HUMOR

Although the laughable is not usually thought of as a subclass of the beautiful (Aristotle, indeed, said that it was a subclass of the ugly), the problem of "humor" is a special case of the central problem of aesthetic theory. To find something laughable is to have a special kind of aesthetic emotion, but it is not at all easy to say just what features of the laughable situation evoke this emotion. Theories of humor attempt to answer this question.

Types of Humor

The only way to evaluate theories of humor is to see how well they apply to different types of jokes or humorous situations. For this we need a list of the main types of humor. The attempt to provide one may, however, prejudge the issue, since the basis of classification may itself presuppose a theory of humor. Moreover, if any one theory is right, then in the final analysis jokes will be of only one type: They will all turn on release of inhibitions, or superiority to the misfortune of others, or whatever it may be.

With these reservations, the following may be regarded as the main types of humorous situations: (a ) Any breach of the usual order of events, as wearing an unusual costume or eating with chopsticks when one is used to knife and fork (or with knife and fork when one is used to chopsticks). (b ) Any breach of the usual order of events that is also felt to break a rule, whether of morality or etiquette. The drunkard, the glutton, the hypocrite, the miser are all stock figures of comedy, on the stage and elsewhere. (c ) A special case of the second type is indecency, as in Restoration comedy or any smoking-room story. This has a different flavor from comic vice, just as comic vice has a different flavor from mere novelty and oddity. (d ) Introduction into one situation of what is felt to belong to another, as George Bernard Shaw's reference to conventional sexual morality as "the trade unionism of married women" or Mark Twain's introduction of a Connecticut Yankee into the Court of King Arthur. Finding connections between things we usually keep in separate compartments of our minds is, according to one version of the incongruity theory, the ultimate source of all humor. Whether this is correct or not, it is certainly one source that needs to be noted. (e ) Anything masquerading as something it is not. This has been a favorite stage device, from Twelfth Night to Charley's Aunt, and is common enough in other forms of comedy. (f ) Wordplay, of which puns are the most obvious, but not of course the only, example. (g ) Nonsense, especially of the Edward Lear or Lewis Carroll type, which often turns on wordplay but is distinct from it. (h ) Small misfortunes, like those provided by the banana skin, the custard pie, the thumb beneath the hammer. (i ) Want of knowledge and skill, as in the schoolboy howler or the circus clown clumsily attempting to imitate the acrobat. (j ) Veiled insults, as in the catty remarks in The School for Scandal.

Theories of Humor

Most theories find the essence of humor in one or another of the following: superiority, incongruity, and relief from restraint. It has also been suggested that humor derives from ambivalent feelings, in which attraction and repulsion are both present.

superiority theories

If we laugh at the miser, the drunkard, the glutton, the henpecked husband, the man who gets hit by the custard pie, the schoolboy howler, the person with faulty pronunciation, may it not be because we feel superior to all of these? This could account for our pleasure in humor. Accordingly, Thomas Hobbes regarded laughter as the result of a sudden access of self-esteem ("sudden glory") when we realize that our own situations compare favorably with the misfortunes or infirmities of others. We also laugh, he said, at our own past follies—provided we are conscious of having surmounted them—or at unexpected successes.

In support of Hobbes, or perhaps as a modification of his view, it may be said that in humor at its best we are conscious of surveying the whole human scene from some godlike level at which all men and women look pretty much alike: all weak, all lovable, all transparently obvious in their petty pretenses. If "superiority" is interpreted as this god's-eye view rather than as simply a sneering contempt for some failing we do not have, it is possible to account for laughter not merely at comic vice but also at comic virtue, as in Mr. Pickwick or Don Quixote. It may even explain why we often laugh with comic vice rather than at it. No one feels superior to Falstaff, but we may feel pleasantly conscious of "seeing through" him, and perhaps, in sympathizing with him, we feel superior, if only for the time being, to the conventional morality he flouts.

