The Office Blog

John Lippitt speaks upon the variances that occur within the large category of understanding incongruity in terms of what in funny. Lippitt explains that many have studied the subject of humor such as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Schopenhauer. The author closely looks at Schopenhauer on his terms of incongruity being the unexpected punchline of a joke. To see this formulation in more recent times, we look at the successful show “The Office”. In the show, Michael Scott, who is played by Steve Carell, has many instances where his dialect is seen to take an unexpected turn, thus having incongruity. For example, in season six Micheal states that, “If I had a gun with two bullets and I was in a room with Hitler, Bin Laden and Toby, I would shoot Toby twice”. The quotation serves the purpose of incongruity where the punchline in unexpected. This example also the many definitions of incongruity as being “innaporotarie”, “unsuited to their situation”, “absurdity”, etc… There are however cultural boundaries of which Lippitt speaks upon. For some people, this joke would not be understandable because they either do not know of Hitler and/or Bin Laden or do not watch the show. “The Office” example also helped to better understand the difference that structure plays in understanding incongruity. If Michael were to have worded the joke in another way, such as stating, “I want to shoot Toby”, the joke would not be nearly as humorous. The context and the attitude of Michael also makes the scene more humorous. The fact that the line was spoken in a meeting with the entire office simply contributes to the idea of making Michael even more absurd and having even more incongruity portrayed in the scene. The theories stated throughout the article all portray various aspects of incongruity which make up its essence of what it exactly is. There in not just one that portrays all on incongruity as stated in the article itself, incongruity has various meanings and explanations.