Sunday, August 20, 2006

Vader Sessions

This clip's been seen well over half a million times on YouTube alone, so I apologize if it's familiar. It's a bunch of Star Wars moments, with all of Darth Vader's dialogue replaced by other James Earl Jones lines from other movies. Personally, I only recognized the two Field of Dreams lines, but maybe you'll spot some others...



There's laughs from non sequiturs and laughs from surprisingly appropriate lines - I think my favorite replacement lines come from the Leia torture scene and the scene immediately following.

But my favorite part, far and away, runs from 7:25-8:00 or so. I'll try and explain why without giving anything away.

I think comedy consists of being surprised by the familiar. Take something you know and put it in an entirely different context, and there's a shock of realization that triggers laughter. (That's why comedy records are never as funny after the first time - you know what's coming and how it's coming.) The more familiar the topics, and the greater the leap from one to the other, the greater the shock and, therefore, the funnier it is.

In the bit I'm talking about here, Vader's doing something we've all done, hearing the same thing we hear when we do it, and winding up with the most mundane thing imaginable - so much so that it's nearly incomprehensible to hear it in this setting. We know Star Wars, we know the sound in question, but we don't, can't, know the two of them together. The incongruity is explosive; hence, so is the laughter.

Class dismissed.

"Laaaaaaa..."

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