How do you introduce yourself in a humorous way?

Methods and techniques to realize humor (1)

Play with humor as you like - methods and techniques to realize humor

1. Perceive humor with heart

Here, the focus is on specific methods and techniques to achieve humor.

Before discussing, it should first be pointed out that humor is not simply about making people laugh. As mentioned above, this is the main difference between humor and comedy. There are funny elements in the shell of humor, but the essence is much more elegant, meaningful and witty than funny; the essence of humor sometimes contains sarcastic content, but the shell is much kinder, broader and more lovely than satire. Therefore, the realization of humor has its own unique skills and methods.

1. The prerequisite for creating humor

The prerequisite for creating humor is the unity of expression techniques and content, the coordination of humor creation and humor understanding, and the principle of letting nature take its course.

The form and content of humor

The form of humor is characterized by being witty and cute. The content of humor is rational and contains philosophy that is self-evident and worth recalling. This is the so-called endless meaning.

American philosopher Parker said: "There is humor that forgives people... Comedy is either pricking or kind-hearted. The purpose of satire is moralism and persuasion, while the purpose of humor is Aesthetic and contemplative. "The so-called "contemplation" refers to the pursuit and exploration of humorous content and thinking about the essence of the issues revealed.

In the 1930s, Yu Dafu went to a restaurant with his friends. When paying the bill, he took out the banknotes from the sole of his shoe and handed it to the boss. His friend couldn't help being surprised and asked: "Why did you hide the money in your shoe?" Yu Dafu held up the banknote and said, "This thing has been oppressing me in the past, and now I will oppress it too." . ”

From a formal point of view, the hidden things in the soles are childlike and innocent, but if you ask why, you will find something worth thinking about.

Why is the unity of form and content the prerequisite for creating humor? Obviously, if you blindly pursue the form of amusing and making people laugh, humor will be considered vulgar. At most, it will only make people laugh like comedy, without any greater value. On the other hand, abandoning necessary forms of expression and only presenting a naked core is a kind of dry humor, and in fact there is no humor at all.

The famous Italian writer Rossini heard that some millionaires were planning to build a statue of him in France. He was moved and asked: "How much do they plan to spend?" "I heard that it is ten million francs." "Ten million francs?" Rossini said with emotion: "If they are willing to give me five hundred francs, I will stand on the base of that statue myself!"

This one! The humorous sketch adopts the form of contrast to reflect the thought-provoking content; through sharp contrast, we can see how much value a person has in a society where money is everything. The humor of this sketch is inseparable from the unity of its form and content.

Many scholars at home and abroad like to attribute humor to the category of comedy in aesthetics, so having a sense of humor is also a view of beauty. It is also an individual psychological quality characteristic like observation, memory, understanding and generalization ability. How to evaluate the special ability of sense of humor? The key lies in the ability to understand and create humor.

In the realization of humor, why is the coordination between humor creation and understanding a necessary prerequisite? Because the level of this special ability directly affects the humor effect. Whether from the perspective of the subject who creates humor or the object who experiences humor, humor as an individual psychological characteristic determines and affects the occurrence, development and outcome of the entire humor process. When it comes to sense of humor, why do some people get it right, while others are indifferent? Obviously, in addition to cultural literacy, geography, ethnicity and other factors, individual differences in the ability of humor are one of the main reasons.

Hundreds of years ago, Gharles Darwin pointed out that facial movements can enhance emotional feelings. Previous experimental studies usually asked subjects to look like they were laughing and then asked them to find out how much they enjoyed the humor.

This method is highly subjective. However, Fritz Strack, a psychologist at the University of Munich, experimentally proved that if you deliberately look like laughing when listening to jokes or watching humorous films, you can improve your true feelings. The sense of humor is appreciated.

His experiment was conducted without the subjects being aware of the purpose of the experiment. The subjects did not know that they were being examined with humor, and thought that they were only conducting research on disability. Strauch asked 92 subjects to hold a pen with their teeth or lips while showing a set of cartoons. The subjects were asked to rate the humorousness of the pictures, ranging from 1 to 9. .

