teorije of humor contemp farber

8/6/2019 Teorije of Humor Contemp Farber

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Toward a Theoretical Framework for the Study of Humor in Literature

and the Other Arts

Farber, Jerry.

The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Volume 41, Number 4, Winter

2007, pp. 67-86 (Article)

Published by University of Illinois Press

For additional information about this article

Access Provided by University of Zagreb, Faculty of Philosophy at 04/10/11 12:57AM GMT

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jae/summary/v041/41.4farber.html
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Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 41, No. 4, Winter 20072007 Board o Trustees o the University o Illinois

Toward a Theoretical Framework or the Studyo Humor in Literature and the Other Arts

JERRY FARBER

With a clearer understanding o the way humor works, we might be better

able to give it the attention it deserves when we study and teach the arts.

But where do we turn to nd a theoretical ramework or the study o hu-

morone that will help to clariy the role that humor plays in the arts and

that will help us as well to understand dierences in the way individual

perceivers respond to humor in art?

A superiority theory o humor emerged in classical times and more or

less held the stage through the seventeenth century; now, however, though

an occasional attempt to revive it is still made,1 superiority theory is usually

regarded as ar too narrow in scope to be useul as a general account o hu-

mor. What are commonly reerred to as release (or, occasionally, relie)

theories and associated with Spencer and Freudwere or a time very in-

fuential, but are somewhat narrow too in their own way, and urthermore,

as Nol Carroll puts it, have the liability o presupposing hydraulic views

o the mind that are highly dubious.2 Incongruity theory, which has been

around in one orm or another since at least the eighteenth century, domi-

nates contemporary humor theory but is still widely regarded as not quite

there yet. And so humor remains somewhat mysterious and elusive. Or

not even that. It may be that most people, even teachers in the arts, bypass

theory entirely and simply accept humor as a given: an unanalyzable act

o human lie. Ive sometimes wondered i it may be that we dont want to

understand humor, either because were araid that this understanding will

spoil the game or, just possibly, because we sense that, as a consequence

o it, we may discover things about ourselves that we would preer not to

know.

Is a well-ounded, broadly inclusive theoretical ramework or the study

and teaching o humor in the arts achievable? I want to propose that it is i

Jerry Farber is proessor o English and comparative literature at San Diego StateUniversity. His books include A Field Guide to the Aesthetic Experience (Foreworks,1982). His essay What Is Literature? What Is Art? Integrating Essence and Historyappeared in the Journal of Aesthetic Education in all 2005; his essay Teaching andPresence is orthcoming in Pedagogy.


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68 Farber

we take incongruity theory a ew steps urther, integrating an analysis o

the humorous situation (that is, what we perceive: the caricature, the witty

dialogue, the bit o stage business) with an analysis o what goes on in the

perceiver (the humor experience itsel).

A General Theory of Humor

Incongruity theory, though clearly the ront-runner these days, continues

to be problematic, making too much sense or us to discard it, but not quite

enough sense to get us where we need to go. Thus, Carroll concludes his

recent overview o this theoretical tradition: Though promising, the Incon-

gruity Theory o Humor remains a project in need o urther research.3

Reading this we may nd ourselves wondering, just as we might aboutsome writer or perormer whos been on the scene or a good long time,

how much longer this centuries-old theoretical approach gets to remain

promising.

What have been the major problems associated with incongruity theory?

For one thing, it doesnt tell us much about the aective dimension o humor.4

Neither does it satisactorily explain dierences in the way individual perceiv-

ers respond. The major weakness o incongruity theory, however, has been a

ailure to account adequately or all o those instances o incongruity that are

not unny: or example, brainteasers, logic problems, and puzzles. One wayo dealing with this problem has been to keep adding on exclusionary clauses

until the category has been pared down satisactorily. In other words, humor

is based on incongruity, provided that we exclude situations that inspire ear,

or are disgusting, or are perceived instrumentally, or are regarded primarily

as a puzzle, and so on. But, o course, this is patchwork. What we need is a

humor theory where stipulations such as these dont have to be added on,

because they ollow logically rom the theory itsel.

Its been proposed repeatedly that the incongruous elements in humor

are likely to be connected in some way, though some o the terms that havebeen advanced to identiy this connection are unnecessarily limiting i our

intention is to cover the widest range o humor in the arts. Resolution,5

or example, perhaps the best known o these terms, appears to claim too

much; it is one o those notions that may be more suited to jokes than to

humor in general. For present purposes, I would preer to borrow Koestlers

term link,6 to cover a broad range o modes o connection, ranging rom

mere juxtaposition, which would be the minimum link, to the kind o per-

ect or near-perect correspondence that we nd in puns, and that a clever

plot can provide in theatrical comedy.At this point, I would like to suggest that we can take an important

step toward solving some o the problems that have been associated with

incongruity theory by looking within the humorous incongruity itsel and


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Framework for the Study of Humor 69

recognizing that each o the incongruous elements plays its own character-

istic role. One elementwe can label it Atypically is the closer o the two

to a social norm or to something that has been socially valorized. The other,

more gratiying elementthe Btends in some way to counter or under-mine or dey or circumvent the A. For a particularly vivid example o this

in the arts, we might turn to those 1830s caricatures by Daumier and others

portraying the French monarch Louis-Philippe (A) as a pear (B).7

Having characterized in this way the two incongruous elements in the

humorous situation, we can take a urther step and recognize that their link-

ing may bring about a particular kind o event within the perceiver, which,

when it happens, is what enables us to say that something is unny. The

external A and B correspond to and evoke an internal [a] and [b], which can

be any one o a number o well-established pairs o psychological counter-positions in the perceiver. In each case, as well see, the B in the situation

corresponds to a strong need or inclination [b], while the A corresponds to

and is in compliance with an internalized constraint or obstacle [a] that op-

poses the [b]. The avoring o the B in the humorous situation (or what the

perceiver may choose to regard as the avoring o the B), causes a reward-

inducing shitoten sudden and usually short-livedin the relative status

o the two counterpositions. (The major pairs o counterpositions in humor

will be examined in the taxonomy below.)

