The following clip is not, in my opinion, among the best The Daily Show has to offer, but somewhere around 2:18, you'll see its relevance to "Holt Water."
Out-loud laughs there. Why? Does this scene provoke the same audience response that "Holt Water" elicits from the reader? Is the nature of the intended humor the same in both instances, or is something different going on in "Holt Water"?
Offer some reflections here.
Deadline: Friday (1/23), 9am.
(Thanks to Professor Renee Trilling for alerting me to this clip.)
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4 comments:
I don't really see the similarities between this clip and "Holt Waters." I guess it's because Dr. Mandvi knows he's drinking pee. Goody Baucis is completely unaware what's in her jug, and so there's a really sinister element to "Holt Waters" that is missing from Paging Dr. Mandvi.
Also, there's other stuff going on in Paging Dr. Mandvi. The pee-drinking clip is only for 3 seconds and it earned, at least for me, a 2 second laugh, and that was only because he drank it out of a swizzle straw. "Holt Waters" was so serious leading up to the climax, and the ordeal was so drawn out, that the humor lasted quite a while afterwards. And I felt bad for laughing.
The similarity of the pee drinking is humorous because I think it takes similar roles to "Holt Water" in that it is unexpected and the doctor enjoys the urine. Like Isaac said, the difference between the doctor knowing what he is drinking and Goody Baucis is a key element that makes the two stories function differently. While they both take an unexpected route to deal with a cultural topic (women having the inability to express anything- particularly if they have to pee or not and ecological issues), the pee drinking in "Holt Waters" was the focus of the poem, and it was not the main theme of the Daily Show sketch. Both are funny, but quite different.
Similar to the distinction Isaac makes, I find the clip and "Holt Waters" to be humorous on entirely different levels. Dr Mandvi, from the introduction of the segment, is presented humorously. The viewer takes the doctor as a clown from the start. When he proceeds to drink urine, the laughs are the result of base, though still funny, toilet humor.
The presentation of "Holt Waters" is almost antithetical to that of the video. The elevated tone and imagery contradict the lowbrow humor. As a result the very fact that urine is discussed is funny. This allows the scene to build up the humor, and crescendo when the urine is actually consumed.
I agree with everyone, I think that the Daily Show's Dr. Mandvi was completely different from Goody Baucis. Dr. Mandvi knowingly drank the pee and as Isaac mentioned Goody Baucis had no idea that she was drinking pee. I think that both the clip and Holt Waters try to take common place occurences and use more figurative language to describe them. The Daily Show is using faux medical terminology to address the issue of liberalism. Given the tongue and cheek nature of the clip I was not all that surprised by Dr. Mandvi's drinking the pee nor did I find it particularly amusing. Similarly, "Holt Waters" uses mythological language to address a common occurrence of a noble woman out on a date but I found it to be much more clever. I liked the way that the author indirectly addresses the class structure of the time period. The noble girl pees in a poor milkmaid's cup and it's humorous but also telling of the power that the rich had over the poor.
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