Let me set the scene: it’s Saturday night, it’s 3am, and you’re feeling all seven of those “non-alcoholic” drinks that somehow ended up in your hand at Toad’s. After you capture your wallet in a particularly intense game of hide-and-seek, you finally manage to beep into Old Campus. As you walk briskly—nay, stumble—back to your room, you notice something absurd. A hallucination? An inebriated illusion?? A dream??? No, no—just another Yalie who's had One Too Many.

Welcome to the “One Too Many” blog where similar experiences are not only solidified (forever!) on the Internet, but they are also analyzed in order to determine why these sightings are actually considered funny in American culture.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Ha-LOL-ween

Report: Due to the clog in the One Too Many factory, there have been some issues with chronology as well: this blog entry will explore the humor behind Halloween costumes.

Yale’s celebration for our beloved Halloween lasts a full week. Why do we treat a holiday with no religious or patriotic significance so seriously unserious? In a most basic sense, people want to explore various characters and personalities without bearing the potential negative consequences. Although these blog entries do not all correlate with topics discussed in English 114: American Humor, I believe that the connection to Mikhail Bakhtin’s discussion of carnivalesque humor in Rabelais and His World fits this topic too perfectly to disregard. In the Middle Ages, carnivalesque humor was roughly what Halloween is today. I think that I concisely addressed the importance of this form of humor in my lens essay earlier in the course:

"As a result of the positive humor, 'carnival celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order' (10), which in turn created a second life for many people to explore new ideas and beliefs. The liberty gained through festive laughter allowed for people in the Middle Ages to enter alternate worlds in which social structure as well as 'religious and ecclesiastic dogmatism' (7) did not exist. The most valuable asset of carnivalesque humor is its ability to create social flexibility through positive humor."

Now, step forward a few centuries. Halloween fosters the same concepts as carnival humor: social order is suspended in order for people to take on different roles and laugh in good fun. Unlike any other day of the year, Halloween allows people to laugh, joke, and play one day and then be completely back to normal the next. This notion explains why costumes tend to be more physically revealing and why taking on the role of even the most corrupt of people is understandable as a Halloween costume. Yale students are often confined to a certain personality, so it comes as no surprise that we take full advantage of the chance to be goofy for a day (or a week!).
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