Humor in Arguments March 29, 2008

Arguments can either be strengthened or weakened by the use of humor. This depends on the context and on the audience. That’s why it is very important to know the audience and realize what is relative to their lives and personalities; humor can sometimes be offensive or bring down the argument if the audience doesn’t get it. EA mentions two types of arguments, satire and parody. While satire uses humor to unmask an underlying problem, parody is taking something familiar and turning it into something new that is critical of the original work. Humor can also bring the author and the audience closer together, setting the foundation for the author to present his argument. In relation to food and body image, humor is used to present arguments that mostly criticize behavior, perceptions, or people. For example, it is easier to feel better about having a certain body shape if the opposite body shape is criticized. This is often used to sell people ideas and is mostly done through the media. What we have been getting into these past two weeks about body image does not have humorous arguments, but we have been getting into the effects of arguments that are made on tv, radio, newspapers, etc. One one hand, there’s the ‘obesity epidemic’, and on the other hand, there are eating disorders. Looking at the end of the film Thin and researching Pro Ana and Mia sites was a hard task to do because I felt like I was entering into people’s lives and minds. It is different than someone opening up a situation because I don’t know the people in the websites, and it kind of leaves me powerless to help after hearing what they are going through and not being able to respond in any way. I was able to see the rhetoric used in the websites, like Thinspo and Fatspo, image after image of ‘desirably thin’ people and ‘undersirably fat’ people. I found it interesting how this type of rhetoric works on anorexic people. It feeds the mind with pictures that it wants to see, with things that are not real. I am glad that I am more conscientious of the the rhetoric and thoughts that drive eating disorders.