Absurd humor, or nonsense humor is a genre of comedy that relies upon "a violation of causal reasoning," with events or behavior that are "logically inappropriate."[1] "Absurd humor replaces the familiar with the unexpected," notes one author, citing as an example, "Wile E. Coyote chases Road Runner after being smashed by a piano."[2]
One author, psychologist Brian Luke Seaward, concludes that there are ten varieties of humor (parody, satire, slapstick comedy, absurd humor, double entendres, gallows humor, irony, dry humor, bathroom humor and sarcasm) and cites as modern examples Gary Larson's cartoon The Far Side, and the standup comedy of Steven Wright.[3]
Drs. Mary K. Rodgers and Diana Pien analyzed the subject in an essay entitled "Elephants and Marshmallows" (subtitled "A Theoretical Synthesis of Incongruity-Resolution and Arousal Theories of Humour"), and wrote that "jokes are nonsensical when they fail to completely resolve incongruities," and cited one of the many permutations of the elephant joke: "Why did the elephant sit on the marshmallow?" "Because he didn't want to fall into the cup of hot chocolate."[4]
"The joke is incompletely resolved in their opinion," noted Dr. Elliot Oring, "because the situation is incompatible with the world as we know it. Certainly, elephants do not sit in cups of hot chocolate."[5] Oring defined humor as not the resolution of incongruity, but "the perception of appropriate incongruity,"[6] that all jokes contain a certain amount of incongruity, and that absurd jokes require the additional component of an "absurd image," with an incongruity of the mental image.[7]
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