Ridiculous
[2][3] From a historical and technical viewpoint, "absurdity" is associated with argumentation and reasoning, "nonsense" with semantics and meaning, while "ridiculous" is most associated with laughter, superiority, deformity, and incongruity.
These studies have been applied to the theory of advertisement regarding attention, memory, and alleviation of preexisting negative attitudes toward products.
The ritual clown (heyókȟa) in some Native American culture uses the painfully ridiculous, and is believed to become closer to the gods by its primordiality.
[17] In the film Little Big Man, the sacred clown rides sitting backwards on his horse, "washes" himself with dirt and "dries" himself with water.
[citation needed] The ridiculous can use uses both physical and conceptual inferiority and incongruity of juxtaposition to create parody and satire.
After being reduced from a "dignified" state to its opposite, the optimistic Dr. Pangloss (representing Leibniz) finds cause to consider his undignified position to be the best of all possible worlds, noting his own particular current happiness, which he argues could not have been attained without experiencing the atrocities in the previous narrative; his optimistic attitude is extremely incongruous with his experiences and extremely inferior undignified ultimate condition.
[19] In Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, apelike humans and their behavior are juxtaposed next to streamlined advanced technology with a highly avant garde score by composer György Ligeti; Ligeti also used ridiculous juxtaposition in his scores to create parody,[20] and this tool was frequently used by composer Peter Maxwell Davies.
Thomas Paine, writing in The Age of Reason in 1795, said The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately.
[30] For example, in arguing against idealism, with its sophisticated arguments that the world was not real but only existed in the mind, philosopher Dr. Johnson famously kicked a stone.