That a gratiying shit o some sort occurs in the perceiver has been recog-nized since Hobbes, and even beore; this is the payo that humor provides.8

What we need in order to move humor theory orward is to understand

more clearly what it is that constitutes this shit. The linked, incongruous A

and B in the humorous situation achieve an immediate, i only temporary,

ascendance o [b]something that we want to think, believe, eel, express,

something that is, to use Edward Fitzgeralds words, nearer to the hearts

desireover [a], its psychological antagonist.

Finally, there is one other eature o the humor experience that helps to

account or its characteristic quality, or the way it eels. As a number otheorists have emphasized, we experience humor as a orm o play.9 Play,

o course, is a very broad category; the theory that I am proposing allows

us to see specically just how it is that a play mode unctions in humor.

It acilitates the shit in the relative status o the two psychological coun-

terpositions. Ater all, the justication that the humorous situation supplies

or such a shit may be fimsy to say the least when judged by the criteria

we ordinarily use to assess things. Viewed more soberly, the liberating B

might appear too preposterous, too unair, or even too oensive, to provide

any gratication. The play mode, however, allows usto some extent atleastto suspend a more realistic assessment, thus allowing the internal [b]

its ascendance over the opposing [a], even i this ascendance is achieved by

means that might not, as we say, hold up in court.


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70 Farber

Returning to the principal problem that has been presented by incongru-

ity theory, will the theory at hand enable us to understand why it is that

one instance o incongruity is humorous and another is not? Suppose, or

example, that were trying to solve some sort o puzzle or mystery or logicproblem; lets say were dealing with a classic locked room mystery, which

presents us with an incongruity that is not in itsel humorous. The incongru-

ous elements here are: (1) someone has been ound murdered in a room; (2)

the room was locked rom inside, so no one could have let the room ater

committing the murder. But note that these two elements, though incon-

gruous, dont provide the A and B, as characterized above, that will evoke

some well-established pair o counterpositions in the perceiver. Thereore,

their incongruous juxtaposition is unlikely to elicit the kind o psychological

event Ive described. What is gratiying here is, rst, the intriguing mysteryo the incongruitynot in itsel likely to be unnyand, second, the trium-

phant resolution o this incongruity: that is, the solution to the mystery. But

this solution, a rational process that has the eect o dissolving incongruity, is

also not something we would expect to be unny; it provides quite another

sort o gratication than humor does.

But then, it might be asked, under the right circumstance, couldnt some

such triumph meet the conditions we have laid out, but without generating

any humor at all? Couldnt a sudden, unanticipated, perhaps even improb-

able, success in solving a mystery or in some game or sport or other compe-tition provide us with a pair o incongruous elements that ts the A/B pat-

tern, but without generating humor? Suddenly, lets say, in the last seconds

o play, a ootball player intercepts a pass and runs it back across the goal

line. The player, the team, and their ans as well have turned apparent de-

eat into victory. Will this give us an A and a B? But then, surely, though this

kind o experience may well be a joyul one, though those on the winning

side may nd themselves smiling or laughing as people oten do in joyul

moments, its not what one would normally expect to be afunny experience

(absent some notably comic element in the way the pass is intercepted). Sohow is this to be understood in theoretical terms? Ater all, couldnt we try

to match the incongruous elements hereapparent deeat and unexpected

victoryto one pair or another o opposed counterpositions in the mind o

the ootball player (or the an watching the game)? Will we have to resort

nally to one o those awkward exclusionary clauses?

Actually, there are several reasons why this situation would not be likely

to be unny. Let us here look at a principal reason, the awareness o which

will move us toward a clearer understanding o humor, and especially o

humor in the arts. We need to recognize that the role o the A in humor isessential, and that, in a humorous situation, what happens to the A is not

that it is eliminated, not that it is replaced by the B, but that it is in some way

successully opposed by the B: undermined or circumvented or deed or


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72 Farber

in their being dispossessed o their home. When Tartue is nally arrested,

the tension is dissipated, and though this is a happy development, it is not a

unny one, in part because the less gratiying element doesnt remain along-

side the more gratiying one but has simply been replaced by it. What wehave throughout the play is Tartue satirized. What we have at the end is

Tartue oiled. Two very dierent things.

I am suggesting that when the linked, incongruous A/B in the humorous

situation suddenly and temporarily alters the relationship between a pair

o well-established counterpositions in the perceiveron the one hand, a

need or inclination and, on the other, the internalized constraint or obstacle

that opposes itand does so in a way that keeps both o these counterposi-

tions in play, something happens that can be compared (merely as a crude

analogy and without implying any electrical model o humor) to currentfowing across a spark gap. But this image is merely an impressionistic one;

what actually occurs in physical terms is something that remains or brain

research to elucidate.12

In order to test this ormulation, as well as to clariy it, illustrate it, and

examine its implications, I will use it here as the basis or a taxonomy based

upon the kind o payo that an instance o humor providesnot an exhaus-

tive taxonomy, but one that does, I think, account or the greater part by ar

o humor in the arts and that, as much as possible, instead o establishing

entirely new categories, reconstitutes traditional ones with the aim o givingthem more coherence, clarity, and explanatory power.13

What this taxonomy will address is neither, on the one hand, merely what

is perceiveda passage in a text, or a cartoon, or an incident in a lmnor, on

the other hand, merely a psychological event in a perceiver. What is at issue

is the text as it is perceived and responded to by a reader, or the movie prat-

all rom the audience perspective. Can a group o people gathered around a

television set all be laughing at a particular gag or incident, and yet not all be

laughing or the same reason? I so, we will need the kind o taxonomy that

not only acknowledges this situation, but, i possible, helps us to interpret it.