When the pen is held in the lips, the lips are tightly closed and the smile cannot be shown; on the contrary, when the pen is held with the teeth only, the mouth is opened and the corners of the mouth are turned up. This kind of facial movement is like a smile. The results show that even this artificial smile can improve people's tolerance for the humor of cartoons. When the lips were closed, the average humor score was 4.32 points, while when the pen was held between teeth, the average score was 5.14 points.

Psychological preparation and facial movements are important components of humorous feelings or understanding of humor. Both Darwin and modern psychologists believe that if you want to be happy, you can rely on your own behavior, such as making The look of a smile. Understanding this is helpful in creating and delivering humor.

The principle of "naturalness"

It can be said that in comedy, folk art, jokes, humorous sketches, humorous photography, comics, funny couplets, and even in daily life, any humorous expression Success has the characteristics of being easy to come by, letting nature take its course, and has the flavor of "unintentional seeking and unexpected encounter". This is the natural principle of "jokes force people to come" as Li Yu said. On the contrary, the humor created by thinking hard and locked in an ivory tower behind closed doors is likely to be in danger of being artificial and pretentious.

In fact, "nature" as a principle in the realization of humor is well known in the practical process (as explained above). The reason for special emphasis here is to prevent this fundamental from being lost intentionally or unintentionally when discussing the following specific methods.

2. The main ways of perceiving humor

The realization of humor includes the creation process and the understanding process. The creation process mainly involves some specific methods, while the understanding process is related to the psychology of knowing and feeling. process related. Generally speaking, the main ways of perceiving humor are divided into two types: visual humor and auditory humor.

Visual humor is pleasure to witness

Visual humor mainly refers to plastic arts with comic significance and humorous content, humorous and funny behavioral postures and their portrayal. What people experience visually. The basic requirement of visual humor for humor creation is "witness is pleasure".

In the U.S. military, soldiers are not allowed to have long hair. However, General Hague, then commander-in-chief of NATO forces, had long hair.

A soldier was dissatisfied with this, so he found a photo of General Haig from the newspaper and posted it on the door of the lieutenant's office. He also drew an arrow pointing to the commander-in-chief's long hair and wrote: Said: Please look at his hair.

When the lieutenant saw this ingenious "letter of protest", he did not find out whose masterpiece it was. Instead, he extended the arrow and pointed it at the commander-in-chief's collar badge, and also wrote: Please see his Rank!

The pleasure of witnessing is closely related to the attention in psychological activities. Attention is directional, that is, at a certain moment, mental activities selectively reflect certain objects and ignore other objects. Experience tells us that things or phenomena that are novel, especially interesting, are most likely to attract attention. This external stimulus signal is transmitted through the visual pathway and acts on the brain. A series of stimuli will produce many different levels of excitement in the skin. The focal part of the excitation focus of a certain intensity forms a dominant excitation center, and at the same time induces a corresponding strengthening of the inhibitory process in the adjacent skin area. People can clearly reflect the external stimuli corresponding to the dominant excitation center and avoid other interfering stimuli. This It is the physiological and psychological mechanism of attention pointing and concentration.

According to this theory, it can better explain why certain visual humorous stimuli are so attractive. In this way, if you pay close attention to the Arhat Hall in Suzhou West Garden, you will find that among the more than 500 Arhat statues, tourists will choose to stay in front of the statues of Thousand-Armed Avalokitesvara and Jigong Living Buddha.

Why is this? Regarding the former, many people like to count whether there are a thousand hands. This is an expression of curiosity. The latter, however, attracts people's attention with its lively, humorous and humorous images.

Plastic arts such as sculpture create obvious, tangible artistic images of the tangible world in space that are reflected by the visual perception pathway. Although humorous statues are static and do not develop in time, they have infinite and long-lasting appeal. They can always reveal the diverse world through visual images. The bronze Hu figurines currently in the Brenda Museum in San Francisco, USA were created between the Zhou and Han dynasties and have a history of more than 2,000 years.

However, whenever we see the smiling faces of the Zhuiji Hu figurines, we always feel overjoyed. They smile so sillyly. What kind of happy things in the world can make people so overwhelmed?

