So we laugh
gumboy kept me occupied at work with Humor and the Whedonverse, an essay on Comic Theory. Since the post essay discussion really only involved him and me, I'm pimping his essay before I go on to write my own. We differ on a lot of points, and I'd love to know who you agree with more.
It should be noted that I grew up on Dave Barry, Douglas Adams, and the Smothers Brothers. This has possibly affected my view on the topic of "why something is funny" in a big way.
So We Laugh: The Rules of Comedy
When it comes to writing, there's really only two things that I seem to have any real skill at: humor, and creepy. I may, at some point, sit down and attempt to work out the latter (I most certainly have my ideas about it), but for now, I'll focus on the former.
It goes almost without saying that humor is subjective. What one person thinks is hilariously funny, might leave another person feeling cold, or worse, offended. In light of that fact, can we say that there are any hard, fast rules about what makes something funny?
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say, yes, there are.
Or rather, I'm going to say that there are elements which are required to make something funny, but don't necessarily always do so.
Now, there are scholars out there with a lot more time on their hands to do the heavy analysis than I have, so I'm going to borrow from one of those (and from gumboy, in part because it was his essay that inspired this one, and in part because, well, I'm lazy), and start off this little escapade by taking a look at a list of the supposed requirements of humor.
I should start out by saying that I agree with a lot more of this than gumboy does.
1. It must appeal to the intellect rather than the emotions
On the one hand, an automatic response to this would be that it's obviously wrong. Laughter is our physical expression of an emotional state of being amused, right? Well, yes. That's true.
However, in order to be amused by something, we must first not be a) angered, b) depressed, or c) disgusted by it. And a lot of humor is based on situations that would ordinarily anger, depress, or disgust us (bodily functions, for example). Furthermore, if something makes us feel all shmoopie and gooshy inside, we're not all that likely to start up a good belly-laugh. Too much empathy for the subject kills the humor. We have to look at it more objectively, and perhaps, intellectually.
Take, for instance, one of the climactic moments of the movie Clerks, when Dante's sometimes-girlfriend has sex with the corpse of an old man in the QuickStop restrooms. If we allow ourselves to look at this scene empathetically, we're hit by a whole lot of negative emotions. When we look at it without attaching our feelings to it, it's pretty damned funny.
2. It must be mechanical
False.
gumboy already made some excellent points on this in his essay, Humor and the Whedonverse, so I won't go any further on it.
3. It must be inherently human, with the capability of reminding us of humanity
True.
"But," you say, "cats are funny!" (or dogs, or snakes, or bats, or whathaveyou). Well, they can be funny, but when they are, it's because they're anthropomorphic. In my own story, The Miraculous Love Life of Pigwidgeon, the main character is an owl, and therefore not human. However, in giving him the position of "narrator" in the story, I've given him a human-type voice.
Okay, but then why is Pigwidgeon funny when we see him in Harry Potter?
Because he's a very small bird that thinks he's a much larger bird. Ego is a typically human concept, and can be very funny when it's erroneous. Pigwidgeon is also being observed from a human point of view (Harry's), and the description of Pig's erratic flight and behavior is being filtered through that human consciousness. Humanity has to enter into it, even if it's meta.
4. There must be a set of established societal norms with which the observer is familiar, either through everyday life or through the author providing it in expository material, or both.
True. Which can lead us directly to
5. The situation and its component parts (the actions performed and the dialogue spoken) must be inconsistent or unsuitable to the surrounding or associations (i.e., the societal norms).
True. This, I think, is the essence of humor, and you can most certainly disagree with me, but I'll attempt to explain why.
Humor is all about running against expectations. In Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, for example, we don't expect an alien race's biggest, most lethal and painful weapon to be poetry. In the Cartoon Network's Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, we don't expect the great, hulking, horned, skull-bearing Eduardo to be a sweet-tempered scaredy-cat. In Shrek, we don't expect the blue bird to explode, and then we certainly don't expect Fiona to fry the dead bird's eggs for breakfast.
