Humour, Comedy and Laughter

Obscenities, Paradoxes, Insights and the Renewal of Life

Lidia Dina Sciama, Lidia Dina Sciama

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781782385431
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Cultura popular

Anthropological writings on humor are not very numerous or extensive, but they do contain a great deal of insight into the diverse mental and social processes that underlie joking and laughter. On the basis of a wide range of ethnographic and textual materials, the chapters examine the cognitive, social, and moral aspects of humor and its potential to bring about a sense of amity and mutual understanding, even among different and possibly hostile people. Unfortunately, though, cartoons, jokes, and parodies can cause irremediable distress and offence. Nevertheless, contributors' cross-cultural evidence confirms that the positive aspects of humor far outweigh the danger of deepening divisions and fueling hostilities

1

THE ORIGINS OF COMIC PERFORMANCE IN ADULT-CHILD INTERACTION

Ian Wilkie and Matthew Saxton

The Development of Smiling and Laughter

Newborn infants can smile, in the sense that the corners of their mouths curl up, just days after birth, but mostly this occurs when they are either very drowsy or even asleep. In the weeks that follow, infants begin to smile when awake, but in an indiscriminate way, at both people and things. It is not until about six to ten weeks of age that genuinely social smiling emerges (Emde and Harmon 1972); the baby responds to another person’s smile with a smile of their own, and also begins to initiate smiling, in a process which only emerges through social interaction with other people. We know this from studies of blind infants, who often fail to progress spontaneously to social smiling (Fraiberg 1974). Once reciprocal smiling emerges, parents begin to feel notably more engaged, while the infant, in turn, begins to show signs of joy, a new emotion, when interacting with others. Soon afterwards, from twelve to nineteen weeks of age, laughter appears, generally in response to very active stimulation by the parent. For example, laughter can be induced by simple games of ‘I’m gonna get you!’ which might culminate in blowing a raspberry on the baby’s cheek. Laughter can also be induced by a vigorous pitch or unexpected tone of voice. As it happens, CDS (child-directed speech), when directed at infants in the first year of life, sounds quite different from normal speech (Garnica 1977). A relatively high pitch is lent colour by exaggerated, swooping intonation contours, which are designed to grab the infant’s attention. At the same time they can prompt delight and laughter in the child. Thus, Rasmussen reports of his daughter that at ‘one hundred and sixty-two days old he could always make her laugh by asking: “Can you laugh a little at father?” pitching his voice on high notes’ (Rasmussen 1920). Van Leeuwen describes the process of CDS, revealing many of the key features of proto-comic performative interplay, in a transcript of a mother interacting with her twelve-week old baby during a research project on ‘toys as communication’:

Mother: ‘What’s that? … (excited high-pitched voice) What’s thaaat?…’. She holds up the rattle and shakes it.

Mother: ‘Who are they? What are they? They are funny ones …’. She moves the rattle close to her ear again, shaking one of the characters and listening to it.

Mother: ‘This is a nice one … Oooh! This is a squeaky one!’ She squeaks him again. The baby shakes her arms and legs vigorously and looks on intently.

Mother: ‘Oooh … (creating a voice for the alien) Ho-ho-ho. It’s like a dragon’.

(She continues, using the ‘aliens’ as puppets, creating sounds for them, making them wiggle, ‘walk’ across the baby’s tummy, caress the baby’s cheek, and so on). (van Leeuwen 2005: 84–86)

Surprise and Familiarity

From the very first, attempts to provoke smiling or laughter in an infant are characterized by an element of surprise. In this vein, Darwin relates his exchange with his 3½-month-old child who was ‘exceedingly amused by a pinafore being thrown over his face and then suddenly withdrawn, and so he was when I suddenly uncovered my own face and approached him’ (Darwin 1872: 289). Our response to being surprised in this way persists into adulthood, as we experience ‘the physiological squeal of transient delight, like an infant playing “peek-a-boo”’ (Critchley 2002: 10).

We see that an element of surprise is critical in triggering a comic response in both infants and adults. Comic triggers tend to be more vigorous than other forms of adult-child interaction, with parents engaging in exaggerated vocal play and facial expressions. A playful attitude is signalled by the introduction of absurdity and incongruity. This kind of early interaction is not only widespread but finds official sanction in advice dispensed by the National Health Service: ‘Put out your tongue and make funny faces. Your baby may even try to copy you! … Your baby is learning all about expression, mood and communication’ (Welford 1999: 124).

Surprise functions as a trigger for laughter, but not just any kind of surprise in any context. Arguably, an event is rendered both surprising and humorous by the occurrence of incongruity presented within a familiar setting. Sully observed the importance of surprise, rather than shock, more than a century ago: ‘Provocatives [sic] of laughter … were sudden movements of one’s head, a rapid succession of sharp staccato sounds from one’s vocal organ (when these were not disconcerting by their violence) and, of course, sudden reappearance of one’s head after hiding in a game of bo-peep’ (Sully 1896: 407).

