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Comedic Catharsis: How Humor Heals
Marisa Khachadoorian
December 1, 2021
1: THE PURPOSE
The purpose of this thesis is to convey the positive impact that laughter has on healing as a visceral release of built-up tension. I intend to communicate how laughter can function as a mode of therapy. It possesses the auspicious potential to provide aid to individuals and communities reconciling with trauma, antisocial behavior, or intimacy matters. Comedy can bestow upon an audience, and the comic alike, the benefits of alignment, community, personal expression, and empowerment. The final, and most ardent, purpose of this thesis is to promote the preservation of comedy as a cornerstone of social institutions. Our innately human sense of humor ought to be cherished, and it is necessary to set a precedent in which comedy is valued from a social and mental health standpoint, not be censored to a detrimental degree.
Plato condemned laughter for being “malicious and evil”. His musings on laughter greatly influenced Christianity and, inevitably, much of ancient European culture. Puritans went so far as to outlaw comedies in the mid-17th Century. Despite this bleak history, we recognize that oppressed communities of people have long used humor to cope with violent and oppressive situations. Jim Carrey refers to comedy as a “weapon at your disposal.” There are innumerable accounts of Holocaust victims making jokes with one another in order to cope with the trauma they endured and to keep them focused on the present moment, if nothing else.
Ted Cohen, in his book Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters, points out two key aspects of Jewish humor: (1) It is the humor of outsiders and (2) The characteristic form of Jewish humor is often based in language and logic. The appeal of Jewish humor, acting as our primary example of a distinguished genre of comedy, extends beyond the scope of the Jewish community because of these two aspects. This example guides us to further understanding how shared laughter from jokes can ease and aid trauma on a scale beyond the individual through the intimacy it provides. Shared laughter is a unique genre of intimacy that I believe is routinely taken for granted. The role that laughter plays in our relationships is far overlooked despite its contagious essence.
2: METHOD AND PRESUPPOSITIONS
I intend to show that joking about one’s trepidations can be empowering. I will do this by establishing how the formatting of a joke determines its ability to cause a release of built up tension in the body. I presuppose that laughter liberates one to achieve power over one’s struggles. This could assist in dealing with sensitive or painful matters. I presuppose that the public equates fear and pain with seriousness. People may find it offensive to not approach potentially painful subjects seriously and sensitively, but if our perspective was shifted in order to better consider what laughter can provide, we could presuppose, then, that laughter can liberate the individual from that which is causing them pain. Few would dispute that crying is a release of built-up tension. We can, therefore, presuppose also that laughter can provide a similar, if not the same, sensation. Utilizing these presuppositions, I intend to show how the relief theory of humor outlines this concept and how it can be cultivated to empower rather than detract from the healing process.
While the public has come to acknowledge how sought-after a sense of humor is in a romantic partner, it is hardly considered valuable on a larger, social scale. Sharing laughter with a group, especially a group of strangers, can be both therapeutic and socially beneficial. “I think what you want is to reach me, and therein to verify that you understand me, at least a little, which is to exhibit that we are, at least a little, alike. This is the establishment of a felt intimacy between us.” (Jokes, 29). An underlying community is formed through a shared sense of humor, connected subconsciously by invisible wires. “Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo” (Bergson 5). If nothing else, a crowd of strangers can become a classification of people who all appeal to such categorization by means of a sense of humor. An audience unknowingly supplies a fundamental element to the experience. They arrive with a presupposed knowledge that then allows them to comprehend the joke. Without such presuppositions, a joke will inevitably require too much background to maintain its comic essence. Therefore, certain jokes will only work with certain audiences. Ted Cohen presumes that, for this reason, “pure jokes” do not exist. In Judd Apatow’s Sick in the Head, he and Jerry Seinfeld reflect on Seinfeld’s innate ability to make jokes for everyone, which is why he has been so successful in his career as a comic. The more neutral a comic is with the subject matter, the more successful they can be at relating to a wider audience. If everyone can relate and can feel in the loop, they are “in on the joke” and are likely to feel involved as a member of a class. Comprehending the joke makes us feel included and a comic like Seinfeld makes everyone feel special and part of the group. There is social validation in an “inside joke.” Seinfeld is essentially making inside jokes for an inner circle whose scope includes everyone. We must then consider what laughter does for us, the role it plays in society, and furthermore how we can benefit from it.
