Looking at comedy again, as a mode of knowing: Comedy as a form of epistemology or way of knowing things! Been studying it since college, but comedy as a way, seems more needed now than ever.

I love studying comedians, but also recently preachers to see how they use humor much like the native americans do–to prepare the mind for the wise men’s words. Often, a preacher will tell several jokes before giving their message. I grew up watching this, and it makes sense. The clowns prepare us for the wise men and women!

Freud’s book on humor isn’t funny, of course, but it does have some interesting ideas about what humor is, and how it works. I don’t agree with his basic premise that humor makes us feel superior to what we are laughing at, but he has a nice section on bringing two things which normally don’t hang out, into the same conversational room, and discovering their intrinsic narrative. The best comedians do this all the time. How could these two normally separate elements meet and come into dialogue. What are three other things this object could do or be? That’s sort of the basics of improvisation. And life is a form of improv really. Anyway, i love studying humor again. It’s funny.

Of course, hyperbole is another form of humor often used in American humor, but it’s also really about unexpected uses of objects. Exaggeration creates caricature, which can be funny, if contrasted against something unexpected.

In comedy you are always thinking of what else the thing could be or do! At least three other things a car wheel could be etc…you are always seeing other uses for an object. That creates it; then you have to place it in a narrative, or discover one as you go….This plate could also be a frisbee. Ironic or other uses; and then sudden leaps while still connecting them. An evangelical preacher preaching at a carwash sort of thing.

Principles in comedy have to do with bringing at least two usually desperate elements into the same room. A war general and a banana peel; watergate and Woody Allen etc. It can be surreal, but not necessarily. A priest at a pub works also. There are levels of association between things. The further away the two things are from each other, the more narrative required to make the imaginative leap to bring them into the same room. Eddie Izzard does this well, as did Robin Williams. They can both bring things into the same conversational room, which are usually very far apart from one another.

I love studying comedy, have since youth. What makes people laugh. Unlike Freud, i don’t think it’s about humiliating weaker things. Often it is however about taboo topics as he pointed out. Slapstick of course, works with our ability to empathize with vulnerability. In this sense it’s cathartic. I don’t agree with Freud that it is usually about feeling more powerful than other’s handicaps. Usually it’s about recognizing our own through other’s. More thoughts soon on comedy—i love studying it again!