WEBVTT

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I'm going to be talking about designing humor,

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which is sort of an interesting thing, but it goes

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to some of the discussions about constraints,

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and how in certain contexts, humor is right,

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and in other contexts it's wrong.

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Now, I'm from New York,

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so it's 100 percent satisfaction here.

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Actually, that's ridiculous, because when it comes to humor,

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75 percent is really absolutely the best you can hope for.

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Nobody is ever satisfied 100 percent with humor

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except this woman.

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(Video) Woman: (Laughs)

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Bob Mankoff: That's my first wife.

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(Laughter)

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That part of the relationship went fine.

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(Laughter)

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Now let's look at this cartoon.

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One of the things I'm pointing out is that

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cartoons appear within the context

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of The New Yorker magazine,

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that lovely Caslon type, and it seems

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like a fairly benign cartoon within this context.

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It's making a little bit fun of getting older,

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and, you know, people might like it.

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But like I said, you cannot satisfy everyone.

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You couldn't satisfy this guy.

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"Another joke on old white males. Ha ha. The wit.

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It's nice, I'm sure to be young and rude,

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but some day you'll be old, unless you drop dead as I wish."

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(Laughter)

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The New Yorker is rather a sensitive environment,

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very easy for people to get their nose out of joint.

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And one of the things that you realize

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is it's an unusual environment.

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Here I'm one person talking to you.

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You're all collective. You all hear each other laugh and know each other laugh.

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In The New Yorker, it goes out to a wide audience,

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and when you actually look at that,

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and nobody knows what anybody else is laughing at,

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and when you look at that the subjectivity involved in humor

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is really interesting.

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Let's look at this cartoon.

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"Discouraging data on the antidepressant."

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(Laughter)

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Indeed, it is discouraging.

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Now, you would think, well, look,

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most of you laughed at that.

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Right? You thought it was funny.

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In general, that seems like a funny cartoon,

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but let's look what online survey I did.

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Generally, about 85 percent of the people liked it.

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A hundred and nine voted it a 10, the highest. Ten voted it one.

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But look at the individual responses.

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"I like animals!!!!!" Look how much they like them.

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(Laughter)

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"I don't want to hurt them. That doesn't seem very funny to me."

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This person rated it a two.

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"I don't like to see animals suffer -- even in cartoons."

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To people like this, I point out we use anesthetic ink.

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Other people thought it was funny.

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That actually is the true nature of the distribution of humor

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when you don't have the contagion of humor.

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Humor is a type of entertainment.

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All entertainment contains a little frisson of danger,

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something that might happen wrong,

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and yet we like it when there's protection.

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That's what a zoo is. It's danger. The tiger is there.

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The bars protect us. That's sort of fun, right?

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That's a bad zoo.

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(Laughter)

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It's a very politically correct zoo, but it's a bad zoo.

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But this is a worse one.

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(Laughter)

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So in dealing with humor in the context of The New Yorker,

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you have to see, where is that tiger going to be?

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Where is the danger going to exist?

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How are you going to manage it?

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My job is to look at 1,000 cartoons a week.

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But The New Yorker only can take 16 or 17 cartoons,

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and we have 1,000 cartoons.

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Of course, many, many cartoons must be rejected.

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Now, we could fit more cartoons in the magazine

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if we removed the articles.

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(Laughter)

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But I feel that would be a huge loss,

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one I could live with, but still huge.

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Cartoonists come in through the magazine every week.

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The average cartoonist who stays with the magazine

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does 10 or 15 ideas every week.

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But they mostly are going to be rejected.

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That's the nature of any creative activity.

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Many of them fade away. Some of them stay.

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Matt Diffee is one of them.

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Here's one of his cartoons.

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(Laughter)

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Drew Dernavich. "Accounting night at the improv."

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"Now is the part of the show when we ask the audience

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to shout out some random numbers."

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Paul Noth. "He's all right. I just wish he were a little more pro-Israel."

