Written Humor.

I’m writing a paper on written humor.

Is it still a viable art form in American culture? I said no, to an extent. I recognize that all humor materializes on paper. I feel like it does. Then again it could sit in the mind of a man and never come out. My inclination is to believe that all humor, whether it be from the radio or television or the internet, takes root when it’s written down. All the idiosyncrasies are ironed out on paper. It materializes and solidifies. Written humor…

Writing. It will never ever leave any culture entirely. As a viable art form it will always exist, although it may not thrive. I think as far as popularity is concerned, there are other means of entertainment that have taken priority over the harder to comprehend written humor. It requires thought, something else that’s on it’s way out of American culture. Easily digestible snippets of understanding are the main course for the culture today. The attention span and comprehensive processes don’t linger around long enough to digest a story. Maybe comic strips. Small words and phrases that symbolize meaning or images hold are attention and get to the punch line far quicker than any written story could convey.

American culture is about instant gratification. They seek out whatever means they can to grasp some form of gratification. Time is constraint that has been an excuse that has prevented large populations of people from reading. Energy and focus is another. They are bombarded by so much stimuli that its no wonder they can’t sit down to decipher an arrangement of words that retain a quality of amusement. They would rather have someone decipher it for them, and build the imagery form them. Like a video. Video’s and watching humor encapsulates and translates with the easiest form of expression for the mind.

Is written humor still a viable art form in the American culture? There is a difference between humor and comedy. Humor contains a quality of amusement. Comedy deals with the dramatic form of composition produced through a specific medium. Comedy relies on humor for it’s dramatic form and composition. Literary humor requires that you’re mind engage and play out the qualities of amusement through your interpretation of the text, characterizing it for yourself. Comic humor, when one watches humor through a medium of expressions such as comic-strips or stand-up or video, is becoming the favorite. Literary humor is indeed losing popularity. The percentages of people who sit down to read an humorous article or book are far and few between. People are much more inclined to absorb amusement produced by someone else’s interpretation.