The thing we have to remember is that without humour things wouldn't be funny. The two are inextricably linked. Can we find an underlying cause or causes which will help us understand and, hence, create humour?
Think of a fat man falling down a steep staircase; this is undeniably very funny. But why? The obvious answer would seem to be the mind's desire for order, and this situation satisfies such Euclidean motive on several levels. The man is overweight-he has transgressed the law of optimum physical being, is in disorder, and deserves to be punished. What better way than falling down a stairs? But this is not all: by constrast, the mind also gets to savour absolute order in the form of gravity. The laws of science at the service of hubris, a wronged world righted. The combination of these factors is what makes the above so humorous and prompts the spontaneous bursting forth of laughter.
So humour would seem to ideally involve the unity of the particular and the universal in the portrayal of moral and natural order.
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2 comments:
Would it be funnier if the fat man had been shot dead and Jason Bourne was riding him down the stairs as a kind of human surfboard?
There would be too many elements to ponder, thus robbing the mind of the spontaneity upon which humour depends.
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