This simple rule, of defying expectations, is perhaps the most flexible one in the entire list. It can be bent into any shape or variation that pleases you, and still have humor potential. Andy Kaufman, of the modern comics, had perhaps the best understanding of this. In one sketch, he performed the theme to Mighty Mouse, but rather than sing it himself, or even lipsynch the entire theme, he only ever actually moved on the line "Here I come to save the day!" It's one of his most famous bits. In another sketch, my personal favorite, he read A Tale of Two Cities, in complete earnest. When the audience began to laugh at it, he grew angry, and started telling them off for it. Of course, they simply laughed harder. The audience had come to watch with an expectation of something entertaining-- something funny. The very fact that Kaufman wasn't being funny became funny. The audience expected him to do something bizarre, and he didn't. By defying that expectation, he made us laugh.
6. It must be perceived by the observer as harmless or painless to the participants.
True.
Well. Mostly.
There's a principle, and I call it a "principle" and not a "rule" for a reason, to humor that if we honestly think that the person has been seriously and irrevocably injured, we won't laugh.
When Wile E. Coyote walks off a cliff, falls hundreds of feet, and squashes flat into the ground in a roadrunner cartoon, we know that he will get up, pump himself back up with a bicycle pump or shake himself back into shape, and go off to chase the roadrunner all over again. If we thought the coyote would die, or spend a significant amount of time in the hospital and then in physical therapy because of falling off the cliff, we might be more hesitant to laugh about it.
It's here that we encounter a very fine line, between humor and pity. This line is perpetually in motion, and in different places for different people, but it's there. If we cross that line, if the situation is just too embarrassing, or the physical pain is too great, then we stop laughing.
The interesting thing about media is that it naturally pushes that line a little bit further. When we watch a character which we know is fictional get injured in a particular way, we are more likely to laugh than if it is someone we know personally, or are seeing in person.
But I still have to go with "mostly" on this. After all, if death can be funny, then this can't be a strict rule.
There's another concept that I'd like to discuss here, while we're on the topic of physical pain, death, and humor, and that's something that I like to call the "Dumb Animal Factor". This also links back to rule number 3, where the subject of the humor must be in some way human. To explain Dumb Animal Factor, I'll use an example. This happens to be the first moment when I realized that Dumb Animal Factor exists.
In the movie Jurassic Park 2 (yes, I know, the movie itself sucks, but it does demonstrate my point), countless humans get killed, all over the place, in a variety of manners, and the audience doesn't really react, except when the death is played up for a laugh. Yet when the merest allusion to a golden retriever getting eaten by a Tyrannosaurus Rex is made, the entire audience erupts into a chorus of "ohhhhhhh". Why do we get that sympathetic reaction from an animal possibly dying, but not from the confirmed deaths of members of our own species?
Because human beings are horrible people. We lie, we cheat, we purposefully hurt each other, and odds are, the people who died on screen in someway deserved it. They were generally aware of their own mortality, they usually are partially responsible for their own deaths, and they've probably done something bad to someone, somewhere along the lines, on purpose.
Animals, on the other hand, are naturally considered to be innocent, especially the cute ones. If an animal is violent or mean, it's not its fault, it's because of instinct, or mistreatment. Unless the animal is anthropomorphic, we don't consider it to have the same capability of being purposefully nasty or evil as a human being does. When innocent beings get hurt, it makes us sad.
Now, I will say that I absolutely disagree with the statement that we must have all of the above factors for something to be funny, because humor is just too subjective for that kind of statement. I am willing to postulate that one of the above factors has to be present.
This brings me to my own, hard and fast rule of comedy: Comedy is about breaking the rules. Even, or perhaps, especially the rules of comedy. One of the better known "laws" of comedy is the "law of three". If something happens more than three times, it ceases to be funny. But in Kevin Smith's cartoon series of Clerks, there's a particular running joke, in which the characters flashback to scaling the walls of Leonardo Leonardo's great, L shaped base of operations. They're leaning over, holding onto a rope and moving vertically up the screen. Then Dante straightens, says "Why are we walking like this?" and a flower pot comes flying in from the right side of the screen and smashes against the surface of the building, and the camera angle shifts to reveal that they are, in fact, walking horizontally. This appears at least once in every episode of the series. And it's funny. Why? Because they broke the law of three, and well, we didn't expect that. We don't expect them to keep breaking that law. So we laugh.
