The Wabe → Stories and Other Bits of Crap → A Serious Look at Comedy
On my desk I have a photocopy of the JIR article “National Geographic: The Doomsday Machine”; my English 1B reader open to selections from The Decameron; a Robert Asprin novel, “Phule’s Company”; a collection of Dave Barry essays; and an article by Joyce Millman on “The Simpsons.” Aside from taking up valuable real estate on an already crowded desk, what do these items have in common? They are all about comedy. Comedy and laughter are very important to us; the great comedian Tom Lehrer once began his routine: “I’d like to take you now on wings of song, as it were, and try and help you forget, perhaps, for a while your drab, wretched lives...”1 There are two obvious functions of comedy. The first function is to help us deal with unpleasant realities; the other, to help us deal with seemingly contradictory or irrational situations. “Shock value” jokes—jokes that usually deal with death, sex, and violence in all of their multifarious forms—help us continue functioning through life without falling into a catatonic stupor of depression. These jokes are usually considered “sick” or “dirty” and are it is considered in poor taste to repeat them; needless to say, they spread like wildfire.2 Intellectual humor—puns and parodies, which, despite their lofty origins, exhibit widespread appeal—allow us to deal with situations which could leave us in a disoriented daze with their conflicting realities. Most humor contains elements of both intellectual and shock humor.
“Shock value” comedies can be subdivided into three overlapping categories: exaggerated, contradictory, and horrific. Most shock humor is in the form of short jokes—they have to be short to provide immediate relief for the terrible situations from which they result or cause.3
Exaggerated and contradictory shock humor both rely on overwhelming the victim’s sense of reality. They differ only in the mechanics from which they achieve this goal. A case of contradictory shock involves the good-news/bad-news doctor joke: Doctor says, “I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that you have six weeks to live. The good news is that I finally fucked my secretary.” The punch here is twofold: the good news is completely unrelated to the bad news (a contradiction to what we normally expect from a good-news/bad-news statement), and the doctor, supposedly a person of compassion, could place his own successes above the needs of his patients.
The other form of shock relies on disgusting or embarrassing images:
Q: How do you get 100 dead babies into a phone booth?
A: With a blender!Q: How do you get them out?
A: With a straw!!!
These kinds of jokes often rely on sex, death, and violence to produce the appropriate results. The mind is repulsed by these images; it cringes back. To recover, it rationalizes that it isn’t real, it’s “just a joke.” The appeal of these jokes, like the appeal of popular horror “hack ’n’ slash” films, is to allow the mind to cauterize itself against semi-believable nonexistent horrors in preparation for the problems of everyday life.4 We believe—we hope—that we can deal with IRA terrorist bombings after surviving Dead Baby jokes.
“Intellectual” humor comes in two varieties: puns and parodies. Puns come in all shapes and sizes, and may just be the most prevalent form of comedy around.5 The elaborate yet conceptually simple “shaggy pun” jokes—an intricate story constructed to generate a single line which is a homonym or a spoonerism of a well-known phrase—are examples of aural puns, where the words are important to establishing the humor:
The errant knight, his horse near death, approaches a roadside inn. As soon as he gets off of his horse, it dies.
“Innkeeper!” he cries out.
The innkeeper and his wife appear. “How may we help you?” they cry in unison.
“My horse is dead, yet I must deliver this urgent message to the king! Do you have a horse I could buy?”
“Nay,” replies the innkeeper. “We are too poor.”
“A donkey then! Anything!”
The innkeeper’s wife nudges the innkeeper and motions to the dog, a large mastiff with serious mange. “Give him the dog!” she hisses.
“No,” responds the innkeeper. “It would be beneath his dignity to be ride on a flea-bitten beast like that.”
“He’s fine, and the man is desperate...”
“No, I’m sorry,” stated the innkeeper. “I’m not going to send a knight out on a dog like this.”
Then, on the next level up, is the conceptual puns. These involve complex set-ups and rely on imagery more than the aural puns—exact wording is not so intrinsic. A very good example of this is the story of Alibech and Rustico from The Decameron. Rustico, a monk, decides to test his willpower by letting a young girl (Alibech), unlearned in the ways of God, stay with him inside his cell. Finding temptation too strong, he devises a way to have sex with her under the guise of a religious ceremony—“Putting the Devil back into hell”:
And he began to remove those few garments he possessed... and the girl did the same. He then sank to his knees... [and] being in this position, and more then ever burning with desire from the sight of her kneeling there so beautiful, the flesh was resurrected...
“Oh my child,” replied Rustico, “that is the Devil...”
“...I do not possess this Devil.” [said Alibech.]