The infant as an audience for comic performance needs to feel secure with the performer, typically a parent or family member. Infant and parent are typically bonded by familiarity and feelings of positive affect, so the setting for early comic performance is generally ideal. In a similar way, the success of comic performance in adulthood is also predicated on familiarity with the performer. The audience must in some way recognize the comic actor or the character they play. Of course, many comic characters are created with the deliberate intention to caricature unattractive traits. In this vein, one might mention Basil Fawlty’s irascibility, David Brent’s insensitivity, Rigsby’s cravenness, or Edina’s rampant egomania. But personality flaws do not prevent one from liking either the character, or more subtly, the actor portraying the character. Thus, Thomson suggests that ‘it is not simply that we like the actor in spite of the character, rather that, in defiance of our own moral judgment, we like the character because of the actor’ (Thomson 2000: 131). Whether or not the audience likes the actor (or their character), a sense of familiarity with the performance is, arguably, essential. In the same way, the infant will only laugh when they are both familiar and comfortable with the performer. This is what Jean-Pierre Jeancolas refers to as the ‘reassuring’ element in comedy (Jeancolas 1992: 141). Accordingly, J.B. Priestley notes that ‘The people to whom we are bound by real affection are always, to some extent, comic characters, and we begin to feel this in childhood. (We are always glad to see Uncle Joe or Aunt May but they can’t help being rather funny)’ (Priestley 1976: 9). Morreall notes that ‘babies enjoy peekaboo only with familiar faces of people they feel attached to’ (Morreall 1987: 135). By six months, infants begin to demonstrate an ability to distinguish between well-known versus strange faces (Sandstrom 1966: 173). And it is the familiar faces that evoke laughter.

If the reassuring context is absent, neither the young child nor the adult will be amused. For instance, the child’s first encounter with a jack-in-the box is just as likely to terrify as to amuse, unless it is introduced carefully, with some preparation by the caregiver to ensure that the new object will be a source of fun. In essence, the child must learn that the toy is not threatening and is, in contrast, comical: the surprise which then ensues is more likely to be pleasant. Circus clowns also exemplify this point, inasmuch as many children seem to be scared by clowns – giving rise to the dedicated phobia known as coulrophobia. Perhaps the outlandish make-up creates an image of the human face that is excessively unfamiliar to young children. Events differ in their degree of novelty and hence in the extent to which the element of surprise they embody is amusing, rather than frightening. And often, the transition from comedy to alarm is quite subtle, as Hazlitt observed in 1885:

If we hold a mask before our face, and approach a child with this disguise on, it will at first, from the oddity and incongruity of the appearance, be inclined to laugh; if we go nearer it, steadily, and without saying a word, it will begin to be alarmed … it is usual to play with infants, and make them laugh by clapping your hands suddenly before them; but if you clap your hands too loud, or too near their sight, their countenances immediately change and they hide them in the nurse’s arms. (Hazlitt 1885: 5)

It becomes apparent that the manner of the interaction is as important as the action itself. We see this point confirmed in verbal as well as non-verbal humour. With puns or gags, the way in which the joke is told is essential in the realization of the comic potential. As the comedian Frank Carson would have it: ‘it’s the way I tell ’em’.

Incongruity

Incongruity is a fundamental feature of comic performance. And the element of surprise discussed above is an essential ingredient in the creation of incongruity. But so, too, is the familiar setting in which the surprise takes place. For an event to be incongruous, audience expectations must be confounded. It follows, therefore, that the ability to compare (however unconsciously) the expected with the unexpected is an essential ingredient in appreciating a joke or piece of slapstick (Morreall 1987: 130). For the infant, the ability to recognize the unexpected as the unexpected is therefore essential. In fact, research over the past twenty-five years has consistently shown that infants are attuned to unexpected events from the very first weeks of life (e.g., Cashon and Cohen 2000).

By the use of deception, infants can be presented with ‘magical’ events which defy the laws of physics or logic. For example, a drawbridge can be raised in front of an attentive infant, and, via illusion, can apparently ‘pass through’ a solid object (Baillargeon, Spelke and Wasserman 1985). On such occasions, infant behaviour betokens their sensitivity to the incongruity of the situation. They look longer or suck more vigorously on a dummy, and their heart rates increase when observing impossible events. This basic finding has been replicated dozens of times and the research method is now known as the ‘violation of expectation’ paradigm. It would seem that we are equipped from the very start with a key ingredient in the appreciation of comic performance: a sense of the incongruous.

