A good jazz musician knows the rules of music. They choose which ones to bend and which ones to break. When a couple of rules are broken here and there it’s pleasurable and exciting.
The core of humor is doing something unexpected. “Willy Wonka makes turnips” is unexpected. The same is true with “Charlie doesn’t like what Willy Wonka makes”.
The problem is that both of those things are telegraphed really early, thus defusing any surprise they could have delivered. By the last frame we expect Charlie to have a bad time at Willy Wonka’s factory, and he does.
This comic is making animal noises into a microphone and Chuck Berry wants to slap the shit out of it.
![Charlie and the Marvelous Turnip Factory [Hark A Vagrant]](https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/9cf0b760-23a0-482d-9a95-61454edd1ff9.png){kind=link}
“Subverting expectations” is like jazz.
A good jazz musician knows the rules of music. They choose which ones to bend and which ones to break. When a couple of rules are broken here and there it’s pleasurable and exciting.
When too many rules are broken, it’s Yoko Ono.
Sure, but I think this is not Yoko Ono.
The core of humor is doing something unexpected. “Willy Wonka makes turnips” is unexpected. The same is true with “Charlie doesn’t like what Willy Wonka makes”.
The problem is that both of those things are telegraphed really early, thus defusing any surprise they could have delivered. By the last frame we expect Charlie to have a bad time at Willy Wonka’s factory, and he does.
This comic is making animal noises into a microphone and Chuck Berry wants to slap the shit out of it.