DEAR PHILOSOPHER SCOTT: IS THERE A LIMIT TO COMEDY? – MUZNA R.
As with beauty, comedy is in the eye/mind of the beholder. As such, there’s no justification to declare that any tragedy cannot be seen as funny to a mind suitably (or possibly dysfunctionally) compartmentalized. Thus, there should be no limit as far as what can be seen in a humorous light given a perspective that accommodates it. But it would help if we nailed down what exactly should be understood by the idea of an interpretation in ‘humorous light’?
Philosophers rarely address this topic, though the experience of humor is ubiquitous, and certainly philosophy itself gives rise to a dividend of deepest laughter, including laughter at ourselves, our foibles, our misunderstandings and the seemingly limitless humiliation of operating from within a sometimes uncooperative physical body.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, Henri Bergson wrote three essays which were anthologized into a small but influential book called ‘Laughter’ (1924). In these essays, Bergson introduced his theory of the comic as the rendering of fluid human action, life, existence and intention as manifest mechanization.
So, for example, the sour expression of a stern headmaster is not funny, but a schoolmate convincingly imitating it could be, as it conjures the understanding that the expression is not the headmaster, but rather a kind of mask the headmaster wears. Egyptian hieroglyphs are not funny, but a person stiffly posing in that manner can be. Air funneled through a bellows is not funny, but for many, human flatulence is an enduring comic chestnut. In the latter case, Bergson might say, our awareness of other people as personalities, rather than mechanical objects, is undermined when our attention is called to those mechanical aspects of our physical existence which are not byproduct of our direct control, and which thus betray a degree to which we are at least partly mechanized.
A person voluntarily and mindfully may choose to dance, and their dance may not appear silly, but when someone comes up behind them and performs a caricature of their dance, we may be alerted to aspects of the dancers motion of which the dancer may not be aware; aspects which may be semi-automated by their nervous system, reminding us that a dancer’s improvisations are at least partly mechanical.
For similar reasons, the dancer being unaware they are being caricatured could add a further layer of humor in mechanization, as here we are made conscious of not only a dancer’s nervous system bypassing mind to work their body like a marionette, but also of the humbling mechanical limitation that a human head is only sighted on one side, so others may witness us persisting without awareness of significant objects, occurrences and imminences in our immediate proximity (such as being lampooned while dancing). This matter of witnessing another’s oblivion to some aspect of their environment is likely the basis of slapstick comedy.
Bergson further notes that we are not likely to find things funny which do not tie in with human intentionality, for example, landscapes (except insofar as we interpret human resemblance into them, such as pointing out a rock formation that resembles uncle Jerry in his favorite lounge chair), or the activities of animals we are not anthropomorphizing. (A cat returning to the house to offer its human a dead bird is not funny directly, but might be if interpreted as a clubfooted attempt to emulate the human custom of providing gifts that are useful to and/or are likely to be appreciated by their intended recipients).
Similarly, adults are often tickled by children who, in their play, emulate adult activities, such as an earnest negotiation between children with pebbles and sea shells in emulation of ‘adult’ commerce. The substitution of something (arguably) without value into a familiar ritual for exchanging things of value may either trigger the sense that such children’s play-commerce is a silly mechanization of real commerce, or that real commerce is no less silly and mechanized as children’s play.
I think Bergson is almost all the way there. But something seems to be missing. I’m on board with the idea that the human foible of limited awareness/ control plays a role, and reminders of mechanization are often funny, but not always – for medical dysfunctions are likewise a mechanistic betrayal of our intentions, but they are certainly no laughing matter. Bergson’s explanation is a clue, but I don’t think it’s the complete answer. I think it goes deeper.
I’m thinking that humor is not limited to what is merely funny – and that for the interpretation of a given situation, the shift from a neutral awareness to a humorous awareness may be either mirthful or tragic. Sometimes we do laugh in tragic conditions – it may be marginalized as ‘nervous laughter’, but I think the most insight bearing organization of these categories acknowledges the similarity between them, and mutually integrates them under the rubric, ‘humor’.
The ultimate mechanization to which Bergson makes reference may take place within our very cognition (not merely a property of our interpretations of things observed). We direct our interpretations through a system of dispositional-orientation filters, e.g., emotional, symbolic, social, practical, play, nostalgic, political, poetic, sexual, spiritual, moral, etc. While emphasizing interpretation under the influence of any of these orientation-filters, i.e., perspectives, we are at least partially de-emphasizing (marginalizing) other perspectives.
As such, built into this system of dispositional filtering is the inevitability of limited awareness. In other words, each of us at all times may be exposed from the blind spot(s) in our perspective, not unlike the dancer being caricatured from behind.
Are we ridiculous in the forest whether or not there is anyone there to laugh at us? Certainly yes, for as long as there is a blind spot in our perspective, an automated rigidity in our selection of perspective is betrayed, whether tragically or comically.
But a logical limit exists in the idea that if humor is found in recognizing the limitations of a perspective from the standpoint of its blind spot, then humor would not be found in the mind’s ‘raw-feed’ of uninterpreted sensation, nor in observing a mind that does not select perspectives, but rather is perspective-transcended. In other words, humorous perspective requires partial blockage of perception, so I’m supposing that where mind activity occurs without perspective (either non-cognitive experience or ‘no mind’ super-cognition), comedy necessarily hits a wall (after someone in front of the wall ducks first, of course).
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