Funny Bone of Contention
Heard any good jokes lately? How about this one:
Wife: Our new neighbor always kisses his wife when he goes to work. Why don’t you do that?
Husband: How can I? I don’t even know her.
I’m guessing some of you may have found this funny. If you were put off or offended by it, then perhaps you’ll prefer this one:
Q: What do you call an intelligent, good looking, sensitive man?
A: A rumor.
How’s that for a touch of humor without politically prudent borders or boundaries—as it should be in my estimation—or at least as it once was in my memory. Humor is both highly subjective and deeply personal. It invariably links us to specific times and places in history and within social and cultural identities that can be either broad or narrow. What we laugh at says a lot about our values and the company we choose to keep, or avoid. Laughter, like music, may be one of our most unique and telling human traits, an adaptation that has enhanced our survival and enriched our living.
I’d wager that people have been laughing since our first hirsute ancestor stubbed his toe on a rock, evoking a guffaw from one of his cave-dwelling witnesses. And who can forget the geriatric Bedouin named Sarah of biblical lore, chortling with enough energy to shake the tent when she overheard passing angels tell her aged husband, Abraham, that she would soon give birth. This was so funny that they named this child Isaac, which etymologically comes from the Hebrew verb “to laugh.” Now that’s what I call punishment!
Why do some things make us laugh, and others leave us unmoved, or even offended? Is it mostly a family thing, learned by adopting what our parents, siblings, and crazy uncles or cousins found funny? Or is humor reflective of a larger, more universal way we perceive what is happening all around us? Steve Martin, whose credentials for comedy are unassailable, once made this observation: "Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.” While I might not put it in terms of such extremity, I have long thought that humor springs from those moments when something unexpected interrupts or jars our normal grasp of the orderliness, sensibility, or propriety of everyday life. Perhaps that is what will strike you as amusing in the satiric caption to this famous painting:
Washington’s greatest wartime dilemma: row versus wade*
Life’s accidental incongruities have a way of making us laugh, even if we must quickly recover and offer apology for losing our composure. That may be why slapstick comedy, with its unbelievable sight gags and farcical sound effects keeps audiences entertained, whether delivered by Stan and Laurel, Moe, Larry, Curly and Shemp—especially Curly—or by a boy named Kevin brutalizing two bumbling assailants during several Manhattan Christmases. It may also explain the enduring appeal of mistaken identity and confused gender recognition that was the staple of Shakespearean comedies and has popularized in-drag characterizations from Milton Berle to RuPaul, from Curtis and Lemon fooling Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot, to the workplace ruse of Hanks and Scolari in Bosom Buddies. By the way, who or what was Julia Sweeny’s Pat on SNL, anyway?
The juxtaposition of what we expect and what we actually encounter that seems out of place triggers our sense of funny, even in the least humorous of circumstances. How else could a Nazi POW camp serve as backdrop to Hogan’s Heroes for six prime-time years. Or how could a somber funeral service for Chuckles the Clown become so hilarious watching Mary Tyler Moore and her uncontrollable giggling during his eulogy? Chaos in the midst of order; silliness in a sea of staid realism—it doesn’t get much funnier than that!
Laughter has been called an essential medicine for our souls, and there is much scientific data to support that assumption. Whenever we laugh, chemicals are released in our bodies that enhance our mood, lighten our anxieties, make us feel more relaxed, or just give us a pleasurable sensation. Serotonin, oxytocin, dopamine, and endorphins get mixed into a chemical cocktail that usually puts us in a better humor (no pun intended) while strengthening those internal humors so necessary for a healthy immune system. Children know what this feels like more than do grownups, as they tend to laugh more readily than their elders. Not surprisingly, their stress levels are usually far lower than older folks, saddled as most of us are with adult preoccupations and complex responsibilities—and far less prone to laughing!
Pianist-humorist Victor Borge once said that “humor is the closest distance between people.” The virtuoso Dane knew of what he spoke, making people laugh over a six-decade career, whether their tastes ran from high-brow music to bawdy, physical comedy. The converse of Borge’s insight is also quite true, however: humor can be the widest gulf between people too. What we take to be funny can create a no-man’s land between our refuges of security and the sanctuaries within which others find comfort. Only the most stalwart or foolish would ever dare to venture into this no-joke zone. Behind such battlements it is nigh on to impossible for us to discover any common ground upon which we might live, work, or laugh together.
Life in the 21st-Century, with its rapidly shifting paradigms and up-for-grabs values, is shaking many of our long-held assumptions about what is, and isn’t funny. As I consider what makes us laugh, it seems to me that humor occurs in one of three moments that all of us have experienced and, hopefully, will continue to do so: when I laugh at you, when you laugh at me, and when we laugh with each other.
When I laugh at you. I suspect our first exposures to humor came at the expense of someone else. A person slips or trips, spills or drops something, makes a funny face or produces a comical sound: what do we do? Laugh, of course. Even babies respond accordingly, long before they learn what is properly funny and what is not. Laughter is a spontaneous outburst that signals our surprise at hearing or seeing something we find incongruous to what we take for normal. Though no humiliation is intended by our laughter, embarrassment is almost always felt by those on the receiving end of our amusement. Not even our empathy for their mishap can stifle our urge to chuckle. That is why humor, in the hands of cliques and gangs, becomes such a powerful weapon to demean and ostracize. What better way to cover our insecurities than by bullying, intimidating, shaming, outing or cancelling whomever can be labeled as different, as peculiar, as an outsider.
