is comedy inherently conservative?

obviously this is the kind of overbroad question that can't really be answered, and i'm sure the smart folks on ilx can come up with a lot of counter-examples. "conservative" is a slippery word, which is part of the problem.

in the past when i have thought this, it has been particularly in reference to humor i am drawn to about race and gender. these jokes derive the content of their humor from social inequality and also from types. do they, in recapitulating those types, fix them even more firmly in culture? our consciousness? some way i could put that that would be rigorous and not flaky.

this is basically coming from how sad comedy about race and gender sometimes makes me, a testament to how little seems to change. maybe a better way to put this would be, if the revolution ever came, these jokes wouldn't be funny anymore. maybe this is a really obvious thing to say. what do you think?

i guess if you wanted to broaden this question beyond my race and gender hobbyhorses, it would be more, is comedy about finding humor in things that never change and therefore asserting that things can never change?

i have a kinda traditional view that the best comedy is launched from from the powerless against the powerful. i also really love freud's explanation of gallows humor and camus' reading of it as sisyphean laughter

it's an interesting idea, especially in relation to all the ink spilled the last few years about how topical comedy is now ruled by liberals (cf. The Daily Show and the miserable failure of that Fox News "conservative Daily Show" thing). perhaps by going to that thought i'm kind of shooting past the point you're making, but i wonder if they're related at all.

so i guess i come down on comedy being essentially radical + not conservative

i'm not sure comedy is "essentially" anything

in the past when i have thought this, it has been particularly in reference to humor i am drawn to about race and gender. these jokes derive the content of their humor from social inequality and also from types. do they, in recapitulating those types, fix them even more firmly in culture? our consciousness? some way i could put that that would be rigorous and not flaky.

Kate Beaton put up this TCJ piece about comic humorist Betty Swords on her blog, which I found both sharp and inspiring.

All at once, her “rather Pollyana view of humor as a kindly contemplation of life’s incongruities” (quoting Stephen Leacock) changed: she saw humor’s tremendous power “to kill as well as to amuse. Humor commits countless little murders of its victims’ self esteem. I saw that too often men used humor as a weapon against the Others of society, and it was women who marched at the head of this Hit Parade. And since each of us marches to a different drummer, we all join the humor hit parade at some time.”

http://images.tcj.com/2011/12/Sword-2-650x761.jpg

i think i've talked in ilx threads before about being uncomfortable with humor about, oh, say indians (which indian comedians sometimes play up) that's just using the fact of being indian as though it's funny. (comedy indian accents, the fact that a bunch of college freshmen in my entering class cracked up at the sight of the sikh character in the english patient, as far as i could tell, because the sight of an indian man onscreen was inherently funny to them.) obviously a lot of race humor is a lot better than this (partially because it's funnier, which isn't hard) but sometimes i wonder if, as funny as it is, it doesn't participate a little bit in the thing it critiques inasmuch as it keeps certain stereotypes in circulation.

or, like, the best comedy can do (which is amazing) is lay bare some deep racist/sexist hypocrisy, like that line about nbc only ever having one black person on screen in the live 30 Rock. but it's not really built for imagining a world that operates differently, better? now of course there are probably millions of examples of comedy that do that that i'm just not thinking of.

i'm not sure comedy is "essentially" anything

― yorba linda carlisle (donna rouge), Monday, May 14, 2012 10:06 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, the level of abstraction/generality/pompousness of this thread title makes me cringe tbh.

At the end, excerpts from Swords' unpublished book on humor:

Excerpts from the precis for Betty Swords’ Humor Power

* The male images of women created by cartoonists were accepted as the truth about women. For example: The woman driver is the safest driver, according to the National Safety Council—but not to the National Cartoonists Society. To them, she’s the quintessential “dumb driver,” an idea so set in the concrete of comic tradition that it’s become a humor shorthand: when we see a cartoon of a woman driver, we know automatically that she’s a dumb driver. Just ask a man which he believes—the Cartoonists Society or the Safety Council?

