This prompt is for Group 2 (Lee-Wright)
Due Monday Feb 7th by 10pm (200-400 words)
“Humor is crafted ambiguity, and ambiguities do not easily yield certainties.”
-Elliott Oring
“The perils of analyzing Allen should be obvious: academics who play around with him risk being played around with themselves.”
-David Galef
“Here is but a small sample of the main body of intellectual treasure that I leave for posterity, or until the cleaning woman comes.”
-Woody Allen
According to 18th century poet and essayist James Beattie, “Laughter arises from the view of two or more inconsistent, unsuitable, or incongruous parts or circumstances, considered as united in one complex object or assemblage” (qtd. in Oring 2). Elliott Oring, in his 1992 work, Jokes and Their Relations, furthers this claim: “The perception of humor depends on the perception of an appropriate incongruity—that is, the perception of an appropriate interrelationship of elements from domains that are generally regarded as incongruous” (2). This view, often attributed to Sigmund Freud (there is a slight difference, though, as Freud claimed this to be a “forced” juxtaposition) has appeared to reach a critical consensus in one form or other amongst humor theorists. I shall not disagree with this thesis. However, when it comes to the forced juxtaposition employed by Woody Allen, the depths of his particular brand of humor need to be plumbed rigorously, as he’s often working on multiple levels.
In his comic essay, “Remembering Needleman,” from the 1981 collection Side Effects, Allen employs the conflation of seriousness and silliness/absurdity to deal with the darkest of subject matter—death. From the outset, Allen forces disparate concepts into one cohesive thought par excellence, while presenting his comic essay as a mock eulogy of sorts. Allen opens with the yoking together of the morbid and the juvenile: “It has been four weeks and it is still hard for me to believe Sandor Needleman is dead. I was present at the cremation and at his son’s request, brought the marshmallows, but few of us could think of anything but our pain” (Side Effects 3). Unless read by a completely humorless individual, this line results in an outburst of laughter. What is the cause of this? Once again, Freud argues in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious that all humor is based on the forced conflation of disparate ideas. What’s at work here is not just the forced conflation of disparate ideas, but a third element—an element of humor that hints that the structure of the joke is as important as the conflation of disparate ideas. In effect, Freud (and Beattie) hints at the main driving force behind the line by line witticisms evident in Allen, but neglects the structure. As Elliott Oring reminds us, “To neglect […] structural elements in conceptualizing the messages of humorous expression is to risk reading into them messages that may not be there, thus increasing rather than reducing levels of ambiguity” (15). I shall heed this warning, and further, claim that the particular structure that makes Allen’s jokes both wildly hilarious, and perhaps the main element in why we may consider Allen’s jokes as literary, is the comic non sequitur.
Maurice Charney, in his 1995 article, “Woody Allen’s Non Sequiturs” identifies this particular logical fallacy as the basis upon which Allen constructs his witticisms. Charney defines the non sequitur as joke thusly:
In the study of humor, a non sequitur usually refers to a kind of joke in which the punch line seems to have nothing to do with the narrative content of the joke proper. In other words, a non sequitur joke seems like a shaggy dog story. I use ‘seems’ advisedly because the hearer always makes some effort to connect the premises and the conclusion, although there is usually an unbridgeable gap between the two. (339)
Analyze the structure of Allen’s humor in “The Kugelmass Episode.” What’s at work here? What role do comic non sequiturs play in this metafictional referential comedy? What else is at work?
"The Kugelmass Episode" has multiple levels of humor within it. Metafictional satire structures the plot . Kugelmass wants love and romance. He tries to find it by magically going into romance novels. Comically enough, Kugelmass is essentially a bald, male version of many of these novels' romances such as Madame Bovary. Kugelmass is bored of his love life and rather than listen to his analyst (reason), he acts on his feelings. Unsurprisingly, Kugelmass discovers that affairs in real life do not play out like novels. He discovers love affairs are taxing, both monetarily and emotionally. Irony and comic non sequiturs fill out and give body to the already comical structure and they often work in unison. For example, whenever Kugelmass is wooing Madame Bovary, the narrative explains (in a non sequitur fashion) his tryst is being broadcast to every person reading the book. These events leads to the teacher making a comment about teens and drug use and how this is causing them to see things. Ironically, we know that these events are actually happening. The "joke tally" stands at two non sequitur instances (the class and then the teacher's comment) and then two instances of dramatic irony blended together in one paragraph. Woody Allen's ability to blend together multiple levels of humor into one flowing narrative, without jarring the reader or leaving the humor feeling forced, marks him as a comic genius.
