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Rhetorical Analysis of Humor

To understand humor you should be able to relate to the comedian. In agreement with Jimmy Carr, humor is an individual thing that defines you, but is not in your ​ control. The video we chose to analyze was "Dylan Moran on Iraq, Americans and smoking at them". To consider something to be funny you need to have a connection with the speaker and have some knowledge on the situation being addressed. When watching the video we were not able to laugh at some of the jokes mainly because we did not understand it and because we were the target of the jokes. The intended audience for this type of discourse were mainly British citizens and anyone else who has some negative notion of America and the decisions that are made here. Moran mentions that the whole world is "anti-American," so the whole world is technically the audience, since they would most likely find this routine quite funny. When we were watching this video we were straining to find a funny joke or even comment in Dylan Moran's stand-up routine. We believe that the reason for this "non-funniness" was because the targeted American's were not impressed or humored by the jokes, and they may have even been a little offended. Although the American's were not humored, the British audience could not stop laughing at the fact that Moran targeted American's obesity and "afraid-ness" of smoking. In this case we believe that the rhetor is not Dylan Moran, but yet the British view of American's. In our opinion, his views and comments are completely off and biased. Not all Americans are obese and against smokers.Most comedians though, make generalizations as part of the routine so it softened the blow of the insults a little. I understood Dylan Moran's humor while I was watching it, but only because I know what the world thinks of American's and the stereotypes we have. I couldn't laugh at it because I don't share the same views as he does. Even though there is a stereotype of Americans being selfish, not all of them are. Moran makes it seem as if American's think the world should revolve around our needs and wants (when he talks about smoking around the American who was eating). I think that our non-smoking policies show that we care more for others' health concerns, unlike the British, who will ignore common courtesy and smoke directly in someone's face. Moran admits that the British are also fat but makes the American "obesity" problem seem self-absorbed. Moran covers up for his comment about Britains being fat by stating that their fat people "have character", does that mean that fat American's have no character? I would strongly disagree with that statement. American's are obese because they make poor choices, not because they want to take up space. Moran also makes fun of the American for eating eggs for breakfast. He mentions how they are "fat slothered in substance" and does not understand how we eat them as a meal. This is just another way of him stereotyping Americans. Moran also makes fun of our ways when he talks about regime change. He mentions that we do this with our eyes closed, which hints that we may not know what we are doing. Obviously we have a plan behind our regime changes and are not simply doing them for fun as he hinted at. I think he has no right to be making fun of our army simply because we are more involved that Britain is and therefore we are putting out more effort than they are, even if we are not doing it in a successful way.