If any one is absent, then the attempt at humor will fail. The first criterion, the appeal to intellect rather than emotion , is obvious when ethnic humor is used. Polish Irish, whitey, gay, fraternity, sorority, etc. To the group that is being made fun of, jokes at their expense are not funny -- they are insulting and rude.
People respond to insults and rudeness subjectively, taking umbrage, or, in more simple terms, get angry, which is an emotion. To those who have no personal interest in the joke, i. Thus, one can take the old joke, "How many Poles does it take to screw in a light bulb? Five: one to hold the bulb and four to turn the ladder. Lenny Bruce counted on the intellectual basis of comedy when, in one of his routines, he identified all the races and ethnic groups in his audience with insulting labels: "I see we have three niggers in the audience.
And over there I see two wogs , and five spics, and four kikes," etc.. As he started the routine there were gasps of incredulity and even anger: the audience couldn't believe that Bruce would be so insulting and insensitive. But as Bruce continued and the list grew longer, and it became clear that he was listing everything he could think of, the words lost their connotative, emotional meaning as insulting terms and turned into just noises.
In other words, they lost their emotive content and became an intellectual exercise in how words l ose their meanings outside of context. At this point, the audience, all of whom had been appalled and angry at exactly the same words, started laughing at them: the audience was reacting intellectually, not emotionally.
The second two criteria for comedy, that it be mechanical and inherently human , are delineated by Henri Bergson in his essay "Laughter". His theory revolves around a basic axiom, that the laughable element consists of a mechanical inelasticity, just where one would expect adaptability and flexibility. It's humorous when a person acts in a manner that is inappropriate to a stimulus or situation, as in any slapstick comedy routine.
It is funny when a chair is pulled out from under someone who is sitting down, because he doesn't adapt to the change in situation and continues to sit in a mechanical fashion. An extension of Bergson's theory is his idea that comedy is inherently human. Something is funny only insofar as it is or reminds the audience of humanity. The audience may laugh at the antics of an animal, such as chimpanzees or horses or bears, but only in direct proportion to the animal's capability of reminding the audience of something human.
Thus, animals such as chimps and orangutans are often dressed in human clothing to heighten the reminder, and horses, such as Mr. Ed and Francis the Talking Mule, can talk and think better than the men they're around. One major point that becomes apparent when one examines comedy is that it is based on incongruity: the unexpected with the expected, the unusual with the usual, the misfit in what has been established as a societal norm.
For there to be incongruity there must be something to be incongruous to. Therefore, for a comedy to work there must be an established set of cultural, human and societal norms, mores, idioms, idiosyncrasies, and terminologies against which incongruities may be found. Such norms may be internal or external. Internal norms are those which the author has provided in the script. There is no humor in heaven. We call those violations.
Our caveman ancestors lived in a world rife with physical threats. There was relief in discovering that a rustling in the darkness was a mouse rather than a saber-toothed tiger.
Today, our threats are less likely to be four-legged, but humor still serves as a way to overcome them. Some cultures avoid these types of blatant transgressions by restricting the topics that can be fodder for jokes. When they were in Japan, for example, they noticed that the comedy in clubs was as raunchy as it gets, but certain settings were entirely off-limits to joking:. But in bars and karaoke theaters, anything goes.
Likewise, p articipants found a picture of a man with a frozen beard mishap funnier than a man with his finger stuck through his own eye socket tragedy. Eventually, however, distance decreases humor by making the event seem completely benign. Last year, the comedian Stephen Fry publicly discussed his bipolar disorder and suicide attempt.
In the s, the psychologist Lewis Terman found that children rated as having a good sense of humor by their parents and teachers died younger as adults.
A longitudinal study of Finnish police officers found that the funniest among them were more likely to be obese and to smoke. And an analysis of New York Times obituaries found that performers died nearly eight years younger than members of the military did. Is there something unusually taxing about the process of dreaming up violations and deploying them to crack people up?
Last month, a group of British scientists found that comedians are more likely than regular people to exhibit psychotic traits, or the characteristics associated with people who have schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Writing in the British Journal of Psychiatry , the authors describe how they administered a questionnaire to comedians, actors, and people with non-performance jobs.
Comedians and actors alike scored higher than the non-performers across almost all of the traits. Comedians, more so than the regular folk or even actors, were more likely to have a mild distaste for humanity. In fact, few of the subjects actually experienced psychotic symptoms; they just shared some traits with people who suffer from psychotic ailments. Sometimes humor and laughter are private, a shared joke among a small group, but usually not. More often, people are very happy to share something funny because it gives them an opportunity to laugh again and feed off the humor you find in it.
Spend time with fun, playful people. Their playful point of view and laughter are contagious. Every comedian appreciates an audience.
Bring humor into conversations. This week? In your life? It can even make exercise more fun and productive. Plus, hearing others laugh, even for no apparent reason, can often trigger genuine laughter.
To add simulated laughter into your own life, search for laugh yoga or laugh therapy groups. Both you and the other person will feel good, it will draw you closer together, and who knows, it may even lead to some spontaneous laughter. An essential ingredient for developing your sense of humor is to learn not to take yourself too seriously and laugh at your own mistakes and foibles. Instead of feeling embarrassed or defensive, embrace your imperfections.
They fall into the gray zone of ordinary life—giving you the choice to laugh or not. So, choose to laugh whenever you can. Laugh at yourself. Share your embarrassing moments. The best way to take yourself less seriously is to talk about times when you took yourself too seriously. Attempt to laugh at situations rather than bemoan them. Look for the humor in a bad situation, and uncover the irony and absurdity of life. When something negative happens, try to make it a humorous anecdote that will make others laugh.
Surround yourself with reminders to lighten up. Keep a toy on your desk or in your car. Put up a funny poster in your office. Choose a computer screensaver that makes you laugh. Frame photos of you and your family or friends having fun. Remember funny things that happen. If something amusing happens or you hear a joke or funny story you really like, write it down or tell it to someone to help you remember it.
Many things in life are beyond your control—particularly the behavior of other people. Find your inner child. Pay attention to children and try to emulate them—after all, they are the experts on playing, taking life lightly, and laughing at ordinary things. Deal with stress. One great technique to relieve stress in the moment is to draw upon a favorite memory that always makes you smile—something your kids did, for example, or something funny a friend told you.
Think of it like exercise or breakfast and make a conscious effort to find something each day that makes you laugh. Set aside 10 to 15 minutes and do something that amuses you. The ability to laugh, play, and have fun not only makes life more enjoyable but also helps you solve problems, connect with others, and think more creatively. People who incorporate humor and play into their daily lives find that it renews them and all of their relationships. Life brings challenges that can either get the best of you or become playthings for your imagination.
But when you play with the problem, you can often transform it into an opportunity for creative learning. Playing with problems seems to come naturally to children. When they are confused or afraid, they make their problems into a game, giving them a sense of control and an opportunity to experiment with new solutions.
Interacting with others in playful ways helps you retain this creative ability. Here are two examples of people who took everyday problems and turned them around through laughter and play:. Roy , a semi-retired businessman, was excited to finally have time to devote to golf, his favorite sport. But the more he played, the less he enjoyed himself.
Although his game had improved dramatically, he got angry with himself over every mistake. Roy wisely realized that his golfing buddies affected his attitude, so he stopped playing with people who took the game too seriously.
When he played with friends who focused more on having fun than on their scores, he was less critical of himself. Now golfing was as enjoyable as Roy had envisioned.
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