Comedy... What's so funny about that?
As Barry Cryer once observed:
“Analysing comedy is like dissecting a frog. Nobody enjoys it and the frog ends up dead.”
There are two kinds of theory about humour and neither is a laughing matter. There is the theory directly related to the practice of comedy: instructions and tips for comedians and comedy actors who develop the skills to make people laugh. And then there is the philosophy of humour which involves trying to understand why we find anything funny in the first place.
In this topic we examine both types of theory. I’ll begin by offering my own story which I recall was very funny at the time but this retelling is not the slightest bit funny....!
It was the late 60‘s and I was 19 working as a temp clerical assistant in an engineering drawing office. This was in the days before CAD so all drawings were in pencil and ink and we had a large team of clerical staff constantly running around finding, filing and copying drawings and specifications. It was a very staff-intensive environment and there were a lot of young temporary staff passing through the office.
The office was dominated by Gladys, the office dragon, a big, middle-aged woman who had worked in the company for years and resented her domain being invaded by all these young people so there was a tinge of animosity on all sides.
Gladys had a desk by the window and my desk was on the other side of the office opposite a colleague so that he and I had direct eye-contact. It was summer and on this particular day Gladys was wearing a sleeveless blouse. The shoulder-strap of her slip had fallen down over her arm. My colleague just motioned with his head towards her so that I turned to look and at that moment he mimed and made a noise as if playing cymbals. Both of us fell around in helpless laughter.
As my colleague made the noise of the cymbals a whole set of linked images and associations shot through my mind. I could see a sleazy, smoke-filled night-club with a sexy stripper coming on stage and dropping a bra-strap in a seductive manner and that was juxtaposed with the incongruous image in front of us of the decidedly un-sexy Gladys.
According to Arthur Koestler in his book The Act of Creation the essence of humour is incongruity. We view a situation using two or more quite different frameworks of understanding simultaneously. Both are kind of logical and make sense and overlap through visual or linguistic linkages but they clash in reality. In the case of Gladys and the strip club the two frameworks were linked by the fallen shoulder strap which made sense in both contexts but were absurd when brought together.
Koestler gives the surreal example of a spiral staircase down which a group of submariners descend followed by chorus-line dancers. The staircase could be in a ship or in a theatre. Two concentric circles of reality are absurdly linked by the staircase. He also thinks this ability to imaginatively link incompatible and incongruous realities is at the root of all human creative thinking.
But not all incongruity is funny. What also happens in humour is speed of recognition. Getting the joke quickly is critical. We all know that having to explain a joke ruins it. What happens is that a lot of subconscious cognitive work is done very fast and at the end of the process your brain, having made all those useless connections, has nothing to do with the information. The resultant tension that’s been generated is released in laughter.
Think of the stand-up comedian telling a joke. There is a big build-up to the punch-line and the more sudden the punch-line comes, the more laughter. It can’t be predictable, in fact it must subvert your expectations, but it must be also be clear when it comes. A joke cannot require lots of reflective thinking or the sudden release of tension won’t happen.
Take a look at this short film by Paul Hendy entitled The Last Laugh (15 mins) of three comedians discussing their respective styles of comedy (Bob Monkhouse, Eric Morecombe and Tommy Cooper). Bob Monkhouse talks about how he has to hone down his jokes so they are as spare and efficient as possible so that the punch-line delivers maximum power.
The Gladys story also contains an element of aggression and possibly a bit of misogyny too. We were mocking her as a woman and getting a bit of revenge on her. Perhaps even treating her as a grotesque. So does all humour contain an element of aggression like this? Some theorists think that humour emerges in humans from the grunts of triumph an ape makes when subduing and opponent.
And what is the relationship between humour and the grotesque? Sometimes the grotesque makes us laugh, as in Punch and Judy, or sometimes we are repelled by it in fear.
And what is the relationship between humour and tragedy? Can the same situation be seen as tragic from one perspective but comic when viewed from another?
Are there some subjects that are too painful and beyond the pale when it comes to joking? Should some comedy be censored or is everything fair game? Before Princess Diana died comedians like Rory Bremner made jokes about her. Then when she died it would have been the height of bad taste to joke about her in the media, although there may have been ‘sick jokes’ doing the rounds at the time of her funeral. What is the role of the ‘sick joke’? Is it just cruelty for its own sake or does it provide a safety-valve and distancing mechanism for people facing pain and tragedy like the ‘black humour’ of health-care specialists in hospitals? After the death of Diana her ghost was humorously included in the play Charles III. It seems that after the passage of time it becomes OK to joke about her again.
The laughter that I and my colleague experienced was triggered by each other. As they say: laughter is infectious. But why? If he had just made the connection between Gladys and the night-club stripper on his own he might have glanced across and smiled but it is unlikely that he would have laughed out loud.
Finally, some more mysteries of comedy to contemplate:
Why are some parts of the body funny and others not funny at all? Ears, noses and knees have been funny since the start of time but the back of the neck and finger-nails are not funny.
Why are some sounds and some music funny? Why are some musical instruments like triangles and tubas funny but violins aren’t.
Does comedy have political force? Mark Twain says: “Only laughter can blow a colossal humbug to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand”. But Donald Trump is the frequent butt of jokes by stand-up comedians and it doesn’t seem to have undermined his credibility one jot. Perhaps comedy is just a outlet for venting angry emotions in order that the status quo is left unchanged. The medievals celebrated the ‘Festival of Fools’ every January 6th when the common people could make fun of the Church, Clergy and Nobles but the social hierarchy was left undented. It was just a way of letting off steam so that social homeostasis was maintained.
Aristotle taught that all virtues involved a balance between two extremes. He thought that people who never laughed were not flourishing in their humanity. But he also thought that people who never took anything seriously were foolish. So where is the balance point between too much and not enough humour?
What is the relationship between comedy and tragedy and the comic and the grotesque.
Comedy often plays on stereotypes such as national stereotypes: the Englishman, Irishman, and Scotsman, or the simple-mindedness of Blondes or the meanness of Jews and the Welsh. Is this necessarily harmful and should it always be avoided?
Jokes have to be fast, clear and economical in order that the punchline is delivered and understood fast. However, conventions like this are sometimes contravened for comic effect. For instance the ‘Shaggy Dog Story’ deliberately goes on for ages and the ending is usually a let-down after building up expectation. The disappointed groan is the very comic point of the story. Tommy Cooper used to gets jokes wrong just for comic effect. It’s as if humour is about contravening conventional expectations and in doing this it builds up its own conventions which in turn can be contravened.
How is it possible to repeat comic sketches like the Monty Python Parrot Sketch and people still enjoy it while hearing a joke repeated, when you know the punchline, isn’t funny.