In addition to humorous sculptures, in art forms such as comics, humorous photography, humorous paper-cutting, pantomime and comedy films, the main way to recognize and experience humor is also through vision. The humorous photo "The Neglected Partner" uses sharp contrast to reveal the hidden humor factors in the colorful world. The only way to recognize this form of humor is through the visual senses.

If humor photography is about observing ridiculous phenomena in the world through the lens, then the recognition through the pupils can be said to be the most direct.

After ridiculous phenomena in life and even humorous creations in art are reflected through human senses, are they actually humorous? This is related to factors such as the perceiver's own cultural literacy, moral standards, psychological quality, and the impact of the environment on his mood at that time. This is why some people are ready to get angry about the same thing, while others turn a blind eye and cannot laugh.

For a person with a sense of humor, he will often see many ridiculous things in the environment and surroundings. The famous French physicist Ampere returned home after an outing. When he walked to the door, he looked up and saw a note on the door saying "Ampere is not at home", so he said to himself: "He is not at home, then I will leave." In fact, he posted the note before leaving the house. He was obsessed with thinking about the problem, so he made this joke. Is it possible to not make people laugh when witnessing this interesting phenomenon?

The ridiculous phenomena in life and the visual humor in pantomimes and comedy films have a distinctive dynamic characteristic compared with comics, humorous photos and sculptures. From a perceptual perspective, dynamic stimuli are more likely to attract people's attention than static stimuli and are less likely to induce visual fatigue. In view of this physiological and psychological characteristics of people, we can make full use of them in the process of creating visual humor. No matter what form of visual humor is used, the visual "language" or "symbols" used must have their roots in life, that is, all movements, behaviors, postures, and shapes that reflect humor are inseparable from people's life and labor. Otherwise, we will not be able to understand and realize the information conveyed by these "languages" and "symbols", let alone have a happy response to this type of visual stimulation.

In fact, there are many ridiculous phenomena and funny images around us, and they are all varied and unique. As long as you are good at observation and insight, it is not difficult to find them at any time. From the huge wedding convoy on the road, can you find some interesting sights between the buyers and sellers at the counter? ...As long as you pay a little attention, you will be in for a treat!

Auditory humor is understood through hearing

The understanding and understanding of humor in artistic styles such as cross talk, allegro, tongue twisters, quick words, jokes, and comic music are mainly experienced through the auditory channel.

In the expression of auditory humor, some use "gimmicks" or "baggage" to create jokes, while others pay attention to form, rhyme and singing, focusing on creating a funny and interesting atmosphere.

Auditory humorous stimuli symbolized by speech, rhythm, and music pass through the afferent pathway of the speech auditory analyzer and reach the WeniCke’s center area of ??the left hemisphere cortex of the brain, where they produce a series of physiological and psychological reactions.

Visual humor is about seeing quickly. We can take in all the activities in the entire space in a scene at the same time. This is not the case for humor reflected in the auditory pathway. Similar characteristics. However, we can just make the most of our strengths and avoid our weaknesses. We can string together the activities in a certain moment into a long thread like telling cross talk or telling jokes. First, we can smooth out the jokes and lay down the foreshadowing, and then stimulate the audience's senses step by step to attract the audience. His attention and all his thoughts are drawn to the clues "hidden" in advance, and he thinks along with their development, until he suddenly interrupts the original train of thought when the clue is finally revealed, resulting in an unexpected and reasonable humorous effect.

A: One day, we were surveying in the virgin forest, and suddenly a bison jumped out, jumping and roaring!

B: Oh, that’s bad!

A: It doesn’t matter, calm down, I said: "Martin, get out of the way! Lao Zhao, leave it alone, let me do it!"

B: What should you do?

A: I’m hiding.

B: What, hiding?

A: I hid in a favorable terrain, picked up the gun, and hit! bump! bump! Just three times.

B: Kill the bison.

A: No, I will scare it. Wild animals are valuable assets.