By extending Hobbes's theory in this way, it is possible to account for many of our classes of humor: indecency and masquerade as well as comic vice, small misfortunes, and ignorance. Alexander Bain extended Hobbes in two directions. Sometimes, Bain suggested, our laughter may be a manifestation not of our own feeling of superiority but of our sympathy with someone else who has triumphed in some way. This would account for laughter at veiled insults. Second, the triumph need not be over a person; it can be over anything at all that is conventionally treated with respect. Mark Twain's debunking of feudal values was not directed at any individual, and Samuel Butler degraded a sunrise by comparing it to a boiled lobster. According to Bain, the essential feature of humor is degradation. Some writers have argued, not very plausible, that in wordplay we triumph over the degradation of words. More credibly, nonsense may be regarded as the degradation of what Arthur Schopenhauer called "that strict, untiring, troublesome governess, the reason." Even incongruity, it is argued, always involves degradation. Typically, the incongruous effect is obtained by the bringing of something exalted into contact with something trivial or disreputable. Shaw's phrase has its force because trade unionism is much lower on the conventional scale of values than is chastity: The pleasure in seeing them linked is, at least in part, malicious.

Henri Bergson maintained that the particular characteristic exciting derision is inflexibility, the inability to adapt oneself to the ever-changing demands of life. Laughter is always at "something mechanical encrusted upon the living." With Molière in mind, Bergson claimed that the comic character is usually a man with a fixed idea. This fits in with early stage comedy and with the etymology of the word humor: A humor was originally a quirk, a kink, a mental (and primarily a physiological) oddity that throws a man off balance and twists his view of life. Hence, the comic character is simply a man with an obsession. The joke is to see how this obsession crops up again and again in the most varied situations, so that he always behaves in a manner wildly inappropriate to the circumstances as others see them but entirely appropriate to his own ruling passion.

With more ingenuity than plausibility, Bergson attempted to apply his formula to wordplay, which consists, he claimed, in showing that language is too rigid to be an accurate mirror of an infinitely fluid universe. His main emphasis, however, was on the social function of laughter; it is leveled, according to him, at the eccentric or nonconformist. This seems an unduly restricted view: The most penetrating humor is often aimed at the social code itself. There is nothing in Bergson's theory of humor that need have prevented him from conceding this: The conventions of society may often enough be characterized as "something mechanical encrusted upon the living."

incongruity theories

It can be doubted whether the concepts of "superiority" or "degradation" or even "inelasticity" do justice to the very large element of humor that consists in the intellectual and emotional pleasure of finding connections where none were thought to exist. It is true that if this were the whole of humor, humor would be indistinguishable from fancy or imagination; but then, if "degradation" were the whole of humor, humor would be indistinguishable from malice.

Immanuel Kant asserted that humor arises "from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing," and since his time incongruity has often been identified with "frustrated expectation." But there is more to incongruity than mere surprise, or even anticlimax; we must be, as it were, jolted out of one mental attitude into another completely and violently opposed to it. Usually this results from bringing together two things normally kept in separate compartments of our minds. Shaw's aphorism about the trade unionism of married women may once again serve as an example. Another is Butler's "God and the Devil are an effort after specialisation and division of labour." In Kant's view, the "degradation" of one of the two disparate ideas is quite incidental. What is important is that they normally evoke very different attitudes and that the connection between them appears to be genuine, not artificially contrived. It is on these two features that the neatness of a joke depends.

Kant's formula may be regarded as defective in that by putting the emphasis on surprise it ignores the logical connection between the two ideas that are linked. This is Schopenhauer's criticism. He claimed that all humor can be "traced to syllogism in the first figure with an undisputed major and an unexpected minor, which to a certain extent is only sophistically valid."

This formula applies most obviously to the mock-heroic or to certain types of satire. The point of Henry Fielding's Jonathan Wild, for example, might be summarized syllogistically as: All generals and those who behave like generals are heroes; highwaymen behave like generals; therefore, highwaymen are heroes. Here the major premise is, conventionally, undisputed. The minor is, no doubt, "only sophistically valid," but only "to a certain extent"; there is enough resemblance in behavior to give the satire sting.