It should also be noted that I haven't set out to write an essay on anything in more than two years, so that might have been somewhat incoherent.
It should be noted that I grew up on Dave Barry, Douglas Adams, and the Smothers Brothers. This has possibly affected my view on the topic of "why something is funny" in a big way.
So We Laugh: The Rules of Comedy
When it comes to writing, there's really only two things that I seem to have any real skill at: humor, and creepy. I may, at some point, sit down and attempt to work out the latter (I most certainly have my ideas about it), but for now, I'll focus on the former.
It goes almost without saying that humor is subjective. What one person thinks is hilariously funny, might leave another person feeling cold, or worse, offended. In light of that fact, can we say that there are any hard, fast rules about what makes something funny?
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say, yes, there are.
Or rather, I'm going to say that there are elements which are required to make something funny, but don't necessarily always do so.
Now, there are scholars out there with a lot more time on their hands to do the heavy analysis than I have, so I'm going to borrow from one of those (and from gumboy, in part because it was his essay that inspired this one, and in part because, well, I'm lazy), and start off this little escapade by taking a look at a list of the supposed requirements of humor.
I should start out by saying that I agree with a lot more of this than gumboy does.
1. It must appeal to the intellect rather than the emotions
On the one hand, an automatic response to this would be that it's obviously wrong. Laughter is our physical expression of an emotional state of being amused, right? Well, yes. That's true.
However, in order to be amused by something, we must first not be a) angered, b) depressed, or c) disgusted by it. And a lot of humor is based on situations that would ordinarily anger, depress, or disgust us (bodily functions, for example). Furthermore, if something makes us feel all shmoopie and gooshy inside, we're not all that likely to start up a good belly-laugh. Too much empathy for the subject kills the humor. We have to look at it more objectively, and perhaps, intellectually.
Take, for instance, one of the climactic moments of the movie Clerks, when Dante's sometimes-girlfriend has sex with the corpse of an old man in the QuickStop restrooms. If we allow ourselves to look at this scene empathetically, we're hit by a whole lot of negative emotions. When we look at it without attaching our feelings to it, it's pretty damned funny.
2. It must be mechanical
False.
gumboy already made some excellent points on this in his essay, Humor and the Whedonverse, so I won't go any further on it.
3. It must be inherently human, with the capability of reminding us of humanity
True.
"But," you say, "cats are funny!" (or dogs, or snakes, or bats, or whathaveyou). Well, they can be funny, but when they are, it's because they're anthropomorphic. In my own story, The Miraculous Love Life of Pigwidgeon, the main character is an owl, and therefore not human. However, in giving him the position of "narrator" in the story, I've given him a human-type voice.
Okay, but then why is Pigwidgeon funny when we see him in Harry Potter?
Because he's a very small bird that thinks he's a much larger bird. Ego is a typically human concept, and can be very funny when it's erroneous. Pigwidgeon is also being observed from a human point of view (Harry's), and the description of Pig's erratic flight and behavior is being filtered through that human consciousness. Humanity has to enter into it, even if it's meta.
4. There must be a set of established societal norms with which the observer is familiar, either through everyday life or through the author providing it in expository material, or both.
True. Which can lead us directly to
5. The situation and its component parts (the actions performed and the dialogue spoken) must be inconsistent or unsuitable to the surrounding or associations (i.e., the societal norms).
True. This, I think, is the essence of humor, and you can most certainly disagree with me, but I'll attempt to explain why.
Humor is all about running against expectations. In Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, for example, we don't expect an alien race's biggest, most lethal and painful weapon to be poetry. In the Cartoon Network's Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, we don't expect the great, hulking, horned, skull-bearing Eduardo to be a sweet-tempered scaredy-cat. In Shrek, we don't expect the blue bird to explode, and then we certainly don't expect Fiona to fry the dead bird's eggs for breakfast.