1. Derisive Humor

Superiority theory, which has been with us since Plato and Aristotle, pro-

vides a revealing but narrow viewnarrow not only in relation to humor

in general but even in relation to the area o humor where it might seem

most clearly applicable. To cover this ground we will need two categories:

derisive humor and empathic humor. These can arise rom the same comic

stimulus and can even coexist (in act, oten do coexist) in a single individu-als response to that stimulus; yet the two dier prooundly rom each other

in the kind o payo that they provide.

The A in derisive humor is an element in the humorous situation (or im-


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plied by it) that corresponds to the internal [a]: in this case, a sense o the su-

periority o others in relation to social norms. This sense is something that we

carry with us out o childhooda time when most o us are made acquainted

on a daily basis with our inadequacies relative to one norm or anotherandthat is only reinorced as, throughout our lives, we are continually conront-

ed with the public image that others choose to present, best oot orward,

while, when it comes to our own ailings, our own lapses rom the social

norm, our own sources o shame, we, generally speaking, know these rom

the inside and all too well. And, o course, even i we do manage to attain

a sense o our own superiority in one particular context or another, there is

always an abundance o contexts in which the superiority o others conronts

us. This [a] that we carry with us is actually doubly oppressive; that is to say it

operates in two sets o counterpositions. It counters our need or superiority,but also, because this sense o others superiority has the eect o excluding

us, it counters our need to belong, to experience community. The rst pair o

counterpositions supplies the basis or derisive humor.

The B in derisive humor oers an inerior, undermining alternative to

the A, and thereore plays to the internal [b]: our own need or superiority.

Revealing turpitudine et deormitate (to use Ciceros terms14) in the other,

the B provides us with that Hobbesian moment o sudden glory.15 What

derisive humor appeals to is not simply some general need or sel-esteem.

It is relative status that is at issue. The [b] isnt merely a desire to eel goodabout ourselves. We may well encounter something in art or in daily lie

that makes us eel good about both ourselves and others, and this may be

heartwarming. But derisive humor, pitting our need or superiority against

our sense o the apparent superiority o others, requires that someone go

down. Heartwarming it is not.

How are the A and B embodied in derisive humor? One o the two is

always enacted or us, but the other may, in some instances, be introduced

more indirectly. For an example o derisive humor that puts both the A and

the B directly beore us, we can turn again to Molires Tartuffe; here a com-petent actor in the title role will present us simultaneously with Tartues

pious, even saintly aade (the A) and the contemptible scoundrel it con-

ceals (the B). However, in derisive ironywhat people usually mean by

sarcasmonly the A need be stated directly (Oh yeah, hes a real ge-

nius); the B is implied by one means or another, oten only by context. And

there are a great many instances o derisive humor where it is the A that

is implied. Humorous caricature, as distinguished rom merely expressive

caricature, can be seen as an inerior version (B) o an implied A.

And, in act, precisely because he is also a caricature, even Tartue de-pends, or maximum comic eect, on our having in our own real-lie ex-

perience, encountered sanctimonious, exploitive gures who were by and

large able to get away with it, who were respected. The A, in other words,


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74 Farber

is not merely depicted or us here; we ourselves help to supply it out o our

own experience. And with many caricatures, the A is largely up to us. I a

political cartoon depicts some respected, dignied senator as no more than

a cheap thug, it is we who have to provide the A: the socially valorized ver-sion o this senator. Similarly, the more we are able, across the intervening

centuries, to recognize the real-lie types caricatured by visual artists such as

Daumier and Rowlandsonthe more we are able to recognize the A behind

the Bthe unnier their work is likely to be.

Though derisive humor is so oten understood, as it is by Hobbes, in

terms o person-to-person comparison, we need to remember that its tar-

get may as easily be an institution or a doctrine as an individual. It may

be a system o thought that a satirist is attacking, but to the extent that we

identiy this system with others and identiy ourselves with the satiristsperspective, our own need or superiority will be supported.

Satirists understand that merely to criticize, to reute, to condemn will

not suce to produce humor. A careul, methodical reutation that takes us

step-by-step rom A to B has the eect o minimizing incongruity; in this re-

spect, its similar to what happens when someone kills a joke by explaining

it: Dont you get it? You see, he thought she meant . . . But i we turn, or

example, to Voltaires satirical tale Micromgas, we see that what he does

not choose to do here is oer a discursive, methodical reutation o Sorbonne

theology (one o his principal targets). What he does is allow two enormousspace travelers, a giant Saturnian and a colossal Sirian, to make a brie stop

on the insignicant anthill o Earth, where they, by accident, become aware

o humansso tiny in comparison to the space travelers that they are vis-

ible and audible only through improvised instruments. Among these mi-

croscopic specks is a Sorbonne theologian, who insists that the entire secret

is to be ound in the Summa o St. Thomas, and that these space travelers

and their worlds, along with everything in the universe, are made solely

or man. At which point the two travelers all on each other, convulsed with

laughter. In other words, Voltaire evokes the A in its ull orce (Sorbonnetheologians and their ilk in Voltaires and his readers world o experience),

while presenting us with a B (this insanely arrogant atom on an insignicant

mudball in a corner o the universe) that perorms a drastic reduction o

that A, and, inviting readers to identiy with the visitors, satises their need

to eel superior despite the apparent superiority o others (who in this case

are traditionally high-status authority gures). Needless to say, or a reader

who happened to be the kind o Sorbonne theologian he portrays, the B in

this situation would counter the need or superiority rather than gratiy it

and thereore would not be unny at all.Some derisive humor may not appear at rst glance to depend on an in-

congruous A/B. I we laugh at some dimwitted comedian doing one stupid

thing ater another, where is the A?


