Welcome to the blog for Prof. John Talbird's English 221 class. The purpose of this site is two-fold: 1) to continue the conversations we start in class (or to start conversations BEFORE we get to class) and 2) to practice our writing/reading on a weekly basis in an informal forum.

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Humor in "Unsafe at Any Speed" and "Mr. Voice"

Both of these stories (at least in these sections) have very different styles of humor.

"Unsafe at Any Speed"'s humor comes from the loneliness of the situation. Having to deal with an undeserving (at least in the eyes of Theo) boss whose 10 years your junior. The description we get of this ratty ass caravan as it slogs throughout the floridian heat is very juvenile and we get a sense of how mundane and unlucky Theo is. Humans commonly laugh at other people's pain, this just seems to fit as a version of that explanation. When it's read out loud, I can actually see, in almost perfect detail his situation as if I was watching a movie.

"Mr.Voice" has the humor of having wacky characters interacting with a real world situation. I mean having this radio host using his voice talents for the bedroom just puts me on tilt because then I actually imagine real life voice actors and actresses in their respective bedroom with their respective lovers and all I can imagine is them using some of my favorite roles of theirs while having sex, effectively ruining those characters for me.  Especially older voice actors, like can you imagine Casey Kasem using the Shaggy voice while he's intimate. I can and I really wish I couldn't.

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