Transcript Comedy, humour, laughter

Comedy, humour,
laughter
• “Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog.
Few people are interested and the frog dies
of it.” (E. B. White)
• “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy
is when you fall down an open sewer and
die.” (Mel Brooks)
• “All tragedies are finished by a death,
All comedies are ended by a marriage”
(Byron: Don Juan)
Kazuo Ishiguro: The Remains of the Day (1989)
• Mr Stevens and bantering
• “It is curious how people can build suvh warmth
among themselves so swiftly. It is possible that
these particular people are simply united by the
anticipation of the eveninf ahead. But, then, I
rather fancy it has more to do with this skill of
bantering. Listening to them now, I can hear them
exchanging one bantering remark after another. It
is, I would suppose, the way many people like to
proceed. ... Perhaps it is indeed time I began to
look at this whole matter of bantering more
enthusiastically. After all, when one thinks about it,
it is not such a foolish thing to indulge in –
particularly if it is the case that in bantering lies the
key to human warmth” (245)
Humour: culturally embedded
• L. Wittgenstein: “What is it like for people not to
have the same sense of humour? They do not
react properly to each other. It’s as if there were
a custom among certain people for one person
to throw another a ball which he is supposed to
catch and throw back; but some people, instead
of throwing it back, put it in their pocket”
• (1) shared cultural codes
• (2) situational context (pragmatics)
e.g. protocols of joke telling
aggressivity and humour
Cultural embeddedness
• (1) shared cultural codes
• (2) situational context (pragmatics)
e.g. protocols of joke telling
aggressivity and humour
terms
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Comedy
The comic
Humour
Laughter
Satire, farce, travesty, parody, irony,
Theories of humour
• A. Looking at the object of humour
• (1) defect theory
• (2) contrast theory
• B. Looking at the laughing subject
• - relief/release theory
C. The relationship between object and subject
• - superiority theory
• Defamiliarisation theory
• +commprehensive theories: Bergson, Freud
Defect theory
• Aristotle: the comic is “some defect or
ugliness which is not painful or
destructive”.
• “The ridiculous may be defined as a
mistake or deformity not productive of pain
or harm to others; the mask, for instance,
that excites laughter, is something ugly
and distorted without causing pain.”
(Aristotle)
Contrast theory
• incongruity, contradiction, discrepancy,
incompatibility
• perception of sg incongruous
• James Beattie, Kant, Schopenhauer,
Kierkegaard
• Plato: contrast between one’s selfevaluation and one’s real value (miles
gloriosus)
Contrast theory- levels of contrast
• Vocal: portmanteau words (slithy)
• Rhetorical: Zeugma: “breaking the Queen’s
peace and a few heads” (Kipling)
• Grammar vs rhetoric: Archie Bunker and
his bowling shoes: „what is the difference”?
• Subject and style (travesty, burlesque)
• Anachronism
Misrecognition (Gogol: The Inspector
General)
Salvador Dalí: Lobster-phone (1938)
incongruity
• Kant: “In everything that is to excite a lively
convulsive laugh there must be something
absurd (in which the understanding, therefore,
can find no satisfaction). Laughter is an affection
arising from the sudden transformation of a
strained expectation into nothing. This
transformation, which is certainly not enjoyable
to the understanding, yet indirectly gives it very
active enjoyment for a moment. Therefore its
cause must consist in the influence of the
representation upon the body, and the reflex
effect of this upon the mind.”
incongruity
• Schopenhauer: “The cause of laughter in
every case is simply the sudden
perception of the incongruity between a
concept and the real objects which have
been thought through it in some relation,
and laughter itself is just the expression of
this incongruity.”
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Incongruity – frustration of expectations
Pleasure?
Cognitive dissonance is disturbing
Ambiguity tolerance
Cognitive dissonance
Relief/release theory
• Lord Shaftesbury’s “The Freedom of Wit
and Humour” (1711)
• Kant: “Laughter is an emotion that is
produced by the shattering of some
intense expectation.”
• Herbert Spencer: “On The Physiology of
Laughter” (1860)
• Anticlimax (bathos)(Alexander Pope)
Superiority theory
“Sudden glory, is the passion which makes those
grimaces called laughter; and is caused either by
some sudden act of their own, that pleases them;
or by the apprehension of some deformed thing
in another, by comparison whereof they suddenly
applaud themselves. And it is incident most to
them, that are conscious of the fewest abilities in
themselves; who are forced to keep themselves
in their own favor by observing the imperfections
of other men. And therefore much laughter at the
defects of others, is a sign of pusillanimity. For of
great minds, one of the proper works is, to help
and free others from scorn; and to compare
themselves only with the most able” (Hobbes:
Leviathan)
Superiority, irony, parody
• „’You read much, John?