This simple rule, of defying expectations, is perhaps the most flexible one in the entire list. It can be bent into any shape or variation that pleases you, and still have humor potential. Andy Kaufman, of the modern comics, had perhaps the best understanding of this. In one sketch, he performed the theme to Mighty Mouse, but rather than sing it himself, or even lipsynch the entire theme, he only ever actually moved on the line "Here I come to save the day!" It's one of his most famous bits. In another sketch, my personal favorite, he read A Tale of Two Cities, in complete earnest. When the audience began to laugh at it, he grew angry, and started telling them off for it. Of course, they simply laughed harder. The audience had come to watch with an expectation of something entertaining-- something funny. The very fact that Kaufman wasn't being funny became funny. The audience expected him to do something bizarre, and he didn't. By defying that expectation, he made us laugh.
6. It must be perceived by the observer as harmless or painless to the participants.
True.
Well. Mostly.
There's a principle, and I call it a "principle" and not a "rule" for a reason, to humor that if we honestly think that the person has been seriously and irrevocably injured, we won't laugh.
When Wile E. Coyote walks off a cliff, falls hundreds of feet, and squashes flat into the ground in a roadrunner cartoon, we know that he will get up, pump himself back up with a bicycle pump or shake himself back into shape, and go off to chase the roadrunner all over again. If we thought the coyote would die, or spend a significant amount of time in the hospital and then in physical therapy because of falling off the cliff, we might be more hesitant to laugh about it.
It's here that we encounter a very fine line, between humor and pity. This line is perpetually in motion, and in different places for different people, but it's there. If we cross that line, if the situation is just too embarrassing, or the physical pain is too great, then we stop laughing.
The interesting thing about media is that it naturally pushes that line a little bit further. When we watch a character which we know is fictional get injured in a particular way, we are more likely to laugh than if it is someone we know personally, or are seeing in person.
But I still have to go with "mostly" on this. After all, if death can be funny, then this can't be a strict rule.
There's another concept that I'd like to discuss here, while we're on the topic of physical pain, death, and humor, and that's something that I like to call the "Dumb Animal Factor". This also links back to rule number 3, where the subject of the humor must be in some way human. To explain Dumb Animal Factor, I'll use an example. This happens to be the first moment when I realized that Dumb Animal Factor exists.
In the movie Jurassic Park 2 (yes, I know, the movie itself sucks, but it does demonstrate my point), countless humans get killed, all over the place, in a variety of manners, and the audience doesn't really react, except when the death is played up for a laugh. Yet when the merest allusion to a golden retriever getting eaten by a Tyrannosaurus Rex is made, the entire audience erupts into a chorus of "ohhhhhhh". Why do we get that sympathetic reaction from an animal possibly dying, but not from the confirmed deaths of members of our own species?
Because human beings are horrible people. We lie, we cheat, we purposefully hurt each other, and odds are, the people who died on screen in someway deserved it. They were generally aware of their own mortality, they usually are partially responsible for their own deaths, and they've probably done something bad to someone, somewhere along the lines, on purpose.
Animals, on the other hand, are naturally considered to be innocent, especially the cute ones. If an animal is violent or mean, it's not its fault, it's because of instinct, or mistreatment. Unless the animal is anthropomorphic, we don't consider it to have the same capability of being purposefully nasty or evil as a human being does. When innocent beings get hurt, it makes us sad.
Now, I will say that I absolutely disagree with the statement that we must have all of the above factors for something to be funny, because humor is just too subjective for that kind of statement. I am willing to postulate that one of the above factors has to be present.
This brings me to my own, hard and fast rule of comedy: Comedy is about breaking the rules. Even, or perhaps, especially the rules of comedy. One of the better known "laws" of comedy is the "law of three". If something happens more than three times, it ceases to be funny. But in Kevin Smith's cartoon series of Clerks, there's a particular running joke, in which the characters flashback to scaling the walls of Leonardo Leonardo's great, L shaped base of operations. They're leaning over, holding onto a rope and moving vertically up the screen. Then Dante straightens, says "Why are we walking like this?" and a flower pot comes flying in from the right side of the screen and smashes against the surface of the building, and the camera angle shifts to reveal that they are, in fact, walking horizontally. This appears at least once in every episode of the series. And it's funny. Why? Because they broke the law of three, and well, we didn't expect that. We don't expect them to keep breaking that law. So we laugh.
It should also be noted that I haven't set out to write an essay on anything in more than two years, so that might have been somewhat incoherent.