Laughing at the World Around You

It doesn’t take long to start thinking of examples of things we call humorous that do not actually induce laughter. Dark humor, for example, may not make you laugh out loud. That doesn’t bother us, we just say, “I am laughing inside,” which, when you think about it, is a rather odd thing to say. You actually don’t LOL as much as you LI. What is laughter? The definition of laughter is also rather tricky. Even if you spend a couple days puzzling this out in a hotel in Indianapolis, you may well still not have an answer.

So, let’s change the question: does it matter why we laugh? If you know anything about philosophers or the academy, it will not surprise you to hear that people have been wrestling with this question for a few thousand years. There are a surprising number of theories of humor and laughter. Enter Frank Buckley.

He begins his book The Morality of Laughter with an anecdote. The purpose of this anecdote is to explain why Buckley, a lawyer, is writing a book about laughter. As you read it, ask yourself: is this anecdote funny? Do you laugh at it? Is it appropriate to laugh at it? If Buckley told you this story in person, would you laugh?

This book had its origin in an elevator at the University of Chicago law school, where I was a visiting fellow. On the elevator with me was Nobel laureate Ronald Coase, a founder of the law and economics movement associated with that school and with the law school where I now teach. The elevator stopped on the way down, and a U. of C. fundraiser stepped aboard with a donor in tow. “This is Ronald Coase,” she enthused. “He invented the Coase theorem!” Smiles, and a shaking of hands all around. “This is Frank Buckley…,” she continued. And in the embarrassed silence which followed I resolved to have a theorem too.

Did you laugh? Whether or not you did, was it right to laugh?

One explanation of laughter is that it is the response to something really surprising. In this case, you pick up a book on laughter and read the story of how the author decided to write on the subject and it is nowhere even remotely the genesis story you were expecting. That is funny.

Buckley doesn’t like that explanation for laughter, though. In the book, Buckley argues that laughter is always an expression of superiority. The laugher is asserting superiority over the object of laughter. If Buckley is right, when you laugh at his story about how he came to write the book, it is an assertion of your superiority. Over what? Presumably over the fact that this lawyer thought he could write a book on laughter than would in any way compare to the Nobel-winning work of Coase.

Is Buckley right? His thesis has both positive and a normative components. He not only wants to assert that laughter is by definition an assertion of superiority, but also that laughter is a morally correct assertion of superiority. He does note that it is possible to accept the positive thesis but not the normative thesis. Oddly, however, I am not enamored with the positive thesis, but I think he is onto something with normative thesis. Perhaps you should now laugh at me.

Buckley’s argument for the thesis originally struck me a rather bizarre. He asserts his thesis, and then tries to knock down any competitors by showing that they do not account for every possible thing that people find humorous. There is shockingly little actual argument for or even exploration of his thesis. It seems like it would be a rather simple matter to knock down Buckley’s thesis using the same sort of arguments he uses to knock down all the competitors. Why isn’t Buckley’s argument stronger? Then I remembered why. Buckley’s academic training is in law. This is a legal brief. He is not proving the truth (read: innocence) of his thesis, he is just raising reasonable doubt about all the other possibilities.

Consider one of the assertions. “All deadpan humor signals the wit’s superiority over those who fail to get it.” Indeed, the highest triumph is when nobody gets the joke; then you get to feel really superior to everyone. That explanation of deadpan humor strikes me as wrong. Who wants to tell a joke that nobody gets? The alternative explanation is that deadpan delivery enhances a joke by making the audience discover the joke themselves. The audience gets that surprise of realizing “That was a joke!” This is why the deadpan joke may fail if the teller of it laughs when it is delivered. If the listener doesn’t get that shock of realizing it was a joke, it may remove the humor.

How do we resolve which theory is the better explanation? I have no idea. Laughter is a ridiculously complicated subject.

When Buckley turns to the normative part of his thesis, I found myself admiring the clever framework of his argument. I don’t think all laughter is an assertion of superiority, but some laughter, even much laughter, is about the antics or misdeeds or absurdities of others. Buckley sets forth a taxonomy of the seven virtues which laughter is meant to reinforce. Deviations from these virtues can occur from either a deficiency or an excess of the virtue. We laugh at either extreme.

Here are the virtues, followed by the effect of a deficiency or excess of the virtue:

Integrity (Hypocrisy; Misanthropy)
Moderation (Moral Sloth; Priggishness)
Fortitude (Cowardice; Foolhardiness)
Temperance (Greed; Excessive Humility)
Grace (Clumsiness or Gaucherie; Excessive Finesse)
Taste (Vulgarity; Preciousness or Camp)
Learning (False Pedantry; True Pedantry)

What intrigues me about that list is that if you wanted to craft a comic character, all you would need to do is pick one of those 14 things and amplify it.

To take an example, cowardice is not really funny. But it is easy to imagine a humorous account of cowardice: the stereotypical person standing on a chair screeching about the mouse or the person acting as if some totally innocuous act is the most terrifying thing in the world. Laughing at these things is indeed an assertion that cowardice is something which is morally blameworthy. But, does the humor work because laughter is the assertion the superiority of the laugher or because it is unexpected that someone would be that terrified of something that is not inherently terrifying?

While I am not persuaded by the details of Buckley’s argument, the general impulse behind the book is entirely correct. Laughter is a good thing.

Why laugh? It is a healthy way to get through life. After watching Dr Strangelove again recently, I realized why. The subtitle of that movie is “How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.” The movie does indeed end with the nuclear annihilation of the planet. Is it a funny movie? I think it is quite funny, but there is truly nothing funny at all about the actual plot of the movie. So why the laughter? Well, what’s the alternative? Imagine we are all on the brink of annihilation and there is nothing we can do to stop it. What do you do? Well, you can worry. You can spend all your time worried about the fact that the universe is moving along outside your control and that other people are doing really foolish things to move us even further into disaster. But, what good is all that worry? Instead, why not stop worrying about the bomb and laugh?

Find the odd and surprising things in life and laugh. It is sure a much more pleasant way to go through life.