ReplyDeleteIn Allen’s “The Kugelmass Episode,” there are various types of humor present in the story that help mold it’s satirical frame. He introduces a “dull” character named Kugelmass who falls under the archetype of a lost lover in a romance story. Ironically, he falls in love with Madame Bovary, a lovely woman in a romance novel and he satisfies his fantasy of having a juicy affair with a younger, beautiful lady. Allen pokes at the situational irony of men cheating on their wives and most of the time it usually ends up as some sort of fiasco, or “episode” as Allen wittingly titled his piece. The on and off non sequiturs used in this story help divert the reader’s attention to provide a brief comic relief to the drama Kugelmass is experiencing. However, at the end of the story, Persky’s abrupt death and the cabinet bursting into flames were somewhat of a jab to a dramatic ending usually present in epic novels. The quick ending to the novel where Kuglemass is trapped in the world of Remedial Spanish being chased by a monster verb (“tener”) provides a somewhat light mood towards Persky’s sudden death and Kugelmass’s entrapment in the world of the Spanish language.
ReplyDeleteCatherine Rabalais
Craig Naccari
ReplyDeleteThe most glaring non-sequitur arrives at the end of the story as a remedial Spanish book chases our protagonist. However, we can view the entire story as a joke gearing up for this punch-line, though we never see it coming. The story begins with a man unhappy in his marriage seeking an affair. It then deviates into a fantastic story of magic and literary love. Harsh reality then sets back in, only to be spat on by the ridiculousness of the final scene.
So the story jumps from reality to fantasy and back again, depicting the flawed desires of the protagonist and the disappointment they bring him in the real world. We then expect either contrition from the bewildered Kugelmass or destruction, but we only receive hairy Spanish verbs. Though the story contains several small gags (the Stanford professor thinking he read something new that he missed), but ultimately sets the stage for the larger gag of tricking the reader. While reading, we expect some misfortune to befall the man who knows the error of his ways through experience but chooses to ignore the realities of his condition. We expect him to disappear into unhappiness because he shunned reality. We expect some moral. We don’t expect a verb’s “spindly legs” chasing after him. Joke’s on us.
Alana Lee
ReplyDeleteIn “The Kugelmass Episode” I found a lot of different parts to this story humorous. It starts off being funny that Mr. Kugelmass is unhappy that he sees an analyst about not being happy in his second marriage. The analyst puts the dumb idea of him going to a magician instead of him into Mr. Kugelmass’s head so he does so. Mr. Kugelmass is in search of love and romace, he just wants to be happy and that’s something that he felt he wasn’t receiving through his current marriage. What’s even more humorus is that Mr. Kugelmass thinks that a magician can help him find love by having him magically appear in a romance novel. So Kugelmass gets his wish thinking he has fallen in love with a French romance novel character and continues on to see this character up until the point where his so called “minor affair” backfires on him. Kugelmass and the character become fed up with one another after so long, and his wife actually suspects him cheating. The magician eventually ends up fixing the problem and everything returns back to normal, but one day Kugelmass returns back for more, and ends up punished for the rest of his life. The role the non sequiturs play is for Kugelmass to even think for a second that this scheme of his was actually doable was quite funny. What person in their right mind can think that they can pursue happiness through a novel character, or that one can go into a novel, or for a character to even come out of a novel. All these impossibilities are indeed what’s humorous.
Humor in “The Kugelmass Episode” arises from improbable scenario's. It seems likely that therapist (or analyst) would tell someone that they are not a magician, but one would expect the client to drop a train of thought or plan of action once their expectations or ambitions have been so abruptly criticized. Instead our protagonist receives the aid of a magician. The entrance of the magician to the story suggests that the reader can no longer operate under the presumption that the rules of the story follow the rules of reality, allowing Allen to pursue the absurd.
ReplyDeleteThe conflict that the reader must then address and which creates the humor is how Allen treats the novel, the affair, and Kugelmass's growth, or lack there of. To the audience the novels that Kugelmass suggests are initially static objects and in them the character's actions are fixed. Perhaps Allen is attempting to satirize the reverence with which the classics are generally regarded. Evidence suggesting this is Allen's intent exists in his continual reference to the changes in the text as the characters continue to interact until the final reference where Bovary's character disappears all together. Once Allan has removed Bovary's character from her text Allen is completely free to do with her as he pleases. Bovary's behavior emphasizes that Allen's intent is to challenge the reader's notion of static characters and to see the characters as real people and the text as living allowing the reader to be more critical of the portrayed behavior. By giving Bovary the expectations that a naive girl may have in an affair with an older man Allen emphasizes his meaning but also allows the audience relief by finding humor in Kugelmass's misfortune. Finally resolving the situation with Bovary, Allen can present a final blow to audience expectations by having Kugelmass again seek a fictional affair rather than learn from the disappointment the first. Allen does provide more comfort and humor to audience by punishing Kugelmass for his adultery by having Kugelmass fleeing a phrase which can be interpreted by lust. In these examples we find Allen's method for humor, contradiction. Repeatedly he has set the audience up only to challenge its notion of the plot's direction.