3: THEORIES
Henri Bergson highlights three observations of comedy in Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. His primary focus was on determining the causes of comic situations. Firstly, he contends that comedy is an innately human thing. Everything that can be found funny has a comedic attribute only in its relation to humanness. The comic spirit illuminates collective imagination. It stands more in the realm of art than in real life. “Comedy is a game, a game that imitates life” (Bergson 68). Comedy highlights simple pleasures, ones derived from childhood. Observational humor is simply taking a mechanical subject and tampering with our view of it. “For exaggeration to be comic, it must not appear as an aim, but rather as a means that the artist is using in order to make manifest to our eyes the distortions which we see in embryo” (Bergson 27). This exaggeration finds the violation in the seemingly benign, as Peter McGraw’s Benign Violation Theory puts it, and amplifies it. This study of the mundane and its absurdity can be witnessed in observational stand-up comedy and even in impressions.
According to the relief theory, laughter is a release of built-up tension. A sigh when you’re touched by something serious is also a sort of release of tension. Lord Shaftesbury’s 1709 essay, “An Essay of the Freedom of Wit and Humor” is considered the first publication that depicts the concept of the relief theory. Its claim was that laughter released “animal spirits” built up inside us. Laughter is a way for the audience to acknowledge they are paying attention; It’s participatory. While many theorists have discarded and since moved past this theory, I believe many other theories of humor ride the coattails of this. The moments of
tension required to create jokes aren’t recognizable to most people. Those are the moments that are meant to go undetected so that the punchline strikes harder. Someone like Gene Wilder is so emotional and caring, and such a genuinely persuasive actor, that he is able to trick the viewer; You fall for his emotion, and then the punchline comes.
The Benign Violation Theory claims that jokes are made up of two parts: a violation, and something that makes that violation benign. Now while this may be a more formulaic theory for humor, I find that it still lines up with the relief theory. The benign aspect of this formula acts as the release of the tension built up by the violation. If we were to plug the BVT formula into a joke, I believe we would find that the relief theory also applies. Freud approached the relief theory in a way that limited its malleability. If we open this theory up and generalize it just enough, it tends to better withstand criticisms. Let’s dissect McGraw’s two strategies: The Silverman Strategy and the Seinfeld Strategy. We know the BVT applies to these because they are the primary examples that seemingly prove the BVT. The Silverman Strategy is as follows: The violation is offensive or aggressive subject matter, made benign by a delivery that is nonthreatening or aggressive, and in Sarah Silverman’s case, a “cute” way. McGraw describes the Seinfeld strategy as follows: “Seinfeld transforms normal everyday situations into benign violations by highlighting what is wrong with them.” Replace violation with tension, and benignity with release and it holds. The release of tension may not always need to come in the form of the punchline. Ie: The tension is in the setup of the joke and the punchline is the release, versus the tension built by the subject matter and the release in the delivery. The release could be happening simultaneously to the tension. In the same way that the BVT claims that there cannot be one without the other, the relief theory cannot work without both parts as well. If there is a build-up of tension and no release, then it can’t work and the joke won’t be funny. If tension is never built up, there is no real need for a release, and therefore no laughter. As is mentioned in Peter McGraw’s The Humor Code, the BVT has a very sleek and formulaic presentation, making it a more digestible theory. The relief theory lacks the bells and whistles, and the modernity, to be taken seriously, and yet I believe it exists as the foundation for the BVT.
4: THEORY ANALYSIS
If both these theories claim that laughter is a result of a violation (built-up tension) becoming benign (being released), then it’s assumed that there’s an understanding that comedy is essentially harmless. Ted Cohen remarks on how comedy we find offensive could be a reflection of ourselves and not necessarily of the comic. Oftentimes, if we find a joke offensive it is because we find it funny but believe we are not supposed to think it is funny due to its potentially taboo subject matter.
“Among contemporary normative theories of morality, most would require that it be shown that traffic in these jokes produces genuine harm to someone, or at least that it reduces the moral character of those who traffic in them.” (Jokes, 81)
The intent to cause harm to others is where a line can be drawn with comedy. If it lacks benignity, then it is not comedic. If we can acknowledge this key differentiation, then we can better understand the nature of comedy and its social role. This brings up two thoughts for me: Why do we try to blacklist topics that we find offensive when joked about? And what does laughter do for us as a visceral phenomenon?
