A 1-Page Application of Humor Theories to Samantha Irby's Essays

    Irby's essays are immediately striking for their humor and wit, but what makes them so funny? Looking toward humor theories may provide some answers.
    According to Plato, humor is a mixture of pain and pleasure; a pleasurable response to seeing someone "ignorant" experience hardship, but painful in that it is pitiable. To an extent, Irby can be viewed through this lens, as her jokes and essays require the reader to partially relate to her life, eliciting sympathy and, by consequence, pity. However, as she is acutely aware of herself, she does not fit the definition of the "ignorant," and, thus, Plato's theory doesn't quite fit.
    Moving on to Hobbes, who asserts that humor is a form of proving social power over others and delighting in seeing yourself at a higher spot on the totem pole, Irby's essays still aren't explained. While she does repeatedly put herself down in her essays, inviting the readers to potentially do the same, her humor relies in her relatability, in being seen as a peer -- not in being seen or proven as a lesser.
    This takes us to Kant, who focuses on both the unexpected and the body's physical responses. As Irby's essays emphasize the body and its sensations, they "occupy the body" and prime it for the humor reaction; her jokes, too, tend to be unexpected. But, after a short time reading Irby, her humor becomes predictable; she loses the element of the unexpected. And yet, the reaction remains.
    This leads to the final, and most apt, theorist: Kierkegaard. He believed that humor is "the painless contradiction." Irby's strong hyperbole, the unexpected, and failures are all contradictions, and her writing them after the fact, proving that all is well, keeps it safe to laugh at.

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