Adam Mier
ReplyDeleteIn Allen’s “The Kugelmass Episode,” I picked up on a couple of different types of humor. The first is what I refer to as “What the hell?!” humor (though I now know that these types of jokes are actually called ‘comic non sequiturs’). This humor is quite noticeable throughout the story. Another form of humor that I noticed in this story was just the overall preposterousness of the whole thing, as well as a little bit of irony in that the woman who he visits in the novel is actually an adulterer in her own novel.
The main role of the comic non sequiturs throughout this piece, to me, is simply to accentuate the obscurity of it all. The story starts off with the main character, Kugelmass, visiting an analyst, who even points out early on that Kugelmass is very unrealistic in what he wants. Just a few examples of the arbitrary events in the story would be (obviously) the fact that Kugelmass is magically sent into a novel to be with a French woman whom he claims to be madly in love with, and that Emma Bovary is able to just jump out of the novel with Kugelmass. Also, while all of this is happening, the modern day readers of the book that he is jumping in and out of are seeing that she has an affair with an unknown man, then vanishes from the story completely, and all they say is that you can read the same book a hundred times and still find something different. It all comes back to just the overall ridiculousness of the story.
Sydney Wright
ReplyDelete“The Kugelmass Episode" starts off like any other fictional piece. Allen presents a main character that has troubles and is currently stuck in a lousy second marriage, with no chances of escaping because of his debt. Excluding the “magic” rides to the other world of fiction, the reader is given glimpses of reality allowing them to relate to Kugelmass. Allen really grabs the reader’s attention with the suspense he builds up while left wondering if the French character will make it back to her world. Kugelmass’s problems become our problems, so there is a sense of relief whenever Emma Bovary finally makes it back to where she belongs. Allen then leads the reader to believe Kugelmass has learned from his mistake, forcing us to forget about the magic box once and for all.
Kugelmass going back to Persky could be taken by a surprise, but easily foreseen; what is not predictable is the ending. Allen’s non-sequitur ending changes the mood from suspenseful to comedic. Persky’s death evokes a panic wondering what will become of Kugelmass, whether he makes it out of the box alive or is thrown into a random novel. In just one sentence, Allen changes the entire theme of the story by having him thrown into a Spanish textbook and chased by hairy words. There were no hints letting the reader know the outcome; so to connect with the character and fear for the problems he was about to face, Allen did a good job of kicking us in the ass with a joke for a punch line.
Danielle
ReplyDeleteWoody Allen’s humor in “The Kugelmass Episode” is clever, ironic, and full of non-sequiturs. One of the first things Kugelmass talks about is his family. His first marriage was a failure, ending in divorce, at which he states he had two “dull sons” with her. He then says his second wife is a fat oaf who he only married for the “few bucks” in her pocket. In the mean time he is telling his analyst all his problems; this is where it is ironic. He complains of his “dull sons” and his oaf of a wife but he fails to realize that because he is bald and as “hairy as a bear”, he might not be the most attractive man. When Kugelmass was telling his analyst of his fantasies for a love affair, the analyst made it clear to Kugelmass that he wasn’t a magician. Kugelmass obviously thought magicians were the real deal because he dropped his analyst right away. However, after finding Persky ,the magician, he was a bit skeptical, which is pretty understandable. After Kugelmass had enough of his book dream world and his beloved Emma presented him with more problems than he was prepared to handle, he started to complain to Persky, Persky replies back with “I’m not an analyst.”
