Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Exaggeration a tool for humor and horror.

I use to get an unintended grin when I think of Exaggeration. Everyone in the world tend to exaggerate things when they convey or discuss anything, or propagate a gossip, etc. The amount of exaggeration is what that differs and differentiate individual's reliability. I recently heard a very good joke about exaggeration. It is: A mother says to her daughter, "I would have told you a million times not to exaggerate things when you talk".

I remember the word *slapstick* which means the use of exaggerated violence that is intended for humor where if there is no exaggeration, then it will mean a vigorous violence. This is the technique used by many comedians, especially Vadivelu. Even when friends get together and talk about a victim, one among them who will be the target of the speech and will be made fun of, there will be a lot of exaggeration to add masala of the topic they talk about him/her.

On the other hand, when someone is told about someone about something negative, exaggeration will prove to be a drastic tool. A little amount of exaggeration is enough to make adverse effect. Since we always see a lot of people whose habit is to exaggerate even when talking about something which is not for fun, and how we loathe about that and how we always hesitate to believe whatever they say, I always try not to exaggerate things when I talk about serious things. And of course, when I fail and when I exaggerate, I will later despise myself for that, and of course it continues till now.

So, let me try and stop completely to exaggerate; and when I mean stopping, I mean that the exaggerating factor be very very less about +\- 0.0001%, as this is the percentage which will happen without our intention, because of the excitement. What more, let me finish with another PJ (poor joke) which I heard when I was a small kid. 'Three friends are taking and one of them says "I had seen a snake of this much length" and he stretches out his one arm to show the measure. Suddenly the second one says "I had seen a snake of thisss much length" and he stretches both of his arms as wide as possible. Now the third one, slaps hard on the second one's face and says "Now, how can I say a size which is more than yours?, You should have used one and a half arms so that I could have used two arms".'

I could overhear some of you saying, "But you told that you are going to say a PJ?" :D Feel free to comment or tell about your views\experiences.

3 comments:

Dobby Severus Salazar said...

nice exaggeration.....

Anonymous said...

Nice one. Exaggeration is there in everyday life and spread by our media. Just watch a few ads in the media and you will know how much bluff goes on...

Ragu said...

Exaggeration is also a result of perception. To be more precise, what is mundane and to the detail for someone can be a flamboyant event for someother. So, there is no universal yard by which you can measure and say something is an exaggeration. But, there are a few things which are universally agreed, like my good ol' stories in school for example...
Oh.. by the way, in college,we had something called.. E.Q. Which stood for exaggeration Quotient. when some one comes up with a Exaggerated story, we simply brush him away as some one with a high EQ.