* Humor’s Role in History. Man creates society in his own image. Our unique culture, and our early tall tale humor, grew from feelings of inferiority—to the British and to the awesome wilderness. The British called the colonists “uncouth savages.” America’s first settlers couldn’t claim culture, so they made fun of it. We still ridicule the “eggheads” and the “absent-minded professors” who, supposedly, lack the “gumption.” Glasses remain the humor symbol for a wimp: he reads! The arts remain suspect as a haven for wimps—or worse. Early Americans chose for the hero of their early tall tale humor that boozing, brawling, boasting, wenching, anti-book-larnin’ son-of-a-gun, the Frontiersman. He lives on in John Wayne and Rambo, and in a president who admires them both. In Funnyland, no Real Man attends a concert or ballet. And President Reagan felt it necessary to note that his ballet-dancing son was really “all man.”

* Humor helped establish stereotypes. Humor perpetuates these always derogatory images once they are set in the concrete of comic tradition. Even social scientists accepted the black stereotype of the lazy, thieving, stupid “coon” set by minstrel show jokes. Stereotypes are wonderfully useful in a pluralistic society: you don’t have to actually know a black or a Jew to know what they’re really like. What stereotypes are, of course, are lies, invented to keep certain people “in their place.” Ideas, as well as people, are the victims of stereotypes when their advocates are ridiculed as “kooks” or “crazies.” Stereotypical jokelore becomes folklore and affects our attitudes and even our laws.

* Our history helps explain why women are the chief target of American humor: women represented culture and civilization to our tall tale hero—the enemy of his freedom—while allowing every insecure male to feel superior to someone.

* Men are victims, too, of the stereotype they chose for themselves: that brawling, boozing, wenching, anti-intellectual frontiersman. … No other stereotype is so rigorously policed by jokes and ridicule–and it’s a killer, inflicting tremendous emotional and physical damage on the men who can’t live up to this rough-tough image, and on those who try to rise above it.

* It’s humor which perpetuates the myths that deny minorities dignity and self-respect. So it was vital that minorities develop a private coping humor to stand the pain, to put down their persecutors—and so to raise themselves.

* Feminist humor hopes to make changes by bonding with people, instead of laughing at them: the pick-up instead of the put-down.

* When you’re the victim of jokes, don’t just die there. Do something. Responses range from simple assertiveness to aikido, a kind of verbal karate which turns the thrust of the humor weapon back on the wielder.

* The larger the audience, the more conservative the humor, so newspaper funnies also reflect a static status quo made up of stereotypical humor myths—as does the press in general, newspapers and mass market magazines. Humorists are mostly merchandisers of the status quo; they must uphold the values of their audiences, especially if they’re large ones. (Political cartoonists and columnists are allowed more freedom). And yet, humorists are usually dissenters, who see the world slightly askew and ask us to share their laughter at its oddities.

* If humor has the power to help shape society—and given that our society is one of growing violence and alienation—can we not alter and improve society, at least our corner of it, by changing our humor? Only when we recognize humor’s power—for good as well as for evil—can we control that power for positive purposes in both our personal and professional lives.

I think her points about most humor – esp newspaper comic strips! – upholding the status quo is probably true.

I feel like this is something I could talk about a lot if I had some time to chew over the question. Too bad this thread is going to expire tonight or whatever...

Um, in a nutshell: no. It's not by any means inherently conservative. But is the bulk of comedy in the popular consciousness conservative in nature? Yeah, I think it is. And I think a lot of the reason for that is that, as with pretty much every other entertainment medium, breaking the mold isn't a thing that's rewarded much (either financially or in terms of popularity) so you don't see a lot of people within the popular consciousness breaking the mold. Which isn't to say those people aren't out there. They just aren't as visible.

One of my greatest concerns wrt comedy is to always always always try to override the impulse towards cruelty. It's such an easy, tried and tested way to go, but it just puts so much more shit out into the world. A lot of people put (potential) fame and riches before humanistic concerns, though, so I don't think that's an impulse that's overridden as much as it probably should be.

