An enquiry into the mad laughter of the truth. Part One here. Part three here.
You Had to Be There - The Origin of Humour
All theories of comedy recognise that laughter is provoked by some kind of freedom; from the fear of the other, from social conformity and from rational constraint.1 Peter Berger provides a good example of a joke which combines all three.
A bear is charging this hunter in the woods. The hunter fires, and misses. The bear breaks his rifle in two, sodomizes the hunter, then walks away. The hunter is furious. The next day he is back in the woods, with a new rifle. Again the bear charges, again the hunter misses, again he is sodomized. The hunter is now beside himself. He gets himself an AK-47 assault rifle, and goes back into the woods. Again the bear charges and, believe it or not, although he sprays the air with bullets, the hunter misses yet again. The bear breaks the assault rifle, gently puts his paws around the hunter and says, ‘Ok, let’s come clean now. This isn’t really about hunting is it?’ 2
Here fear of the wild, anxiety about sodomy and having to live in a world where bears cannot lovingly console us are all presented and then relieved with a final, ridiculous, punch-line. But did it make you laugh? My guess is, if you have a sense of humour, it raised a smirk of appreciation and, somewhere around the base of the throat, a little warmth of recognition. Or perhaps not. The point is that even a good joke, on a page, when read alone in your head, has limited power to make you laugh. This doesn’t invalidate written jokes and funny pictures and whatnot, rather it points to the fact that the source of laughter is something ‘bigger with jest’, namely the whole context, which is why the comedy of a great novel, which can present and engage you with the context of a whole world, is more potent than a Christmas cracker gag. But even with the very greatest comic novels, we are never breathless with laughter, clutching our sides, begging the author to stop. For this, we have to go to sketch shows or, even more powerful, live comedy, each of which envelops us more and more fully into the context.