Comedy

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In the narrowest sense, comedy is drama that makes us laugh and has a happy ending. In a wider sense it is alsohumorous narrative literature with a happy ending. In the widest sense, comedy includes any literary or graphicwork, performance or other art intended to amuse us. This entry will leave aside theories of humour andconcentrate on comedy as a dramatic and literary form.Comedy began at about the same time as tragedy, and because they represent alternative attitudes toward basicissues in life, it is useful to consider them together. Unfortunately, several traditional prejudices discriminateagainst comedy and in favour of tragedy. There are four standard charges against comedy: it emphasizes theanimal aspects of human life, encourages disrespect for leaders and institutions, is based on malice, andendangers our morality. These charges are easily answered, for none picks out something that is both essential tocomedy and inherently vicious. In fact, once we get past traditional prejudices, several of the differences betweencomedy and tragedy can be seen as advantages. While tragedy tends to be idealistic and elitist, for example,comedy tends to be pragmatic and egalitarian. While tragedy values honour, even above life itself, comedy putslittle stock in honour and instead emphasizes survival. Tragic heroes preserve their dignity but die in the process;comic characters lose their dignity but live to tell the tale. Most generally, comedy celebrates mental flexibilityand a realistic acceptance of the limitations of human life. The comic vision of life, in short, embodies a good dealof wisdom.1 The demeaning of comedyAlthough comedy and tragedy grew up together, and many dramatists from Sophocles to Shakespeare wrote both,tragedy is usually thought superior to comedy, and is often judged the only important dramatic form. Tragedy iscalled ‘serious' drama, comedy ‘light' drama. The low status traditionally held by comedy is revealed by twomeanings that arose for the word ‘comical': ‘befitting comedy; trivial, mean, low; the opposite of tragical,elevated, dignified' and ‘of persons: low, mean, base, ignoble or clownish'.The demeaning of comedy, and of humour generally, began with Plato. Four main charges are traditionallyoffered. One is that comedy, which had its origins in animal masquerades, phallic processions and similar revelry,emphasizes the animal side of human nature. Plato found the Old Comedy of his time still wild and vulgar. In hismind the licence of comedy encouraged the undermining of our rationality by our lower physical nature. Whenlaying down rules for the education of the young guardians in his ideal state, Plato insisted that they must not beprone to laughter and that the literature they read should not show the heroes and gods laughing too heartily.Comedy is also charged with encouraging irreverence toward leaders and institutions. A society, like an individual,needs rational control, and that requires respect for leaders and traditions. But comedy can make fun of anything;Greek comedy even lampooned the gods. Plato was probably especially resentful of the ridicule his teacherSocrates suffered in the comedy of Aristophanes.Throughout history, opposition to comedy and laughter has been strongest in societies which emphasize physicalrestraint, decorum and conformity. Many medieval monastic orders had statutes forbidding laughter. The Puritanand Victorian eras saw many condemnations of comedy and laughter. The more authoritarian the regime, thegreater its suppression of comedy. Hitler even set up ‘joke courts' to punish those who made fun of his regime -one Berlin cabaret comic was executed for naming his horse Adolf.The third charge against comedy, and humour generally, is that laughter is inherently mean-spirited. According toPlato, the object of laughter is vice, and specifically people's ignorance about themselves. Dramatic characters andreal people are comic to the extent that they think of themselves as wealthier, better-looking, more virtuous orwiser than they really are. Our laughter at their self-ignorance involves a kind of malice towards them - a ‘pain inthe soul', as Plato called it - that is not only antisocial but harmful to our own character.Aristotle agreed with Plato that the essence of laughter is ridicule. Most people carry humour too far, he claimed,not worrying about hurting the feelings of those at whom they laugh. This view of laughter was later called thesuperiority theory. Its most famous proponent was the seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who saidthat the cause of laughter is the sudden glory we feel when we judge ourselves to be doing better than someoneelse. Those who laugh the most, according to Hobbes, are those who are conscious of the fewest abilities inthemselves. They have to search out the imperfections of others in order to feel good about themselves.The last charge against comedy is that it is full of gluttons, drunkards, liars, adulterers and other base characters,who are bound to have a bad influence on our own morality. Aristotle said that comic characters are worse thanreal people and warned that children should not be allowed to attend comedies because they would be led toimitate the vices they saw on the stage. The purported danger of comedy to morality has been cited many times. Itwas part of the English Puritans' rationale for outlawing drama. Rousseau used it against the comedies ofMolière.The weight attached to it can be judged from the number of writers and critics who felt obliged to argue that inlaughing at immoral behaviour, we reject it, so that comedy discourages rather than encourages vice.Ben Jonson,Sir Philip Sidney, John Dryden, Henry Fielding, George Meredith, Henri Bergson and dozens of others defendedcomedy by citing its moral utility in this way.2 Answering the chargesWhile the four charges against comedy apply to some plays and comic works, none applies to all of them, andnone makes a convincing case that some characteristic is both essentially vicious