What Is Comical about What Is Comic? (article)

Humor is ubiquitous, omnipresent, and universal; yet a singular sustaining consensual definition remains elusive. For one individual, a laughing matter might consist of mocking someone in power. For another, it might be the bittersweet pleasure in watching a child ride a bicycle for the first time and safely, but inevitably, falling. The funny thing is, it is so basic, so simple, yet it is so indefinable.

There are countless types of humor: non-verbal includes sight gags, slapstick, mime, cartoons, comic strips, gestures, grimaces, and the like, while verbal includes puns, satire, lampoons, irony, doggerel, ethnic, burlesque, stand-up, put-down, hanging (as in gallows), schadenfreude, and so on.

Freud (1905) considered laughter to be stimulated by wit

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that occurs with an attempt to achieve psychic energic savings, as a result of a momentary lifting of inhibitions that allow infantile forms of pleasure to come to the fore and be expressed in a manner that is acceptable to both the sense of self (ego) and the inhibitory censor (superego). Later on, Freud (1927) expanded his original interpretation, now characterizing humor as a spiteful triumph of narcissism and the pleasure principle over the miseries of life. In this regard, it is historically noteworthy that Freud was fighting cancer at this time, which may account for some of his pessimistic mood.

Humor flies in the face of reasoning, logic, and reality, sometimes even to the point of being death-defiant. There is an omnipotent feeling in heartily laughing at a joke and even in successfully telling one. A good laugh bestows on one the illusion of invulnerability for a brief moment. Frequently, humor involves transgressions, but ones for which we somehow make allowances.

Others have commented about how humor develops. Ernst Kris (1938) agreed with Freud. He said that it was the speed of tension relief resulting from the laughter, which further highlighted Freud’s economic theory. He stated that “…the element of suddenness in this economic process is responsible for the nature of comic pleasure” (p. 89). He went on to suggest that this generally occurs in association with past discord and ensuing tension over upsetting material, images, feelings, or unsettling thoughts with which the ego has been beset, writing, “…most comic phenomena seem to be bound up with past conflicts of the ego, that they feel help it to repeat its victory and in doing so once more to overcome half assimilated fear” (p. 89).

Over countless generations, humor has served a multitude of purposes. As indicated above, self-effacing humor can be highly adaptive. According to Samuel Juni and Bernard Katz (J. General Psychology, 2010, Vol. 128 No. 2: pp. 119-142), self-effacing humor reflects processes of psychological defense and acculturation, rather than the exemplification of masochism. They conceptualized “identification with the aggressor” as a transitional mechanism that permits a minority group to gain entry into the society-at-large. They regarded it as a form of self-empowerment. Splitting and reframing are regarded as essential processes as well. They added,

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“Luring the aggressor into a situation that is then used against him is construed as the kamikaze maneuver and conceptualized as an ambush technique in which the role of self-effacement facilitates aggression” (p. 119).

On top of that, humor can literally serve as an instrument of survival. In fact, a number of people have studied this phenomenon: Berk and Tan (1989) have referred to the part played by the eustress [the good stress] of mirthful laughter in modifying natural killer cell activity of the body; Dillon, Minchoff, and Baker (1985) described how humor helped foster a positive emotional state that, in turn, enhanced the body’s immune system; and Cousins (1979) observed first-hand the role that humor played in helping his body fight off what had been diagnosed as terminal cancer.

However, after all of our scientific endeavors to analyze the ontogenesis of laughter and smiling and our attempts to understand the early origins and developmental lines of humor, we are still left with a question the likes of which Sherlock Holmes and Watson would find equally challenging to answer, yet simultaneously stimulating: Just what is it that is comical about what is comic?

When it comes to humor—as with all things that emanate from the primary process workings of the unconscious—logic, reasoning, and rational thinking are not governed by, and thus do not operate in accordance with, the same rules as Euclidian Geometry, Newtonian or Einsteinian physics, or other natural sciences. Thus, rational judgment must often be suspended, or, at times, completely discarded. The workings of humor are not linear. They are an idiosyncratic amalgamation and synthesis of concrete thinking, syncretisms, idiosyncrasies, ideational combinations, and permutations with vast implications, all of which come together in a spontaneous combustion that is based upon, and heralded by, the preliminary hard work of prolonged and detailed observation. Nothing is irrelevant when the comic observes the human condition, so any reference to such conditions may be more than a tad bit irreverent.

