December 23, 2008
Random Humor: A Quick Theory
So, the other night, after showing Jessie Left 4 Dead and having a good time at that (though she obviously isn’t a shooter player. It shocks me that she beats games like Silent Hill that frustrate me. She must either be better at them than me or have extreme patience) we went looking for something to watch, and, after looking through what I had, we ended up trying some Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. I’m happy to report that it hasn’t lost any of its humor from the last time I watched it. It’s still got such intense randomness combined with horrible stereotypes. Heh. It was, you know, good times.
About halfway through, though, I remembered a series that relied on random humor that I hadn’t seen in an eternity and got out the DVDs. That series is Excel Saga. Going back and watching it, I barely remembered much about it. I feel like it doesn’t hold up quite as well as back then. It’s still totally random, of course, and the humor comes from that randomness (Space Butler!) but it’s significantly less character driven. There’s all kinds of random shit happening, but Excel is just this crazy person who does crazy things as opposed to a character, really, and stuff just… well… happens. Like I said. Yeah.
Basically, mulling these things over, I think I’ve kind of figured out what makes randomness work so well, and that is an adherence to a strong internal logic, even if the events don’t make any sense. Granted, Excel Saga is purposefully lacking an internal logic because they change everything around every episode to spoof various styles and whatnot, but that’s also hindering it. No matter what fucked up things happen in Mr. Despair and his class, they are still internally consistent, even if their characters are kind of expanded stereotypes. Each member of the class is going to react in a logical way, given what you know about them. It gives the wackiness some grounding, a baseline to compare the craziness to, and that just makes it more funny. Right?
That’s the theory, anyway.