I have previously discussed John Limon’s theory of absolute stand-up. This theory states that the audience “[makes the comic’s] jokes into jokes, or refuse[s] to, by a reaction that is more final, less appealable, than a judgment” (26-7) Thus, we might infer that laughter is the ultimate judgment, and it is the only judgment that should matter.
However, Limon calls it a “reaction.” And the way that he talks about it, displays that humor’s constitution is marked by an involuntary physical reaction; therefore laughter is an anti-judgment, a refusal to judge. This view relies on a few common underlying premises – mostly remnants of Freudian psychoanalysis – that have profound entailments for judgments of humor.
In Limon’s view, humor must be defined by a uniform and visceral display of pleasure, an eruption of the unconscious; thus this judgment is reactive, uncontrolled and therefore trivializing. As such, one must be physically present for any such reaction to matter. Here, I’ll take a moment to examine each of these premises. To begin, the notion of uniformity of laughter depends on the idea that all laughter is based on the same interpretation.
Uniform/Particular
One of the early proponents of a superiority theory of humor and one of the first to write a treatise on laughing, Henri Bergson believed there was a sort of complicity among laughers – that all people laugh for the same reason. It is in this sense that many researchers note the power of humor to polarize people (see for instance, Boskin; Gilbert; Schutz).
Collective laughter is often interpreted as a sign that people have formed a cohesive group and agree with one another (Coser; Gilbert; Merrill; Mitchell; Nietz). For instance, Borns notes that in the face of a joke we might not normally find funny, like a “dick joke,” “we find ourselves laughing in recognition, then we notice others laughing, and we feel a sense of group recognition” (16). This felt sense, while it might be mistaken, nevertheless constitutes a group whose sense of self can have very real consequences – they may then decide to act as one.
Limon takes up this view by default. He reasons that because laughter is ephemeral, expiring in the moment, it cannot be examined after the fact. Such appraisals are untrustworthy (therefore “Individual recantations are invalid”), whereas the uniformity of visible and audible reactions is undeniable, and the effects accrue regardless. While hostile audiences pinpoint their critiques – boo’ing at the moment or stating the particularities of their problems (heckling) – laughter gives no clues as to why or how it was funny, simply that it was. But this sense of uniformity at its base relies on a notion that laughter is visceral, physically affecting the emotions, and therefore unconscious.
Unconscious/Conscious
Limon’s theory of laughter returns us to Freud’s idea that humor attempts to subvert thought and therefore judgment. This belief stems from Freud’s distinction between the conscious and unconscious. For Freud, judgment occurs in the conscious. Conscious thought enforces taboos. It is only when we react without thought – when the unconscious is victorious over the conscious – that laughter is possible. This view of laughter as an involuntary response or an eruption of the unconscious has become commonsensical, and is held by everyday people, academics and critics alike (see for instance Bergson; Boskin; Coser; Merrill; Mitchell; Nietz; Schutz). We can see it when comics talk about belly laughs, or “making the audience laugh.” In the hierarchy of humor, these laughs are thought to be the best.
Comics and critics who take this view further argue for a loss of bodily control; mere amusement is insufficient. Laughter and gasping (e.g. in surprise) are therefore thought to be genuine, visceral responses enacted in the accepted register of humor – that is to say, the physical expression of unconscious emotions. Any other response thus displays the imposition of thought, which then constitutes the content as “not humor.”
By this logic, any audience member who is moved to thought – to judgment – is no longer audience to a humorous act, but to something else. So from this frame, anyone who boos, heckles, critiques or protests – especially after the fact – is cut out of humorous audiences – “To criticize a joke is to miss it” (Limon, 12). In each case, by taking up the act, thoughtfully engaging it and responding in a manner other than laughter, such audiences constitute it as consequential, and therefore not humorous.
Trivial/Consequential
Laughs, as the expected response to humor, are treated by many people as universal signs that the joke has not achieved any political end (whether or not this is true). Limon states, paraphrasing Freud, that “there is ‘no process that resembles “judging”’ in [laughter’s] vicinity” (12). Because the pleasure of humor is derived from an eruption of the unconscious, it is incapable of being subsumed within the realm of judgment, thought and therefore incapable of having any meaningful effect.