Bergson’s second observation is that something is only funny if we aren’t too emotionally invested in it. The comic spirit values and adheres to mind, or intelligence, over heart, or emotion. “Indifference is its natural environment, for laughter has no greater foe than emotion” (Bergson 4). This could explain why s are often seen as insensitive or unemotional, especially when they approach a topic that is considered to be risqué or offensive. The connection is often made of s to depression, though many successful s do not come from broken childhoods or have a history of mental health issues. During a conversation documented in Peter McGraw’s Humor Code, Jamie Masada claims that “Eighty percent of s come from a place of tragedy. They didn’t get enough love. They have to overcome their problems by making people laugh” (Code, 36). We may make this connection because we often see comics performing material about serious or intense subject matter. This could play a role in this assumption, but I do believe that we only feel such a way because of the public nature of a ’s career. There could be an accountant with the same problems, they simply aren’t talking about them on a stage with a microphone to a crowd every night. Another theory could be that comedy arises as a coping mechanism when dealing with trauma. While this isn’t universal, it certainly speaks to many s and probably to their gravitation towards comedy as a career, even subconsciously. Although, the phrase coping mechanism is one I do not particularly favor in that it implies there isn’t a level of healing going on, only a coping with. It is minimizing and dismissive of the nature of comedy’s role in rehabilitation. Chris Rock believes, “We [s] were the last philosophers.” I don’t believe that comedy must come from a dark place. Comedy doesn’t have to come from pain to provide healing benefits to a comic or an audience. Comedy can come from a positive place and still contain a comic essence regarding subject matter that will aid in rehabilitation. The comic simply acts as a vessel for the comedy. “The comic person is unconscious. As though wearing the ring of Gyges with reverse effect, he becomes invisible to himself while remaining visible to all the world” (Bergson 16). A comic may remark on a seemingly offensive topic that is simply not funny on its own. The beauty of the comic is their ability to transform a subject into something that provokes an involuntary visceral response from their audience, essentially giving power to the voyeur. To do this the comic must remove themselves just enough to act as a carrier of a joke. Jerry Lewis is not the joke, his movements and his reactions are the jokes. The comic is the server, and the joke is the meal. Therefore, the comic is not necessarily offensive when making jokes about offensive topics.
The more exactly these two images, that of a person and that of a machine, fit into each other, the more striking is the comic effect, and the more
consummate the art of the draughtsman. The originality of a comic artist is thus expressed in the special kind of life he imparts to a mere puppet (Bergson 31).
Ted Cohen, in his book Jokes, has a lot to say about the offensive nature of certain jokes. Cohen believes jokes can act as a diversion from the subject whereas I believe it is the exact opposite. I do not feel that joking about something is avoiding it. How someone approaches fear or pain may vary. Not everyone wants to approach death by staring into the eyes of a corpse. Instead, perhaps taking a topic that is difficult to discuss, such as death, and essentially stripping it of its power by connecting over laughter, we can dismantle our fear or trauma. A joke one finds offensive does not mean it is not funny. Usually, one is upset when an “offensive” joke is funny. “The wronger something feels, the righter it is,” says Jerry Seinfeld on writing jokes. Jon Stewart explains that what s call a “bucket-of-blood laugh” is a laugh caused by the misinterpretation of a joke, the audience laughing at the wrong thing or agreeing about the wrong part. The fear of the comic is that their intention gets lost along the way. Not only can a joke not be funny, but it can also be found funny for reasons beyond its intentions. The importance, then, lies in the intentions of the comic.
Bergson spends a lot of time discussing the role of automatism in comedy. A sudden change or an involuntary element can cause laughter, such as a break of habit or routine, or something unexpected. If absent-mindedness is the root of comedy, the comic’s absent mindedness is “calculated and organized.”
But above all, they are the past-masters in absentmindedness, with this superiority over their fellows that their absentmindedness is systematic and organized around one central idea, and that their mishaps are also quite coherent, thanks to the inexorable logic which reality applies to the correction of dreams, so that they kindle in those around them, by a series of unlimited expansion (Bergson 14).