Writing in the nineteenth century, Schopenhauer was well aware of the importance of incongruity in inducing laughter: ‘The cause of laughter in every case is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real objects which can be seen through it in some relation, and laughter itself is just the expression of this incongruity’ (Schopenhauer 1909: 52). Similarly, Kierkegaard noted that surprise is present in any ‘contradiction’ that, in turn, leads to a perception of incongruity (which must contain its own innate truth or ‘absurdity to itself’ (Kierkegaard 1941: 460)). This perception then leads to laughter. But why should laughter be the response, when faced with incongruity? The answer to this question is much more mysterious, but the sense of relief, or release, which people feel when they ‘get’ a joke may hold the key, even for the infant:

Research has shown we instinctively recognise these ‘incompatible contexts’ in the first year of life … research shows that if a mother crawls towards the edge of the cot the baby will laugh because it interferes with the convention that babies crawl, mothers walk … Laughter is essential because it provides a cognitive respite. (Hale cited in Skatssoon 2006)

The Here-and-Now

Adult-child interaction is rooted in the here-and-now. In fact, it might be argued that nothing else is possible (Saxton 2009). The typical one- or two-year-old is incapable of discussing ideas and concepts which are remote in time and space. Their interest is instead devoted to concrete actions and objects within their immediate orbit. In fact, five topics tend to dominate the conversation of very young children: clothes; parts of the body; family; food; animals (Ferguson 1977). An adult who attempted something more ambitious, say some treatise on stock market prices or global warming, would be met with a blank stare. The adult is forced to follow the child’s interests and concentrate on matters of interest in the child’s immediate environment. Comedians also often draw their audience into a world that is rooted in the moment, as noted by Bruce: ‘Comedians drew on a repertoire of techniques which broke any theatrical illusion and rooted the experience in the here and now – they engaged directly with their audiences, ad-libbed, used catch-phrases and so on’ (Bruce 1999: 83).

Language-based Humour

At the age of about twelve months, most children utter their first word and the subsequent shift into a world of language takes off with remarkable speed. By the time of the child’s third birthday they can string multi-word sentences together. By the age of five, the typical child has a vocabulary of about 6,000 words and possesses most of the basic grammatical machinery for understanding and producing complex sentences (Saxton 2010). In tandem with this exponential linguistic growth comes a rising appreciation in the child for language-based humour. The development of a sense of humour seems to parallel the child’s linguistic development (Morreall 1987: 217). In verbal language play,

the sort of language play that leads to puns is thought to serve an important function in the development of a child’s language and communication skills … the greater source of pleasure seems to be the interaction with the carer or researcher … in this case ‘telling’ the joke … seems to make the children feel exhilarated at their new power to amuse their adult carer. (Carr and Greeves 2006: 31)

Children on the threshold of language take great delight in onomatopoeia, simple wordplay and puns (Moustaka 1992). We find here an echo in the use of catchphrases by many comedians: instantly recognizable triggers for a comic response. Dave Willis’ ‘way, way uppa kye’ is particularly childlike and was, in fact, taken verbatim from an utterance made by his own son, Denny, when a young child (House 1986: 67). Tommy Morgan’s catchphrase was similarly childlike, with onomatopoeic qualities: ‘clairty, clairty’, meaning ‘dirty, dirty’ (Irving 1977: 29). Arthur Askey’s ‘hello playmates’ or Bernie Winter’s ‘hello choochy face’ are further appeals to the childlike state. In a similar way, playground chants and rhymes, with their reliance on rhythm and vernacular language, are often resonant of comedians’ catchphrases. In Scotland, for example, one finds so-called stottin rhymes, as in: ‘Ruglen’s wee roon rid lums reek briskly’ (this translates as ‘Rutherglen’s small, round, red chimneys smoke copiously’) (Mackie 1973: 102). In Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, Freud states: ‘it is also generally acknowledged that rhymes, alliterations, refrains and other forms of repeating similar verbal sounds which occur in verse, make use of the same source of pleasure – the rediscovery of something familiar’ (Freud 1964: 122).

The use of incongruity to provoke laughter shifts from purely physical events into the linguistic sphere during the pre-school years. For example, puns rely on incongruity in their manipulation of the phonological, morphological and semantic features of words. In consequence, ‘a pun is a sort of jack-in-the-box’ (Santayana 1896: 250). Jokes also depend on verbal incongruity: ‘The punchline works by resolving the suspense of the story in an unexpected way. Your brain responds to this tiny paradigm shift by making a conceptual leap that mirrors the jump from perceived threat to no threat, with the same result – laughter’ (Carr and Greeves 2006: 22). Undoubtedly, the level of sophistication witnessed in verbal humour develops gradually during the school years. It may be for this reason that Scottish educationalist and founder of Summerhill School, A.S. Neill suggested that: ‘Few bairns have a sense of humour; theirs is a...