Limon believes that laughter displays an unwillingness to take the content seriously and/or to take action – at least, for the time being. On the other hand, outrage would seem to display that the joke is not trivial, but consequential and such determination must come not from reaction (as an unconscious, physical act) but from judgment. Outrage comes from audience members’ thought, which distances the reaction from the unconscious and therefore the joke from the trivial, and this distance is what comics need to bridge in order to “make people laugh.” However, comics must also overcome physical and temporal distance.
Presence/Distance
The requirement of an unconscious, visceral, physical reaction limits the correct use of term “audience” to those physically present. Many theorists of stand-up implicitly reference the traditional live audience that witnesses and responds to the stand-up act (see for instance Borns; Gilbert; Limon; Stebbins). As Borns states, stand-up comedy is not just “live, but living – an organic, growing, developing monologue that is as reactive as it is active,” and this could only occur in front of a live audience, or a series thereof (16).
Yet, by the above logic, when the act becomes mediated via radio, television, and especially when captured in writing or on records, tapes (audio or video) or digital technology (CDs, DVDs, or MPEGs), the act loses this living quality and presumably much of the audience’s power to shape it. Audiences making use of mass media are thus implicitly designated secondary (and therefore perhaps trivial) to (and therefore parasitic on) the immediately present audience.
A series of immediately present audiences have shaped the comic’s routine, the live-audience being televised confirms the humor and serves as mediator of our reaction, thus although we don’t get the experience in the same form, format or context as the live audience, we still are encouraged to laugh by that audience. This is the whole reason for the laugh track.
This requirement of presence further justifies the separation of critics as well as their audiences from humorous audiences. If we accept that once we are outside the “living” moment of stand-up, once the text has been watched (whether via mass media or not), it is no longer adaptive, malleable, living; then in this static form the text can be examined in greater detail, as is the case with many critics and protesters.
In this form, audience members – including bona fide political critics (those who present themselves as advocates, not comics) – are free to reframe the comic’s material as consequential political discourse. The comic’s entire routine may be rendered down to a specific bit or series of jokes, critical commentary can be added in order to clarify the issue – to determine the “true” meaning – and this new statement is then (re)presented to a new audience with different expectations. My own projects are thus cast as highly suspect.
Political Problems
Yet such an easy delineation of who is and is not an audience for humor relegates stand-up to a trivial role. To begin to distinguish between audiences puts us on a slippery slope. Where do we stop drawing distinctions? In making such distinctions, we rob stand-up of any claim to political action, and also define political statements as necessarily non-humorous.
Implicit, then, in Limon’s laughter/outrage dichotomy is a set of criteria that systematically define whether a text is humorous or serious and he is not alone. Other scholars also make this distinction, and I’ll get to them in due time.
Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Corrections? Additions?
References:
Bergson, Henri. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. New York: Macmillan, 1911.
Coser, R.L. “Laughter Among Colleagues: A Study of the Social Functions of Humor Among the Staff of a Mental Hospital.” Psychiatry 23 (1960): 81-95.
Freud, Sigmund. Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious. 1905. Trans. James Strachey. New York: W.W. Norton, 1963.
Gilbert, Joanne. Performing Marginality: Humor, Gender and Cultural Critique. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 2004.
Limon, John. Stand-Up Comedy in Theory, or, Abjection in America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000.
Merrill, L. “Feminist Humor: Rebellious and Self-Affirming.” Last Laughs: Perspectives on Women and Comedy. Ed. R. Barreca. New York: Gordon and Breach, 1988.
Mitchell, C. “Hostility and Aggression Toward Males in Female Joke Telling.” Frontiers 3 (1978): 18-27.
Nietz, M. “Humor, Hierarchy, and the Changing Status of Women.” Psychiatry 43 (1980): 211-23.
Schultz, Charles E. Political Humor: From Aristophanes to Sam Ervin. Rutherford: Associated University Presses, 1977.
Stebbins, Robert A. The Laugh-Makers: Stand-Up Comedy as Art, Business and Life-Style. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1990.
