behaviors, the society may not be formed, and the whole environment cannot be developed. Therefore, after thinking about this rule controlled human, I start to understand the meaning of weigh up the pros and cons. Sometimes, it is more worth to give up than obtain.

Response to Nick's blog

I do like the point that John is using comedy as a way to make people listen, which shows that comedy can not only make people laugh but also gathers people attention about something serious.

Sometimes, I questioned the way the social media filter the information, should they pick the ones interested to audiences or the ones really matter to the society but maybe less attractive to viewers. Considering the audience rating, if they pick the ones that more attractive to audiences, they may gain a lot of economic benefit by ignoring the truly important dull information. However, after watching this show, I know we do have a way to spread news without decreasing its audience rating, which is using comedy. In my opinion, the charm of this show is that it uses comedy as a tool to attract more people, including the audiences who care less but just like John Stewart, to see the news. John can make news became lively and easy to understand, just like watching cartoon. In this way, people can not only learn the new but also have a good time, just like learning while playing. If this strategy is used properly, news will not be too dull to watch, and the process to view news will become meaningful and benevolent to society.

Response to Parker's lead blog

The Office is different from the other American TV series I watched before, because it creates funny atmosphere by Michael's absurd thinking pattern, not just the words he said. For instance, he questioned if he should saved this person because the dummy has on arm and legs. It seems like he was too serious to distinguish the dummy and a real person, and even has emotion with a dummy. This makes me feel like he is serious and a little bit cute. However, the behavior he did next denies my previous knowledge about him. He found it hard to pump in the right way, so he started to pump to the beat of the song and then singing more and more excited. He already changed his focus from saving the dummy to sing a song in the funny way which make me feel like he is not as cute as I imagine. He is not serious to this dummy at all and all he wanted to do is using the dummy to make fun. Here is the scene similar with it showed in my head, a child, who fancies about her doll very much, twists its neck after finding out it cannot play with her like a real friend. The contrast of the lovely little girl and her behavior makes her seems queer and little laughable. In this way, I found more absurdity than laugh in The Office. I would feel much funnier if  he is not intend to make fun but do ridiculous things unconsciously.

Superiority theory

Superiority theory claims that the reason why people laugh is because they found out disadvantages or defects of others. However, it sometimes seems distorted when we thinking about laughing at a beggar or make fun of disabled people. People usually will not deride the ones who have genuine difficulties in their life, but the ones who have difficulties temperately. For example, <Running Man>, an entertainment programme in China and Korea, is famous for its weird and funny games and its all-star cast. None of stars can keep their perfect image on this programme. In the game, their is no preparation, no time to think, and even no make-up. All the thing they need is won the game by luck, wise or strengths. So, here is the question, why popular stars so eager to join this programme even if they know they might be embarrassed by it? Could this programme show their advantages? -Yes, if they think they are wiser or stronger than others, but most of people will not think so. Could it help them get better image? -Absolutely not if we are talking about appearances, because most of people cannot make up or wear gorgeous clothes on it. However, is it possible that people join this programme is simply want themselves to look "bad" or be closer to populace?


In my opinion, showing their imperfections will help them gain more popularity. After creating their so many perfect figures on the screen, the marginal utility of being perfect idol decreases; moreover, many fans will start to question their authenticity of being so perfect. Therefore, the most effective and cleverest way to gain more popularity is being more likely to common people, who are imperfection and have less beautiful outfit. In this way, being embarrassed and teased to make people laugh at this point is not that embarrassing, and the outcome of being in a inferior situation is not that hurtful for their position.


In conclusion, superiority theory sometimes will not hurt the targets, but actually benefit them for showing their imperfections.

Make me laugh

Here is the link of the video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxINJzqzn4w

I thought it is interesting to see Bill Burr can speak whatever he want in public, including the thoughts restricted in the society.

In the beginning, he said if there is an automatic check-out machine in the supermarket, he will just passing by the machine and told the police he don't need to pay because there is no employee. This behavior may sound crazy in our daily life, because nobody can actually stealing goods from the store and find a such stupid excuse without feeling shame in front of police. However, although stealing goods is definitely not the right thing to do, we cannot guarantee that we have never thought about it in our unconscious mind. Sometimes, malicious impulses are exactly what people want to do without laws controlling us. In my opinion, the reason why it is funny is because he pointed out our unconscious mind, stealing things, and say it out loud in the public, just like talking about something always happened in our life. In other words, he is kind of making a delusion of the society without rules which blurs audiences' boundaries. In this way, audiences will feel relief because they let their forbidden thoughts out and found his humor in the show.

Later, he said never try to get help on the phone, because there is nothing we can get except listening  ' I understand, but I am sorry, there is nothing i can do' over and over again.' He uses this extreme case to criticize workers' lazy and irresponsible attitudes, and even deride this hopeless job. For me, this case is funny because this always happens in my life, but it is so trivial that nobody shares it in our life. However, when hearing the compliant, I will have the same feeling with speaker, and find out I am not the only person who also suffered in this situation. It is like the superiority theory, the humor of seeing disadvantages on others. In my opinion, this theory should add a sentence: it is easier to make people laugh if people find there are more people have same feeling with them.