Notes on What's So Damn Funny
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Notes on What’s So Damn Funny Do we need a code for humor? By Joseph Epstein he motives for humor are as little more than a form of hidden aggression to those manifold as those for murder. that hold humor is a cure for all sorts of illnesses. Giv- Among them are the raucous phys- en the range of motives for humor, its varying kinds ical misfortunes of others (slap- and occasions and forms, can it be usefully studied and stick), grotesque incongruities codified in the way of other phenomena? (between reality and appearance), ethnic abuse (Polish, irish, anti- #1 semitic, and other), subtlety elegantly deployed (through T irony and understatement), release of inhibi- hether it can or not, it already is, in univer- tion (blue jokes), witnessing the mighty fallen (the re- W sities, in scholarly journals, at comedy clubs, vered made to look ridiculous). Laughter itself comes at improv studios, and elsewhere. the University of in multiple forms: smiles, sniggers, grins, giggles, belly southern California provides students a “concentra- laughs, falling-off-the-couch laughs, and what mel tion” in humor. the University of Colorado has a humor Brooks once called heart-attack laughter. the realm research Laboratory. the international society for of jokes encompasses the entire world in its subject humor studies publishes Humor: The International matter and appears in such varying forms as puns, Journal of Humor. one-liners, epigrams, witty ripostes, practical jokes, comic commercials, and elaborate narratives requir- #1 ing foreign, often Jewish-greenhorn, accents. various, often contradictory theories about hu- enri Bergson is perhaps the greatest name to mor have been devised—from the notion that humor is Hwrite a full treatise on the subject, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, a work that Joseph Epstein, a longtime contributor to Com- brings to mind the comedian Chris rock’s remark mentary, is the author of A Literary education and after seeing the movie The Temptation of Christ: “not other essays (Axios Press). many laughs.” Freud’s Jokes and Their Relation to the Commentary 57 Epstein.indd 57 8/12/14 4:08 PM Unconscious (1905) contains a few decent jokes, but it, of the New Yorker and a founding editor of the Onion too, fails to light up the subject, except perhaps for that and many other experts. they investigated one or an- minuscule portion of the population that continues to other aspect of humor in sweden, Denmark, Africa, believe in the doctrines of the man vladimir nabokov Japan, and the Palestinian territories; and talked with never failed to call “the viennese Quack.” stand-up comics and humor theorists in new york, Los Angeles, montreal, and elsewhere. many studies are #1 cited (some are called “compelling”) and the word sci- ence often comes into play when social science, a much hree PeoPLe, it has been said, are required less stringent activity, is meant. All of which leads into Tfor the successful consummation of a joke: one a poor joke of my own creation: how many social sci- person to tell it, another to laugh at it, and a third not entists does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: Dif- to get it. if you have to explain it, as everyone knows, ficult to say. they’ll first need a grant to do a study of it isn’t funny. the problem. Without spontaneity—even well-rehearsed spon- taneity—humor is sadly crippled. i once told a joke #1 through a translator to the soviet dissident hero Andrei sinyavsky. the translator had come up to me at a party CGraw’s studies have led him to endorse to say mr. sinyavsky had heard i knew lots of jokes. Msomething called the benign-violation theory, he, sinyavsky, loved jokes, and would be pleased if i which holds that “humor only occurs when something would tell him one. i proceeded to do so. the translator seems wrong, unsettling, or threatening (i.e., a viola- translated me line for line. At the punchline, sinyavsky tion), but simultaneously seems okay, acceptable, or smiled faintly, and told the translator, in russian, “very safe (i.e., benign.)” the form this takes in most jokes nice.” But it wasn’t, really. All rhythm was lost, literally, and comic situations is to begin with the threat of a in translation, and by the time i came to the joke’s end i violation of some sort and save the uneasiness this myself was slightly bored by it. causes by its turning benign at its end. the theory does work with a great many jokes. in #1 1962 i heard Lenny Bruce, a man not overly concerned with seeming benign, tell a joke whose premise was nALyzinG hUmor,” e.B. White wrote, “is like that sophie tucker, still alive at 75 and then thought ‘ A dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and one of the great ladies of show business, was a nym- the frog dies.” this sentence appears toward the end phomaniac requiring the services of an unending sup- of Peter mcGraw and Joel Warner’s The Humor Code: ply of Puerto rican busboys working in the nightclubs A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny.* inter- in which she performed. Bruce then staged a dialogue esting they would include it, since their book is about between mr. rosenberg, the (naturally) Jewish owner little else than the dissection of humor to learn how it of such a nightclub, attempting to persuade manuel, works, when it is effective, and what are its uses. the one of his busboys, to attend to miss tucker in her authors propose to answer such questions, among room. in a heavy hispanic accent, manuel protests vig- others, as: “Do comics need to come from screwed-up orously, citing miss tucker’s age, her looks, the outra- childhoods? What’s the secret to winning the New geous impropriety of the whole business. rosenberg Yorker cartoon caption contest? Why does being funny offers him 50 dollars. manuel claims it’s impossible, he make you more attractive? Who’s got a bigger funny cannot do it. rosenberg assures him it will all be over bone—men or women, Democrats or republicans?” in 10 minutes. this back and forth conversation con- they do answer them, but for the most part in the tinues until, finally,m anuel says, “i don’t care what you largely unsatisfactory manner of social science—with, say, mr. rosenberg, i cannot, i cannot, i will not [brief that is, poll results, surveys, and focus-group findings. pause here] schtup her.” mcGraw, the director of the humor research Lab the joke turns out not to be about sophie tuck- at the University of Colorado, supplied the theoretical er’s putative nymphomania but about manuel’s use of expertise for the book. the notion of a humor research the word schtup, which picks up on the point that the Lab is itself amusing. one imagines a large, well-lit minority employees of Jewish bosses often acquire odd room with mice and monkeys falling over with laughter bits of yiddish. while watching videos of rodney Dangerfield. Another such joke has a man and woman necking much legwork went into the making of The Hu- mor Code. the authors interviewed the cartoon editor * simon & schuster, 256 pp. 58 Notes on What’s So Damn Funny : September 2014 Epstein.indd 58 8/12/14 4:08 PM passionately on their banquette in a French restaurant, when suddenly the woman slides under the table. (you #1 should be a bit nervous at this point.) A moment or two later the waiter approaches the table and informs the ithoUt WishinG to put the various humor man that his wife is missing, to which he replies: “no, W labs, institutes, journals, societies, and inde- she’s not. she just walked in the door.” relief follows; it’s pendent humor gurus out of business, thus increasing not a fellatio joke with a high yuck quotient. unemployment in America, why, one wonders, would in both jokes, benignity wins out over violation. anyone need to have an all-purpose explanation of But not always, however. not even all that often, actu- how humor works anyhow? the authors of The Humor ally. the benign-violation theory has its limits. Code try to understand a laughing epidemic that took place in a high school in tanzania, but are unable to #1 discover what, exactly, brought it about. they go to Denmark to learn about the extreme muslim reaction or exAmPLe: A woman comes to her physician to to the book of cartoons mocking mohammed, but F announce that her husband, a Christian scientist, conclude very little. they fly down to the Amazon in has been behaving strangely of late, but, owing to his clown costumes, joining Patch Adams and his troop of religion, refuses to see a doctor. the physician suggests clowns, in the hope of cheering up the lives of wretch- she give him a list of her husband’s symptoms. After she edly poor south American children, and the main re- does so, he says that there are two distinct possibilities sult appears to have been that it allowed co-author Joel here: her husband has either AiDs or Alzheimer’s. When Warner to lose many of his inhibitions while playing a the woman asks what is she to do, the physician offers clown. they visit the Palestinian territories and write a simple solution. “Drive your husband 30 miles out of about humor among the Palestinians, but they come town and drop him off.