Let us go into the circus. In the ring a man is sitting at a
table. He has just eaten a banana and thrown the skin over his shoulder. A
clown, dressed as a waiter and carrying a tray loaded with an enormous cream
cake approaches the table. Anticipatory silence from the packed audience.
Without looking down, the waiter's foot just misses the banana skin. Gasp from
the audience. There is then some shouted dialog between the waiter and the
diner, the diner saying he hadn't ordered the cake and waves the waiter away.
The waiter steps backwards, but by a miracle his foot just misses the banana
skin again. Another gasp from the audience, even the children reduced to a
tense wide-eyed silence. This happens once or twice more until the waiter,
apparently realizing the effect he is having on the audience, reveals he is
perfectly aware of the banana skin and starts hamming it up, poising his foot
just over the skin then stepping aside. Audience starts to laugh relievedly.
Finally the waiter, far away from the banana and now ostentatiously
over-confident, trips over his own feet and falls over the table thickly
covering himself, the diner and the table with cream pie. End of scene.
Hysterical laughter in the audience, even from the parents (who may however be
glad that none of their sophisticated friends can see them).
What we are observing is a manifestation of
"Humour". The
purpose of this Essay is to try
and find what humour is, how does it originate and does it serve any useful
purpose.
What the dictionary says:
"Wit, humour, repartee, sarcasm, irony. These nouns,
related but not interchangeable, are compared as they denote forms of
expression. Wit especially implies mental keenness, ability to discern those
elements of a situation or condition that relate to what is comic, and talent
for making an effective comment on them. Humour, closely related, suggests the
ability to recognize the incongruity and absurdity inherent in life and to use
them as the basis of expression in some medium. Both wit and humour are
associated with amusement and laughter, but wit often implies brilliant,
pointed or cutting statement, whereas humour is also applicable to what is
kindly or broadly funny. Repartee, or the exchange of wit, generally in conversation,
implies facility in answering quickly and cleverly. Sarcasm is usually a form
of wit intended to taunt, wound, or subject another to ridicule or contempt.
Often it involves irony, a form of statement whose witty intent is contrary to
and sometimes the opposite of, the literal meaning of the words employed. In
this sense irony is often employed to point up mockingly the discrepancies
between reality, with its shortcomings, and a more desirable state."
Actually what we have been observing in the sketch above is
a very simple form of humour, one step away from pure slap-stick humour.
("Slap-stick. A paddle designed to produce a loud whacking sound, formerly
used by actors in farces. Also a form of comedy marked by many chases,
collisions, crude practical jokes and similar boisterous actions.")
The
beginning - the Grin
To find where it all starts, let us go
right to the beginning.
Two parents are bending over the cot of their 1 month old
offspring. They are baring their
teeth at the child and the child (who has no teeth yet) is baring its gums back
at the parents.
This baring of the teeth is the way
humans indicate pleasure, reduce social tensions, indicate approval. Offhand
it's not the obvious choice, but it's the one we have made. It's called
Grinning (not Smiling which will be discussed later). Parents and children may
also make hee-haw noises at each other which we call "Laughter".
Babies grin and laugh when they are happy, and their fond
parents grin back at them. This reciprocal grinning becomes iheir first communication. The parent reads
it as "child happy" and therefore "child healthy". The
child reads it as "parent happy" and if the parent is happy then the
child feels secure. Furthermore parent grinning becomes associated with its
main pleasure - food is about to be delivered.
Discovery
As the child grows up it discovers another pleasure - the
pleasure of finding the buttons that control its body.
For an example, a piece of hard data:
One morning my wife and I heard lots of laughter from the bedroom of my daughter, aged then
about 1 year, and went to investigate. She was trying, all
on her own, to stand up in her cot. With intense concentration she would grasp
the cot rails and pull herself up, totter a few moments unsteadily and then
collapse in fits of laughter. She was exploring her body and obviously
surprised and pleased to find that it was made to be stood up in.
To find out what she was doing more generally and more
exactly, we must remember that the human brain is a very large number of
switches or "neurones" and when we learn something we wire these
neurons up in a complex network. When we want to perform that action or think
that thought again, we just have to send an electric current down that
"learnt" network. But many networks have been "pre-wired"
for us. Some are to do with simple survival routines and come into action at
birth, before we have learnt to program our brain ourselves. (Try holding a sleeping
baby's nose - it will show a quite unexpected agility in pulling its head
away). Other prewired networks are discovered by the child as it grows up,
sometimes with the help of the parents.
Another example. While a baby is lying down its legs have no
obvious use. The baby knows they are there and can move them, but that's all.
But parents know what legs are for, and before the child is very old it is
being unwillingly supported on these rubbery useless extensions of its body and
incomprehensibly urged to do something. After a while its own brain is also
telling it to "walk across the room" but it hasn't the faintest idea
how. And if you consider the number of muscles involved, the need to take the
load on a stiffened leg, to transfer the weight to the other extended leg
without losing balance, walking is an
incredibly complicated manoeuvre. But spurred by parents and its own brain the
child takes an uncertain step - and a miracle occurs! It suddenly finds that a
whole part of its brain has already been wired up to perform this complicated
operation. The wiring is a bit gummed together to start with, like a new-born
butterfly's wings, but it soon unwraps and the child begins to feel a whole
section of its body come alive. The legs were obviously placed and designed for
walking and the circuits to control them are all prewired. Whole sections of
the child's brain, whose purpose was previously unknown, suddenly lights up and
clicks together and join up to make a whole. It must be a mind-blowing
surprise, a break-through, an insight, one of the strongest the child will ever
experience. And it is accompanied by mutual delighted grins on the faces of the
child and the doting parents. The event may well end up in the family photo
album under "First Steps".
