Humor

Humor is common, but analysis of humor is less common. Perhaps there is a good reason for that. In the words of the English comedian Marty Feldman, “[Analyzing humor is] like dissecting a frog. You can learn the parts and label them, but you kill the frog in the process." Nevertheless, even if it does ruin some humor, here begins an attempt to explain how humor works and what its implications are. 

How Humor Works

C.S. Lewis made a creative statement in his book The Screwtape Letters, when a character says, “the Joke Proper...turns on sudden perception of incongruity." Although something specific is meant by what he calls “the Joke Proper,” this same definition regarding the “sudden perception of incongruity” can be applied to humor more broadly. This may be seen in laughing at someone’s absurd appearance. The thing that makes one laugh is the incongruity between what one considers a normal or proper appearance and the way the person actually looks.  

To express the same idea differently, all humor consists of some sort of irony. For instance, “the doctor is sick,” could be perceived as a funny comment because a doctor is one whose work is to rid people of sickness. The same thing could be said of the phrase, “Hurry up and wait,” because the two actions seem to exclude one another. 

Lest one should think that this explanation of humor might be too limited, it is worth pointing out that a variety of examples of different types of humor can be given in which incongruity is involved. One is the joke mentioned in the opening paragraph above. It takes two seemingly dissimilar things - frog dissection and analyzing humor - and relates them to each other. The dissimilarity of the two things is the incongruity. Another example is the famous joke, “Why did the chicken cross the road?,” to which the answer is, “To get to the other side.” It works off of the expectation of something more surprising, and the incongruity between the expected surprise and the predictable answer is what makes it funny. Yet another comes from my great-aunt, who was riding in the car in which the ashes of her deceased husband’s body were being transported. She commented to someone that during the car ride he was giving her “the silent treatment.” The incongruity between death and “the silent treatment” is what makes the joke work. There could be many other examples, but these three vastly different ones give some indication of the broad range of humorous remarks for which the incongruity explanation works.

One possible objection to this theory is that not all incongruity produces a humorous reaction. However, this objection involves an unwarranted reversal; saying that incongruity explains all humor is not the same as saying humor results from every incongruity. 

What Humor Reveals: Part 1

Everything up till now has led to an answer to the question of how humor works. Another question that naturally arises is, "What information does humor provide?" To state it straightforwardly, it is an indication of one’s depth of understanding. Perhaps we could even say that the more one can appreciate humor, the wiser one is. In words attributed to the writer Samuel Johnson, “The size of a man’s understanding may always be justly measured by his mirth." That may be an overstatement, but even so, it makes the point that there seems to be at least a correlation, and perhaps some sort of direct relationship, between humor and wisdom. This could be said of both of the ability to create humor and of the ability to laugh at it. 

There is some evidence of this from everyday life. The ability to laugh at something is considered a sign of being able to see things in their proper place, and of not having an exaggerated sense of self-importance. That is why humor has been described as “seeing through” things. It could be said that with a good sense of humor, one is not so focused on what is right there in front of oneself at the moment, but rather sees the immediate thing in a larger context. There is some evidence that humor is beneficial for the regulation of negative emotions. That would seem consistent with this line of thinking about humor, because negative emotions tend to involve attaching unwarranted importance to something.

To further expand on this concept of "seeing through" things, there seems to be a certain “externality” - if it can be called that - about humor, in that it tends to rely on a thought that is outside of the way one had been accustomed to thinking. For instance, offensive humor which embarrasses someone often is based on exposing the ironic ridiculousness of what someone is saying or doing, and the reason for the person’s embarrassment is that they had not seen that irony. This could be shown in other kinds of humor, but this example is given as just one way of showing the concept in action. 

It might be said that some humor is so absurd or idiotic or vulgar that it does not indicate wisdom and understanding. However, it might just as well be said that these low-quality jokes indicate understanding about low-quality subjects. Another idea is that the ability to make connections between seemingly dissimilar things - even if those things are vulgar or stupid - is nonetheless the “raw material” for wisdom.  

The idea of incongruity as the mechanism of humor and the connection between humor and understanding are not unrelated. They are linked because at least some measure of understanding is needed in order to recognize incongruity. Surely this need not be argued; total incomprehension clearly would prevent the recognition of anything, including incongruity. Furthermore, there is another aspect of the link; the process of “seeing through” something, which was mentioned earlier, involves understanding the difference - one might say the incongruity - between what one is dealing with and the wider context. 

