WHY WE LAUGH

Hokitika Guardian, 8 December 1930, Page 7

WHY WE LAUGH

SOME OF THE CAUSES. In spite of the' extraordinary variety of the elements which provoke our laughter, the causes of our mirth can be roughly reduced to two or three (writes D. E. Campbell in the Weekly Scotsman.) Laughter, for instance, according to Bergson, is very often a social protest against, any “rigidity” of action, mind, or character. Thus we see fun in absent-minded prolessors, in people walking into- booby-traps or making faux pas. An example from the evening paper will serve to illustrate what is meant by “rigidity” : Smith (everlastingly trying to be funny), to tram conductor—ls your Noah’s Ark full? Tram Conductor —We are short of one monkey. Step in, sir! Here the facetious Smith, so pleased with his . infantile sally that he does not realise the obvious retoi t, displays “rigidity” in the form of this absent-mindedness in laying himself open to attack. We enjoy his discomfiture and his blushes, while he registers a vow to be more careful in future. Society has taught him a iesson. Jokes about foreigners, Jews, and Aberdonians show, in a more pronounced way, this laughter against “rigidity,” In such w® are amused by the display of conventional racial idiosyncracies, which are fundamentally ~rigid” in this sense. The rigidity in these jokes, too, is of a more serious kind than the absent-mindedness of Mr Smith. It appears here in social vices, petty but real. There being no law against miserliness, for example, society does what it can to laugh the miser into a.sense of shame. To produce this curative laughter is the object of satire, the French comedy of manners, and such literary: works. One, of, tjje commonest causes of our laughter is a feeling of superiority. We grin at the sight\of a dignified gentleman chasing his silk-hat, at a hustlei falling on a piece ■ orange peel, or at husbands.'-We can afford to : smile, since, we are\in nope of these predicaments. ,Iu 'the"'Same \way .we laugh at the. innocent of children , from the .height of our. knowledge. It would be difficult to classify all jokes , and . humorous; . .situations as due to; any one of the-'above causes*. Veiy often all theiaughter-causing elements are present, more’or less, All that can be said ■is that, here . or,there, one particular: source ,of .laughter predominates. Probably Bergson’s theory -of laughter as a social corrective is true in somedegree, hut: it'is doubtful if it is completely, satisfying or all-embracing. It leaves unexplained, . for example, t e kindly,, sympatheticxbrah.d;of itomour, generally regarded as typicalTy English. Audiences laugh with Fnlstaff, not at him, to use a vulgar distinction. W 6 don’t want to cure what makes us laugh or It would be a solemn world. Nor does if explain why Dr. Johnson, and many others or less note, often burst into merriment, when no one else could see the' slightest reason for if. Perhaps a completer view of the cause of laughter might run in this way. Every individual has a- theory of life of some description, . which - lie tries, with varying success, to undertan . Anything that lie cannot fit - into his theory, anything that is eccentric or unusual from hjs point of view—not society’s as a whole—will appear comic to him. His laughter will be his own protest against it. This d'cplarjation accounts for the varying strength of people’s sense of humour, ajicl for the, fact that one person sees a joke when another can find i n one —D.' E. Campbell, in the Weekly Scotsman.