Misery loves company. So does humor, thriving as it does in the company of those who laugh along with us. Laughter affirms our shared comedic values while bonding us into a coterie of insiders who “get it.” At the same time humor helps us distinguish ourselves from those who are the dupes and foils for our sarcasm or mockery. There are understandable reasons for our human inclination to typecast, stereotype and turn the appearances, dialects, and foibles of our “outgroups” into jokes and bigotry. For doing so reinforces our normalcy and superiority while justifying our smug assessment of their deficiency and inferiority. Religious, ethnic, racial, national and political differences become easy marks for mimicry, distortion, and disparagement. I’m not sure what is worse about this trait with which all of us are infected to some degree: the pain it inflicts on our targets or the toll it exacts on those of us who are its perpetrators.
How many _____________ does it take to ________? (Feel free to fill in the blanks with your favorite out-group to ridicule.)
When you laugh at me. This seems the birthplace for many of our comedians. Perhaps they began as class clowns wresting their peers’ attention to garner a laugh or sabotage their teacher’s efforts at class control. Since negative attention is preferable to none at all, getting people to laugh at us by striking a ridiculous pose, saying outlandish things or making sounds—yes, humans of every age tend to laugh at strange sounds—succeeds more often than it falls flat. Oh there are times when comedy can backfire and generate scorn or punishment as its reward. But it never fails to get others to notice the one trying to be funny. That may, in fact, be its ultimate satisfaction.
The entertainment industry has a long and memorable history of those who have made a living trying to make people laugh at them. Jerry Lewis, Jonathan Winters, Richard Pryor, Robin Williams, Phyllis Diller, George Carlin, Joan Rivers, Rodney Dangerfield, Sarah Silverman, Jim Gaffigan—to name just a few—all learned early in life about both the cost and reward of being the butt or punch line of a joke or comedic sketch. Some lived to reap the benefits of their self-effacing talent, others were broken by it. I can’t help but think that there is a measure of masochistic payoff that comes whenever any of us, or any group that seems to bring derision upon itself, settles for attention purchased at the price of humiliation and abasement. Professionals may be able to pull it off while retaining their self-respect. Others may just have to settle for any attention they can get, however demeaning.
I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous. Everyone hasn’t met me yet. – Rodney Dangerfield
When we laugh with each other. The bottom line is that we not only like to laugh. We need to laugh, especially when circumstances give us no other healthy way to deal with life’s ambiguities, incongruities, and absurdities. Behind most humor lay a tongue-in-cheek sarcasm that requires an insiders’ acceptance of the charade, that wink of the eye assurance that we get the jest, freeing us to laugh at ourselves and anyone else who is also “in on it.” Humor can have its most inspirational impact when it is shared with others in a way that is neither offensive nor hurtful to them or us. It can break the ice whenever we find ourselves in an awkward moment when we are at a loss for words or when a long-estranged relationship stands in need of reconciliation. Laughter breathes life into most parties, and becomes one of life’s most enduring ties that bind us in affection to friends over the course of a lifetime.
Philosopher William James once wrote, “Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.” Not everyone dances smoothly or in synch with a partner, however. Toes can be stepped on and bodies can throw each other off balance when one tries to lead and the other resists following. Likewise humor can be hurtful and abusive, violating those safe spaces where we like to stand, let alone dance. There seems to be an invisible line each of us draws demarking where good taste gives way to crudity, where good-natured jesting turns into a personal affront. Our closest friends usually know and respect this line; others may not be quite so sure.
Friends hide a smile and help you up when you fall. Best friends laugh so hard that they fall also.
My own recollections of America as it once was, of the humor that can still be enjoyed on old-time radio broadcasts, sitcoms and variety shows from the so-called Golden Age of television, reveal that we once shared a broader consensus about what was funny. I can only imagine how unbelievable these broadcasts must appear to those who have grown up in our country since the 1980s. Today’s cultural climate, overflowing as it is with sensitivities and insecurities that many choose to wear on their sleeves, seems to foster a national mood of accusation and censorship rather than one of good-natured teasing and fun-poking levity.
While we have not lost the ability to laugh at others, and seem to go at it with sadistic glee at times, we are far less willing to have that laughter turned on ourselves. Even more concerning to me is our aversion to venturing onto any common ground where we might actually laugh with, and alongside those who don’t mirror all of our values or political opinions. It’s as if we have cut ourselves off from two of the three places where humor normally abides. And to the degree that we have done this, the degree to which we have cloistered or barricaded ourselves behind our protective walls, we rob ourselves of so much of humor’s therapeutic vitality: our ability to laugh at ourselves while laughing with those secure enough to do the same.
I’m not sure how best to bring an essay on the topic of humor to an appropriate close. With a bow to the thunder of applause from an audience neither seen nor heard? How about a pie in the face? Perhaps the best exit is the one that jesters relied on in entertaining royals in medieval castles and vaudevillians employed in breaking up their audiences on American stages—leave ‘em laughing…
*Credit to my friend John Johnson, long-time history teacher from Kingston, PA, who shared this visual quip with his classes studying Colonial America.
The full version of this essay can be read in the April edition of Accent West magazine at: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=cm#search/accent/FMfcgzGmvfgJmrqPkDTPQRgDPQTrMsvZ