What Humor Reveals: Part 2

In at least some cases, humor could be used to measure the depth of one’s humility in a similar way to how it is also used for measuring the depth of one’s understanding. An indication that this is true comes from the etymological link between the two words. Similar to the words “conservative” and “conservation,” “humor” and “humility” are similar-sounding words because they are similar concepts. As the question, “What could be more conservative than conservation?,” might be posed, so might one also ask “What could be more humble than humor?” Those questions could be analyzed in themselves as examples of the incongruity theory, but never mind that for now. The focus here is only on how similar sounding words can have similar etymologies and thus similar meanings. Humor and humility are both related to the word humus, which means soil in Latin. Here again can be seen the idea of humor as seeing something in its proper place. Humor keeps a situation close to the ground - close to the soil, if you will, and prevents it from growing too large in one’s mind. If the situation involves a person, then humility can become involved in that.

An obvious objection to this idea is that humor that is meant to insult someone surely is not an indication of humility. On the contrary, it may still be seen as an indication of humility, but not in the same way other humor is. This would mean that it is an indication of humility in the sense that humility is what it aims to produce in the person at whose expense the humorous remark is made. Insulting someone is meant to “cut them down to size.” Even if what is created is a false humility because it makes the person seem worse than he or she really is, it still seems that the intended result is humility. 

This provides an opportunity to return to the earlier topic of vulgar or "low-brow" jokes. In some circumstances, people make these as a way of keeping themselves humble. An example of that last idea comes from a story about a friend of mine. When she was a small child, she referred to her parish - St. Mary Star of the Sea Church - as “Chicken of the Sea.” Years later, she and her cousin still call it that when they talk about the parish. One priest who served there disapproved of that. He saw it as “borderline blasphemous.” I do not think he was correct, because it appears that the person being made fun of by that joke is not the person whose title is “Star of the Sea," namely the Blessed Virgin Mary. A more likely explanation is that it is my friend who is being made fun of. It was she who made the mistake of calling the parish "Chicken of the Sea" as a child, and by continuing to reference her misspeaking, it seems that she is making light of herself, and showing humility by being willing to do so. The idea that they were mocking the person St. Mary, Star of the Sea by continuing that joke seems far less likely.

Sexual humor in particular is a means which may be used to maintain humility. There is a moral risk of causing scandal involved in it, and thus discretion should be applied (though the same is true with other kinds of humor), but there is also, at least for some people, a danger in not having any of this kind of humor. Shortly after the earlier quoted passage from The Screwtape Letters, this insight appears: “There are some to whom ‘no passion is as serious as lust’ and for whom an indecent story ceases to produce lasciviousness precisely in so far as it becomes funny: there are others in whom laughter and lust are excited at the same moment and by the same things.” To say it another way, there are those for whom sexual humor could be what breaks the spell of temptation and makes chastity easier to practice, and there are those for whom sexual humor could be an occasion for temptation. In the former case, the humor serves to “put things in their place” and prevent the thoughts of sexual matters from taking on an outsize importance. Lewis furthers this point in The Four Loves:

We must not be totally serious about Venus. Indeed we can’t be totally serious without doing violence to our humanity. It is not for nothing that every language and literature in the world is full of jokes about sex. Many of them may be dull or disgusting and nearly all of them are old. But we must insist that they embody an attitude to Venus which in the long run endangers the Christian life far less than a reverential gravity. We must not attempt to find an absolute in the flesh. Banish play and laughter from the bed of love and you may let in a false goddess.

This means that without sexual humor, we are in danger of deifying our sexuality. The way in which all of this relates to humility is that sexual humor has the potential to expose the incongruity – and thus the relative importance – of sexual things in relation to the rest of our lives, and also to prevent the deification of human sexuality, which would be pride – humilty’s opposite – in the extreme.

Conclusion

Incongruity is a sound explanation of how humor works because of its comprehensiveness. Furthermore, if incongruity is the mechanism and the fuel of humor, then humor is a measure of understanding, since understanding is essential to recognizing incongruity. Humor is also a measure of humility. We can only hope that our senses of humor have survived this analysis of them!