The best and most popular example of someone fighting the good fight in this regard is Louie CK. There are probably lots of moments that back this up, but I hone in on the season 2 episode of Louie when he has to trust his neighbors with his kids. This is a moment that could have been played for big, dumb, xenophobic laffs but was instead an honest moment which recognized how disconnected we often are from the world around us. It was pretty brave, and I think most instances when an overt comedic persona tries to embrace truth over laughs are equally brave but also just not a thing that appeals to many comedy performers or audiences.

when you remember this clusterfuck, remember me, please

jk I am going to read + think this

there's a whole argument about turn of century vaudeville humor that it used broad ethnic or racial humor bc the practitioners were looking to distinguish themselves from even more Other'd groups than themselves, to align themselves with the broader, whiter, popular culture. there's def conservative traditions of humor, but not ones i find particularly funny.

maybe stretching the definition of conservative beyond useful meaning here, but i have also wondered if the "moment of recognition" nature of what makes you laugh is part of the conservatism? like, comedy shoots for maximizing the widespread recognition of something familiar and wringing humor out of it--does that make it necessarily backward-looking or, as Abbott put it, overcommitted to the status quo?

i guess this question is kind of trolly or challopy or something. Abbott, i am going to read that article now! Betty Swords sounds cool.

yr leaving out the best part of that scene which was a monumental juicy hospital fart

xp to deric

(just to clarify, i like comedy! inasmuch as my humorless tendencies allow! i mean the term "conservative" half-descriptively, here. it's not my intention to be pejorative, exactly.)

Was this inspired by the 30 Rock discussion on the racism thread?

No I don't think comedy is necessarily conservative. I do think 30 Rock is a bit conservative. It also happens to be really, really good. But I don't think it even remotely approaches radical stances on pretty much anything.

isn't the way that humor allows us to discuss and laugh about things that generally aren't allowed as serious topics a kinda radical element? even if the thing it's letting you talk about is conservative in certain ways? like the fracture in society has an almost anarchic element.

I would argue if you're liberal-minded, you're not going to be seeking out inherently conservative humor. So if you're talking about Louie, you have to bear in mind how much more vastly popular and part of general popular consciousness someone like Jeff Dunham is. Lord knows I will get almost teary with love for the rabble-rousers and thorns in our side of the comedy world. But Vaughan Meader was outselling the Fugs by a fatty-ass margin! You know?

This is why I always half-sucked at improv: way too in my own head trying to avoid easy and regressive bullshit. While castmates minced merrily across the stage or did their best Breakfast At Tiffany's-era Rooney without giving a rip.

we should include friends, family + social circles too, and not just "professional comedy."

Something like 30 Rock is at least discussing third wave feminism, racial politics, etc, with some level of thought and even affection, which you won't find in hardly any modern comedy. Which is why it gets talked about to a degree that I find totally exhausting. There aren't dozens of other competing shows with similar ideologies to compete for attention from Slate & whatnot.

yr leaving out the best part of that scene which was a monumental juicy hospital fart

The fart was icing on the cake.

i would also point out that Louie has its "radical" tendencies and its conservative ones. louis ck's views, as expressed on the show, about wanting to have sex/masturbate being inherently disgusting and indicative about something animalistic about masculinity in particular are as old as the hills.

well, as old as the 19th century

in some sense even the most transgressive humor leeches the bile just a bit to allow the persistent context to continue. if you laugh then maybe you can deal with it today.

on the other side, lots of powerful ppl throughout history (on macro and micro levels) have been very concerned with the threat that laughter contains

i hate how defending my dumb thread idea is going to force me to criticize all these things i like, like Louie.

I'd say "no," to the thread title, but not to the concerns raised by it. It's a tricky thing. Picking up on what Mordy said about power, I think comedy can either laugh up or down. (And of course it can sometimes be hard to tell which is which -- just ask Dave Chappelle.) What's most transgressive about comedy -- like, say, the first Eminem album -- is often also what's most brutal about it, and that brutality is most effective when it's least conveniently or even consciously aimed. See also the entire run of South Park, obviously. Does South Park subvert anything, or does it just reify existing power structures? The problem is that that question is always going to miss something essential about what makes comedy work. Funny South Park episodes aren't really more politically or socially defensible than lousy South Park episodes, they're just funnier.

Which doesn't answer the question, obviously.

what is more conservative dreams or comedy

i guess jonathan swift would make swift work of this thread question

xp whoa

btw every time I see live comedy I basically feel like I am watching someone have a nervous breakdown on stage, I can't really do it anymore

i hate how defending my dumb thread idea is going to force me to criticize all these things i like, like Louie.