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(Laughter)

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Now I know all about rejection,

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because when I quit -- actually, I was booted out of -- psychology school

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and decided to become a cartoonist, a natural segue,

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from 1974 to 1977 I submitted 2,000 cartoons to The New Yorker,

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and got 2,000 cartoons rejected by The New Yorker.

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At a certain point, this rejection slip, in 1977 --

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[We regret that we are unable to use the enclosed material. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider it.] —

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magically changed to this.

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[Hey! You sold one. No shit! You really sold a cartoon to the fucking New Yorker magazine.]

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(Laughter)

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Now of course that's not what happened,

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but that's the emotional truth.

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And of course, that is not New Yorker humor.

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What is New Yorker humor?

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Well, after 1977, I broke into The New Yorker and started selling cartoons.

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Finally, in 1980, I received the revered

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New Yorker contract,

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which I blurred out parts because it's none of your business.

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From 1980. "Dear Mr. Mankoff, confirming the agreement

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there of -- " blah blah blah blah -- blur --

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"for any idea drawings."

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With respect to idea drawings, nowhere in the contract

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is the word "cartoon" mentioned.

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The word "idea drawings," and that's the sine qua non of New Yorker cartoons.

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So what is an idea drawing? An idea drawing is something

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that requires you to think.

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Now that's not a cartoon. It requires thinking

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on the part of the cartoonist and thinking on your part

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to make it into a cartoon.

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(Laughter)

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Here are some, generally you get my cast of cartoon mind.

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"There is no justice in the world. There is some justice in the world. The world is just."

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This is What Lemmings Believe.

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(Laughter)

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The New Yorker and I, when we made comments,

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the cartoon carries a certain ambiguity about what it actually is.

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What is it, the cartoon? Is it really about lemmings?

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No. It's about us.

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You know, it's my view basically about religion,

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that the real conflict and all the fights between religion

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is who has the best imaginary friend.

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(Laughter)

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And this is my most well-known cartoon.

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"No, Thursday's out. How about never — is never good for you?"

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It's been reprinted thousands of times, totally ripped off.

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It's even on thongs,

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but compressed to "How about never — is never good for you?"

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Now these look like very different forms of humor

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but actually they bear a great similarity.

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In each instance, our expectations are defied.

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In each instance, the narrative gets switched.

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There's an incongruity and a contrast.

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In "No, Thursday's out. How about never — is never good for you?"

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what you have is the syntax of politeness

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and the message of being rude.

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That really is how humor works. It's a cognitive synergy

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where we mash up these two things which don't go together

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and temporarily in our minds exist.

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He is both being polite and rude.

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In here, you have the propriety of The New Yorker

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and the vulgarity of the language.

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Basically, that's the way humor works.

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So I'm a humor analyst, you would say.

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Now E.B. White said, analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog.

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Nobody is much interested, and the frog dies.

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Well, I'm going to kill a few, but there won't be any genocide.

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But really, it makes me —

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Let's look at this picture. This is an interesting picture,

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The Laughing Audience.

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There are the people, fops up there,

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but everybody is laughing, everybody is laughing

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except one guy.

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This guy. Who is he? He's the critic.

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He's the critic of humor,

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and really I'm forced to be in that position,

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when I'm at The New Yorker, and that's the danger

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that I will become this guy.

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Now here's a little video made by Matt Diffee, sort of

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how they imagine if we really exaggerated that.

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(Video) Bob Mankoff: "Oooh, no.

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Ehhh.

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Oooh. Hmm. Too funny.

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Normally I would but I'm in a pissy mood.

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I'll enjoy it on my own. Perhaps.

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No. Nah. No.

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Overdrawn. Underdrawn.

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Drawn just right, still not funny enough.

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No. No.

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For God's sake no, a thousand times no.

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(Music)

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No. No. No. No. No. [Four hours later]

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Hey, that's good, yeah, whatcha got there?

