Water Sports
I want to begin this analytical analysis of humor by stating that I think only a few of the clips seen in this You-Tube video are funny. The other sections in the video I would describe as a horror film. The video is nothing more then a compilation of “funny” water sport clips taken over a period of time. When I first watched this video with a few of my friends they were laughing historically. I on the other hand only laughed at a couple sections in the video, and starred with horror at the remaining clips.
What made my friends laugh at every single section in the movie? Three aspects of this movie come to the top of my head in answering this question: everyone has been there, people can get into comical contorted positions, and everyone wants to be the actor.
Almost everyone who is capable of seeing this You-Tube video has had, or has seen a similar experience to one of the many shown in the video. People have failed miserable at water sports. In fact, one must be a beginner (make mistakes) to become an expert in any sport. People are not so much laughing at, but laughing with the people who are making the mistakes in the video because they too have similarly failed. By just watching a video one can recall one’s own feelings at having experienced or watched someone do a similar epic water sport fail! Americans can relate to other people’s humiliations.
No one can deny that (almost) all the fails in the video look painful, and that they involve a human getting contorted into animalistic positions at best. My favorite clip is when the rather robust woman who is standing on the dock with water skies goes flying off of the dock. The rope in her hands suddenly goes taught and she flies out of her water skies. The way she entrances the water is quite similar to how a frog would jump off a log and into the water! People find this humorous because they may not have ever thought of human positions being akin to animal positions. This video proves that humans (whether they want to or not) can be manipulated like stick figures.
When people do water sports there is usually someone else present to observe. The person doing the water sport then feels the responsibility to become an actor, in order to keep the spectator entertained. One becomes an actor by doing daring or funny actions. Often time’s people end up regretting that they did become the actor by doing an overly daring or stupid action that ultimately causes them to be thrown in the water. Americans do not like show-offs, especially those that fail miserably at what they are doing. In the “American Dream,” the people that do end up making it to the top of the ladder are not portrayed as show-offs, but are instead likened to humble people, ready to help those who are less fortunate. Don’t be a water sport show-off!
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