There is nothing funny about the expected. Comedy is born with the advent of the inexplicable. Just as an infant giggles with delight playing peekaboo, so too is humor borne always from surprise.
A joke is a curtain lifted, a laugh the resolution of a rift torn in the mind. This is why humor is so vitally important for the promotion and preservation of sanity. A laugh is the garbage man taking out the trash. Without that garbage man, the paradoxes of life would pile endlessly higher, blinding us to everything but chaos. For there is no way to repair ourselves of the searing rifts of life except through laughter. When taken seriously, a paradox leads always to madness. Only by taking things lightly can we hope to rid ourselves of the overwhelming weight of life, thereby paving the path to clarity of vision, clarity of thought, and a higher sanity.
A joke is a revelation. The apparently mundane is revealed to be substantially impossible, and the incommensurability of these opposites compels us to... laugh. But the joker is not surprised by his own joke; he already knows the punchline. Knowing the joke's end, his art lies in deception. He must keep concealed the essential moment of the joke until its proper time, at which point he delivers the unexpected truth with expert force. The joker must walk a line and deliver a punch. In this way, the joker is a combatant - and a liar.
If the joker is a liar, might also the liar be a joker? And if the liar does not laugh, doesn't that just make him more honest? A laugh can be had without a joker, and a joke can be told without a teller. Suffering considerable loss, who of us is brave enough to laugh?
All lies are potential jokes - it all depends on how seriously you take them. In comedy, white lies become light chuckles, significant deceptions become sick jokes, and flagrant abuses of trust become black commentaries on the gut-shot absurdity of life. All the world's a stage, and all of us merely players... but are our lives comedy or tragedy? It all depends on how seriously we take them.
Monday, May 16, 2011
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(part 2/2)
“A joke is a revelation. The apparently mundane is revealed to be substantially impossible, and the incommensurability of these opposites compels us to... laugh. But the joker is not surprised by his own joke; he already knows the punchline. Knowing the joke's end, his art lies in deception. He must keep concealed the essential moment of the joke until its proper time, at which point he delivers the unexpected truth with expert force. The joker must walk a line and deliver a punch. In this way, the joker is a combatant - and a liar.”
And a joke is not a revelation; its punch line is since it reveals the truth to the opposite of what was first described, or its setup. In other words, a joke needs a punch line for it to be funny, where it, the punch line, reveals a truth that is humorous, often because it violates expectations because its end is diametrically opposed to its means.
“All lies are potential jokes - it all depends on how seriously you take them. In comedy, white lies become light chuckles, significant deceptions become sick jokes, and flagrant abuses of trust become black commentaries on the gut-shot absurdity of life. All the world's a stage, and all of us merely players... but are our lives comedy or tragedy? It all depends on how seriously we take them.”
To claim that all lies are potential jokes does not account for the cheating husband on his wife, (significant deception or flagrant abuses?) where he must lie about his whereabouts, or when a father lie’s about his overweight teenage daughter when she asks “am I too fat in this” (white lies?)? Sure, these examples can be funny to the non-participant in such interactions, but I would argue that, if anything, they can be hurtful and even damaging if the listener were to find out the truth to the lie. Nothing funny about a wife finding out her husband was cheating, at least to the participants. According to this view, either cynicism from the other prevails or the disheartened individual who experiences the truth.
Finally, it appears that the author has erroneously combined two analogies, unsure of the proper cosmological prescription to remedy the bleakness of the proposed, deterministic life: the world as a stage with us individuals as players and the world as an arena with us as mere players. Surely players do not play on stages, and actors do not act in arenas, for they have some sort of determined space to play and act and, when the game or act ends, the individuals eventually retreat to another “world,” so to speak. And of course a stage assumes actors to act upon it, just as players assume an arena to play. So, if the world is a stage and we are mere actors acting on it, then this assumes we live double lives, never truly ourselves onstage, and always acting-the result of our imagination. But then what does life look like off stage and outside of the imagination? And who directs this life off stage? How about on? If it is not this, and we are actually players in an arena, then who is the referee? What happens in the locker room? In both scenarios, there is a presupposition that we are guided by a supreme authority that governs rules or laws for the appropriate cosmological explanation. In line with the author’s deterministic account of life, a God must therefore exist to govern our “comedic or tragic” lives, where the existence of jokes and laughter leads to the salvation that is happiness. Afterall, all games require regulation just like all shows require a director. Without one that will regulate either, can we really say that these are mere games and acts in the world? In both cases, actors and players are governed by an authority, and because of this I must question how your theory of jokes and happiness account for individual agency under the guises of both actor and players and how this in turn brings us tragedy or comedy vis-à-vis jokes.
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But, more to the point, as the old adage goes “laughter is contagious,” where this is presupposed on having others in place to experience such comedy and life relief. Sure, one can experience humor alone and indeed laugh, but laughter with others, I would argue, and especially in the context of jokes, is more salient to our individual existence and well-being than simply experiencing it alone. The author is only concerned with the individual, and ignores the others that affect the individual’s well being or happiness. A mother that witnesses her child acting out of character, that is perhaps humorous to her, arguably provides more satisfaction, meaning, and of course laughter than perhaps the crudest of jokes. But the point is that humor, laughter, and comedy are best experienced with others and not alone, as the author fails to clarify or even acknowledge.
If laughter is a coping mechanism, then what exactly are we trying to cope with, since, as the author notes, the consequence brings us clarity? Again, the garbage of my past? The trials and tribulations of my present? The uncertainty of tomorrow? And clarity of what, exactly? Why do I need jokes to cope with all of these again? If this is the case, then what is the purpose of relationships and leisurely activities if they do not provide happiness or reduced stress from life? And if clarity is warranted, how did it become hazy in the first place and why?
If the only way to rid self from the overwhelming weight of life is by taking “things” lightly, then what happens to the serious-minded, or the prosaic? Is life too great to bear for these individuals, where suicide is perhaps the only logical outcome to this heavy life? Do these rigid, often entrepreneurial type folk then have an opaque vision of thought and sanity?
“If the joker is a liar, might also the liar be a joker? And if the liar does not laugh, doesn't that just make him more honest? A laugh can be had without a joker, and a joke can be told without a teller. Suffering considerable loss, who of us is brave enough to laugh?”
If the joker is a liar, and the liar does not laugh, then how does this make her more honest, if they already know the truth? Doesn’t that make them just a liar, regardless if they laugh or not? Not all laughter is the result of jokes, and not all jokes yield laughter. All laughs do not profoundly affect my life so that it will give me the “strength” to merely accept the hardships of life. It seems that the only way I can achieve this higher order, at least through the author’s prescription of life, is through jokes, where I assume the result of it is laughter, which then further assumes that this will affect my life so that it becomes more bearable, since it is so hard to live. Fatalism, perhaps?
I presume that is you, Jessica. Thank you for continuing to read the scant writings I still post on here. I'm glad that this one provoked you to thought.
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