Gargantuan Lists in Society

The world is a compilation of lists; everything can be categorized into differing groups of items. These lists can be comical or dramatic, among others.

Francois Rabelais includes many of his own comical lists in the story, "The Truly Hair-raising Life of the Great Gargantua, Father of Pantagruel." One such list can be found in Chapter Five: The Chatter of Well-Oiled Drunks. This list includes just that which the title entails - comments made by people under the influence of alcohol.

The set of phrases is a parody of comments to be made by people of varying class. For instance, a person of a higher class says, "Bring me a glass of nice light wine full to the top!," whereas a person of a class lower than the former may be quoted as saying, "Give me mine straight.... Ah, like that, my friend."

This is comedic because the topic, alcohol, is not something which one might regard as being discussed daily in this time, especially among people of the higher classes. It's a little abnormal to think of a wealthy family being with those not so fortunate, even more so behaving in this manner.

There are many more lists covering a variety of topics in the story of Gargantua. The following is a list of my own. On my wall in college, I had pictures of many men posted. The men included:

Adam Sandler, Josh Hartnett, Jesse Bradford, Landon Donovan, Taylor Hanson, Usher Raymond, Ty Pennington, Larry Johnson, Zack Mills, Jonathon Jackson, Matt Damon, Hayden Christen, Brad Renfro, Ashley Angel, Heath Ledger, Brad Pitt, JJ Thomas, Erik Estrada, BBMak, Tobey Maguire, Blaine Wilson, James Dean, Jimmy Fallon, among others...

This list is a parody of the 100 Sexiest Men and the aspect that makes this group into a list is handsome features.

The grouping shows us that there are a large number of good-looking men in this country and the humor of this list is the fact that all of these men are hanging on the finite space of my dorm room wall; it would be unfair to the man who is not there simply because of the area factor.

When we discover lists as a truth of society, it can be hard to determine the humor that lies within them. The absurdity of the list lies within those we ourselves create. What purpose do they serve other than to display our need for categorization?