Why Do We Laugh? The Nature of Comedy
What is funny, and how do you make it funny?
It’s often said that you can’t explain comedy. Or teach it. If you’ve got the skill, you got it. If you haven’t, forget it. Said mainly by people who think they’ve got it, in my experience.
I don’t believe that. Stand-up comics take years to develop their skills. To learn how to write material, and deliver it. And if you can teach yourself something, then you can also learn it from other people.
A Brief Primer: What is Comedy?
What if comedic laughter is our impulsive bodily response to an unstable moment of cognitive dissonance, when we don’t know whether we are safe or in danger, because our two systems for dealing with the world are arguing with each other?
For the nerds among you, this is my version of McGraw & Warren’s Benign Violation Theory. Everything that follows is just explorations of that core idea.
What is often called System 1 these days (preconscious, impulsive, rapid) is telling us that we are in danger and need to act immediately to avoid or escape it, while System 2 (controlled, rational, slow) is simultaneously telling us to stop being silly, it’s perfectly safe.
But you don’t need the jargon to recognise the feeling.
Potential threat surrounds us
Even the operating thetas amongst us carry around at least underlying fears of danger lurking unnoticed in the world. Some dangers are physical, some financial, some social. Some worlds are riskier than others. Some people are warier than others.
Social humiliation may not seem as threatening as being eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger, but to our amygdala (part of System 1), there’s little difference.
If comedy is what makes us laugh, then it needs to trigger fear, then safety. Direct threat or perceived social violation, followed by the reassurance of safety or social permission.
Some examples
Tickling. You can only be successfully tickled by someone you trust. Tickling plugs into primal feelings of being attacked, and while your amygdala is telling you, ‘I’m about to have my guts ripped out’, your neocortex has to be telling you, ‘No, it’s Daddy. I’m safe.’
If System 1 is shouting ‘Get Away!’, System 2 has to be shouting equally loudly ‘No, this is fun!’ If System 2 can only muster, ‘They’re harmless – I think…’ threat will overwhelm security, and you won’t laugh.
Roller coasters. Roller coasters depend on this same dichotomy. Your gut has to be terrified, while your brain is assuring you it’s perfectly safe.
Nobody is going to get on a roller coaster that doesn’t terrify them deep down in their guts. Or on one where your conscious mind is noting the loose bolts. You have to simultaneously feel terrified, and perfectly safe.
Plus, it helps to be in a group, which heightens both: the implicit ‘I dare you’ heightens the risk, while the ‘We’re all in this together’ diminishes it.
Cute children. ‘My three-year-old said the funniest, cutest thing the other day. How does that fit your theory?’
When little children say cute, funny things, they’re usually expressing aloud what polite society suppresses (i.e., it triggers our subconscious taboo reflex), but at the time our conscious mind accepts it because they’re too young to have learnt the unwritten rules of polite society.
Much so-called social laughter falls into this category as well – a social faux pas narrowly avoided.
Comedy and subtext
Unlike the many levels of subtext in dramatic dialogue, most comedy dialogue oscillates between naked impulse and blatant cover-up, with an occasional topping of sarcasm.
At the risk of over-simplification, I see comedy as drama without the cover of deception, or with it made obvious.
But what makes it safe?
We’ve already talked about what might trigger the feeling of being in danger. And we all know that fear is much easier to trigger than hope, or safety. So how do you trigger the feeling of safety?
Sometimes it’s logic. Standing in the queue for the Ride of Death you tell yourself that these things are closely regulated, you watch the cars go around safely, you see the people getting off afterwards, your friends are with you…
Sometimes it’s a cultural shift. Comedy tracks moving cultural boundaries with forensic accuracy. It has to. Yesterday’s taboo becomes today’s dad joke. But only for some audiences. Sexual anxiety might be close to universal, but ‘blue’ comedy won’t fly at the church social. Instead of having personal fear relieved by social release (the laughter that says “you’re not alone”), in that situation, you have personal fear exacerbated by social fear.
And two fears don’t make a laugh.
Social anxiety is more difficult to release. If comedy only works when it ‘punches up’, is making relative status crystal clear the key? (BTW, I wish it was true that comedy only works when it punches up. I think that’s a rule we should follow because there’s already too much punching down going on.)
Hearing other people laugh is probably the most significant indicator of safety. Cringe comedy is hard to watch alone, because if you’re on your own, all the ‘safety’ cues have to come from within the work itself. But, watching with an audience, what allowed the first person to laugh?
Something in the performance or the action or the words says this is not real, it’s just play. And we’re all desperate for release, so we jump on it the moment it’s offered.
Jokes without ‘Fear’?
There are jokes without overt fear elements, depending on unexpected logic shifts or momentary semantic confusion.
But they’re often feeble (unless we thought of them first), prompting more groans than laughs. It’s not accidental that puns are labelled the lowest form of wit.
Comedy and the Rule of Three
Many stories follow the rule of three. Many comedic mini-narratives follow this structure:
- The setup: establishes the norm or introduces the risk.
- Reinforcement: heightens risk or norm by repetition or escalation.
- Release: turns risk benign, or reveals the underlying threat.
Many sexual jokes follow this structure – plugging into the way taboos manage societal behaviour by suppressing impulse.
A thought experiment
How about this story?
A person steps up to a vending machine, puts in their coins, pushes the buttons. Nothing.
They hit the machine with the palm of their hand, twice. Nothing. They kick the machine. It squirts soda in their face.
Does that work? How?
Does the choice of character trying to get the drink make a difference? A child? A woman? A man? Their size? Apparent social status?
General rule – the higher their status the better. Otherwise, the joke feels cruel.
Does the machine’s response make a difference? What if it fell on the person instead of squirting them?
Without an immediate ‘safety release’ letting us know that the person wasn’t hurt (they stand up and throw the machine against the nearest wall, or emerge through the machine, scattering soda cans in all directions), most people wouldn’t laugh at the machine falling on the person.
But squirting is largely a symbolic threat. And it anthropomorphises the machine, turning the whole exchange into a playground tiff. Which probably does connect to hurt and humiliation, but in the safe, distant past.