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Those jokes that target some regional or ethnic (or other) group tradition-

ally designated as a target or dumbness humor are particularly instructive

here. Is the stereotyped target gure in these jokes to be seen as a caricature,

based on a more respected, higher-status gure in real lie? Perhaps, in somecases (blonde jokes or example). But wouldnt we say that oten the ste-

reotyped gure begins at a decitis a conventional butt o derisive humor

right rom the start? I so, then we may have to look elsewhere or the A.

Whether or not the ethnic or other target gure is to be seen as a carica-

ture, what reliably supplies the A in these jokes is our sense o an alternate,

normal scenario, or range o such scenarios, that is not stupid, and that is

invoked by the lead-in or body o the joke.16

How do you get a one-armed [stereotyped gure o choice] out of a tree?

The normal scenario here might involve, lets say, persuasion or orce ora lure o some sort. I were being told the joke, its not necessary that we

actually imagine any particular one o these scenarios, but merely that we

orm a general expectationan involuntary, more or less automatic expec-

tationo that sort o thing. Even though we know its a dumbness joke,

we dont at this point know specically where its going, so we have only

the normal scenarios to orm our expectation on. The punch line, Wave

at him, supplies the incongruous B scenarioone too dumb, too extreme

or us to have anticipated (at least in the very brie interval that is allowed

to us). The link here, o course, is supplied by the lead-in, which is capable,logically, o leading to either the A or the B scenario.

Reversing the joke will help to demonstrate how all o this works. Sup-

pose we present the joke this way: Waving at a one-armed [stereotyped g-

ure] is how you get him out of a tree. Not likely to be unny. Why? Because

we have preempted any sense o some possible A scenario, even i it were to

emerge only or a split second, by beginning with the B scenario and there-

ore closing the door on other possibilities.

The A here, representing more or less normal behavior; corresponds to

the perceivers [a] sense o the superiority o others, not in this case becausethat A embodies particularly astute or admirable behavior, but only because

it corresponds to some sort o everyday common sense norm. The B under-

mines the A and plays to the perceivers [b] desire or superiority. Someone

is pushed down so that we ourselves can achieve our sudden glory. What

is necessary is not that the A be remarkably high; it only needs to be higher

than the B, so that this incongruous reduction o it will play to the [b] in the

perceiver.

Looking analytically at jokes can, in this particular case, help us un-

derstand similar humor in the arts. Whether in lm comedy, in commediadellarte, or in a simpleton olktale, dumbness has to be played o against

something that will establish the presence o the A in order to generate a

payo. The Athe alternate scenariomay be provided by a characters


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76 Farber

sel-condence or expectation o success, by the high expectations o onlook-

ers, or by the demands created by the situation the character is in. Someone

tripping over his own oot is one thing; someone tripping over his own oot

while demonstrating a ballet combination is another. Harlequin may appearto us as a B, sitting on a donkey, wearing a broken sword, and with a cham-

ber pot on his head, but we know that he sees himselfas an A: a knight errant

o to do battle in honor o his beloved.

Recognizing the importance o an A thats emphasized within the comic

scene helps us to understand the role thats played by Oliver Hardys ir-

repressible, i utterly unjustied, sel-assuredness and superiority: his con-

dent, impatient Let me handle this. It helps to explain why I. B. Singers

wonderul ools, the Elders o Chelm, are similarly irrepressible. Near me,

the leading Elder tells his wie, you too become clever.17 With characterslike these, the A is in their nature and is not erased by their ailures to live up

to it.

Needless to say, a gure in the comedy o dumbness may also be a carica-

ture. In this case, the A will be established by whoever or whatever it is thats

being caricatured and also, perhaps, by some sort o alternate scenario that is

evoked within the comic situation. But what about derisive humor that seems

to oer not a doubly constituted A but no A at all, whether staged or implied?

Here I think we have the opportunity to observe humor as it either ades out

or sees its audience narrow down considerably. Do we laugh at someone whois no caricature, who is dumb to begin with, who has no pretensions, and who

is just doing stupid things, with no A o any kind in sight?

Suppose we understand the sense o others superiority as a sort o

background hum that is louder in some people than in others, and louder

perhaps as well at certain stages in lie. We can then imagine a somewhat

more embattled perceiver, someone who, burdened with an oppressive

sense o others superiority, may be particularly ready to see any stupid act

as an incongruous reduction o that superiority, and thereore more ready

to read in the A and welcome with laughter whatever occasion or a mo-ment o personal superiority may come along, i it is in what is regarded as

a suitable context or humorand in some cases, even i it is not.18

2. Empathic Humor

We would never be able to understand the comedy o lm and television

gures like Charlie Chaplin, Lucille Ball, Jacques Tati, and Jennier Saun-

ders, nor could we do justice to the ull range o humor in literature and

theater, without recognizing a kind o humor that is related to and is o-ten even joined with derisive humor, but in which the payo comes rom

sharing our oolishness, our ailings, our ineptitude with a character who to

some degree is able to draw our empathy.


