Back then McClane was an avatar of embattled American masculinity, a regular working stiff whose essential good humor was challenged by Japanese corporations, bureaucratic red tape, feminism and a nasty Euro-nihilist with a fancy suit and a silky accent.
(Berg's present-day successor at N.Y.U., Dean Matthew Santirocco, who admits to having been unfamiliar with College Humor.comuntil it was recently brought to his attention, says of the site, "It is commercial and self-promotional, and it seems to me that what is essential about humor is that it is not commercial or self-promotional").
Another installation, of videos of scolding heads in a room with projected texts, pushes confrontation to an extreme -- you may judge it to be condescension rather than confrontation -- borrowing a tip or two from the work of Bruce Nauman, minus his essential black humor.
It's a photo set whose sequencing is essential to the humor, and understanding, of the series.
Something shifted for me in that moment; I was not only able to understand the essential need for humor when telling a story but to access it as well.
I find humor essential because my mother was emotionally abusive".
Humor is essential to the success of these works.
We have learned that a good team is essential, and so is humor — no matter what the situation.
Somehow, though, his humor approached essential things: the tyranny of autocrats, the injustice of corrupt judges, the complacency of the wealthy and the corrupt.
He has earned a place among the elite of the State Senate, a institution where, Texas Monthly magazine once said, "toughness is good, shrillness and criticism are not, and humor is essential".
