Sense and humor

Sense and humor

Good sense is at once the basis of and the limit to all humor. He who lacks perception of the difference between what things are and what they ought to be can never write humor. mirth is a matter of relationships, of shift, of rigidity trying to be flexible, of something shocked into something else.

"Let us think of a circle on which four points have been marked:

"Beginning with a serious idea, we may swiftly step from point to point until we return to the serious, with only slight variations from the original conception. Take the comedy-theme of the impish collar, and visualize the scenes :

"1. A man starts to button his collar. Nothing is less comical, as long as the operation proceeds normally.

"2. But the button is too large and his efforts begin to exasperate him, with the result that his expression and movements become incongruous. We see, and laugh—though he does not.

"3. He begins to hop around in a mad attempt to button the unbuttonable, and soon rips off the collar, addressing it in unparliamentary language. He is ludicrous, ridiculous, absurd.

"4. In his rage he violently kicks a pet dog that comes wagging up to him. Our laughter subsides, for

the fellow is more contemptible than amusing—a deeper feeling has been born in us.

"5. The little dog limps off with a broken leg—we are no longer amused, we are indignant. What is more, not only have we gotten back to the serious, but there is no amusement left in any of the previous scenes..

Still applying the test of the extent of the variation from the normal as shown in the effects, we conclude that serious consequences kill humor. The mere idea of such consequences, when we know that in the circumstances they are really impossible, may convulse us with merriment, as when we see a comedian jab a long finger into the mouth of his teammate and the latter chews it savagely. In real life this might sicken us with disgust—I say 'might, ' because we can easily conceive of such a situation's exciting laughter if the victim were well deserving of the punishment. It is human for us to laugh when the biter is bit ; indeed, variations on this theme are endless in humorous writing.

Sympathy also kills humor. The moment we begin to pity the victim of a joke—for humor has much to do with victims—our laughter dies away. Therefore the subject of the joke must not be one for whose distress we feel strong sympathy. The thing that happens to a fop is quite different in effect from that which affects a sweet old lady. True, we often laugh at those—or at those ideas—with whom or with which we are in sympathy, but in such an instance the ludicrous for the

moment overwhelms our sympathy—and sometimes even destroys it.