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Office worker: Got a ham and swiss on rye?BM: No.

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Office worker: Okay. Pastrami on sourdough?BM: No.

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Office worker: Smoked turkey with bacon?BM: No.

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Office worker: Falafel?BM: Let me look at it.

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Eh, no.

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Office worker: Grilled cheese?BM: No.

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Office worker: BLT?BM: No.

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Office worker: Black forest ham and mozzarella with apple mustard?BM: No.

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Office worker: Green bean salad?BM: No.

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(Music)

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No. No.

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Definitely no. [Several hours after lunch]

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(Siren)

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No. Get out of here.

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(Laughter)

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That's sort of an exaggeration of what I do.

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Now, we do reject, many, many, many cartoons,

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so many that there are many books called "The Rejection Collection."

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"The Rejection Collection" is not quite New Yorker kind of humor.

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And you might notice the bum on the sidewalk here

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who is boozing and his ventriloquist dummy is puking.

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See, that's probably not going to be New Yorker humor.

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It's actually put together by Matt Diffee, one of our cartoonists.

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So I'll give you some examples of rejection collection humor.

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"I'm thinking about having a child."

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(Laughter)

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There you have an interesting -- the guilty laugh,

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the laugh against your better judgment.

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(Laughter)

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"Ass-head. Please help."

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(Laughter)

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Now, in fact, within a context of this book,

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which says, "Cartoons you never saw and never will see

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in The New Yorker," this humor is perfect.

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I'm going to explain why.

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There's a concept about humor about it being

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a benign violation.

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In other words, for something to be funny, we've got to think

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it's both wrong and also okay at the same time.

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If we think it's completely wrong, we say, "That's not funny."

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And if it's completely okay, what's the joke? Okay?

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And so, this benign, that's true of "No, Thursday's out. How about never — is never good for you?"

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It's rude. The world really shouldn't be that way.

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Within that context, we feel it's okay.

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So within this context, "Asshead. Please help"

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is a benign violation.

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Within the context of The New Yorker magazine ...

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"T-Cell Army: Can the body's immune response

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help treat cancer?" Oh, goodness.

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You're reading about this smart stuff,

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this intelligent dissection of the immune system.

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You glance over at this, and it says,

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"Asshead. Please help"? God.

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So there the violation is malign. It doesn't work.

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There is no such thing as funny in and of itself.

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Everything will be within the context and our expectations.

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One way to look at it is this.

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It's sort of called a meta-motivational theory about how we look,

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a theory about motivation and the mood we're in

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and how the mood we're in determines the things we like

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or dislike.

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When we're in a playful mood, we want excitement.

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We want high arousal. We feel excited then.

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If we're in a purposeful mood, that makes us anxious.

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"The Rejection Collection" is absolutely in this field.

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You want to be stimulated. You want to be aroused.

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You want to be transgressed.

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It's like this, like an amusement park.

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Voice: Here we go. (Screams)

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He laughs. He is both in danger and safe,

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incredibly aroused. There's no joke. No joke needed.

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If you arouse people enough and get them stimulated enough,

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they will laugh at very, very little.

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This is another cartoon from "The Rejection Collection."

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"Too snug?"

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That's a cartoon about terrorism.

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The New Yorker occupies a very different space.

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It's a space that is playful in its own way, and also purposeful,

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and in that space, the cartoons are different.

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Now I'm going to show you cartoons The New Yorker did

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right after 9/11, a very, very sensitive area when humor could be used.

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How would The New Yorker attack it?

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It would not be with a guy with a bomb saying, "Too snug?"

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Or there was another cartoon I didn't show because

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actually I thought maybe people would be offended.

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The great Sam Gross cartoon, this happened

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after the Muhammad controversy where it's Muhammad in heaven,

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the suicide bomber is all in little pieces,

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and he's saying to the suicide bomber,

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"You'll get the virgins when we find your penis."

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(Laughter)

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Better left undrawn.

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The first week we did no cartoons.

