What's So Funny?
Nothing kills a joke faster than explaining it. But why something is funny is still a fascinating question. As someone who's sold jokes, it's actually not something you think about much. You just ask if something works, not why. But then, there's always been a divide between those who do things and those who think about doing those things.
There's a book out that sounds like fun (in an academic way--though who knows, it may include some decent gags): Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind by Matthew Hurley, Daniel Dennett, and Reginald Adams Jr. As the title implies, they're looking at jokes to decide how the mind works. I don't know how technical they'll get, but I think we should try a biological approach.
I've read a number of essays on how humor works, and most seem wrong, or at least incomplete. Famous theories include laughs come when the organic acts like the mechanical, or when we're given a sudden feeling of superiority, or when we see cruelty that doesn't threaten us. The theory that I think comes closest is often traced back to Kant--that a joke comes about when some sort of incongruity is resolved. But it still has to be the right sort of incongruity and resolution or you don't get a laugh. (And what explains puns? Catch phrases? Pratfalls? Also, how do you account for individual preferences, and regional variation?)
The authors of this book try to explain humor as an evolutionary adaptation. As the description puts it:
Mother Nature—aka natural selection—cannot just order the brain to find and fix all our time-pressured mis-leaps and near-misses. She has to bribe the brain with pleasure. So we find them funny. This wired-in source of pleasure has been tickled relentlessly by humorists over the centuries, and we have become addicted to the endogenous mind candy that is humor.
Not implausible. I'll have to read further to see how they back it up.
It's interesting that, throughout the ages (but never more than in our decadent times), we've had people whose job was literally to make us laugh. If the book is right, they're taking advantage of preferences in our naturally selected brains. But then, restaurants take advantage of our biological needs, so is it that weird?
posted by LAGuy @ 12:19 AM
4 Comments:
There is "place and time" aspect to humor that I don't completely understand either. Milton Berle and Sid Caesar were very popular in the early days of TV but in snippets I tend to find them, in the words of Bea Arthur's Maude "funny like a migraine" (rewatching her shows I have the same opinion of her though I think I found them funny when I was young).
Is there a sense of shared experience/herd instinct that drives it too? i.e. I think its easier to laugh when everyone is (or you imagine everyone is) than when the crowd is somber and quiet. I'm not quite sure whats going on when you are alone- maybe you are imagining subconsciously that others think (or would think) something is funny. Not sure what that adds but I've often thought the experience of humor is related to how others are experiencing it.
Now if I could get a grant to study that ...
I still find Sid Caesar funny, Milton Berle less so. If I had to list my favorite funny movies, the vast majority would come from the first half of the twentieth century. Many of my favorite comic plays are over a century old.
But it's true, there are certain expectations regarding comedy that can make it of the times. Part of it is references to lifestyles of the day which are casually understood by the audience. Part of it is fashions in comedy that the audience in general understands.
Also, I agree, I think there is something about shared experience--seeing something with others does can change how you look at it.
Nevertheless, whether or not the book's theory makes sense, it figures that there's a biological mechanism underlying how we appreciate humor, just as what food people like can change in different cultures and eras, but we all have to eat.
Comedy, like music, goes through different fashions.
My theory is that comedy is perceived whenever there is a perceived mismatch with the environment, e.g. falling in a hole or on the steps. (I never fail to laugh at Home Alone.) That sounds like an incongruity, although I'm not sure about the resolution part.
And I could see my definition playing an evolutionary role. Certainly, understanding when the environment is mismatched is likely to be an evolutionary, or anyway existential good.
Code word, "prefer." What is that? Google Latin?
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