“You possess hell,” said Rustico, “and I firmly believe that God has sent you here... [so] you could be the one to take pity on me by allowing me to put him back into hell.”
Note the quick pun on “the flesh was resurrected”: in the literal sense, it describes his erection, but since the story has a religious theme, we get a brief connection with Jesus returning to life. An obvious contradiction which results in a quick grin across the face as the mind resolves the conflict with “it’s just a joke.” The “Devil in hell” pun works on the same principles: the words “Devil” and “hell” bring forth images of religion, but in the context of the story, they bring forth images of sex, and we resolve this contradiction of simultaneous sex and religion by defining and understanding that “it’s just a joke.”
The parody is the supreme example of humor. Unlike shock humor or puns, parodies are usually directed at a specific audience—one has to understand the subject of the parody. Parodies usually are made up of smaller elements of humor, usually of a muted shock variety, but the fact that the entirety is greater than the sum of its parts makes us realize that there is something intrinsically funny about the juxtaposition of the jokes. Also, the individual jokes within the parody cease to be as funny (or even funny at all) when removed from the context.
As an example, examine the wonderfully funny parody entitled “National Geographic, the Doomsday Machine,” by George Kaub.6 The title alone causes a contradiction—National Geographic is a respected publication—and sets us up for a fall. The article begins innocuously enough:
Pollution of many types and kinds is currently paramount in the public mind. Causes and solutions are being loudly proclaimed by all of the media, politicians, public agencies, universities, garden clubs, industry, churches, ad infinitum...
The author continues along describing the horrid effects of some new type of pollution—earthquakes, tidal waves, floods, fires—until he finally tells us the source of this catastrophe:
PUBLICATION AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE MUST BE IMMEDIATELY STOPPED AT ALL COSTS! It is not too late if this warning is heeded!
...more than 6,869,797 issues are sent to subscribers monthly throughout the world. However, it is safe to say that the bulk of these magazines reach subscribers in the United States and Canada, and it is and never has been thrown away!
Kaub continues by explaining that the aggregate weight of 141 years of this magazine on the crustal plate of North America must “boggle the mind,” and cites numerous contemporary disasters that could only be caused by National Geographic.
Why is this funny? Like conceptual puns, parodies work by providing two conflicting contexts in which to view the work. The subject of the lampooning, however, is usually much more prevalent; to be parodied correctly, it must be left nearly intact in form (compared to caricatures, which deform to emphasize). In this case, the subject is the numerous “heralds of doom” that are so ubiquitous in this modern day—greenhouse effect, ozone layer, medical waste—and are not funny at all, but very scary. The format is there—numerous disasters occurring, supposed cause of disasters, theoretical horrific outcome if the cause is left unchecked—but we realize that the assumptions made are so outrageous.7 Through the use of parodies, we are able to deal with the forces that we cannot directly control (such as politics or industry) but greatly affect our lives.
The function of humor is to allow us, as humans, to cope with our mortal problems. Baudelaire based his supposition that laughter had a Satanic origin from analysis of the statement “The wise man never laughs but he trembles.” Baudelaire’s wise men are terrified of losing their terror. Laughter allows an escape, a chance to see the problems we face without being afraid, a chance to rise up above our basal fears. Comedy could even be considered divine.
1From the prelude to “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” A Night (wasted) with Tom Lehrer.
2Dave Barry, in his essay “Public-Spirited Citizens Such as You,” wanted to release a sick joke into the populace with the intent of having people upon hearing said joke immediately contact the national Joke Tracking Center in Florida.
3Shock humor that results from a tragic situation could be described as reactionary humor. “James Bond”-style one-liners are an example here; space shuttle jokes are another. Here the humor is not directly involved with the tragedy.
4Millman touched on this concept in her defense of “The Simpsons.” The jokes in the show deal with parents and their inability to control their children: a valid fear in today’s world of juvenile delinquency, parent beating, drugs, and suburban techno-gangs.
5Puns are intellectual, despite Noah Webster’s claim that “punning is a low species of wit.” Perhaps he meant common or intrinsic.
6This “article” originally appeared in the March 1974 issue of the “respected” Journal of Irreproducable Results, a humor magazine for scientists, doctors, and educators that consists solely on submissions from the readers. The actual text was culled from Selected Papers from the JIR (second edition).
7L. M. Jones, in a rebuttal to Kaub, states: “...there is the question of time. Assuming even distribution... over the present surface, it would take 17.94 × 1013 copies... to depress the crust 100 feet would take 24.92 × 109 years [to accumulate].” Jones was, of course, castigated for making such a simplifying assumption as “even distribution.” A subsequent article reduces this time by a magnitude or two.
Last Modified: 2003/12/08 05:27:20 GMT
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