“We continue to see evidence of an alarming decline in the quality of our nation's criminals.” This was stated in the article “Not Exactly Razor Sharp” by Dave Barry. In the article “Not Exactly Razor Sharp” the author creates humor for effect and uses it to communicate a universal truth. I will be expanding on that topic and the effects of the article. I will be explaining the level of comedy, and the elements of humor the author uses to send a message. The universal truth of “Not Exactly Razor Sharp” is criminals are unintelligent and foolish. The level of comedy in the article “Not Exactly Razor Sharp” is low-level comedy. Low-level comedy is a type of comedy that everybody can understand. For example in the article paragraph 2, the author states “ The problem was the particular disguise he picked, shaving cream.” The author was talking about a man who tried to rob a minimart and the disguise he picked was shaving cream. When robbing a store, shaving is not the best disguise. There are so many other options and the robber decides to lather shaving cream all over his face. In this example, the author was able to send a humorous and laughable joke that was …show more content…
The author uses many low-level comedy laughable jokes intended to make the audience convulsed with laughter. For example in paragraph 4 “Story does not say whether he tried to make himself invisible by putting his hands over his face.” The author makes connections to the shaving disguise bandit and his stupidity to make a joke about his disguise and foolishness. Another example is in paragraph 3 “What can he do to prevent the citizens from realizing that he is Superman? He can announce I'm wearing contact lenses.” The author uses the advantage of the unintelligent people in Metropolis by saying if Superman ever loses the glasses that disguise him, the citizens are so stupid he can just put on contact glasses so the citizens don't notice he's