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Derisive humor gets its satisaction rom the act o rising above, rom

Hobbess sudden glory; empathic humor provides us with company in

our un-risen state. Both types o humor play o against the same sort o A:

something in the humorous situation, or implied by it, that corresponds toour [a] sense o the superiority o others. In derisive humor, this [a] aces

o against our need or superiority. In empathic humor, it is the exclusion-

ary aspect o the [a] that is relevant and that is counterposed to a dierent

[b]: our deep need to belong, to be with, not to be excluded. Thus, the B in

empathic humor oers not merely an inerior alternative to the A but one

that we are to some extent willing to identiy with. Sharing our ailings with

others, we escape rom the sense o exclusion that the [a] carries with it,

by participating in a community o all-too-human imperection. In a broad

way, and rom the perspective o psychological theory, one could character-ize derisive humor as Adlerian and empathic humor as Maslovian. The

two orms o humor might also be seen as representing two ways o coping

with our own ailings. With derisive humor we, in eect, deny ineriority

in ourselves and assign it to someone else; with empathic humor we expe-

rience the relie o discovering that our individual ailings are shared and

thereore less shameul.

Albert Rapp, in his highly speculative evolutionary account o humor,

sees ridicule as an earlier orm, with what he calls genial humor or simply

humor emerging as a later development. In his denition o genial hu-mor, however, as ridicule plus love,19 love would appear to be claim-

ing too muchan oversentimentalized counterweight to the harsh reality

that ridicule implies. In act, the objects o empathic humor are not neces-

sarily ridiculed, nor is it necessary in all cases to love themonly to sense,

consciously or not, some degree o kinship with them in their ailings.

More to the point, perhaps, is the distinction, built into everyday lan-

guage, between laughing at and laughing with. Im not laughing at

you, we reassure someone. Im laughing with you. This distinction may

be somewhat misleading, though, in the present context, insoar as it impliesthat the object o empathic laughter is also, at least on some level, nding

the situation unnysomething that is most commonly ar rom the case.

I Lucy, ailing spectacularly on the candy assembly line (in a well-known

I Love Lucy episode), were to start laughing at hersel, the comedy would

be diminished. What we need to see here is someone at least as dismayed

and embarrassed as we might be, not someone who has distanced hersel

enough rom her plight to laugh it o.

I we experience community in derisive humor, it is community with

whoever shares our derisive perspective: the audience, or perhaps thosecharacters in a play who lead us in mocking the targets o this humor, or

perhaps the narrator in a satirical work o ction. This community o deri-

sive humor, however, is based on an assumption o shared superiority; it


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78 Farber

leaves us alone with our ailingsleaves us, at the level o those ailings,

still excluded. Empathic humor, on the other hand, reassures us that, even

at the level o our ailings, were not alone. And oten it accomplishes even

more than this because the gures we laugh at empathically are likely tohave something going or them as well, so that our ailings are not merely

shared, but also to some extent redeemed. In Mozarts Le nozze di Figaro,

or example, whereas a character such as Basilio is the object o more or

less exclusively derisive humor, and has, in act, little to recommend him,

Cherubino is a more endearing sort o ool. Cherubino may be sel-absorbed,

somewhat inept, and caught up in giddy adolescent inatuation, but hes

bright, un to be around, and he has soul (and, o course, Mozart gives him

some extraordinarily beautiul arias). Objects o empathic humor in the arts

are not likely to be mere minus signs.It makes sense, then, that the objects o empathic humor should tend to

be gures that we want to see come out well, or at least not badly. The tar-

gets o purely derisive humor, on the other hand, are likely to be gures that

we can see go down to deeat (as does Tartue) without any dissatisac-

tion and quite possibly even with considerable pleasure. Thus, the comi-

cal blocking guresrom the senex in ancient and early modern comedy

to the high school principal in a arcical teenage lmare likely neither to

draw empathy nor to come out on top.

My own teaching experience suggests that a range o response ex-ists among perceivers, rom highly empathic to purely derisive, not only

toward borderline gures such as Molires misanthropic Alceste or the

Larry David character in the television series Curb Your Enthusiasm, but

even toward many less ambiguous characters as well. But also, were not

required to make a fat choice between the two modes: our laughter at cer-

tain characters may be ueled by two simultaneous, though not necessarily

conscious, recognitions: (1) Oh my God, thats me! and (2) At least Im

not that bad!

A useul analogy here might be the experience o participating in a sel-help group made up o people who share the same problem. One could

simultaneously be gratied to share the problem and gratied to see that

there are others who have it worse. Here, and in humor as well, the degree to

which we experience each type o response will depend on the individual.

3. Counter-Restriction Humor

In the subcategories that all under this general heading, the A corresponds

to some internalized restriction on thought, eeling, or behavior. The juxta-position o a B that corresponds to the restricted need or inclination itsel

and that in some way counters or evades the restriction may provide the

entire payo, or it may serve to support some other sort o payo. Deri-


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sive humor, or example, can get an extra, counter-restriction boost when its

target is someone or something that it is not proper to be making un o.

While recognizing the broad nature o this general category, I would like

to ocus on three specic types o counter-restriction humor: aggressive hu-mor, sexual humor, and nonsense humor (though there are others, too, such

as scatological humor, that play their role in the arts).

There does also appear to be a more generalized, transgressive humor in

which the need or autonomy aggressively dees restriction in general, re-

striction itsel. Transgressive humor may show up more or less on its own

or may add its payo to other types o humor. The various specic types o

counter-restriction humor in particular may oten be tinged with a gratica-

tion that comes rom a more generalized sense o transgression, as is evident

in the documentary movie The Aristocrats (ocused on retellings o a single joke and promoted with the tagline No nudity. No violence. Unspeakable

obscenity). Here a transgressive payo works to shore up and even to a con-

siderable extent replace less robust sexual, aggressive, and derisive payos.