The formula applies, however, to other types of humor as well. Oscar Wilde is reported to have said, when he was in prison, "If this is the way the Queen treats her convicts, she doesn't deserve to have any." Here the major premise is: "Those who ill-treat their dependents deserve to lose them." This generalization is then made to apply to a case in which losing them would be no hardship and deserving to lose them no demerit. What is sophistical about the minor premise is the assumption that a convict is, along with a servant, a child, and the like, the kind of dependent to whom the generalization applies.

The objection to Schopenhauer's analysis is that it stresses the formal side of a joke to the exclusion of the content. For him, humor was purely a matter of finding connections where (except in a "sophistical" sense) none exist. By this view, all humor is of the type of Richard Whately's Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Bonaparte. The essence of it lies in the ingenuity of the argument, underlined by the absurdity of the conclusion. If any derision creeps in, it is at the expense of the reasoning, or perhaps of the governess Reason herself.

What this overlooks is the part that the abrupt dissolution of an attitude plays in our emotional lives. Kant's phrase "strained expectation" hints at this but does not characterize it adequately. Jonathan Wild would not be funny if it were not for the whole complex of emotions that cluster round the concepts of patriotism and national glory. To take another example, Gerald Bullett's adaptation of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Wearing the white feather of a blameless life," is funny, not merely because of its close resemblance to the wording of the original ("the white flower of a blameless life") but because of the startling difference in attitude that results from the alteration of a single word.

So far as superiority theories call attention to the emotional element in humor, they do something to correct this inadequacy. It is doubtful, however, whether the emotion involved is either self-congratulation or malice. In any community certain attitudes are felt to be appropriate to some things and not to others, and there develop "stereotypes" of such figures as the typical politician, poet, businessman. The humorist drags into light the inconvenient facts that shatter these attitudes and puncture these stereotypes. Sometimes, as Bergson pointed out, the humor is at the expense of the person who is unable to live up to the conventional requirements, and here malice may creep in, but often enough the effect is to cast doubt on the conventional attitudes and values. Sometimes it is not clear which effect is intended. Wilde's witticism "Work is the curse of the drinking classes" may be taken either as a gibe at the working classes or as a questioning of the conventional Victorian attitudes to work and to drink. In either case one element in our enjoyment is certainly the sense of enlarged horizons that comes from seeing unexpected connections. This is in part an intellectual pleasure. So far as it is a conventional attitude that has been convicted of inadequacy, the accompanying emotion may be not malice or superiority but a feeling of liberation at the removal of intellectual blinkers.

relief theories

Liberation, or relief from restraint, is regarded in a third type of theory as the central element in humor.

It is well known that people who have been undergoing a strain will sometimes burst into laughter if the strain is suddenly removed. It has been argued that all laughter is of this type and that any joke will be found, in one way or another, to remove the restraints which society imposes on our natural impulses. It is the liberation of our impulses from social constraints, not of our intellects from too narrow a point of view, that is emphasized by this type of theory.

What are these impulses that need liberating? One obvious one is the sexual impulse. Since the mention of the (conventionally) unmentionable is in itself a sufficient cause of laughter, it seems reasonable to say that at least one important type of humor depends on our being able to give vent to forbidden thoughts and feelings.

But thoughts about sex are not the only ones that society calls on us to suppress. Our aggressive impulses are also repressed. Children are taught that it is "rude" both to expose their bodies and to speak insultingly to others. Consequently, the relief theory can account, plausibly enough, for the malicious element in humor and, in general, for most of the aspects of humor that have given rise to superiority theories. Even nonsense can be explained, if it is conceded that trying to be rational all the time is a strain for most of us.

Relief theories have been given considerable impetus by the rise of psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud himself wrote a book on humor, in which he suggested that there is a basic resemblance between jokes and dreams. Both are essentially means of outwitting the "censor," the name by means of which Freud personified our internal inhibitions. In dreams forbidden thoughts are distorted and disguised; in humor insults are veiled, masquerading perhaps as compliments, and sexual references lurk behind apparently innocent remarks.

