Inflate the Balloon and Pop It

Hi, everyone!

My name is Roger. I am an English teacher in Korea who does comedy of one kind or another. My goal in this blog is to make non-native speakers of English funny or funnier. I thought of doing a book, but the blog idea was from a friend. It's my first blog, so expect errors, glitches, and just plain inexperience.

OK, what is humor? It's a tool we use to generate laughter, to find the world funny. It is quite beneficial for us humans. We can relieve stress and tragedy and sadness, or at least feelings thereof, though humor.

So it shouldn't be a total surprise that humor often derives from tension, of building up tension, then releasing it somehow. The founder of Mad Magazine, Harvey Kurtzman, once described comedy as inflating a balloon and popping it. The inflation of the balloon is called by stand-ups the set-up. The popping of the balloon is called the punch line.

The set-up establishes some kind of expectation. It creates a context of information. It's very tricky. Basically, you have to give enough information to produce humor, but avoid taking too long.

The punch line is the funny part of the joke. Somehow it departs from the set-up. For example, the set-up could establish one expectation and the punch line contradicts it, while still staying close to the world the set-up established.

Consider this simple riddle: "Why was six afraid of seven? Because seven ate nine."

The question is the set-up. It establishes the formula: question and answer. The punch line needs to be the answer. It must somehow agree with the formula. However, the punch line gives an answer that surprises people. The answer is a pun based on the number eight.

A great joke? No, but you see the structure. Let's look at another example.

Emo Philips did a stand-up routine where he started talking about romance. He was not particularly handsome or classy as a man. He doesn't look like an actor playing James Bond.

One time, he said, "I'm a good lover... I bet."

The audience laughs because of the structure. The set-up makes us think, "Hey, maybe he is a ladies' man." But just two words at the end -- "I bet" -- and we get the sense that he's never had a lover, ever. It contradicts the set-up in a surprising way.

Notice a difference in emotion. When Emo performed this, his voice changes from set-up to punch line. The set-up sounds confident -- "I'm a good lover" -- but the punch line contradicts it by sounding uncertain. That means that your humor is stronger with changing the emotional feeling from set-up to punch line.

If you watch comedy in English, look for the set-ups and punch lines. Can you see differences in emotion? Can you see how the punch line releases the tension? You can learn a lot about humor from watching stand-up that you like, looking for interesting details.

So, to sum up: Inflate the balloon and pop it! Have jokes with two parts to them: set-ups and punch lines.

What do you think? Do you have questions or comments? Do you have your own jokes using set-ups and punch lines? Let me know.

-- Roger