so funny? IT HURTS!

This is a compilation of pieces of videos that I found on Youtube, which have the common theme of pain and/or humor. The videos in this compilation have only been cut, I have not added nor changed the video in any way My original conception of this piece was to raise awareness and re-sensitize the people who choose to watch videos involving pain and humor, which is why I have chosen the tags for this video as well as the first Youtube produced prototype, through a psychological test, but unformalized. At first I thought it would be best to have a linear progression, having the video clips start from very funny with little to no pain and ending with extremely painful and possibly even disgusting. My idea evolved from there into a less linear, blunt, and obvious route. During its evolution the piece has started to not only focus the observer on their own thoughts and reactions to videos that depict a person in pain that are deemed funny, but has grown to include how society and other people think of these videos, how media plays a role, the power of juxtaposition, group dynamics and how they may play a role in normalizing semi-sadistic behavior, and the communities of people that make compilations of accidents and painful incidents on Youtube or any other group video sharing forum. I am interested in finding the breaking point, between what people think is funny and when they are going to stop laughing and empathize with the person in pain in the video. This interest in finding the line, however thick or fine, between humor and empathy was the driving force behind this work. As I started to mix video clips together, I realized the power of juxtaposition, which I utilize in this piece. Through a mixture of juxtapositions I have tried to create a visual and intellectually interesting piece which will hopefully by the end guide the viewer into questioning if they even find the less painful videos funny and why other's pain can cause us to laugh. To achieve this goal, I have used the medium which propagates these types of videos to question itself. It is also a way to reach a population that is probably in the greatest need of questioning themselves and their society about this issue. At the time of writing this text, 16:50 on Thursday the 15th of December, my first video has been viewed 14 times from people who reside in the United States, Spain, Germany, and Malaysia, most of whom searched accident, funny accident, sports accident, or funny accidents 2011 to end up at my video. I may never know the effect that my videos have on people, but hopefully it slightly reawakens them to the reality of what they are watching, and re-sensitizes them to feel empathy for people in pain. At certain points I want the viewer to squirm, to feel the pain, to empathize with the people that have been recorded, to keep the connection between the documentation of the person and reality. We have started to lose this connection between sequences of images that pass on a screen and their connection with the world which it depicts. This is due to the ease of manipulation of video/television, our assumption that the video was made or chosen for our enjoyment, and the fact that most television/videos that are available are fictional, fantastical pieces that are based in or try to portray reality. From these experiences we begin to create a distinction between TV/video reality and "reality." Seemingly, this distinction applies to all TV programs and videos, since so many people have created, watched, and commented on videos that are meant to be humorous by depicting other people in pain. My choice of ending with a deep villainous laughter at the pain that they are presumably responsible for causing or at the very least in assisting, hopefully provokes the question, "is laughing at videos like these sadistic?"