Even without invoking a Bakhtinian carnival theory, we can hardly

help recognizing that comedy, historically, has shown a pronounced trans-

gressive tendency that suggests not merely an impulse to breach one par-

ticular social norm or another but an impulse that conronts, that challenges,

social convention itsel. Comedy, Erich Segal concludes, ater a backward

look over two and a hal millennia, always thrives upon outrage.20

3.1. Aggressive Humor

The close relationship between aggressive humor and derisive humor can

make it easy to conuse them, as Freud tends to do. But, in act, to experience

the sudden glory o superiority and to take gratication in aggression de-

spite the restrictions on it are by no means the same sort o payo. Its true

that, on the one hand, derision may well satisy an aggressive impulse, and,

on the other, aggressive acts can easily have the eect o demeaning theirobject. But though both may be present in varying proportions in many

instances o humor, there are, nonetheless, two separate kinds o reward

involved. It is one thing to eel the rush o superiority when a respected

gures imperections are revealed; it is another to enjoy seeing someone hit

over the head with a vase.

As or aggression, what is it that makes the dierence between comic ag-

gression and scenes o aggression that are not generally regarded as unny?

For one thing, to achieve a comic eect, something in the situation beore

us will ordinarily need to present or in some way invoke an incongruousand restrictive A. One notable example o comic violence in the lm The Big

Brawl oers a remarkably clear view o the A/B structure at work. Jackie

Chans character has a ather who doesnt want him to ght, so when Jackie


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80 Farber

takes on a gang o thugs not only outside his athers restaurant but with his

ather actually looking on, he has to beat them up (B) while appearing not

to be ghting at all (A). The A/B incongruity is achieved by other means

in Molires Les Fourberies de Scapin. When Scapin wants to take revengeon Gronte, he persuades the old man to hide in a sack that he is carrying

and then pretends to be trying to protect him rom assailants (A) while it is

Scapin himsel that is administering the blows (B).

The incongruous A is sometimes center stage, as it is in these examples,

and sometimes incorporated in subtler ashion. What presents or evokes the

A in aggressive comedy may be no more than a look o studied indierence

or innocence on the aggressors part, or the utter inappropriateness o the

aggressor (as with the battle o old people in Lysistrata, or Monty Pythons

gang o thuggish old ladies who descend on innocent citizens and beat themwith purses), or a situational irony, as when, in the Pink Panther movies,

Clouseaus servant Cato attacks him (B) but only in dutiul obedience (A) to

Clouseaus standing order.

But also, or aggression to work as humor, the B must support the ag-

gressive [b] in the perceiver rather than the restrictive [a]and this is by no

means a given when aggression is portrayed. Style and context can play a

decisive role here. I someone fips o a gang o violent crooks in a harum-

scarum comedy-adventure movie, thats one thing. I someone does the

same thing in a tense, realistic dramatic lm where we have reasonable ex-pectations o seeing him beaten to death in ront o us, thats quite another.

This latter situation could have the eect o reinorcing the restriction on

aggression rather than deying it. Part o what makes violent slapstick work

as comedy, whether in an animated cartoon or in silent movies or in comme-

dia dellarte, is that style and context make it possible or the aggressive B to

support our need or aggression rather than our internalized restriction o

it because they exclude the kind o consequences that might spoil the game,

that might play to the restriction rather than the need. Cartoon animals eel

only enough pain to make the aggression register as such, and then, even itheyve been steamrollered paper-thin or have been shattered like crockery,

they get themselves back together and get on with it.

Finally, a comic eect is urthered to the extent that the incongruous A

and B are neatly linked in some way, as in the Clouseau movies already

alluded to where a situational link makes the respectul servant and the vi-

cious attacker precisely congruent. Molire was a master o this. Alongside

the sack scene mentioned above, we can place a scene rom Le Mdecin

malgr lui where Lucas and Valre, searching or a doctor and having been

inormed by Sganarelles vengeul wie that he is a renowned doctor but willonly admit this i he is beaten, are orced, regretully and with the greatest

courtesy and respect, to begin beating him with sticks.


16/21


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82 Farber

3.3. Nonsense Humor

In Freuds view, the pleasure we take in nonsense jokes derives rom our

success in liberating nonsense in spite o suppression.

22

Considered in thisway, nonsense humor would neatly parallel aggressive humor and sexual

humor, setting something that graties a need against the restrictions that

govern it. The [a] in this case would seem to be the internalized norms o

sensible, rational thought and expressionthat mental straitjacket that we

put on as we move away rom inancy. I an opposing [b] exists, this would

indicate that something is sacriced in that maturation process, that a need

persists in us that goes counter to the [a] in question, causing us to take

pleasure in subverting these restrictions that have been imposed on the pro-

cess o thinking itsel.

23

Nonsense humor, then, suggests a need or ree-dom and autonomy o thought at the deepest level. And it may even be that

such a need will be strongest in those who are still early in the process o

surrendering that reedom.

What complicates this airly simple account o nonsense humor is the rec-

ognition that, because the ramework o sensible thought has its own weak-

nesses and limitations (particularly since it is always to some extent built on

convention), nonsense may amount to more than mere regression; it may

stand as an implicit criticism o that ramework, as an invitation to venture

outside it, and even as a suggestion o what may be ound there. This might

help to explain the appeal that nonsense humor can have not only or chil-

dren but or two groups o adults in particular: artists, on the one hand, and

philosophers, scientists, and theorists o all kinds on the other.

With nonsense humor as with aggressive humor, we need to look care-

ully at what it is that separates humorous situations rom similar nonhu-

morous ones. Nonsense, ater all, is easy to achieve. Why are some instances

o it amusing while others are not?

