Violence is present in even the most innocuous forms of entertainment. We are introduced very early on to the concept of violence through cartoons and children’s story books. Fictional violence is normalized, and we are unfazed when a cartoon cat accidentally eats a bomb in the guise of a pie and explodes on the screen, or when an animated Disney character is hit on the head with a ten-ton hammer. So it’s not simply fictional violence that we accept, it is the caricature of it. So when we come across violence in jokes and stories, we are not disturbed nor are we disgusted when a bear eats a person whole in what is otherwise a gruesome image. That said, there are several forms of violence that we not only find acceptable, we find it to be funny.
Shaggy dog stories are one of the many forms of humor, often presented following a distinct pattern or ending with a sentence that is a play on words related to the story as well as a common phrase in culture. The success of these stories is often based on the familiarity of these phrases in order for them to be witty and clever. But a lot of the success, it would seem, also stems from the portrayal of violence within a shaggy dog story. And the success of the humor found in that violence is based on exactly who (or what) is the perpetrator of violence, and who the victim happens to be. There is a wide variety of types of violence that can be found in shaggy dog stories. The ones I found are as follows: gun violence, “natural disaster” type violence, and indirect violence. There are also a variety of victim-perpetrator relationships as well: animal vs. nature, human vs. nature, human vs. non-human.
The element of absurdity in the set of shaggy dog stories is often set in violence, and that element of absurdity is often a large piece of the key to success. For example, the humanization of an animal falls under this element. And often, the perpetrators of the shaggy dog story are animals. An example of a situation where the perpetrator was non-human and the victims were human, is the Giant Panda shaggy dog story. It was a story in which a panda with the ability to talk and use a gun shoots several human patrons in a restaurant and leaves. That sentence alone isn’t inherently humorous for most; in fact it’s rather morbid. However, within the frame of a shaggy dog story, it was incredibly successful in its delivery.
Human vs. Human conflicts were also found to be popular. In the story about friars, the friars are attempting to raise money by selling flowers. Their business becomes so successful that the other flower shop resorts to hiring a hit man to beat the friars until they stop selling flowers. Again, we have violence that, in real life, would make headlines. And yet for some reason, most people really liked the story. They laughed and chuckled at it. I think the fact that it’s fictional makes it safe for people to laugh, but there is also the fact that the rival flower shop’s efforts to stop the friars were so over-the-top that it was comical.
Shaggy dog stories sometimes make a joke of “natural disasters”, forms of violence in which neither human nor animal are involved in the perpetration of violence. In “ Nate the Snake”, another popular story, the element of violence comes not from a living thing, but a freak boulder on the verge of squashing the snake, who has taken it upon himself to guard a lever within a desert that has the ability to destroy the world if moved. In the end, the boulder does not push the lever, for the body of Nate the snake had run it off its course. Explaining the story plainly and without the pattern or build-up of a shaggy dog story, this tale isn’t very funny. It is out of the ordinary, just as many shaggy dog stories are, and yet if I told someone the story the way I just told it, I am almost positive they wouldn’t even giggle. So there is more than just violence that a shaggy dog story needs for it to be successful. The comical exaggeration of violence works in cartoons due to the visual effects. In a shaggy dog story, it takes the entire rhythm of the story for it to work.
I found that among these popular shaggy dog stories, it isn’t the element of violence alone that makes it a success. The forms of violence, in the real world, would be considered tragic. But in the frame of the shaggy dog story, it is somehow entertaining and even hilarious to some people. Part of it is due to the unrealistic characters (i.e. talking animals) but even in conflicts among humans, where it might be plausible for it to happen in real life (even the smallest chance), the story was popular and received high scores from many of the people who read it. Absurdity is an important part of shaggy dog stories, and of many jokes in general, and a lot of that revolves around violence in some shape or form. But it isn’t simply violence that the success relies on. It’s the type of violence that we’re so accustomed to, that we grew up watching for years, it’s our common sense that stops us from finishing any of these stories and saying, “Wow that was horrific, what did I just read?” In the end, it is the caricature of violence that we appreciate, not violence in and of itself.
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