Freud did not, however, regard all humor as the release of inhibition. He distinguished between "harmless wit," indulged in for its own sake, and "tendency wit," which gives us the additional gratification of giving rein to repressed sexual or aggressive impulses. Harmless wit delights us because it provides us with "infantile play-pleasure." In learning to use words, Freud pointed out, children "experience pleasurable effects which originate from the repetition of similarities, the rediscovery of the familiar, sound-associations," and the like. In other words, the pleasure of playing with words and ideas, on which incongruity theories place so much stress, is admitted by Freud to be enjoyable for its own sake, not just as a means of seeking relief from restraint. It is, indeed, because this intellectual play is enjoyable in itself that we can use it to beguile the censor. When Wilde, for example, complained that "the youth of to-day are quite monstrous; they have absolutely no respect for dyed hair," we must suppose that the censor is so diverted by the discovery that this remark differs only in one word from the conventional headshaking of the stuffier kind of matron that the malice in the remark (its complete exposure of the matron's pretensions and its revelation of her envy of youth) is allowed to go unchecked.

Freud explained "infantile play-pleasure" by invoking the concept of "psychic economy." In this he was influenced by Herbert Spencer. Spencer thought that humor consists essentially in the abrupt transition of thought from a noble or elevated idea to a trivial or degrading one, leaving the psyche with an unexpended fund of nervous energy that overflows into laughter, which is, according to him, a physical release of energy. Freud adapted this notion for his own purposes, identifying "psychic economy" first with the line of least resistance and then with the brevity and neatness that is the soul of wit.

Neither Spencer's nor Freud's use of the concept is very satisfactory. It may be pointed out against Spencer that when, for example, an innocent remark is transformed into a sexual reference, the second might be expected to call forth more emotional energy than the first. Against Freud it may be said that the lazy pleasure of following the path of least resistance is very different from our appreciation of the skill with which a master of humor links disparate ideas. When writers such as François Rabelais, G. K. Chesterton, Christopher Fry, James Joyce, and even Laurence Sterne play with words and ideas, it is exuberance rather than economy that they display.

Relation of the Theories to the Types

If the theories are evaluated by their ability to explain the main types of humor listed earlier, it would seem that none is completely adequate by itself. Each of them relies mainly on particular kinds of humor, either ignoring the rest or giving relatively lame accounts of them. Satire and laughter at small misfortunes are very well explained by superiority theories. Incongruity theories find difficulty in dealing with these but are much more satisfactory than superiority theories in dealing with wordplay, nonsense, and indecency. Relief theories can explain malice and indecency, and perhaps nonsense, but are driven to admit that wordplay and the finding of unexpected connections have an intrinsic appeal that cannot be reduced to relief from restraint.

See also Aristotle; Bain, Alexander; Bergson, Henri; Butler, Samuel; Carroll, Lewis; Freud, Sigmund; Hobbes, Thomas; Kant, Immanuel; Schopenhauer, Arthur.

Bibliography

general

Monro, D. H. Argument of Laughter. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1951; Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1963.

Sully, J. Essay on Laughter. London: Longmans, 1902.

superiority theories

Bain, Alexander. The Emotions and the Will, 3rd ed. London: Longmans, 1880.

Bergson, Henri. Le rire. Paris, 1900. Translated by Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell as Laughter. London: Macmillan, 1911.

Leacock, Stephen. Humour: Its Theory and Techniques. London: John Lane, 1935.

incongruity theories

Eastman, Max. Enjoyment of Laughter. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1936.

Schopenhauer, Arthur. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 2nd ed., 2 vols. Leipzig, 1844. Translated by E. F. J. Payne as The World as Will and Representation, 2 vols. Indian Hills, CO: Falcon's Wing Press, 1958.

relief theories

Freud, Sigmund. Der Witz und seine Beziehungen zum Unbewussten. Leipzig and Vienna, 1905. Translated by James Strachey as Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960.

D. H. Monro (1967)