When nonsense merely gets in our way, its not unny; its just so much

intellectual trash. What is our instinctive reaction to an argument, a propos-

al, a speech, or a theory where the logical connections are absent or aulty?

Thats nonsense! And i were getting rustrated because were trying to

retrieve a computer le and coming up with nothing but unreadable gar-

bage, are we likely to relish this moment o reedom rom the rational?

Clearly not. So what is it then that brings humor into the picture? We can

use the theoretical ramework at hand to answer this question. Nonsense

moves in the direction o humor insoar as (1) it sets a nonsensical B in in-

congruous juxtaposition with an A that is either supplied with it or is con-

tributed by the context and by our expectations, and that represents a more

rational everyday norm; and (2) this B supports the [b] in the perceiver more

than the [a]. In the absence o an A, or i we see the nonsense as irritating or


18/21


as an impediment o some sort that merely strengthens our adherence to the

rational norm, then it wont be unny. Finally, the humorous eect will be

heightened in proportion as (3) the A and the B are linked in some way.

Style and context, along with individual psychology, may have muchto do with determining how gratiying the B is. A child-oriented pictorial

style, in the context o a childrens picture book, can encourage even no

nonsense adults to let down their guard, to move more ully into a play

mode, and thereore to be less impatient with language and visual images

that are weird and o the wall. And, o course, some individuals are

ar more ready than others to take pleasure in the subversion o rational

norms.24

There is an enjoyable nonsense that fourishes in the artsthat, in partic-

ular, ound a home in childrens literature and illustration in the nineteenthcentury and even earlier (in some nursery rhymes and olktales, or exam-

ple), and that ound a home later in dada, surrealism, and absurdist theater.

How do we distinguish all o this rom nonsense humor? With great care,

I would say, because, in act, quite a bit o it is unny. Not everything that

alls within these aesthetic categories works as humor, o course. Much o

surrealist painting, in particular, even though such painting tends in general

to be built around stunning incongruities, isnt all that unny. In Magrittes

The House of Glass, to take one example, were given a rear view o the head

and shoulders o a man standing on a balcony with the sea beore him. But,through a somewhat jagged open space in the hair on the back o his head,

we see most o his ace staring out into the distance behind us. What one

might identiy as the B here is, in its immediate eect, less likely to gratiy

my need [b] to be ree o rational norms than to strengthen my need for

them. I nd mysel, as it were, o balance, clutching or them. As is so oten

the case with Magrittes paintings, what we sense is not so much a playul

up-ending o the rational as the revelation o something prooundly unset-

tling beyond the rational, a revelation that has the power to stop us in our

tracks. And though the painting itsel may be very gratiying in aestheticterms, just as the painting o a tragic subject may be gratiying aesthetically,

this is not the same thing as unny.

Lewis CarrollsAlice books, on the other hand, though proound in their

own way, are a estival o nonsense humor. The Duchesss moral inAlices

Adventures in Wonderlandplaying a brilliantly loony sentence o against

an implied, more rational A, which it caricaturesprovides an excellent

example: Never imagine yoursel not to be otherwise than what it might

appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise

than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.25

As is oten the case with nonsense humor, this moralparticularly in the

immediate context that Carroll creates or itprovides a secondary payo;


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84 Farber

that is, it also works as a derisive caricature, aimed at moralizing, bla bla-ing

parents, teachers, and so on.

Nonsense humor is, arguably, achievable in absolute music, when, in-

stead o an A based on the rules o rational thought and expression, it is theormal conventions o music that are incongruously violated. Haydn, in par-

ticular, had an inclination toward this type o musical humor, to the point

that Philip G. Downs is led to characterize Haydns Op. 33 string quartets

with such terms as silliness and tomoolery.26 The conclusion o Op.

33, No. 2, in particular, teases the listeners expectations, in what Charles

Rosen describes as the amous joke . . . which pretends to be nished beore

the end.27 Is the gratication that this kind o musical humor provides es-

sentially the same sort o thing as the payo in verbal or visual nonsense

humor? Perhaps. The possibility is at least worth considering. Finally, how is it that humor, which is by denition not serious and

which can so easily be seen as a cheap and short-lived gratication made

possible by the temporary suspension o realistic assessment that a play

mode provideshow is it that this stolen sweet, this dubious indulgence,

comes to attain proundity in the work o a novelist such as Austen or a

playwright such as Shaw?

The answer, o course, is that humor, which by its nature tends to seek

out and reveal incongruities, is a divided way o seeing that can be as shal-

low or as deep as the vision o the artist who employs it. Its tendency to splitwhat purports to be solid and whole into separate and in act conficting

realities makes it a preeminent mode o social criticism. But humor is hardly

limited to this role. Candide is rich in social comedy, but Voltaires humor in

this work turns inward as well, exploring ways in which the human psyche

is at odds with itsel and thereore in a permanent state o disequilibrium.

Humor, urthermore, has the potential to reveal ssures within the notions

through which we understand the world, and thereore even in reality it-

sel as we comprehend it. Some readers have ound this kind o critique

in Carrolls Alice books; and certainly it would be hard to miss in some oIonescos plays or in Buuels surrealist lms.

But we should, I think, be wary o using the more intellectual maniesta-

tions o humor in the arts as a way to legitimize it and to oset its more

low-lie maniestations. Aristophanes, who, along with Molire, is arguably

one o the two greatest comic playwrights, was, like Molire, clearly not

averse to low-lie humor. And Bakhtin, whether or not his historical as-

sumptions are quite right, does make a compelling case or the deep signi-

cance o the crude, the earthy, and the grotesque in humor.28 The structural

and psychological characteristics that high and low humor share constitutean anti-totalizing orce that can give even a pratall a certain philosophical

depth.