Jason Richert
ReplyDeleteWoody Allen establishes the comic structure of The Kugelmass Episode through an unconventional mix of humorous devices. The simplicity of Allen’s description of characters throughout the story allows the reader to easily grasp the comic undertone of his work. Allen’s description of Kugelmass as “bald and hairy as a bear” lets the reader form an immediate impression of the main character as being very unfortunate. The way Allen structures the dialogue of the characters in the story allows for absurd scenarios to seem ordinary and routine. This structure helped move the story along, while providing the reader with a bizarre, yet ordinary flow. Also in the work, Allen satirizes humanly desires such as sex, wealth, and fame. In Kugelmass’s pursuit of fulfilling his physical desires, he leaves his analyst to seek the help of a magician. After many successful visits to the magician, the magic box breaks, and misfortune once again finds Kugelmass. This misfortune causes him to begin complaining to the magician of his reacquired anxiety. Once hearing of the mans problems, the magician replies, “I’m a magician, not an analyst.” Allen’s humor is very evident in the above quote, as he satirizes the ignorance of humans in their pursuit of happiness.
Marlon White
ReplyDeleteIn Woody Allen’s “The Kugelmass Episode”, we witness the demise of a very desperate man. Kugelmass understands the source of his unhappiness at this stage in his life to be the binding constraints of his passionless marriage. Although he knows he’s no David Bowie, he believes he has more to offer.
When analyzing Allen’s comic structure one must note how ordinary and widespread a situation this must be in this age of commercialized love. With help from Persky, Kugelmass is granted the reprieve he seeks , the nature of which is so outrageous compared to his original predicament that it can only be described as incongruous. Thus is the essence of the story’s humor.
Kugelmass adapts surprisingly well. He woes his mistress like no other. Perhaps the coolness with which Kugelmass handles his escapade is intended for amusement. It is also curious, possibly not in the writings of Allen, that no one is all together bothered by the modification in plot caused by this fling. Of course the reader must suspect that this cannot go on perfectly forever. The most evident comic non sequitur is, in my opinion, that fact that Kugelmass did not learn his lesson with the outcome of his first novel affair and subsequently finds himself the prey of a big hairy, irregular verb. Hilarious!
Kathryn Martin
ReplyDeleteIn “The Kugelmass Episode” Woody Allen utilizes non sequitur. The unexpectedness of situations and lines catch readers off guard; at these moments no one can resist laughing out loud. The protagonist of Allen’s short story, Kugelmass, is introduced as “unhappily married for the second time.” His description makes his desire for romance unexpected, but what is really interesting is the woman with whom he chooses to have an affair. Readers discover that Kugelmass failed freshman English, yet he seems fairly familiar with Madame Bovary. Emma Bovary is never satisfied with her life, one would expect Kugelmass to know this about her. To a person who has read this novel, Emma Bovary is obviously not a good choice for a mistress. However, her neediness appeals to Kugelmass because his wife, Daphne, controls him; she does not need him. Further irony is in the fact that he takes a fictional character as a mistress because he wants a discreet affair, yet readers across the country are reading about it. A humorous line in the beginning of the short story is Kugelmass’s statement: “Daphne would really sock it to me.” This is humorous because it does not fit the scenario. Not only is he unconcerned with the moral effects of an affair, but he is also more concerned with his physical well-being rather than hurting his wife. Throughout the story, Allen tosses in little comments and builds situations which are so absurd or out-of-place one can only laugh at them.
Seth Pottle
ReplyDeleteWoody Allen truly seems to have a thorough understanding of “the absurd.” His humor throughout “The Kugelmass Episode” is centered around two main ideas: incongruous parts and a nice non sequitor to tie it all off.
The story begins in New York with a professor named Kugelmass looking to have an affair, due to his fading interest in his current lifestyle. Through some wacky miracle, he is able to find a magician who has the ability to transfer him into the pages of any book of his choice. Kugelmass jumps at this opportunity, though skeptically at first (like any of us would). His journeys lead him to Yonville and into the heart of Emma Bovary, a beautiful young woman and the protagonist of Madame Bovary. Ridiculous enough? A college professor finds himself in the midst of an affair with a fictional character. And, if that isn’t enough, as Kugelmass spends time with Emma in “her world,” Kugelmass’ name is spotted throughout the book, confusing students and professors alike. Obviously, these circumstances are completely unreal, mixing romance and magic like some simple Mother Goosery or fairy tale with a twist, horrific, but hilarious ending. Kugelmass traps himself in a Spanish book, and is chased by a monster verb, after an explosion that took Persky’s life. Tragic ending, or comic non sequitor? I think I’ll go with the latter.
Interesting post, Russell, especially the line of reasoning that starts with "Perhaps Allen is attempting to satirize the reverence with which the classics are generally regarded." Very interesting. Allen's famous for having failed out of two colleges and yet can stil hold his own with references to classic works (early in his career, he was dubbed, "The stand-up Flaubert," philosophers, historical satire, etc. He's constantly satirizing the academy... why not satirize the canon, as well?
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