America's Funniest Home Videos

Today in class we talked about laughter in response to suffering and how the laughter takes away some of the power from the suffering. One thing I think of that has to do with laughter at other people’s suffering is America’s Funniest Home Videos. People send all kinds of videos into AFV, but undeniably the most popular are the ones of people getting hurt. Some of the classics are dads getting hit in the crotch with baseball bats, or people getting accidents on bikes and roller skates. We know that we shouldn’t be laughing about the suffering of other people, but we laugh anyway. The ability to laugh at other people’s suffering is also why shows like Jackass have such success. Watching other people get hurt is funny as long as it’s not happening to us. However, even when bad things happen to us we have to learn the laugh because it’s the only way to deal with our pain and get on with our lives. Here is some of those classic AFV videos hope you enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S060AmYejjM&feature=related and this is one of my all time favorite AFV videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE42Gn74m2k