The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [55]
I suspect Richardson had an entirely healthy sense of humor. However, stern philosopher-wit Voltaire, a friend of Ninon de Lenclos, cautioned:
A joke explained ceases to be a joke. Any commentator of bons mots is a fool.
Then again, Voltaire might have been protecting trade secrets. Although comedians harp on about how analysis destroys comedy, this is a bit like surgeons saying the leg is a marvel of nature and shouldn’t be chopped up: So it is, but they still understand the mechanics, can dissect and repair it. What comedians really mean is that talking about what makes something funny isn’t a barrel of laughs. But none can deny they work at it, and as Ninon demonstrated, a spot of apprentice work comes in handy.
➺ Rule four: We laugh hardest at the stuff that is hardest to talk about
Comedy jigs on the borders of our discomfort zones. Ricky Gervais, star-creator of The Office, claimed humor has no taboos. But tampering with taboos, snapping at sensibilities, is comedy’s raison d’être. Each joke has a victim: There must be an “it” to “get.” Even if “it” is a belief, it is attached to someone, and a reductive view would be that the butt’s invariably the listener, laughing at himself for being fooled.
However, lines of attack tend to be indirect. Anthropologists found that jokes in North American tribes skirt seven topics:
Sex and gender
Shortcomings or social deviance
Sickness, suffering, death
Religion
Wealth
Power and authority
Social stereotypes and relationships
These targets, sources of desire and weakness, strike nerves everywhere because comedy is a fairground mirror, monstering what disturbs us, making “it”—our fear, our folly—ridiculous. It defangs threats, deflates authority, transmuting the funny-peculiar into the funny-ha-ha, reminding us that nothing matters but plenty’s worth knocking.
And we shouldn’t overlook the enduringly popular, ever economical joke resource: its machinery. Wordplay, such as the pilloried pun, is humor’s junk food, embezzling laughs from bamboozled listeners’ brains. Unburdened of anything so portentous as a comical idea, the average pun has little to say for itself beyond “Duh, gotcha, filing error!” Which may explain why people are so down on them. Still, seven- to twelve-year-olds of all ages remain in thrall, including me.
➺ Rule five: The right target is what others are prepared to laugh at
Jokes, like taboos, shift with society, and Russell Brand disproved Ricky Gervais on September 12, 2001, getting fired from MTV for hosting a show dressed as Osama Bin Laden. Brand had forgotten humorist James Thurber’s dictum:
Although jokes thumb a nose at fears, they work best as “an epitaph on an emotion,” not when feelings are live and kicking, and cracks at others’ expense may cheapen you. So aim at listeners’ assumptions. Even better, joke against yourself.
In unfamiliar terrain, only a bold, brilliant, or socially suicidal wit should tackle:
What others in the room look, smell, sound, feel, or taste
like
Wives, husbands, kids, siblings, parents
Pets (wake me when it’s over)
The poor and needy
Genitalia, odoriferous effluvia, biological hazards
Obscure hobbies, chess, philately, math, physics, esoterica
How wonderful life is, how brilliant you are
Plague, famine, war, pestilence
The horrid food/drink/guests (to the host)
The horrid host (unless it’s you)
➺ Rule six: For wit to woo, better to amuse and be amused than ape a stand-up
Despite Britain’s pride in our nation’s sense of humor, a 2007 survey found the average citizen remembered only two jokes. Surprised? Don’t be.
Social humor is generally triggered by situation, not ready-canned, and the monopoly conditions in which professional comics operate have none of conversation’s companionable to and fro. Indeed, so antisocial is the audience-performer dynamic that jokes can de-emulsify conversations into gag contests—not always desirable. Be that as it may, professionals’ comic wisdom can be culled to boost