(Yes, OK, this is a simplification - I know the child
actually learns to crawl before it tries to walk)
So:
- the child instinctively knows or learns from its parents that laughter is connected with
approval and pleasure.
- the child learns to laugh itself when it feels pleasure.
- the child feels surprise and pleasure and therefore laughs when it "opens up" a
new part of its
brain.
Insight
This subject has been covered in "The Brain -
Thinking" but briefly we store data in our brain in a completely different
way to our computers. We have an "associative" memory. Insight occurs
when two or more networks, corresponding to two ideas or pieces of information
and previously not associated, suddenly join up in our brains. An example:
Your hobby is chess and so you are very accustomed to see
the patterns made by the pieces on the chess board. You normally
"switch-off" after a game and don't use that part of your brain in
your every-day life. But one day you go with a chess-playing friend to a
football match and suddenly you both start to see the players as pieces on a
chess-board, with pieces covering each other and a goal being the equivalent of
a pawn making queen. It gives you a whole new view-point. Physically the two
complex networks containing your knowledge of chess and football have joined
together or become associated. You have had "insight" and you may
laugh with pleasure at the surprise, as you make further comparisons to each
other.
"Having insight" is a wonderful intellectual
feeling. You know your brain has just expanded. A whole lot of apparently
random data that you had painfully collected over time suddenly drops into a
pattern and become associated. You can now forget the data and remember just
the pattern. A really strong insight is like a chain-reaction: you admire the
first pattern for an instant then suddenly realize it is similar to other
patterns you already know and with a shock all these patterns become part of a
yet greater pattern.
My argument is that "having insight" is very
similar to the feeling of surprise you had as a child when you suddenly
discovered what part of your brain was for. It gave pleasure then, the pleasure
made you laugh and it has the same effect now.
Now insight, which is the sudden joining together or
"sparking over" of two pieces of brain tissue, can occur in two
general ways. Either you can discover the path spontaneously yourself, or
someone can show it to you. In the examples above, my daughter had obviously
discovered something herself, whereas in the second "learning to
walk" example the parents are slightly nudging the child to make the
connection. A "taught" insight can be imagined as someone making you
construct paths in your brain to bring the two parts closer and closer and then
suddenly, "snap", there is a spark-over, you have the insight, the
sudden surprise, and may laugh.
The
"snort"
The outright laugh is not often seen. More often is a sudden
involuntary compression of the diaphragm, giving rise to a "snort".
In the U-Bahn the other day I was sitting by a grumpy
looking Bavarian and opposite us was black passenger. Just then the ticket
inspectors walked down the coach and we showed our tickets. But the black passenger
didn't have one and was taken off the train by the inspectors. "Ein
Schwarzfahrer" I said to the Bavarian, who could not prevent himself from
snorting in surprise. (The German word means literally a "black (or
illegal) passenger"). He had evidently never thought that a passenger
could be "schwarz" in two senses.
But if I told some of my student friends how "fundamentally
human" (say) Mrs. Thatcher was, I would get a similar snort, this time of
derision. Why is this? I think this shows that the snort is a reaction of
surprise. Surprise that two concepts, normally not connected in that person's
brain are suddenly brought together or associated. Surprise as well, in this
case, that anyone could associate them.
Laughter
I think laughter is a succession of snorts, each snort
produced by the burst of small surprises which follow the first main surprise.
As though we are saying to ourselves "Gosh, that can't be true. Snort. Let
me check the data in my brain. Yes it is true. Snort. I didn't think of that.
Snort. I'll just check again. Yes, incredible. Snort. But that must mean ..
Snort. And that's true too ... Snort". A really good surprise which
associates a lot of things (which it also pleases you to associate) can result
in a "belly laugh". Har! Har! Har!
We don't experience many snorts, let alone laughs, in our
sophisticated adult life, for the reason that most of the ideas in our brain have already been
associated at some time or another. To find surprises in our brain we have to
look for parts which are far apart, are not yet associated. We join these parts
together in little artificial playlets called "Jokes". And of course
once the two pieces have been associated in a satisfactory surprise, they will
not produce that effect again - we have heard that joke.
Smiling
and grinning
We found out at the beginning of this Essay that baring the
teeth is the way humans indicate pleasure, reduce social tensions, indicate
approval. We do it in two ways:
The Smile. This is a conscious gesture and has nothing to do
with humour. It only concerns the muscles of the mouth and doesn't extend to
the eyes. Smiling is merely a polite gesture indicating approval or pleasure -
in other words it reduces possible social tension. Our literature is full of
such expressions such as "he smiled disarmingly" or "the smile
on his face took the sting from his words". We smile to show we feel
friendly and non-aggressive. People smile politely at each other when they
cross on a footpath.
In the infinitely complex human inter-reactions the smile
may be "smiled" from a position of strength ("he smiled
confidently" or "condescendingly") . Or if not sure of his
reception he may "smile uncertainly". Under certain conditions it
must be used with caution as it can have other interpretations ("she
smiled at him invitingly").
The Grin. This resembles the smile but is a twitching of the
lips and is uncontrollable. It always extends to the eyes. It is our reaction
to something we find amusing. This difference is shown in that we can have an
"infectious grin" but never an "infectious smile".
Forbidden
paths
No discussion on Humour would be complete without some
words on "taboos".