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That was a black hole for humor, and correctly so.

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It's not always appropriate every time.

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But the next week, this was the first cartoon.

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"I thought I'd never laugh again. Then I saw your jacket."

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It basically was about, if we were alive,

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we were going to laugh. We were going to breathe.

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We were going to exist. Here's another one.

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"I figure if I don't have that third martini, then the terrorists win."

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These cartoons are not about them. They're about us.

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The humor reflects back on us.

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The easiest thing to do with humor, and it's perfectly legitimate,

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is a friend makes fun of an enemy.

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It's called dispositional humor.

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It's 95 percent of the humor. It's not our humor.

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Here's another cartoon.

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"I wouldn't mind living in a fundamentalist Islamic state."

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(Laughter)

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Humor does need a target.

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But interestingly, in The New Yorker, the target is us.

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The target is the readership and the people who do it.

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The humor is self-reflective

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and makes us think about our assumptions.

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Look at this cartoon by Roz Chast, the guy reading the obituary.

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"Two years younger than you, 12 years older than you,

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three years your junior, your age on the dot,

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exactly your age."

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That is a deeply profound cartoon.

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And so The New Yorker is also trying to, in some way,

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make cartoons say something besides funny

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and something about us. Here's another one.

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"I started my vegetarianism for health reasons,

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Then it became a moral choice, and now it's just to annoy people."

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(Laughter)

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"Excuse me — I think there's something wrong with this

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in a tiny way that no one other than me would ever be able to pinpoint."

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So it focuses on our obsessions, our narcissism,

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our foils and our foibles, really not someone else's.

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The New Yorker demands

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some cognitive work on your part,

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and what it demands is what Arthur Koestler,

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who wrote "The Act of Creation" about the relationship

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between humor, art and science,

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is what's called bisociation.

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You have to bring together ideas from different frames of reference,

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and you have to do it quickly to understand the cartoon.

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If the different frames of reference don't come together

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in about .5 seconds, it's not funny,

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but I think they will for you here.

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Different frames of reference.

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"You slept with her, didn't you?"

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(Laughter)

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"Lassie! Get help!!"

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(Laughter)

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It's called French Army Knife.

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(Laughter)

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And this is Einstein in bed. "To you it was fast."

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(Laughter)

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Now there are some cartoons that are puzzling.

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Like, this cartoon would puzzle many people.

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How many people know what this cartoon means?

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The dog is signaling he wants to go for a walk.

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This is the signal for a catcher to walk the dog.

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That's why we run a feature in the cartoon issue every year

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called "I Don't Get It: The New Yorker Cartoon I.Q. Test."

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(Laughter)

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The other thing The New Yorker plays around with

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is incongruity, and incongruity, I've shown you,

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is sort of the basis of humor.

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Something that's completely normal or logical isn't going to be funny.

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But the way incongruity works is, observational humor

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is humor within the realm of reality.

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"My boss is always telling me what to do." Okay?

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That could happen. It's humor within the realm of reality.

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Here, cowboy to a cow:

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"Very impressive. I'd like to find 5,000 more like you."

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We understand that. It's absurd. But we're putting the two together.

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Here, in the nonsense range:

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"Damn it, Hopkins, didn't you get yesterday's memo?"

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Now that's a little puzzling, right? It doesn't quite come together.

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In general, people who enjoy more nonsense,

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enjoy more abstract art,

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they tend to be liberal, less conservative, that type of stuff.

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But for us, and for me, helping design the humor,

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it doesn't make any sense to compare one to the other.

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It's sort of a smorgasbord that's made all interesting.

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So I want to sum all this up with a caption to a cartoon,

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and I think this sums up the whole thing, really,

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about The New Yorker cartoons.

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"It sort of makes you stop and think, doesn't it."

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(Laughter)

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And now, when you look at New Yorker cartoons,

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I'd like you to stop and think a little bit more about them.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)

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Thank you. (Applause)