Harold and Kumar Watch a PSA

http://youtube.com/watch?v=mN3u2tE9tEQ

This is a clip from the movie, “Harold and Kumar go to White Castle.” For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, the premise is that two pot-smoking recent college graduates have a wild crazy adventure while trying to get to the fast food chain, White Castle, because they have the munchies. This particular clip from the movie was absolutely hilarious.
First, there are two realms of humor going on in this clip. There is the actual public service announcement that Harold and Kumar are watching on television and there are the camera shots of Harold and Kumar reacting to it while sitting on their loveseat. (Two grown men sitting together on a loveseat being funny in-and-of itself.) Having seen the movie, I don’t think there is an overarching message to the movie as a whole. However, this small tidbit makes a complete mockery of public service announcements and is incredibly humorous.
With the two realms of humor, there are two separate arguments. On the one hand, the actual public service announcement is reminiscent of public service announcements from the ‘80’s, which are inadvertently hilarious. Typically they are way over-the-top and basically lie about the severity of subjects while attempting in vain to appeal to children. An actual example I can think of is the series of Smokey the Bear public service announcements about forest fires. They were about the danger of playing with matches and featured a bear named Smokey wearing a forest ranger uniform whose catch-phrase was “only you can prevent forest fires.” In other words, it was too absurd to be taken seriously.
In the “Harold and Kumar” public service announcement, they set up a spoof of the unrealistic DARE commercials from the late ‘80’s/early ‘90’s. The line, “Don’t you want to be cool,” is classic peer pressure hyperbole and its use in the made-up commercial makes it all the more funny. The final hilarity of someone shooting themselves in the head because they have smoked a joint combined with the over-the-top “Nooooo!” from his friend makes for great ridicule for the genre of public service announcements. (This would be an example of ridicule humor.)
Secondly, there are the shots of Harold and Kumar, which attempt to show them as fun-loving guys who think that the public service announcement is as ridiculous as the audience of the film does. The argument here has more to do with the film’s plot, but it essentially is meant to endear Harold and Kumar to the movie’s audience so that they feel like they are in the adventure as well. By showing Harold and Kumar completely stoned, watching this ridiculous over-the-top public service announcement, it almost makes the viewer feel high too and thus the rest of the plot becomes at least slightly more plausible. Whereas one might normally think an entire movie about two potheads trying to get fast food was boring, this scene makes it a worthwhile journey.