The act of "thinking" is the sending of a current
though various networks in our brain, and an insight is when we find an
unexpected connection or association. But there are connections or associations
which we don't or shouldn't make. They have been discovered by the child who
has perhaps gone down them once but then the parents have posted "no
entry" signs on them. Apart from the obvious ones concerned with making
the child a civilized human being and guarding its safety, each young child
will have a different set of no-entry signs. An example would be when the child
first picks up an expensive glass vase and grins self-approvingly. The parent
replies with a definite "no grin", several loud noises and rapid body
movements. The child is surprised with the reaction it has had for such a small
outlay of energy and initially files it away as a good way of attracting
attention. But then it is made to realize that it has done something
"wrong". A new word, signifying the opposite of approval. If it goes
down that path again it will get the same attention but this will have to be
balanced off against some sort of
punishment.
The child continues mentally and physically to expand into
its environment, and learns lots of "rights" and "wrongs".
The "wrongs", in spite of the glass vase example above, are usually
rules to prevent the child hurting itself - any parent would be foolish to
leave expensive glass ornaments within reach of a child. (It is not generally
realized that the wall of "do's" and "don'ts" with which
the parents surround their child is not only to stop the child getting out into
the dangerous world but also to prevent the dangerous world getting in. But the
child is perfectly aware of this. It is why a child will, keeping an eye on the
parent, go up to (say) the house door and
put its hand on the door-knob as though to open the door. If the parent
says "no", the child will remove its hand satisfied. It has touched
the "wall", and the wall is still there protecting it. For this
reason child psychologists like Spock say that a parent should think very
carefully before it says "no" to a child, but once said, it should be
maintained. Consistency is everything.)
But the child finds quickly that doing something
"right", like making a complex crayon pattern on a piece of paper may
get a vague smile and "That's nice, dear", but doing something
"wrong" produces a much more dramatic reaction. Unfortunately wrong
things can only be done once. Then the child finds that the dramatic reaction
can be provoked without the punishment that follows, if it just pretends to do
the wrong thing. Just wandering near the wall-paper ostentatiously holding a
crayon will produce a very satisfactory response.
If the child is basically sure of the
reaction and affection of its parents, it can have a lot of fun by going as
"close to the wind" as possible, without actually committing a crime.
It can become quite a subtle game. When
my daughter was 4 years old we had an act where she would climb onto my
shoulders as I sat reading in an armchair. I remember she was wearing loose red
woolly socks. I would grab her ankles and sternly tell her how naughty she was
to climb on Daddy's shoulders when he was trying to read his important papers
and as a punishment he was going to hold her prisoner and stop her getting
away. But by not holding her too tightly she was able to slip her feet out of
the socks and scramble down the back of the chair. Holding the empty socks
tightly I would now proclaim to the world that I had got her fast and she
couldn't escape and that would teach her not to disturb Daddy. She would then
run around the chair and stand in front of me, flaunting herself and waving her
arms. I would look from her to the empty socks I was holding with exaggerated
surprise and she would go into fits of laughter. In fact it is the first time I
had ever seen anyone actually slapping
their thigh with hilarity.
I think that what she was actually
doing was taking advantage of being allowed for a short time to be a
"court jester" and mock the "father figure". Nor was the
"mother figure" exempt. She would cheekily and accurately imitate my
wife putting on lipstick which would amuse me and disconcert my wife. My wife
didn't really like this little monkey imitating her, especially before
visitors, but she couldn't really forbid it.
So as the child grows
up the number of paths increases and
the number of "no entry" signs too, this time placed not by the
parents but by the society they live in. Some of the no-entry signs are
absolute ("thou shalt not kill"), others are less stringent
("thou shalt not speak with a common accent"). Going down forbidden
paths means doing or saying things which are against authority or not socially
acceptable. Just going near to these paths increases social tension. Breaking a
taboo is not amusing on its own but getting near to it can powerfully enhance
the effect of a joke, which remember is a surprise association. How often does
a joke begin:
Joke teller (lowering voice and
looking over shoulder) "Did you hear the one about the Pope and the
pregnant Lesbian when they met in the
zoo?"
He hasn't said anything funny yet, but
he's got our attention and we expect something really weird (an unusual
association).
Forbidden
"Forbidden paths"
What is forbidden varies widely over
different nationalities and social groupings. Sex, being forbidden and pleasant
at the same time, is always acceptable. "Lavatory" jokes are looked
on as childish - which is clinically true.
"Really" forbidden
associations are said to be in "bad taste" and are to do with
subjects deeply felt by the listener such as cancer, religion, blindness,
mental illness, death and suffering generally.
You need to be quite sure of your audience when you use
forbidden paths to enhance your jokes. There is for instance the concept of male "honour". Few men
like to hear jokes about their own country or group. Nor do Anglo-Saxons
usually like to have their women-folk hear "dirty" jokes (they are
supposed to be protecting them).
Rules of
Humour
When you are a child you learn that there are some things
that will reliably make your parents laugh - any remark that refers to Aunt
Mary's nose, or the simpleness and avarice of Mr Smith who lives opposite.
These "family jokes" must be cast in a certain
mould, going near certain forbidden paths and avoiding others. Repeating or
alluding to family jokes reminds the listeners that they are all in the same
family and reinforces group identity. Imaginative members of the family will
invent new combinations (associations) and create new jokes. Non-members of the
family will find the "jokes" quite incomprehensible, but if they live
with that family for a while they will gradually learn what the family thinks
is funny and if they have imaginative (associative) minds will be able to make
family jokes of their own.
Using
humour
As with learning the rules for humour, the actual use of
humour is very variable, and must be learnt. If you work in a German company
you will find everyone is very formal (calling each other Herr or Doktor) and
phlegmatic. If you make a joke, commenting on the weather perhaps, there will
be a pause while someone identifies your remark as a "joke", and then
they will all smile politely. Or possibly, as you are a foreigner, someone else
will explain to you that such weather conditions are due to a low pressure over
... and are to be expected at this time of the year. If you persist in making
humorous remarks at work they will patiently wait for you to finish before they
bring the conversation back to the matter in hand. Obviously humour is not
needed and is just seen as a pointless waste of time.
