According to Sigmund Freud in his work Jokes and their relation to the unconscious (1905), humour is derived when the conscious mind “[lets] in forbidden thoughts and feelings which society suppresses”(1). Humour therefore acts as a form of tension release—the feelings that have been suppressed by society and social norms are allowed to surface in an acceptable way, producing humour. As Aaron Smuts puts it:
“The humorous involves a saving of emotional energy, since what might have been an emotion provoking situation turns out to be something we should treat non-seriously. The energy building up for the serious emotional reaction can then be released.“(2).
In Collective Groan Heard Whenever Mature Student Raises Hand (3), the author Michael Oliver derives his main source of humour through the parody and exaggeration of stereotypes. According to Wikipedia:
“A stereotype is a preconceived idea that attributes certain characteristics (in general) to all the members of class or set. The term is often used with a negative connotation when referring to an oversimplified, exaggerated, or demeaning assumption that a particular individual possesses the characteristics associated with the class due to his or her membership in it.“(4)
For his article, the stereotype Oliver uses to derive humour from is the stereotype of ‘mature students’, as found in the culture of university students. The stereotype of mature students is used to describe older students of higher education, whose age and experience are seen to be an impairment to their learning, and even destructive to the learning of their younger fellow students—although studies into this have shown otherwise(5).
This stereotyping is clearly negative, therefore any feelings directed towards such stereotypes or stereotyping would be suppressed by societal norms. In order to derive humour from these associations through the desired ‘tension release’ effect, Oliver has had to do two things: Firstly, establish the writing as a work of fiction; and secondly, to invent a stereotyped character and situation that is extreme or even absurd.
As the writing is in the form of a news story, and is even located in the magazine in the news section, the piece has been placed in a news sub-section titled “In the Week that Wasn’t“. This sub-section is a regular occurence in the magazine, and is a play on “The Week that Was“, which is a commonly-used title for weekly news articles in modern journalism. The inclusion of the negation “not” in the sub-section’s title (as “wasn’t” is a contraction of “was not”) clearly indicates that the piece is a work of fiction, and also establishes it as a parody on news articles and whatever else may appear in the article, i.e, university culture. This satisfies the first requirement for the desired humourous effect.
The second requirement is then satisfied by Oliver in the article itself. He has written a story in which his mature student stereotype, Janet Sampson, disrupts a LAWS 121 class. Sampson frequently displays behaviour which can be seen as possessing extreme characteristics of both the stereotype of a mature student as well as that of an older person. Already the absurdity of the situation is seen in the second paragraph, when Oliver writes “…Sampson, 54, would not shut the fuck up about anything not connected to the subject being taught.” Her extreme (albeit fictional) behaviour indicative of a mature student stereotype is further indicated roughly halfway through the article, when it is said:
“Ten minutes into the 90-minute lecture, she had already asked 13.5 questions. […] Seven related to the lecturer’s children, the motivation for each name, and whether or not they “ate their din dins.” ”
In addition, not only the behaviour of Oliver’s mature student stereotype indicates the article’s humour; it is also indicated by the behaviour of all other parties mentioned in the story: the students, Salient, and even the lecturer.
The students’ behaviour is characterised by extreme hatred and frustration towards Sampson. They say things such as “I’m gonna fuck you up, grandma”, and “DIE! JUST FUCKING DIE! HOLY GOD IN HEAVEN ROLL OVER AND DIE!”; Sampson is oblivious that these comments are directed at her until told by Salient.
Salient’s presence in the story is made when, for “…perhaps the only time [Salient] will dabble in anything remotely investigative, [we sent] along a volunteer to sit a row behind Mrs. Sampson…” Both the notion that such a story would be worth investigating, and the fact that it is said that it is a rare occurence of investigation, is clearly absurd, as Salient‘s weekly news reporting is both serious and investigative, as of almost any news reporting in any journalistic medium.
This extreme behaviour, combined with the extreme stereotyping and the indication that the writing is indeed fiction, lets the reader know that the situation is not serious, and is acceptable and okay to laugh at. The humour is therefore derived, according to Freud’s model, through released emotions the reader might feel in empathy or sympathy for the characters and events in the story, such as frustration or anger. All of this is combined to form an excellent humourous article that is both a parody of journalism and university culture.
References:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humour_in_Freud
2. http://www.iep.utm.edu/h/humor.htm
3. Collective Groan Heard Whenever Mature Student Raises Hand by Michael Oliver. Salient issue 2, 2009. Pg 15.
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype
5. Mature students in higher education: Academic performance and intellectual ability by John T. E. Richardson (http://www.springerlink.com/content/u7581m370x330418/)