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NOTES

1. See F. H. Buckley, The Morality of Laughter (Ann Arbor: University o MichiganPress, 2003); Charles R. Gruner, The Game of Humor: A Comprehensive Theory of

Why We Laugh (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1997).2. Nol Carroll, Humour, in The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics, ed. Jerrold Levin-

son (Oxord: Oxord University Press, 2005), 352.3. Ibid., 351.4. Arthur Koestler, to his credit, did attempt to bring both incongruity and aect

into his theory, but relied on a Spencerian release model o emotion to achievethis; thus the unction o laughter is the disposal o excitations which have be-come redundant, which cannot be consummated in any purposeul manner.(Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation [New York: Macmillan, 1964], 51).

5. See Jerry M. Suls, A Two-Stage Model or the Appreciation o Jokes and Car-toons, in The Psychology of Humor, ed. Jerey H. Goldstein and Paul E. McGhee(New York: Academic Press, 1972), 81-99; see also Suls, Cognitive Processes in

Humor Appreciation, inHandbook of Humor Research, vol. 1, ed. Paul E. McGheeand Jerey H. Goldstein (New York: Springer, 1983), 39-57.6. Koestler, The Act of Creation, 64.7. Note that it is not merely the kings appearance that is being mocked here;poire

in French has the secondary meaning o simpleton.8. See especially John Morreall, who centers his theory in Taking Laughter Seriously

(Albany: State University o New York Press, 1983) on the notion o a pleasantpsychological shit.

9. Two recent studies, both drawing on the work o the Dutch primatologist Janvan Hoo, examine the relationship between humor and play in an evolution-ary context: Brian Boyd, Laughter and Literature: A Play Theory o Humor,Philosophy and Literature 28, no. 1 (2004): 1-22; and James E. Caron, From Etholo-

gy to Aesthetics: Evolution as a Theoretical Paradigm or Research on Laughter,Humor, and Other Comic Phenomena, Humor: International Journal of HumorResearch 15, no. 3 (2003): 245-81. Earlier examples o a play theory o humor areMax Eastman, The Enjoyment of Laughter (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1936);and William F. Fry Jr., Sweet Madness: A Study of Humor (Palo Alto, CA: PacicBooks, 1963).

10. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (London: Oxord University Press, 1970), 211.11. Clown gures, like Harpo himsel, may sometimes appear to provide the B in

the absence o any A. Unlike Chico and Groucho, Harpo gets to walk up andcut your tie o or knock the bag o peanuts out o your hand without so much asa nod toward the A. I would suggest that this clowns license actually impliesthe A. We recognize the clowna sort o walking carnivalnot as an abroga-

tion o the statute but as the escape clause within it.12. For an overview o such research through 2001, see William F. Fry, Humor andthe Brain: A Selective Review, Humor: International Journal of Humor Research15, no. 3 (2002): 305-33. More recently, an MRI study has concluded that humorengages a subcortical reward system in the brain, including an area that hasalso been implicated in sel-reported happiness . . . and cocaine/amphetamine-induced euphoria. Dean Mobbs et al., Humor Modulates the Mesolimbic Re-ward Centers, Neuron 40, no. 5 (2003): 1045.

13. One category that lies just outside the scope o this essay is based not on theA/B payo but on the link that bridges these two elements. Puns and similarwordplay, along with ingenious situational links in the narrative and dramaticarts, and occasionally even visual puns such as those Arcimboldo achieves inhis composite portraitsall o these provide what could be termed the high-resolution eect, where the link itsel is oregrounded and oers the cogni-tive satisaction o coherence imposed upon incongruity. Not a orm o humorsolely in itsel, and comparable in its eect to palindromes, anagrams, and such,this perect t imposed suddenly on otherwise incongruous elements typically


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86 Farber

enhances, and is enhanced by, one or more o the types o humorous payodiscussed in this essay.

14. Cicero, De Oratore, vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 1959), 372.

15. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 43.16. I am using scenario here in a broad sense. The term is more precisely em-

ployed by the linguist Victor Raskin in his Semantic Mechanisms of Humor (Dor-drecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1985) to reer to a temporal script. Script itselhe denes as a large chunk o semantic inormation surrounding the word orevoked by it (81). His analysis o jokes yields a rigorously worked out semanticversion o incongruity theory, in which the joke text is compatible, at least tosome extent, with two dierent scripts that are opposed in some way but thatoverlap on the text.

17. Isaac Bashevis Singer, When Shlemiel Went to Warsaw and Other Stories, trans.Isaac Bashevis Singer and Elizabeth Shuh (New York: Dell, 1968), 46.

18 Hobbes makes a similar point, going so ar as to call laughter at the deects o

others a signe o Pusillanimity (Leviathan, 43).19. Albert Rapp, The Origins of Wit and Humor (New York: Dutton, 1951), 57.20. Erich Segal, The Death of Comedy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,

2001), 453.21. Sigmund Freud, The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious, trans. Joyce Crick

(New York: Penguin, 2003), 92-97.22. Ibid., 134.23. Freud reers to a rebellion against the compulsions o logic and reality (ibid.,

121).24. For a summary o research by Willibald Ruch and others on the relationship

between personality type and the appreciation o nonsense humor, see ElliottOring, Engaging Humor (Urbana: University o Illinois Press, 2003), 24-25.

25. Lewis Carroll,Alices Adventures in Wonderland (New York: Dover, 1993), 61.26. Philip G. Downs, Classical Music: The Era of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (NewYork: W. W. Norton, 1992), 433.

27. Charles Rosen, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, expanded ed. (NewYork: W. W. Norton, 1997), 139.

28. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hlne Iswolsky (Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 1984).

teorije of humor contemp farber

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