The Germans regard a humorist the same way the British would
regard a man who is always cracking jokes at work. If he was very good, people
would laugh at him at first but gradually he would become an irritation, a
clown ("Can't you be serious for once?").
It is very interesting to see how
people adapt to different societies. I have known Germans who have lived a long
time in France and have mastered the French sense of humour enough to make
Frenchmen laugh. On the other hand I know Britons who have lived a long time in
Germany and have "become serious". Make little witticisms and
humorous asides and they will merely patiently wait until you have finished.
Interestingly enough, this loss of a
sense of humour goes with a deepening
of the voice, another sign of the generally light-voiced Briton adapting
to the bass-voiced Germans.
Need for
humour
To resume then, laughter, that strange hee-hawing noise we
make, is an extreme form of grinning, and needs an actual insight type of
arc-over in the brain to initiate it. We don't laugh outright very often - we
need specially constructed artificial set-piece situations to trigger it. Much
more common is the grin. But before we go into how we make, or try to make
people grin, let us look at why we should want to do this.
The first reason may be necessity:
Democracy = sense of
humour
It's a hypothesis of mine that Democracy has found its
strongest roots in societies of mixed races. For the very simple reason that on
any important decision everyone is going to have a different opinion and the
only way to get anything done is to count heads. It's a terrible method. England
was one of the first to accept Democracy because England was such a aggressive
mish-mash of Celts, Saxons, Danes etc. And humour must also have developed at
the same time as a way of getting them to tolerate each other. We still all
live together in England, with much inter-marriage, so it worked, which is why
we have a sense of humour.
Contrast this with a country with a
homogeneous population such as we have in the Nordic countries or Japan. They
will all feel more-or-less the same on any issue and so they leave the decision
to an Expert. Democracy and therefore humour not needed. Such countries, freed
from having to make time-wasting jokes all the time, are very work oriented and
productive.
(Switzerland - with
democracy, four races and a noted lack of humour, was suggested to me as an
exception to this hypothesis. But then each race there has its own language and
therefore lives fairly separate lives. Important negotiations between the four
races must be done by well-educated and rational politicians. Down the
centuries the Swiss have had to learn to live with each other or be absorbed by
their powerful neighbours).
Humour
oils society
Humour acts as a social "oil".
A smile may not necessarily trigger a smile in return and so
defuse a tense social situation, so we try a bit harder and introduce humour to
"lighten" the situation. Just telling a joke is too obvious - one
might as well wear a red nose. So we behave in a "humorous" manner.
For example:
John arrives rather late at a dinner. Anyone else would have
mumbled an excuse and sat down at the end of the table. But John is a humorist.
He bustles up to the table, holds his hands out horizontally palms down and
says "No, no, please don't all get up". There are a few smiles, some
rather thin-lipped, perhaps a grin - but no one laughs. One girl says
indignantly to her neighbour that she hasn't the slightest intention of getting
up. John gets a chair from another table and pushes in next to the host.
It's not a joke, it's only marginally humorous. It's just
John's way of getting over an embarrassing moment by pretending that he is a
famous personage.
And once a sense of humour has been developed as a necessary
tool, it finds its second use - as a pastime. This quite often happens: eating
has become Haute Cuisine, sex has become Eroticism, picture making has become
Art.
We call the person who has a strong active sense of humour a
Humorist. He is a person who wants to show off his skill and be rewarded by a
grin or even laughter. The Humorist is an Artist. He is bored by simple data
transfer, he wants to embellish the signal a bit, to make it more colourful. In
the same way an artist doesn't like bare walls, functional furniture or living
accommodation, the Humorist doesn't like solemn faces, long serious
conversations. He wants to liven things up a bit. Instead of saying "I was
sitting on my chair typing into my word-processor" he would say
"There was I, perched on my stool pecking away at the keyboard". It
gives the image of some sort of bird, especially if he makes downward jabbing
motions with two fingers.
He is the sort of person who recognizes the dilemma, the
incongruity of the science reporter who had to dig his car out of the snow one
icy morning and get a friend to help him push it to start it. Arriving at last
in a filthy temper at the studio where he has to make a broadcast, he finds the
pipes of the heating system have burst and has to have a blanket over his
shoulders as he shiveringly sits in front of the microphone giving his talk
on - "Global Warming".
Most of the time the Humorist goes through life seeing and
commenting with a light touch. In the same way that most people can appreciate
art and some even create it, most people can appreciate humour and a few even
create it. But apart from the witty on-going ad-lib comments that humorists are
expected to provide at suitable moments, humorists will also have a stock of
set-piece Jokes.
Humour and humorists are given a high position in
Anglo-Saxon society. They have their own columns in the press and their own
radio and TV shows. In England we send them to our most revered and august
University. Any ex-graduate who has appeared in a Cambridge Review is assured
of a successful life in the national entertainment industry.
Whereas in Germany, or at least Bavaria, humorists are so
thin on the ground that they actually have a museum to one in the centre of
Munich! Valentin was his name and his act rather like early Buster Keaton.
How humour
affects our character
A person who has developed a sense of humour and uses it in
day-to-day life, will (in a society that uses/needs humour) inevitably
sometimes be on the receiving end of a joke. If he doesn't like this, and few
of us like ridicule, he will be forced to look at himself, his outside
appearance, the things he says. He will try to strike a balance between dignity
and wittiness. This varies with the company he keeps of course. Amongst friends
(those he knows will not ridicule him for many reasons, such as knowing his
"real worth") he can relax, wear a red nose, make terrible puns etc.
