Video Analysis: An Ameriquest Commercial

In search of a form of American humor which I could write about, I searched “American funny” on youtube. One of the first things that came up was a collection of Ameriquest commercials, all deemed funny by the uploader. Thus, the YouTube video was entitled “American Funny Commercials”. In this video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1yA8HK_280, five different commercials are shown, each of which has the punchline, “Don’t Judge Too Quickly…We Won’t”. In each of the commercials, an awkward and tension-filled situation is brought about, where things aren’t the way they seem. Through this facet, Ameriquest can deliver its message that they are a relatively impartial mortgage company.

Anyways, now to focus on the important part of the video—the humorous situations. In the first commercial, a husband is preparing a romantic dinner for his wife, which their dog goes on to spill all over the kitchen floor. As the husband picks up the dog, his wife walks in and assumes that the husband was inflicting some harm upon their dog. This situation seems humorous to the average person because we feel bad for the husband and are laughing at his misfortune simultaneously. Although the husband’s situation is a sympathetic one, Americans often laugh at others’ failures, as in this case. Americans, for some reason or the other, like to see others’ hardship, perhaps because of some strange individualistic superiority theory. Also, since this situation is one which I’m sure many people can relate to, it makes it establishes a tie between the “average Ameriquest consumer” and the public. In this case, it becomes clear how humor uncovers a seemingly inexistent link and can craftily depict the similarities between people.

The first commercial was the one that I personally found funniest and most revealing about the role of humor in American culture. YouTube, as the media by which this commercial was made permanently available to the public, was a mechanism for delivering a humorous account to the public. In this way, YouTube acts as a channel for entertainment and allows a broader audience to interact with humor.