• ’Read what?
• ’Fiction.
• ’Do you?
• ’Oh sure. It gives me all kinds of ideas. I like
the sound and the fury,’ he added enigmatically.
• That’s what rerading does to you: you start
saying things like that. (Martin Amis: Money)
Freud:Jokes and Their Relation to
the Unconscious
• Joking, the comic and humour; in each,
laughter releases psychic energy which
turns out to be superfluous
• Comic: energy of thinking (clowns)
• Humour: energy of emotions (sympathy,
empathy which is, after all, not needed:
the pity is not needed and we laugh it off)
• Joking: repressed drives
Freud
• Jokes: innocent (pleasure only)
• and tendentious (violence and sexuality)
• Jokes: repressed desires getting around
censorship
• Formal mechanisms + repressed drives
Henri Bergson: Laughter (1900)
• Indifference: “a momentary numbness of
the heart”
• Sy falls flat in the street
• “the momentary transformation of a man
into a thing”: mechanical rigidity
• Rigidity of body and mind
• Thales the astronomer who fell into a well
while watching the stars
• “the behaviour of the body, its gestures
and movements are comic inasmuch as
the body resembles a simple machine”
• „the mechanical encrusted on the living”
Rigidity of mind
• “In the newspaper they always give the age of
deceased persons but never the age of the
newly born. That doesn’t make sense” (Ionesco:
The Bald Soprano)
• Géronte: The heart is on the left-hand side, the
liver on the right-hand side.
• Sganarelle: Yes, indeed, that’s how it used to be
with doctors of old. We, the new ones, however,
have arranged medicine according to a different
system.” (Moliere Le médecin malgré lui)
Language: automatisms
• Puns: the ‘body’ of language appearing
• (joke is a secret language inside words – David
Mitchell)
• Eg typos
• „Officer accepting bride”; “szovjet állat”
• Mistranslations
• spoonerism: „You have deliberately tasted two
worms and you can leave Oxford by the town
drain.”
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• Comic rhymes
• Ogden Nash’s poem “Fleas”:
Fleas
Adam
Had’em.
• Jack aranylovon érkezett, Joe ezüstön,
Charles bronzon.
• Be alert! England needs lerts.
• P. G. Wodehouse’s line, “If it’s feasible,
let’s fease it”
• According to Freud, what comes between
fear and sex?
• Marriage is not a word, but a sentence.
• Harwich for the continent, Frinton for the
incontinent.
• Karl Marx’s grave  another Communist
plot.
• Education kills by degrees.
• Tóth Gyula bádogos és vízvezetékszerelő.
• What is a myth? A female moth
• “For sale: a mousetrap, with mice.”
• „Friss báránybőr eladó. Özvegy Bárányné”
Defamiliarisation theory
• sg suddenly appears out of its normal,
context
• Charlie Chaplin
• Switching frames, cognitive function
• Absurdity (elephant joke)
• Category switches (Tom and Jerry)
• Scale switch (Gulliver)
Contractual error
• „’What shall we do?’ said Twoflower.
• ’Panic?’ said Rincewind hopefully.”
• Waiter! What is this fly doing in my soup?
• It looks like beaststroke to me, sir.
Louis Philippe (cartoon by
Daumier)
Metaphor, comparison, humour
• Jean Paul Richter: a joke is a priest in disguise
who will join any couple in marriage
• (Vischer: „ especially couples whose marriage is
frowned upon by their respective families”)
• You are like a wonderful bottle of wine
• This lady resembles the Venus of Milo in many
respects: she is ancient, she has no teeth, and
there are a few white spots on her yellowish
body
“ ʻA necromancer!’ said Rincewind.
The old woman across the fire shrugged and pulled a pack
of greasy cards from some unseen pocket.
Despite the deep frost outside, the atmosphere inside the
yurt was like a blacksmith’s armpit and the wizard was
already sweating heavily. Horse dung made a good fuel,
but the Horse People had a lot to learn about air
conditioning, starting with what it meant.
’What’s neck romance?’ she whispered.
’Necromancy. Talking to the dead,’ he expalined.
’Oh,’ she said, vaguely disappointed.
They had dined on horse meat, horse cheese, horse black
pudding, horse d’oeuvres and a thin beer that Rincewind
didn’t want to speculate about.”
Umberto Eco: The Name of the
Rose (1980)
• Aristotle’s lost book on comedy
• Brother Jorge