No, but you're right. And that's the thing: there really isn't any comedy I can think of in the popular consciousness that isn't at least a little conservative. It's just a matter of degrees, and all of the degrees are worthy of criticism.

funny dreams for sure the most radical. unfunny reality sometimes the most conservative but also funny.

Humor has and always will be a reactionary force.

isn't the way that humor allows us to discuss and laugh about things that generally aren't allowed as serious topics a kinda radical element?

No. Humor acts as a mechanism of release and pacification. Energy that is potentially directed towards dismantling the existing power structure is used up in counterproductive emotions such as "laughter".

To be humorless is a necessary precondition for creating a better world.

I recently reread a bio of Will Gaines, which I had read in my teens and it lead me to idolize the dude and early MAD as the unparalleled liberal iconoclasts. Which, of course they weren't. They basically wouldn't hire female humorists, wouldn't allow wives on the legendary and exorbitant annual staff international vacations, used racial slurs, made horrible (and unfunny) jokes at the expense of Prohias and Aragones for their ethnicity, etc. All a reminder that one must not have too much love for heroes, who are fallible, including my favorites such as Tina Fey.

omg am i banaka?

xp

hey banaka, knock knock

banaka, i am sorry but you are wrong. laughter will be the song we sing as our consciousnesses are uploaded to the singularity. u didn't get the memo?

for real i think this used to bother me more when i was a self-styled revolutionary. it's probably a naive way to think about social change.

satire can be sort of conservative i guess. if everything is worthy of ridicule and scorn then why do anything differently than we do now? feel like this is often the case with british satirical humour. if you skewer everything then the subtext is to just keep going with the status quo. though you could probably get into a whole class thing about the kind of people who make comedy in britain, which is just boring imo.

the joke that the universe is cold + empty + meaningless > the revolutionary joke so i guess the question is whether the void is conservative or not

see my thing about "humorless" is that it's often slung at people who actually understand the machinations of humor (usually better than the people lobbing the accusation in the first place)

doctors who understand farts better than I do can be humorless ime

targeted satire isn't, though, is it? i am just thinking of "a modest proposal" here. it's some next-level imagining a worse world to invoke a better one.

xxxp

i think humorless tends to apply to ppl who take themselves seriously

I fart a lot tho, like all the time, people tell me about it all the time, like I fart more than most people

no, progressive comedy was the subject of this thread! or comedy that's created with an anti-racist/anti-sexist intention but somehow seems to reify racist/sexist stereotypes unintentionally. or whatever.

― horseshoe, Friday, August 17, 2012 6:12 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Like, comedy that fails on it's own terms, or comedy that succeeds, but is embedded in and reinforces other oppressions?

My first thought on reading the thread title was Monty Python, which is explicitly leftie political comedy without getting preachy, but also five white straight public-school boys (with occasional appearances by a lady with very large breasts).

i'll have to check those docs out.

w/o much familiarity i have a certain respect for old showbiz hoofers/lifers omg is that conservative

but I will say, from what we know about early western comedy, it seems to have been mainly about laughing at the misfortune of others? and sometimes about upending the privileged, but there are plenty of laughs had at the expense of eg slaves, too - and I think "finding amusement in the misfortune of others" is maybe inherently conservative?

i think American comedy would be a good-sized topic to tackle, since it still exists kind of a distinct flavor from other English-speaking countries and you'd only have to go back a couple hundred years, although it's probably most oral tradition that's hard to document, no idea how much non-literary comedy/humor made it to print before a certain point. (xpost)

i think more the latter, comedy that is embedded in and reinforces other oppressions. that's better-put than my original post, for sure. i think i was talking about a really specific and historically contingent thing and pretending it was general, for one thing. so yeah, i am interested in max's history of comedy, too.

xxp to Andrew

i think there is something at the psychological root of a lot of comedy that might lend itself to reinforcing the status quo -- like a lot of time a joke has to function by playing off of some widely understood truth or idea or social norm. if an idea or norm is inherently racist or misogynist etc., then yeah, a lot of the jokes constructed around will probably essential saying "check out this ridiculous situation in which our accepted ideas of this minority are defied." which by the way would be a horrible way to tell that kind of joke, usually it's done much more smoothly, but i'm not a comedy professional.

