Common Strategies of Animated Comedy article - Literacy Review

This article entitled “Common Strategies of Animated Comedy” by Joe Yang is the authors’ personal analysis on comedy in animation. He focuses on recent and popular shows, giving four different comedy techniques which he has observed. He interestingly gives the advantages and disadvantages of each point as well as finishing the article with tips on creating more effective humour.
The four points the author focuses on are parody, bad/cheesy, gross-out and random humour. Spoofs and animations which reference well known sources are successful because of their recognisable content, but on the other hand the disadvantage is that the scriptwriters can be accused of laziness or lack of creativity- the same downfall associated with the “bad/cheesy” animated comedy. The advantages of the bad/cheesy animated film are that some viewers may find the badly drawn characters and environments funny, or the writers could create gags revolving around the badly drawn film. “Gross-out humour”, which includes violence and/or bad language, is funny when both the visual and gross out element come together. The disadvantage is overusing the gag which could result in the loss of viewers. Disregard for logic, unpredictability and the surprise it causes, is what makes “random humour” successful, although some viewers may find it hard to understand a certain joke and it could lead to confusion in the story line.
What I liked about the article was the fact that the author looks at both sides of the different points he addressed. The final section on how to create more effective humour is quite useful but like the rest of the article, I would have liked more points to be investigated as the ones he has looked at, were very interesting.