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Video

Monkey Business

VIDEO: Funny pet vids are taking over YouTube. Here's why.

Norman Misura 12 Aug 2008TheTyee.ca

Norman Misura is a Vancouver actor and writer.
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Just try to explain the humor of monkeying around.

Pet videos are surging ahead in their campaign to take over YouTube completely. Soon there'll be nothing else there. But unlike many other types of vids, funny animal vids are a paradox, the ultimate study in contradiction.

Last week, the headlines seemed full of even more violence than usual -- from the hammer attacks in Vancouver, to the beheading on the bus in the prairies, to the murder of the seven-year-old in Toronto. Around the water cooler, I heard about those and also, correspondingly, more about comedy and humor videos than usual. Go figure.

This one, in particular, started to make the rounds: "Monkeying Around on the News Desk." The description from YouTube reads "11 News anchor Mindy Basara nearly got more than she could handle when Dr. Kim and Mikey the Chimp showed up." That's called understatement.

But it's not just understatement that accounts for the vid's appeal, there's something else extra contradictory about the content of it. I watch a lot of comedy: from Funny or Die, to random pet videos, and send them to friends, and this one had more people laughing than any I've ever seen. Humor is usually very specific: only a certain group of my friends finds a certain video funny, but this one had my eight-year-old niece and 76-year-old dad in total fits. Friends of every religion and socio economic status told me they cried with laughter. And the only explanation I can give is that it's one of extreme contradictions, full of the kind of real-life reactions, awkwardness and spontaneity even Borat can only dream of.

The monkey is in one of the most formal and structured environments in our culture -- the TV newsroom. And what does he do that's so funny? Well, he just kind of acts like a monkey. In a circus or zoo or in the wild, he wouldn't be funny. But the monkey innocently breaks dozens of high stakes social conventions within a matter of minutes and can't be made to abide by human rules.

Does that even really explain it? No. It's just funny. Contradicting the normal rules of analysis, humor sometimes just can't be explained.

Watch it. And tell me if you don't laugh.

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