The humorist tries to observe and question everything that s/ he is surrounded by, every heretofore sanctified credo that is regarded as firm and that is rooted into our collective consciousness, every given, every stereotypical action we do, and every belief that

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we have about ourselves or others—all of which are subject to the critical eyes, ears, and words of the comic, who feeds on and is fueled by noting and commenting on those of which other people are oblivious. In some ways, this represents acts of assertion, based on a certain degree of courage, in the interest of achieving freedom. Certainly, in the process of getting as personal as possible, a measure of self-discovery may also be attained along the way.

For some, being comical is not something you do; it is more of something you are. For many comics, getting the laugh— although exquisitely crucial—may be of lesser import than expressing and releasing one’s own tension in a fashion that is efficient, thus avoiding unnecessary expenditures of physical or emotional energy, much as Freud had said. In short, humor can be something that fills up the self, rather than depletes it.

Comics, by their very nature, are law-breakers. At every imaginable twist and turn, they break the laws of psychic gravity. They play with words and phrases and meanings and twist and turn them around on their ears. If there were such a thing as a Language Arts Police Department, comics would certainly be cited for violating the rules of grammar, for reckless endangerment, and for purveying profound exaggerations or outright prevarications.

The late George Carlin, who was notorious for carefully selecting and exploiting words to illustrate and take exception to some of society’s more inane conventions and shibboleths, once said that he enjoyed playing with people’s danger zones. In 1972, in one of his most celebrated social commentaries, Carlin talked about the “seven dirty words that you can never say on television.”

As a result of his skit, as well as Lenny Bruce’s body of work before him (involving eight forbidden words), the Supreme Court ruled (5 to 4) that the federal government could regulate speech on broadcast radio and television. But true to the unwritten comedic code, Carlin wrestled with this thorny issue and eventually was able to mockingly defy this ruling. He insightfully pointed out that context affects meaning, perhaps more than the words themselves. A questionable word can be uttered under one set of circumstances, as opposed to other times when it would be considered taboo, simply because of different contexts. Carlin pointed out that

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it would be acceptable to say on television that I pricked my finger, but that it would be impermissible to say I fingered my pr…

Then there is Hugh Gallagher, who literally assaulted our senses and smashed our sensibilities into smithereens about what constitutes good taste and what turns good taste into something distasteful. A close analysis of his skits reveals a much more sensitive, nuanced, delicate balance between what is esthetically respected as “good taste” and what is disdained as “bad taste” than what most of us would ever have suspected were it not for Gallagher’s brash, in-your-face comeuppances, which suggest that the whole issue is much more complex than what might otherwise hit you in the face.

In the final psychohistorical analysis, what can we definitively say about what tickles our funny bone, makes us laugh so hard we could cry, wet ourselves, split our sides, get choked up, or experience any one of a number of other visceral reactions? Ultimately, humor and tension reduction are intimately involved with each other, with the former depending upon and being the antidote for the latter, but the latter not requiring the former for its existence.

Humorists attempt to reduce the tension that each of us feels. If there is insufficient tension in the room, the journeyman humorist will create some and then proceed to cut it down to size. Victor Borge was an expert at this.

As a child I used to listen attentively to this man, who was elegantly dressed in a tux and tails, who expressed himself so precisely, and who was the epitome of grace as he prepared to sit down at his grand piano. He would always introduce the melody that he was about to play by providing important information about the piece. Then he would begin to play, and, each time, just as I was beginning to become enraptured by his magnificent playing, he would go off on some sort of tangent. No, it was not the beginning of adult attention disorder with hyperactivity. Although it created a similar reaction in me of tension, I remember screaming in my mind, “Just finish it already. I want to hear the rest of the music!” This is similar to Jimmy Durante’s famous dramatic interjection, “Stop da music!” Of course, in both cases, when the comic felt that the time was exactly right, the interruption was followed by an im-

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peccable delivery of what often turned out to be a hilarious punch line. It was more obvious to me with Jimmy Durante that the music was not the ultimate goal, simply because he did not possess a typical crooner’s mellifluous voice. It was less clear that this was also the case with Victor Borge, who was an accomplished pianist. Both of them were successful in attaining what they set out to accomplish, namely to make the audience uptight and then to use their skill to relieve the discomfort that they, themselves, induced in us.

So it goes. Comics are the puppet masters who, with the audience’s permission, manipulate the tension of our mirth strings and co-create a choreography of spontaneous rhythmic dance, which moves along a continuum from tender amusement, to delight, to surprise, to shock, to mildly ironic, to grim sardonic, which finally culminates in a triumphant state of laughter.

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