and essential to comedy.Comedy's emphasis on the animal side of human nature may be a fault if we share Plato's low opinion of the bodyand of the physical side of life. Similarly, the irreverence of comedy may be objectionable if we agree that ourleaders and institutions deserve reverence and not critical questioning. But we need not share Plato's views onthese issues. Indeed, a good case can be made for saying that comedy is valuable precisely because it reminds us ofour physicality and because it keeps us thinking critically about our leaders and institutions.The other two charges against comedy - that laughter is an expression of feelings of superiority and malice, andthat the base behaviour of comic characters might rub off on us - do focus on two things that are reasonablyconsidered objectionable. But they fail to show a necessary connection between either of these and comedy.Although the first of these charges has a long history, it has seldom been carefully examined. If the superioritytheory is right, then our laughter is always directed at a person, and in laughing we must be comparing ourselvesfavourably with that person. But, as Francis Hutcheson showed a century after Hobbes, neither of theseconsequences is true. We sometimes laugh when no one else is involved, and we sometimes laugh when someoneseems superior to us. If I open my front door on a November morning to find a foot of snow where there was grassthe night before, I may laugh - not at anyone, not even at the snow (in the sense of ridicule), but simply out ofsurprise. Similarly, I may laugh at clever rhymes or other wordplay in a comedy without comparing myself to thecharacter speaking the lines or to anyone else. Some action which is better than we expected may also make uslaugh in surprise. A stock character in early film comedy, for example, is the plucky hero, such as Charlie Chaplinor Buster Keaton, who gets out of trouble with an ingenious acrobatic stunt that we would never have thought of,much less been able to execute. The stunt makes us laugh, though the character looks superior to us.The last charge against comedy - that we are likely to imitate its base characters - has probably been made moreoften than any other. But seldom has any evidence been given for it. Do people who see a lot of comedies have ahigher rate of drunkenness or adultery? Are people who laugh at hypocrisy more likely to become hypocritesthemselves? These are empirical questions calling for empirical research. Several characters, such as the boor, thewindbag and the pompous ass, seem to be comic only if we think that their traits are undesirable - someone whoemulated them would not find them funny. It may be that other comic characters, such as the smooth-talking liar,do elicit emulation from some people. But that has never been established, nor has it been shown that thesecharacters outnumber the ones who discourage emulation. In short, like the other charges against it, the claim thatcomedy threatens our morality is largely an ancient prejudice.3 Comedy and tragedyOnce we set aside traditional prejudices against comedy, we can compare it more equitably with tragedy. The mostgeneral similarity between the two is their focus on the incongruities in human life - the ways in which ourexperiences do not match our expectations. As William Hazlitt said, humans are the only animals who laugh andweep because they are the only ones who are struck by the difference between what things are and what they oughtto be.It is in their responses to life's incongruities that comedy and tragedy differ. Both see misfortune, vice, folly, and,in general, the gap between the real and the ideal as part of the human condition. But tragedy sees these leading todownfall and death, while comedy sees them as something we can live with and even enjoy.Comedy and tragedy also have different attitudes towards the physical side of human nature. Comedy accepts thelimitations of our bodily existence and celebrates acts like eating and sex. Tragedy bemoans our physicallimitations and often identifies the human being with the mind, spirit or soul. In general, comedy is more physicaland active, and tragedy more intellectual and contemplative. Falstaff might deliver a monologue while gnawing ona leg of mutton: it is inconceivable that Hamlet would do so.The idealism and dualism of tragedy carry over to its vision of society. In tragedy only a few people are importantand only their lives are of interest. The main characters in tragedy, as in the epic, are heroes, typically male rulersor warriors. In comedy, by contrast, there is a greater variety of characters, women are more prominent, and centralcharacters may come from any social class. While the language of tragedy is elevated, the language of comedy iscommon speech.Tragedy usually focuses on the suffering of one elite character in an extraordinary situation; comedy involvesseveral characters from different social classes in ordinary situations. When comedy has a central character, thatperson, unlike the tragic hero, is not exalted above other human beings. Tragedy emphasizes the dignity and prideof the hero, which are often based on the code of honour of a male-dominated, power-based, militarist ideology.Indeed, it is often just this ideology which gets the hero into the tragic situation. Comic characters, not bound bycodes of honour, may lack dignity, but at the end of the comedy they are still alive. Indeed, they are often foundattending a wedding or another life-affirming celebration.Furthermore, because comedy values life - especially the life of the community - over honour, it emphasizes thesocial support we all need. In tragedy, by contrast, the hero is more of a ‘loner'. Many comic plots are based onreconciliation and peacemaking, while no tragic plots are. As Aristotle noted, in comedy enemies sometimesbecome friends, but in tragedy they never do.4 Comic wisdomThe popularity and value of comedy lie largely in its vision of human life, which contrasts sharply with thedominant ideologies of Western culture. Those ideologies treat as virtues