― kitty shayme (some dude), Monday, May 14, 2012 11:04 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark

i was about to try to write a post but i think i was just going to kind of reword this old post

Is the class itself a target?

I'd say in Rickles comedy everyone is the target. it's very meanspirited but in an oddly magnanimous "hey EVERYBODY is a joke" way. not defending all of his material cuz he definitely worked racist/sexist, but I do think there was something genuinely appealing in his "I am an equal opportunity offender" schtick.

xp

american standup comedy was invented by airplanes btw

airplanes and spendthrift women iirc

but I will say, from what we know about early western comedy, it seems to have been mainly about laughing at the misfortune of others?

seem to recall taking some shit somewhere (probably some other thread) where I made the broadly reductive assertion that all comedy was based on either the suffering of other people or nonsense/non-seuquiturs

but I will say, from what we know about early western comedy, it seems to have been mainly about laughing at the misfortune of others? and sometimes about upending the privileged, but there are plenty of laughs had at the expense of eg slaves, too - and I think "finding amusement in the misfortune of others" is maybe inherently conservative?

― steven fucking tyler (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Friday, August 17, 2012 12:40 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cutting against this is that the "lol slaves" bits of these pieces were the only points where non-aristo, non-heroic life was even depicted?

an airplane walks into a bar

why the long wings asks the bartender

Haha also if comedy is essentially conservative then why are conservatives SO TERRIBLE at telling jokes?

good question, they're long, but, you know, they sure are tired, replies the airplane

this is my favorite dylan song, says the airplane

mine too, says the bartender, mine too

then in Shakespeare you get a panoply of fools and low lifes who on the page delight in words but on stage also indulge in an awful lot of the slapstick and pratfalls of Roman comedy.

http://archive.org/details/laughteranessay00berggoog

here it is

Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
Henri Bergson

the comic consists in there being "something mechanical encrusted on the living"

gbx your post just reminded me that if anyone is interested in this subject and hasn't read hugh kenner's book The Counterfeiter's they should, it doesn't function as an all around deal, but it gets at a lot of what max wanted out of a piece or w/e

the whole buster keaton part is great, the rest is too, it is very dry and wonderful

the comic consists in there being "something mechanical encrusted on the living"

whoah, gross, get it off

^^^lolz

there's a spark in yr hair!!

cutting against this is that the "lol slaves" bits of these pieces were the only points where non-aristo, non-heroic life was even depicted?

I don't think that's the case - cf Horace especially re: his dad but maybe that's what you mean. Horace's satires are so gentle that to call them "comedy" is stretching a little imo

i think about this thread often, i think the answer is p much yeah

but I will say, from what we know about early western comedy, it seems to have been mainly about laughing at the misfortune of others? and sometimes about upending the privileged, but there are plenty of laughs had at the expense of eg slaves, too - and I think "finding amusement in the misfortune of others" is maybe inherently conservative?

I'd say it's pointed, but whether the arrow is pointing up-class or down-class makes a difference.

the comedy i find funny points at some unjust flaw in society and calls out hypocrisy with an eye towards creating equality. pointing up class, basically.

i was watching footage of this 'conservative comedian' at CPAC (i like to self-punish) and i feel like his conservativism made him inherently unfunny. same with the short-lived 'half hour news hour' on FOX, it was just painfully bad. but that is explicitly conservative comedy, i.e. it operates openly under the conceit that it is 'conservative' which might hamper its ability to talk about anything else. but i dare anyone to find some comedy that openly declares itself 'conservative' that ANYBODY finds funny. FOX viewers did not like the 1/2 hr news hour and the audience did not seem to be particularly in to that 'conservative' comedians routine. i feel like this has something to say about the nature of comedy, or perhaps it just says more about the nature of comedy as *I* perceieve it.