But amongst strangers he has to be much more careful, especially if he is
trying to impress them with his sincerity, and general "soundness".
He can only too easily imagine jokes made by others with him as subject and so
he tries to avoid them in advance.
This has the very important spin-off that a person who has a
sense of humour is a person who can look at himself "can see himself as
others see him". In engineering terms, he can apply feedback to himself.
This can be negative feedback which will damp down his
excess behaviour, acting as a built-in Devil's Advocate. Or it can be positive
feedback which will tell him when people approve of his behaviour and spur him
to behave even better.
Exported
humour
In England's moment of glory on the world stage we not only
taught half the world's population to speak English, but to a certain extent to
"think" English too, which includes having a sense of humour. I am
sure this is one of the reasons we still have a Commonwealth relation with our
ex-Empire. Contrast this with the French and Dutch colonies - Algeria and the
Dutch East Indies took the first opportunity available to get away from their
ex-masters and fought violently for their freedom. The Russian colonies are
repeating this.
Those with
no sense of humour
Think now of a person living in a "humorous"
society but who himself has no sense of humour. He cannot imagine how he
appears to others and if he is to avoid being the subject of ridicule he must
carefully watch how other people dress/behave and imitate them. He can permit
himself no fantasy. At the same time, fearing ridicule, he may cultivate an
aggressive personality, threatening physical violence to anyone who ridicules
him. It's his only answer.
Note carefully that what such a person fears is
observant Humorists with an irreverent
sense of humour. But if there are none around, if he lives in a society free of
these pests, he can live a "normal" life. Such a person is most at
home in the homogeneous societies that we have in Northern Europe or Japan.
Jokes
Jokes are short humorous plays. Related by one person, they
usually place the various actors in a complicated and unusual situation which
is resolved in an unusual and surprising way.
You might think that a joke or a
cartoon is just an amusing situation to make you laugh, or perhaps show you an
unusual viewpoint of something. And a lot of them are, of course. Those to do
with animals, for instance. But most jokes have a "message". They
show someone, some people, some type of person to have a certain
character-trait - stupid, mean, brave, cowardly ...eg. Scotsmen are supposed to
be economical ("The place was as deserted as Glasgow on a
flag-day.").
Reactions
to jokes
For this reason it is not surprising that some people on
hearing a certain joke will determinedly not laugh. Others will not laugh at
any of your jokes, even completely neutral ones. They may say they have heard
it before, or know a better one. It almost appears as though they are jealous
of the popular witty joke teller and refuse to support him. Laughing at a joke
seems to be not only to be approving
the "message" behind the joke but somehow also approving of the joke
teller. Laughing at his jokes is seen as helping to increase his popularity.
In Potter's "Gamesmanship"
book there is even a recommended way of putting down a joke-teller and so
becoming "one up". The joke-teller is pictured as leaning on the
mantel-piece at a party, glass in hand, relating one witty joke after the other
and surrounded by a laughing crowd. The "Gamesman" should enter
quietly and sit on a stool at his feet. To start with he laughs at all the
jokes. But sooner or later a joke will be related about a man with one leg. The
Gamesman too will laugh loudly and then climb to his feet and hobble out of the
room on his obviously artificial leg.
When to
tell a joke
During a normal lively conversation a Humorist will often be
reminded of a good joke and may think of telling it. It's usually a bad idea.
If the Humorist is well-known, the group will politely allow
him to tell his joke and will laugh. But there is always a terrible
"hole" after a joke has been told, as occurs when the television is
switched off. The joke has broken the free association that everyone was using
to maintain the conversation and now they have to start again. The Humorist may
now seize on this hole to relate another and another joke. This can quickly
become boring to the more active members of the group who didn't join it just
to provide an audience. They will either drift away or relate a joke of their
own and it can quickly becomes a sort of contest.
The best time to tell
a "formal" joke is at the beginning or end of a meeting. A speaker at
a conference will often tell a short joke at the beginning of his speech to
"loosen things up". Another good time is just as a party is breaking
up - "leave them laughing".
Now let us analyse and attempt to classify some jokes. Note
that these jokes are some of the best I know but they appear much less amusing
when pulled apart in analysis. I suggest that at the end of this paper you read
the jokes again and this time jump over
the analysis.
Joke 1
A old lady goes up to the gorilla cage in the zoo and gives
the gorilla a peach. The gorilla takes the peach, sniffs at it suspiciously
then sticking his fingers into it pulls out the stone. Reaching behind himself
he pushes it into his bottom. Then he pulls the stone out of his bottom, puts
it back into the peach, and eats the peach with evident enjoyment. The little
old lady regards all this with fascinated disgust and turns to the nearby
keeper.
"How absolutely
revolting! How can you permit your charge to behave in such a scandalous manner
before the general public? And what
possible excuse can this animal have for behaving in such an unnatural manner?"
"Ah," said the keeper, "It's very simple.
Jimmy here is a wise old gorilla. He remembers that a nice lady, just like you,
once gave him a peach with a stone that was almost too big to pass. Very
painful it was".
(So now he checks before).
Note the build-up of tension
(translation - `watch out, there is going to be a spark any moment, get ready!)
followed by the snap of the spark. Notice also that the actual
"spark-over" is not included in this joke - the two pieces of the
joke are pushed closely together and the spark occurs spontaneously. This is a
way of increasing the size of the spark (as in physics, too!) and gives the
listener a stronger sense of "discovered it myself" insight.
