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Why are monkeys funny?

Sax

14:08 / 18.07.03

We find monkeys hilarious. If any lazy comedian/animator/artist/writer wants a shorthand icon for funny, they use a monkey.

Why are monkeys funny? Aren't they just little people in furry suits?

And if they're as intelligent as we keep getting told, isn't this a nasty form of speciesism?

pomegranate

14:14 / 18.07.03

of course it's speciesism. but oh well.
i think they're funny cos they're so human-like (or are we just monkey-like? ooooh deep!) and we can see bits of ourselves in them.
say you put a dog in a suit, ok. kinda funny, but too absurd really. but a monkey? well, it's more feasible, he wears it better, but it's still weird, therefore funny.
i think.

Bear

14:15 / 18.07.03

It's like that new Halfords ad - bunch of people sitting in an office getting paid thousands more than me...

"Any ideas yet?"
"Awww fuck it lets just dress some chimps up in track suits"

Sax

14:25 / 18.07.03

That's exactly what I was thinking of. And Channel 4 have got some ads with a monkey in a spaceship. Monkeys are the cliche of youth culture. We must stop abusing them now.

unheimlich manoeuvre

15:01 / 18.07.03

History: The Nature of Monkey was Irrepressible!! Monkey was hatched from a magical egg on a mountain top. made of stone and virtually indestructible (although he still feels pain.) He was crowned the Monkey King after he was the only monkey on the Mountain of Fruit and Flowers to dare go through the Water Curtain and set up a kingdom on Earth. Upon realising that he was destined to die like everyone else, he set off to become immortal. He located a Taoist who taught him magic and alchemy (and how to fly on clouds).

...

Monkey was so much more than just funny.

...

'When what is indestructible meets what is irresistable, the female all too often wins.'

Old brown-eye is back

15:11 / 18.07.03

For my money, its the context that the monkey is placed in rather than the fact of the monkey itself that provides the comedy. A monkey on its own (unless it's smelling its finger) - not funny at all. A monkey picking nits off another monkey/Diane Fosse - not funny. A monkey in a clown suit and/or smoking a cigar - disturbing. Ahhh, but an evil cartoon monkey emerging from Chris Griffin's closet, gritting his teeth and pointing.....the monkey flashback in Being John Malcovich.....the monkey/Christ thing at the end of Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes. This is what funny is made of.

Christ only knows why.

Timing.

Monkey is funny because it has a 'K' in it.

gravitybitch

00:58 / 19.07.03

Maybe it has something to do with the way they're so close but aren't quite human - the similarities can be very disturbing, but it gets laughed off as "humor" so we don't have to think about all the ways we aren't as far removed from "mere animals" as we thought we were.

Monkeys can knock us down from our perch as the "pinnacle of Creation" and so we trivialize them.

Am I making sense?

Rev. Orr

01:34 / 19.07.03

Yes, but it would be funnier if a monkey said it.

I had a much longer post prepared about monkeys holding a mirror up to humanity and allowing us to laugh at ourselves - a grotesque imitation to puncture our self-importance - but it was way too pretentious. So I ate a banana instead. Mostly, they're funny 'cos their cartoon monkeys so they're drawn funny. Plus they look like the Welsh.

w1rebaby

10:45 / 19.07.03

Monkeys aren't funny. Popbitch thought they were funny, and popbitch is lame now.

Axolotl

11:35 / 19.07.03

Yes, but what kind of monkey is funniest?

Panic

12:42 / 19.07.03

Chimps are not funny.

Chimps are vicious, murderous little bastards who hunt lesser primates for fun. The gleeful screeching they make when they catch their prey and tear it limb from limb is the most horrific sound I've ever heard.

(insert something profound about our own human nature)

Now capuchins....they're funny.

Mourne Kransky

18:51 / 20.07.03

Baboons' arses are quite a giggle.

18:57 / 20.07.03

This thread is a mirror: When a chimp looks in, no bonobo looks out.

Matthew Fluxington

19:36 / 20.07.03

This may be a controversial take on the monkey/comedy issue, but I think monkeys are overexposed in humor, and are actually kind of borecore.

Mazarine

21:15 / 20.07.03

Seth Green's character, Oz, contended in one of the early seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that all monkeys are French. And that they're the only animal crackers that get pants. I don't think that has anything to do with why they're funny. I think it's because they are bipeds with a lot of hair, and in that aspect, similar to Robin Williams.

And yet Lancelot Link preceded Mork and Mindy by a full eight years, and Mork's appearance in Happy Days by four.

Nonetheless, I think, eventually, a massive conspiracy involving monkeys, Robin Williams, Ron Howard, Henry Winkler, Pat Morita, and the television industry as a whole will come to light.

Aethelwine Jedi

21:55 / 20.07.03

Monkeys are funny because they enbrace toilet humour. A monkey throwing poo at someone=funny, if you're not that someone.

Panic

14:54 / 21.07.03

You leave Pat Morita out of this!

If anyone's involved in the Military-Industrial-Entertainment-Primate Complex, it's Anson Williams....

cusm

19:24 / 21.07.03

ibis the being

19:59 / 21.07.03

(recently read that the % genetic difference between men and women is equal to the % difference between humans and apes.)

friend of mine thinks there is something to the fact that people in general seem to be attracted to/fascinated with both monkeys and robots. on either side of human.

Mister Six, whom all the girls

20:05 / 21.07.03

So.... are monkey robots our future or are they funnier.

What about a woman doing it with a monkey and a guy getting chased by a robot, Benny Hill-like?

Scary? Funny?

lorca

10:30 / 23.07.03

they are funny because they are true

Sax

10:48 / 23.07.03

Well, you won't think they're funny when Planet of the Apes happens and you're all in chains.

And don't think I'll save you, because I won't. As the only ape-sympathetic human I'll be allowed to live on an island somewhere with a load of mute human women to do my bidding.

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