i think this thread is pointing towards comedy that may harbor a different 'banner' than being openly conservative but in subtle ways reinforces the status quo, making them more dangerous? i have mostly skimmed this thread and will have to re-evaluate my stance on the comedy I find funny, to see if it is actually subversive and progressive. i also think people in this thread are all operating within different definitions of what defines 'conservative' but then you have people saying the counterbalance to conservative could be anything from liberal to lefty, so. i don't even know what i'm talking about anymore

i also don't particularly find the daily show very funny, maybe I am just quite tired of Jon Stewart mugging it up and thinking that's a good joke.

i don't find it funny at all, just kind of annoying and full of super obvious jokes that don't provide much insight into anything other than making the audience feel like they 'got' the joke and feeling smug

i find someone like anthony weiner deeply tragic and think an argument could be made that using him as the butt of jokes is very cruel- he is obviously a deeply damaged and broken person, as easy as it can be to mock him. does it make it okay because it is pointing 'up' the class/power structure? love your enemies, etc

Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (420 of them)

lol now that's some subversive shit

is it conservative when i make 420 jokes to my baby

answer to op is probably it depends. If yr a wasp- yes.

american conservaives are authoritarian at heart, and there's nothing funny about that shit. you're either contemptuously spitting on those below you (which is disgusting) or kissing the ass of the people above you. i don't think it has the right palette to make good comedy.

answer to op is probably it depends. If yr a wasp- yes.

― Mordy , Wednesday, July 31, 2013 1:07 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

?

here he is, 'bringing down the house':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUdco-_bBeI

I'd say it's pointed, but whether the arrow is pointing up-class or down-class makes a difference.

the problem is usually when people who think their arrow is pointing up-class still end up - necessarily, because comedy is inherently conservative - pointing it down-class at another group of people

I have no trouble believing that lex has only been exposed to reactionary humor.

Brit-specific, but Jonathan Coe on Boris Johnson is very good on this:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n14/jonathan-coe/sinking-giggling-into-the-sea

(I feel kind of sorry for Harry Mount, the writer of the book that's notionally the subject of the review)

Read this @Merrillmarkoe piece on why comedy is truly a woman’s arthttps://t.co/IfmqFiDXCf

— Yael Kohen (@YaelKohen) November 21, 2017

Andrew that was a great read and definitely can be extrapolated on to the Daily Show etc

where's the weird dissertation about humor that Tracer (?) posted lo those many years ago, about humor being the moss growing on rust or some old bullshit

― catbus otm (gbx), Friday, August 17, 2012 6:38 PM (five years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"moss growing on rust" = it me

that essay is by bergson, a hero to deleuze - it's called "laughter: an essay on the meaning of the comic"

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4352/4352-h/4352-h.htm

it is one of the greatest things i've ever read, about anything. in it you could see an argument for an inherent liberality of comedy, in that it punishes unthinking conformity or rigidity of habit:

A man, running along the street, stumbles and falls; the passers-by burst out laughing. They would not laugh at him, I imagine, could they suppose that the whim had suddenly seized him to sit down on the ground. They laugh because his sitting down is involuntary.

Consequently, it is not his sudden change of attitude that raises a laugh, but rather the involuntary element in this change,—his clumsiness, in fact. Perhaps there was a stone on the road. He should have altered his pace or avoided the obstacle. Instead of that, through lack of elasticity, through absentmindedness and a kind of physical obstinacy, AS A RESULT, IN FACT, OF RIGIDITY OR OF MOMENTUM, the muscles continued to perform the same movement when the circumstances of the case called for something else. That is the reason of the man's fall, and also of the people's laughter.

Now, take the case of a person who attends to the petty occupations of his everyday life with mathematical precision. The objects around him, however, have all been tampered with by a mischievous wag, the result being that when he dips his pen into the inkstand he draws it out all covered with mud, when he fancies he is sitting down on a solid chair he finds himself sprawling on the floor, in a word his actions are all topsy-turvy or mere beating the air, while in every case the effect is invariably one of momentum. Habit has given the impulse: what was wanted was to check the movement or deflect it. He did nothing of the sort, but continued like a machine in the same straight line. The victim, then, of a practical joke is in a position similar to that of a runner who falls,—he is comic for the same reason. The laughable element in both cases consists of a certain MECHANICAL INELASTICITY, just where one would expect to find the wide-awake adaptability and the living pliableness of a human being.