The "forbidden path" here is obscenity, but it is
treated clinically.
Unfortunately spark-over doesn't occur with some people and
the joke has to be explained. In other words the two pieces of the joke have to
be pushed together even closer for them and, as to be expected, there is only a
small spark.
("Oh, I see. I don't think that's very funny.")
Joke 2
Two Victorian explorers are hacking their way through the
jungle in deepest Africa, followed by a train of bearers.
"God, George, but it's hot here" says Percy,
pulling off his topee and wiping his forehead.
"Indeed it is" replies George. "But look -
isn't that a river ahead?"
It is. They arrive at the river bank and sit down with
relief, dangling their legs in the cool water.
"Ah, that's wonderful, isn't it, Percy?"
"It certainly is, George".
But after a while:
"I say, George."
"Yes, Percy?"
"A crocodile has just bitten off one of my legs."
"Really, Percy? Which one?"
There is a pause while Percy looks out across the river.
Let us pause here a moment too. A rather odd situation has
developed. Two men, caricatures of English gentlemen, are exchanging polite
club-type conversation in the middle of darkest Africa. Two parts of your
brain, not normally connected (ultra-civilized conversation and the wilderness)
are brought together. There is a slight tension between them, enough to make
one grin, but no spark is expected in this exaggeratedly foppish conversation.
But you are hearing a joke so you know there is going to be a spark. Where will
it come from? You wait, slightly cringing, and then Percy's answer:
"I'm damned if I know, George. All these bloody
crocodiles look the same to me."
Pow. A spark from an unexpected direction, using an
alternative answer to the question. And quite in character with these two
grotesquely stoical Englishmen, one politely curious, the other merely
irritated that he can't satisfy his friend's curiosity.
But this joke, harmless though it may seem, is disliked by
some listeners, especially if related in a drawling English accent. It can be
regarded as indirectly praising a certain type of upper-class, public-school
educated intrepid English gentleman. (The sort of Battle of Britain pilot
imagined by Walter Mitty. Someone pointed to his arm and asked if he was
wounded. "Oh, that?" he answered, "Just a scratch. I set it
myself.")
Middle-class English, Germans, French and Americans find the
joke funny and will laugh almost affectionately. Irish, Scots and working-class
English will not laugh and will quickly relate a joke of their own.
Which just goes to show that as in any human interaction,
there are all sorts of hidden "messages" in jokes. As in:
Joke 3
During the war a German pilot was shot down and landed badly
wounded in England. His left arm had to be immediately amputated. After the
operation the pilot asked that his arm be sent to Germany where it could be
buried. Moved by this love of the Fatherland, the authorities readily agreed
and the arm was parachuted onto his home airfield.
Unfortunately gangrene had set in the other arm which also
had to be amputated. Again the pilot requested the arm be returned to the
Fatherland and after a short delay permission was received from the Air Ministry
and again the arm was parachuted into Germany.
But the pilot had really been badly wounded and in spite of
the most devoted care, his right leg had to be amputated. As expected, he again
weakly requested it to be returned to Germany and again permission was
requested. Almost immediately the reply came back from the Air Ministry:
"Permission refused. Guard this enemy pilot carefully.
He is trying to escape".
The tension starts to rise here with
mention of amputation.
Curiosity
increases concentration/tension when the pilot uses an exaggeration of the convention that the dead should be
buried in the land of their birth. This
is used again and again and curiosity
mounts. And then from an unexpected direction comes the spark of an eccentric interpretation of the convention as
another convention, the convention that it is the duty of captured soldiers to
try to escape.
We also see here an example of "black humour"
which is best defined as the casual treatment of anything to do with illness or
especially death.
As this joke contains military elements like
"duty", and "Fatherland", and implies admiration of the
brave pilot who wants to be buried in the Land of his Birth, it is a
"male" joke. Unamused feminists will raise their eyes to heaven at
the mention of such stupid male conventions.
And now a joke with another "message":
Joke 4
A group of men, mostly French, are in a railway carriage,
swapping jokes. After a while one of them announces:
"Now here is a Belgian joke!"
They grin in anticipation and sit forward in their seats.
All except one man who sits up straight:
"I'll have you know I am Belgian."
The man about to tell the joke is visibly disconcerted and
rubs his chin.
"Ah, a Belgian," he mutters.
Hold the action a moment. This is a one of the many racist
jokes. All countries think that members of some other country are simple.
English the Irish, Americans the Poles or Swedes, Israelis the Arabs, Germans
the East Friesians, North Germans the Bavarians etc. And French and Dutch the
Belgians.
The story-teller is in jam. He has
dropped a social "clanger" - he has essentially said "All
Belgians are stupid" in the presence of a Belgian. How can he extricate
himself except by apologizing profusely? And no excuse will suffice really,
because the Belgian knows the French think all of his compatriots are simple.
What the Frenchman has done is to tactlessly bring this fact to the attention
of the others in the carriage. But his reply to the irritated Belgian:
"I'll tell you what," he
offers finally. "I'll explain it to you afterwards."
Zap. Suddenly all the dialog must be re-interpreted. The
story-teller sees the Belgian's irritation not with being cast as a member of a
race of simpletons, but rather as someone who, admitting he is a simple
Belgian, complains that he will not understand the forthcoming joke. The
story-teller is embarrassed, not with the social gaffe he has just made (which
indeed he is apparently unaware of), but with the problem of having a member of
the audience who won't understand his joke.
It takes longer to explain the joke
than it does to relate it, but two points are illustrated. First, the listener
has to be aware that Belgians are considered simple and second he must be able
to appreciate the social tension - he has to completely understand the problem
before he can appreciate the weird "solution", which in this case
consists of ignoring the obvious problem and solving another imaginary problem.
