Copied Response from 9/2 Lead Blog post

Thank you so much for choosing this clip for analysis! I love Seth McFarlane so I personally found it amusing. I thought the clip was funny because of how it created an obviously inaccurate depiction of the people, places, and things associated with Boston. For example, the clip references the fact that the only good and popular pictures of Boston contain an aerial shot of Fenway Park which is not true at all. I definitely agree with you that the superiority theory is most apparent in this clip. I think that although the superiority theory is the most prevalent of theories in modern comedy, it definitely is the trickiest to use. It is a two-faced theory; on the one hand it can be funny in the way it puts shade on a person, place, or thing. However, the other side of the superiority theory is offensive and apathetic towards the beliefs, ethnicity and morals of others. The superiority theory always has the potential to be taken too far and almost any joke has the potential to offend at least one person. I also thought that towards the end of the clip when McFarlane was shot in the head in every scene that he starred in, the incongruity theory was at work. McFarlane getting shot repeatedly was certainly a surprise to me and I thought that it matched up well with the incongruity theory. I really liked your comment associating Freud’s “Humour” to the clip. Freud definitely makes a point that humor is almost like a shield, protecting the psyche from pain and suffering. Maybe McFarlane was trying to “ward off the suffering” of Boston (i.e. it’s crime rates and poverty) by creating this parody. My response to your question about a joke “scale of offensiveness” is that it would be a difficult device to implement. I can’t personally imagine a way to measure offensiveness without having a slight bias towards or against the joke in question. Maybe if specific universal guidelines were put into place? Also, if a scale like that was implemented, it would put a restriction on the type of jokes people would be able to make. It sounds like it could have been put into place by Big Brother himself from Orwell’s “1984”. I really enjoyed reading through your analysis and dissection and thank for sharing such a cool clip!