Bergson’s final observation of comedy is simply that laughter is shared. There is comradery in laughter, and it can make one feel as if they are a part of something. “Our laughter is always the laughter of a group” (Bergson 6). A community is formed through a shared sense of humor. “However spontaneous it seems, laughter always implies a kind of secret freemasonry, or even complicity, with other laughers, real or imaginary” (Bergson 6). Even if we are alone when we laugh, we are still a part of a community of people who would also laugh at the same thing. What, then is the utility of laughter? “To understand laughter, we must put it back into its natural environment, which is society, and above all must we determine the utility of its function, which is a social one” (Bergson 7). The utility of laughter is innately social and therefore plays a role in relationships. If laughter has a utility to improve relations, then we can infer that laughter can aid in building social connections. This can even be in the form of bonds by virtue of a “dark” subject, such as shared trauma. “Laughter, then, does not belong to the province of esthetics alone, since unconsciously (and even immorally in many particular instances) it pursues a utilitarian aim of general improvement” (Bergson 20). Laughter, then, can be used as a tool. Social “ceremonies,” or constructs, when isolated, lose their seriousness. An intense, serious, or seemingly offensive subject, when isolated, loses its seriousness.
The ceremonial side of social life must, therefore, always include a latent comic element, which is only waiting for an opportunity to burst into full view. It might be said that ceremonies are to the social body what clothing is to the individual body: they owe their seriousness to the fact that they are identified, in our minds, with the serious object with which custom associates them, and when we isolate them in imagination, they forthwith lose their seriousness (Bergson 45).
5: CONCLUSION
I’ve established how essential comedy is to social institutions and to healing. The consequences of censoring comedy put these benefits at risk. Cancel culture, especially in regard to comics, sets a dangerous precedent for the future of comedy. As stated, comedy is a cornerstone of social institutions and culture. There is no tragedy without comedy and vice versa and these are the foundations on which culture is built. Our ability to have and to apply a sense of humor is innately human. With censorship on the rise, we face the possibility of limiting what comedy can do for us socially. The health benefits of laughter go so overlooked that a new generation of censorship and political correctness openly puts those benefits at risk for the sake of correctness alone. We simply take our sense of humor for granted. We do not have to find everything funny. In fact, we’re not meant to. Pete Davidson, a young stand-up comedian, states that “Genuinely being hurtful is off-limits.” It is a simple statement that nonetheless says so much about misdirected anger and censorship. If intent is how and where the censorship line is drawn, a joke itself is not what is found offensive, but rather the intention of the comic. It is impossible to account for every possible reaction or interpretation of a joke. Attempting to do so takes away from the organic comedic process. One may essentially end up censoring themselves before someone else does. This greatly limits and stifles creativity. We take good comedy writing for granted because no one really understands how hard it is to create. People overlook it as if we are just expected to find things funny regardless of the intention and imagination required for the process. I imagine sadness is more easily universally translatable and more relatable than comedy. If you asked people what they find sad versus what they find funny the answers would probably coincide more than the funny ones.
“Try remaking the world so that such jokes will have no place, will not arise. But do not deny that they are funny. That denial is a pretense that will help nothing. And it is at least possible, sometimes, that the jokes themselves do help something. Perhaps they help us to bear unbearable affronts like crude racism and stubborn prejudice by letting us laugh while we take a breather.” (Jokes, 84)
Laughing at pain as a way of coping with it will always be relatable to a certain audience. While it may not be the therapeutic method of choice for everyone, like anything else, if it can rehabilitate or even simply relieve pain or tension, it will always be worth preserving. If laughter is meant to be shared and therefore helps build social connections, and if serious subject matters, when isolated, lose their seriousness, then sharing laughter over a serious, but isolated, subject will inevitably build strong communities and give power to a group over a subject. This is how comedy can help heal trauma.
Works Cited
Bergson, Henri, et al. Laughter: An Essay On The Meaning Of The Comic. Martino Fine Books, 2014.
McGraw, Peter, and Joel Warner. The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny. Reprint, Simon & Schuster, 2015.
Cohen, Ted. Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters. 1st ed., University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Apatow, Judd. Sick in the Head. New York, United States, Penguin Random House, 2016.
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