Use of
racist jokes
You might now be wondering where and how such racist jokes
help to bind a diverse society. Well, if you are fighting the Argentinians and
your allies are the Patagonians, you surely don't go around telling jokes
against the Patagonians ("Did you know all Patagonian tanks have four
gears? One forward and three reverse.") Rather you tell such jokes to the
Patagonians against the Argentineans to bind you to your allies. As with most
devices, humour is a two-edged sword and you must choose the edge to match the
target.
The next example is also a
"re-interpretation" joke.
Joke 5
A man is sitting in a restaurant drinking a glass of wine
when he notices an attractive young lady at a nearby table smiling at him
invitingly. Surprised, he looks over his shoulder to check that she is not
smiling at someone behind him, then shyly smiles back. Calling the waiter over
he orders an extra glass of wine which he carries over to her. But no sooner
has he sat at her table and introduced himself that she says in a sharp
affronted voice: "What? Of course not!"
Sudden silence in the restaurant, eyes swivelling towards
him. Thinking he had been misunderstood. He starts again:
"Look, I think you must have misheard me. I really would
just like offer you a glass of wine, I just thought ..."
"No, certainly not! Disgusting! Please leave my
table!" she says loudly.
Consternation in the restaurant, people standing up at the
back to see the cause of the disturbance. The waiter rushes up and stands
undecided whether to throw this bum out.
Cringing and blushing with shame he creeps back to his own
table, hearing whispers and feeling himself the target of condemnatory eyes. He
sits moodily sipping his wine, while the restaurant gradually returns to
normal.
After about 10 minutes he is very surprised to see the
beautiful young lady appear and take a place at his table.
"I'm sorry I embarrassed you just now, but you see I'm
a psychologist and I am collecting data for a Paper on stress reactions."
She smiles at him winningly.
He looks at her thoughtfully, then stands up.
Hold. The man discovers the woman has just coldly used her
sex to make a complete fool of him. And that in front of the other customers in
the restaurant, who are all looking at him as an inopportune lecher who quite
rightly has been put down by this obviously clean-living girl. His simple
honest feelings have been cynically manipulated by this spoilt pretty scientist
who obviously thinks her explanation will be instantly understood and accepted.
After all he will have the honour of becoming a statistic in her forthcoming
book. What can he do except gruffly
accept her casual apology? He looks at her and now sees there was never any chance
of him making it with her.
"What!" he shouts loudly,
"A hundred dollars?!"
There are a number of components. First a compliment to the
listener who is assumed to be clever enough to have worked out that the man had
been made out to be a lecher, which is bad but excusable, whereas the women has
now been revealed as a prostitute - much worse. In other words "the biter
bit". There is quite a bit of male chauvinism in this joke, in that a male
hearing this joke would be pleased to find a man, initially deceived by
feminine wiles, using the same weapon to get his own back. Women are less
amused.
The disadvantage to this joke is that
it is a bit "cerebral". The
"spark" for slow thinkers is delayed, or doesn't occur at all if they can't play back the forgoing dialog.
And now for a completely different type
of joke:
Joke 6
This is the story of Garge and his mare Doris. Each year
Garge and his mare entered the Littlehampton ploughing contest and every year
they won by universal acclaim.
But one year, during the run-up to the championship, Doris
was pulling the plough, finely responsive to Garge's every touch and covering
the field with beautiful mathematically straight furrows. The team seemed well
on their way to winning again. But suddenly Doris went crazy, weaving all over
the place, not responding to control and making a terrible hash of the field.
In horror Garge dropped the reins and going forward pulled the horse's blinkers
apart and there to his amazement, Doris's eyes were completely crossed. He
shouted to his wife who phoned the vet.
The vet, who was very busy, asked Garge's wife to describe
the symptoms. "Ah, yes, a clear case of Plodoshink." To save time he
asked Garge's wife to prepare a yard of 1" diameter rubber tubing,
"..and I will come immediately."
Rather surprised, Garge's wife prepared the tubing and an
hour or so later the vet arrived in his Range Rover. He examined the tubing
then walked onto the field where the dejected Garge was standing by Doris and
the plough. The vet took one look at Doris and then told Garge to hold the
horse's head. He took the piece of rubber tubing, put one end into the horse's
rear and then applying his lips to the other end, blew a short blast.
To Garge's amazement, Doris's eyes immediately uncrossed!
Because of the special conditions, the judges allowed Garge
to restart the test which he did, this time covering the field with faultless
furrows. And ultimately he went on to win the championship, as usual.
The next year, this time during the semi-finals, Doris
succumbed to the same ailment. Garge signalled his watching wife and told her
to call the vet. She was just about to leave when he recollected that the vet
had charged 20 guineas for his last visit. So he quickly called her back and
asked her to prepare instead a yard of 1" rubber tubing. When it arrived
he stuck one end in Doris's bottom, as he had seen the vet do, and then blew
sharply into the other. He then went round confidently to the front of the
horse - but Doris's eyes were still crossed! He repeated the treatment several
times, but the horse's eyes remained persistently crossed. Finally he was
obliged to get his wife to call the vet. When the vet arrived, Garge rather
embarrassedly admitted that he had tried the treatment that the vet applied the
last year, but to no effect.
The vet said nothing, but merely took the piece of tubing in
his hands and asked Garge to describe exactly what he had done. Garge explained
that he had put that end in the horse's rear and had blown down this end.
The vet took the piece of tubing in his hands and carefully
reversed the ends. Then he inserted the tube into the horse's bottom and blew sharply down the other end.