such traits as respect for authority, duty,honour, single-mindedness, courage and a capacity for hard work. These have been promoted by armies and otherpatriarchal institutions since ancient times. An important way of inculcating them in society at large has been tocelebrate them in epic and tragic art, which are full of military imagery. Indeed, patriarchies try to get us to thinkof everything in military terms. In the USA, social programmes are called ‘the war on poverty'; medical researchis called ‘the war on breast cancer'; even programmes to stop violence are ‘the war on violence'! When militarymetaphors sink deep enough into our culture, life itself becomes a series of battles.While blind obedience, single-mindedness, the ability to work constantly, and the willingness to die or kill oncommand are important for the conduct of war, it is not at all clear that they are virtues in all areas of life. Thusalongside the official ideology promulgated by epics and tragedy there has always existed an alternative ideologyof comedy. Instead of promoting military virtues, comedy promotes the questioning of authority, mentalflexibility, playfulness and the value of life. All of these threaten institutions of power in various ways, and as aresult comedy has been suppressed in most cultures. However, because it addresses deep human needs, it hassurvived.Comedies have different kinds of characters. Many serve as negative role models, examples of how not to act. Inlaughing at the miser, the prude and the pedant, as Henri Bergson pointed out, we are recognizing theirmechanicalness, their ineptness at living a human life. But most comedies also have at least one character that weidentify with and may even admire. Many of the roles played by Charlie Chaplin, Mae West and Groucho Marxare of this type. These characters are so different from epic and tragic heroes that their usual name, ‘comic heroes',is misleading. We can call them comic protagonists.The attitudes of these characters embody what is most valuable in comedy. Unlike tragic heroes, they play as wellas work. They are not unwaveringly committed to any cause; nor are they prepared to die, or kill, to achieve theirgoals. Like tragic heroes, they face problems and enemies, but instead of confronting them head on with violence,they use trickery, perhaps by turning the power of the threat against itself, or with reverse psychology. When allelse fails, they are not ashamed to run away. As the old saying goes, you're a coward for only a moment, butyou're dead for the rest of your life.Comic protagonists differ most notably from tragic heroes in their mental flexibility, a trait which comedycelebrates. The characters who lose in comedy are rigid creatures of habit; those who succeed are adaptable andthink on their feet. Unlike tragic heroes, comic protagonists do not have fixed categories for thinking or acting.They can view situations from several perspectives and see many possibilities. Much of their thinking is lateralrather than vertical, to use Edward de Bono's terms.When confronted by problems, tragic heroes are given to emotions that make them mentally rigid and evenobsessive. Comic protagonists keep an unemotional clearheadedness in the face of misfortune that allows them tothink rather than feel their way through challenges. They do not engage in self-pity or curse their fate, but are morelikely to laugh at their problems, as tragic heroes never do. As a result, they are more likely to bounce back fromtheir mistakes and learn from them. The contrast here is fittingly generalized by Walpole's maxim, ‘This world is acomedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel'.Since emotional disengagement and the ability to imagine alternatives are a big part of human freedom, comicprotagonists are considerably freer than tragic heroes. They are often in charge of their lives as tragic heroes arenot, and they end up victors, while tragic heroes end up victims.It is often said that the tragic vision of life embodies wisdom. Solemnity and pessimism are considered hallmarksof wisdom. Western thinkers, with a few exceptions such as Democritus and Nietzsche, have usually thoughtwisdom to be a kind of seriousness about life. But that is all part of the traditional prejudice against comedy.Judged fairly, the comic vision reveals at least as much wisdom as the tragic.Indeed, if wisdom includes emotional disengagement, seeing life from a higher perspective than usual and seeing itobjectively rather than from a self-privileging position, then comedy seems wiser than tragedy. If wisdom includesa realistic attitude towards life, comedy's tolerance for human limitations and its emphasis on adapting ourselvesto an imperfect world seem to make it more realistic than tragedy. More fully than tragedy, too, comedy representsthe richness of life - especially social life - in the many ways it may be lived and appreciated.Comic characters make mistakes and suffer misfortunes, but through it all they are at home in their world, and theyget by with a little help from their friends. Tragic characters, with their elitism and idealism, are not satisfied withliving a merely human life. The central lesson of comedy is that we are finite and prone to error, but with a senseof humour we can still be happy.The capacity for happiness seems to need some psychological technique for coping with finitude and fallibility,and humour is easily the most effective. Psychological studies have shown that humour is correlated not only withself-esteem but with creativity and a tolerance for ambiguity, diversity and change. Furthermore, humour hasmedical benefits - it blocks negative emotions, counteracts stress, boosts the activity of the immune system,reduces pain, and even has a laxative effect!Both comedy and tragedy are reactions to the human condition, but as a dramatic form, an artistic sensibility, andan attitude toward life itself, comedy seems truer to human nature. The displacement of tragedy by comedy andtragicomedy in the twentieth century seems a step towards the acknowledgement of this fact.