Dissecting Humor

There are a lot of theories about what makes people laugh. Some say it’s a release of tension, that’s why we laugh when we’re nervous, like when our boss tries to make a lame joke about being on a sea food diet because when he “sees” food, he eats it. Some believe its imbedded in our DNA to help us survive the stress of life. Others think it’s the feeling of superiority over something or someone. Something or somebody has to be the butt of the joke and it’s usually the overweight guy who has the complete collection of the LOTR Trilogy and has the Voltes V robot in its original packaging . While a handful have the opinion that it is the identification with pain. We laugh because the other person is also feeling the pain that we have felt: the pain of heartbreak, the pain of failure, or the pain of watching another bad ventriloquist with sock puppets doing knock knock jokes.

I believe that humor is a combination of all these things, except maybe for the ventriloqust. But most importantly, we find something funny if and when we can relate to it. There has to be some basis of agreement to find the humor in the subject. If Seinfeld started doing his bit about how small the peanuts are on the airplane to someone who’s never flown before, then there’s a lot of explaining to do first before he can get to the hysterics. By the time he gets to the history of the Wright Brothers, the subject would already be boring. If you don’t understand the racial discrimination in the States, you probably won’t find Chris Rock that funny. He’ll probably just sound like an angry black man. Oh wait, he really is an angry black man, well at least before he made millions.

This is the reason why humor is so personal. A drag queen singing and insulting the audience may be riotous to some people, while some might be offended and driven to beat up the drag queen with a baseball bat. So who decides what is funny and what is not? Is it the comedian or is it the audience? Is it a joke if nobody laughs? My opinion is a little of both. The comedian, by virtue of his expertise and artistic capabilities, knows how to craft a joke. But on the other hand, if the audience doesn’t get it, then the problem lies in the comedian not communicating effectively. So there has to be a balance, otherwise it will just be called spoken word.