What Works

Humor is a slippery animal, indeed. I like to think of it as the pinnacle of culture, not in a high culture kind of way, but in a cultural development kind of way. Just think of trying to learn a foreign language. When you can intentionally, subtly be humorous in that language, you know you’re really getting somewhere. If you have never gotten to that point in a foreign language, just listen to kids try to tell jokes. They kind of suck. You end up laughing along because they’re kids and kids telling jokes is funny in itself, not because what they are saying is actually humorous. This is a fairly long winded way to point out that one indicator that telling stories with graphics is thick culture (thanks, Geertz) is that things like the above image are actually funny in a way that they couldn’t be funny in another format. If you had to say to someone, “man, professors spend lots of time on service activities, but the administration really doesn’t reward that or even notice” nobody would laugh. They might sigh and wish the economy were better so they could find a job that didn’t involve sitting on committees.

Bottom line: this works because we have been immersed in graphic storytelling. We get it. It doesn’t work in any other format.

Relevant Resources

Piled Higher and Deeper, a comic strip by Jorge Cham online. If you are a student or professor and haven’t discovered this, I’ll warn you that it could suck away an hour or two of your day if you click through right now.

Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. The HERI Faculty Survey. There are fees associated with accessing the data but you can get an overview of how data about faculty time commitments is gathered.

This 2006 Obituary of Clifford Geertz in the New York Times does a good job of summarizing his life and work, for those who want to follow up on my parenthetical. His book “The Interpretation of Cultures” is a good place to start. If you want something shorter than a book, “Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight” is worth a read.