but you could also read in it an argument for conservatism, as sympathy must be put aside for a moment in order for laughter to function:

Here I would point out, as a symptom equally worthy of notice, the ABSENCE OF FEELING which usually accompanies laughter. It seems as though the comic could not produce its disturbing effect unless it fell, so to say, on the surface of a soul that is thoroughly calm and unruffled. Indifference is its natural environment, for laughter has no greater foe than emotion. I do not mean that we could not laugh at a person who inspires us with pity, for instance, or even with affection, but in such a case we must, for the moment, put our affection out of court and impose silence upon our pity. In a society composed of pure intelligences there would probably be no more tears, though perhaps there would still be laughter; whereas highly emotional souls, in tune and unison with life, in whom every event would be sentimentally prolonged and re-echoed, would neither know nor understand laughter. Try, for a moment, to become interested in everything that is being said and done; act, in imagination, with those who act, and feel with those who feel; in a word, give your sympathy its widest expansion: as though at the touch of a fairy wand you will see the flimsiest of objects assume importance, and a gloomy hue spread over everything. Now step aside, look upon life as a disinterested spectator: many a drama will turn into a comedy. It is enough for us to stop our ears to the sound of music, in a room where dancing is going on, for the dancers at once to appear ridiculous. How many human actions would stand a similar test?

and what's more it follows a herd instinct:

Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo, Listen to it carefully: it is not an articulate, clear, well-defined sound; it is something which would fain be prolonged by reverberating from one to another, something beginning with a crash, to continue in successive rumblings, like thunder in a mountain. Still, this reverberation cannot go on for ever. It can travel within as wide a circle as you please: the circle remains, none the less, a closed one. Our laughter is always the laughter of a group. It may, perchance, have happened to you, when seated in a railway carriage or at table d'hote, to hear travellers relating to one another stories which must have been comic to them, for they laughed heartily. Had you been one of their company, you would have laughed like them; but, as you were not, you had no desire whatever to do so. A man who was once asked why he did not weep at a sermon, when everybody else was shedding tears, replied: "I don't belong to the parish!" What that man thought of tears would be still more true of laughter. However spontaneous it seems, laughter always implies a kind of secret freemasonry, or even complicity, with other laughers, real or imaginary. How often has it been said that the fuller the theatre, the more uncontrolled the laughter of the audience!

and reinforces the unspoken codes of society:

Society will therefore be suspicious of all INELASTICITY of character, of mind and even of body, because it is the possible sign of a slumbering activity as well as of an activity with separatist tendencies, that inclines to swerve from the common centre round which society gravitates: in short, because it is the sign of an eccentricity. And yet, society cannot intervene at this stage by material repression, since it is not affected in a material fashion. It is confronted with something that makes it uneasy, but only as a symptom—scarcely a threat, at the very most a gesture. A gesture, therefore, will be its reply. Laughter must be something of this kind, a sort of SOCIAL GESTURE. By the fear which it inspires, it restrains eccentricity, keeps constantly awake and in mutual contact certain activities of a secondary order which might retire into their shell and go to sleep, and, in short, softens down whatever the surface of the social body may retain of mechanical inelasticity. Laughter, then, does not belong to the province of esthetics alone, since unconsciously (and even immorally in many particular instances) it pursues a utilitarian aim of general improvement. And yet there is something esthetic about it, since the comic comes into being just when society and the individual, freed from the worry of self-preservation, begin to regard themselves as works of art. In a word, if a circle be drawn round those actions and dispositions—implied in individual or social life—to which their natural consequences bring their own penalties, there remains outside this sphere of emotion and struggle—and within a neutral zone in which man simply exposes himself to man's curiosity—a certain rigidity of body, mind and character, that society would still like to get rid of in order to obtain from its members the greatest possible degree of elasticity and sociability. This rigidity is the comic, and laughter is its corrective.

but it really is worth instapapering and reading from the beginning

lol 'the weird dissertation about humor'

ty!

Before 1960 or so, few comics eyeing mainstream audiences broached politics in any way. (Will Rogers was a different cat, but very savvy; he needled his own inclinations, as in the Democrat "no organized party" joke.)