Immediately Doris's eyes straightened!
Garge was amazed and chagrined. He couldn't see what he had
done wrong.
"But that's exactly what I did .. how can it make any
difference ...why did you reverse the tube?.. What difference can it
make?"
The vet looked coldly at Garge.
"Surely you don't expect me to put the same end of the
tube in my mouth as you had in yours, do you?" he said.
This is an example of what used to be called a "Shaggy
Dog" story, perhaps because the first of it's type was about a shaggy dog.
It can go on for hours, and is really a vehicle for a skilful story-teller to
add lots of amusing details, remarks and sub-jokes which he invents as he goes
on. Its humour (like all of its genre) depends very much on the teller and the
slow build-up to what should be an amazing and witty denunciation, but is
instead a barely satisfying explanation.
Joke 7
I once came across an interesting "visual" pun in
a spy film.
The hero was at the race-course, binoculars around his neck
and carrying one of those sticks that fold out at one end to make a seat. He
was recognized and chased by one of the "other side". Cornered he
lifted up the stick he was carrying and pointed it his pursuer. Smoke and flame
appeared from the end and the baddie went down. The seat was also a concealed
gun.
All good stuff but on the way home from the cinema,
something was bugging me. There had been something about that stick/seat the
hero had been carrying. What the hell was it called? And then suddenly I
remembered. A shooting-stick!
Joke 8
It is the breeding season and two
unwilling female ostriches are being hotly pursued by two overheated male
ostriches. The two female ostriches look back fearfully over their shoulders -
they are running as fast as they can, but the male ostriches are getting closer
and closer. Suddenly, without a word being spoken, the two female ostriches
stop and simultaneously stick their heads in the sand.
Immediately the two following male ostriches jam on their
brakes and look around blankly. They look at each other.
"Where on earth did those two girls disappear to?"
says one in angry bafflement.
Ah, a little more subtle. To appreciate this joke you must
be completely familiar with the fact (?) that ostriches in moments of danger
hide their heads in the sand, on the principle that `if I can't see my enemy
then my enemy can't see me.' Ridiculous to humans of course, but presumably not
to ostriches, or they wouldn't do it. And if ostriches believe it, then by a
sort of perverse logic ostriches must not be able to see anyone who has his
head buried in the sand.
(Sorry about the analysis if you saw the joke, but to my
surprise not everyone understands it).
A little bit of tension release (if related properly),
possible human interest by identification with the birds and an unexpected
solution - provided you know that ostriches in moments of danger ...
Notice that this joke gains a lot because the males are
chasing the females ie. sex. If it was merely about some baby ostriches who
were playing "hide and seek" it would just be "cute".
Male/female
humour
It is an observed fact that the females of a mixed group
almost always laugh when a male tells a joke, even though they haven't
understood it. It's part of their "Gatherer" or home-making function.
Furthermore, females very rarely tell jokes in mixed company. I think there are
two reasons for this:
- they instinctively don't want to compete with the male,
preferring the passive role of an admiring audience.
- they can't compete with the male (like, alas, in so many
other fields) because very few have a good (ie. male) sense of humour. Yes,
it's a case of aggression again. Remember that humour was developed to smooth
out eccentricities, and males in general are not afraid of being eccentric -
indeed many go out of their way to cultivate it. Females are essentially
conservative, cooperating rather than confronting. In brief, women don't need an "active" sense of humour and so
haven't developed one. The more
intelligent can appreciate male humour, in the same way that they can appreciate Art, but the actual
creation of humour is left to the male.
A quick definition here. By "humour" I mean the
more intellectual type of humour - wit,
irony, satire. Because, apart from an expected appreciation of
the "cute" things that children and young animals do, females do
have a special type of humour, a type of humour usually greeted
with a grimace and raised eyebrows by Anglo-Saxon males. I refer to sex jokes,
and I mean the really "earthy" sex jokes, the ones completely
uncontaminated with wit, the ones "that would make a monkey blush".
That this particular type of "forbidden path" joke
is truly female receives confirmation
from my experience in France, a country I have always thought of as being
"female" - in contrast to "male" Germany. The Latins are
much more uninhibited than the Anglo-Saxons. (They cannot believe that we do
not have the same preoccupation with sex as they do, but think we are just more
successful at hiding it. They call us "hypocrites").
You can be sitting in a restaurant in the Latin Quarter of
Paris, not obviously filled with perverts, and some young man will come in with
a guitar and toughly tell you to "hold on tight to your seats" as he
is going to tell us something really "strong". He is obviously being
proudly "macho". He will then sing the most amazingly obscene songs,
not only about all the different variants of inter-species sex but also the
effects of age, different types of virus and parasite infections on the sex
organs. Everyone in the mixed gathering is amused, the females especially,
their faces becoming red and their pupils widening, laughing delightedly as each
new variant is revealed. They are certainly experiencing insight, to put it no
lower.
[When caught in this sort of situation my only defence was
to bring out a small French-English dictionary and after vainly looking up some
word, request scholarly clarification from the eldest and most
respectable-looking guest present. "Le morpion ou la morpion,
Monsieur?" I would ask keenly. ("morpion = "pubic flea")]
It is really difficult to understand
why normally fastidious and "well-brought up" females have a liking
for brutally simple sex jokes. Is it because females with their short-sighted
"Gatherer" vision are uninterested in the outer world and jokes
involving “things"? Is it because they need to make themselves sexually
attractive to the homecoming "Hunter" and are therefore much more
interested in the theory and practice of sex? Or is it because they are much
more concerned than males with the fundamentals of life - birth and death?
Whatever the reason, they fortunately only relate these jokes
to other females.