For this cross talk, let us use our eyes to understand all the activities in it. We can find that almost all activities happen in one moment, and we can only feel it with our eyes. There's not much humor in it. However, once it is changed into an auditory expression, the situation is completely different. In this passage, the three shots of "hide" and "touch! touch! touch!" are the two jokes that were planted while we were listening. From coming forward to hiding, it was confusing, but as soon as the conversation changed, the explanations that followed were very satisfactory and reasonable. With the sound of three gunshots "Bang! Bump! Bump!", the audience was eager to know whether the bison was dead or injured, but unexpectedly, they lightly said "scare it, scare it." At this moment, the nervous expectation suddenly disappeared and disappeared. Make a laugh.

It should be emphasized here that in any form of humor expression, it is difficult to distinguish between pure visual humor or auditory humor. They usually complement each other and complement each other. For example, in the form of visual humor in cartoons or comedy films, the perceptual process seems to be related only to the firing of excitatory actions of the optic nerve cells in the retina.

In fact, when we watch Disney's Donald Duck lighting up the cannon, even though there is no dubbing or narration, the auditory nerve cells in the inner ear system are also in a state of stress preparation. In this way, when plumes of green smoke come out of the mouth of the gun barrel, we will also seem to "hear" a bang. This is called "syneraesthesia" or "synesthesia" in psychology. The so-called synaesthesia or synaesthesia refers in psychology to the feeling that one sense has produced, which can cause changes in the feeling of another sense.

Just as visual humor can induce auditory synesthesia, auditory humor can also induce synesthesia in other senses. From the perspective of the synaesthesia psychological phenomenon where vision and hearing interact with each other, when expressing auditory humor, paying attention to choosing things that people are familiar with as humorous materials can enhance the effect of auditory humor.

In funny dramas and comedies, the sense of humor mainly lies in the combination of vision and hearing. All artistic techniques that can affect this comprehensive level will ultimately affect the infectiousness of humor, that is, the enjoyment of beauty.

Humor can be said to be the "best equation" for "life exercises".

Mr. John F. Kennedy, the youngest, most personable, and funniest talker in the history of the United States, who became president at the age of 44, was also proficient in Samadhi. On one occasion, he asked a large group of reporters to follow him. Taking the "Air Force One" presidential plane to visit a certain place, during the flight, the approachable president chatted with the reporters accompanying him. Suddenly, a reporter asked a rather "awkward" question. He asked rashly: "Mr. President, if the plane suddenly crashes now, what do you think will be the consequences?" The pleasant atmosphere suddenly froze, and everyone looked at each other in confusion, not knowing what to do.

What a Kennedy, but I saw him saying slowly: "Well, I don't know what the consequences will be, but one thing I am absolutely sure of is that your name will be published in the newspaper tomorrow morning. , but the font size will be very small.” What a humorous change ball, thrown out skillfully, which not only resolved the embarrassment, but also made the rude reporter get a meal.

If you add "the seasoning of wisdom" to a humorous delicacy, it will be even better.

A big boss bought a beautiful garden covering a very large area. He planned to hire 12 gardeners to take care of it. After he posted the recruitment in the newspaper, application letters came like a snowflake. There are hundreds of emails in total.

The big boss gave the executive secretary full responsibility for this matter. After preliminary screening, the secretary notified 50 people to come for interviews and told them to bring the work pants they usually wear.

On the day of the interview, the executive secretary served as the examiner. When he entered the examination room, he looked at the applicants without saying a word, then looked through the work pants they brought, and then scored. .

The 12 admitted people were notified to come to work, and there were whispers in the workplace. Finally, they couldn't help their curiosity, and sent a representative to ask the executive secretary: "What is the reason for being admitted?"

The executive secretary smiled and replied: "Nothing, I mainly want to see if there are patches on the work pants? And where are the patches? Your patches are all on the knees, so I decided to hire them. , if the patch is on the buttocks, I will definitely not use it!”

Many people are in the trend of losing weight recently, and they want to lose weight even though they are already thin. At this time, we can tell them that no matter how tall or short they are, they will lose weight! , nature is the most beautiful. Tall people are called "standing upright", short people are called "down to earth", fat people are called "at ease", thin people are "reasonable", tall, short, fat and thin are all happy! As long as you always show sincerity and creativity when dealing with others, anyone can reap the good fruits of life.