The Crying Need for Laughter

Is the world running out of humour the way it

is said to be running out of oil? It sometimes

looks that way as we watch those so-called

"comedies" on television. But not really --

the best jokes are the ones that spring fromour daily existence. Here we look at humour

as a great gift to the human race...

[] Humour, the moan goes up, doesn’t seem to getaround much any more. If it’s not downright sick,then it’s definitely green around the gills.

Nevertheless, in print, films and broadcasting,vast amounts of money and energy are being ex-pended to make adults do what comes naturally toan infant who chuckles at the sight of his teddybear. The airwaves are leaden with mercifullyshort-lived situation comedies; stand-up comediansproliferate on nightly talk shows; variety seriessprout and wither within a matter of months.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation recent-ly instituted a television quiz show entitled Trivia.On it, two teams matched wits to produce totallyuseless information. The purpose was to amuse.

To relieve the tedium, the quizmaster wouldoccasionally toss out a question to the studio audi-ence. One such went: "What is the most appropri-ate gift for a couple’s twenty-fifth wedding anniver-sary?" Almost instantly, someone in the back of thehall called out, ~’Separate vacations."

With a sickly grin, the quizmaster quickly ex-plained the significance of the sterling silver jubi-lee. Another laugh--live, on television--hadbeen throttled at birth.

It was a striking instance of the difference be-tween spontaneous and manufactured laughter--the funny versus the merely facetious. The laughmachines of television spew out thousands of jokesdaily, but somehow there are more jokes and fewerlaughs. What seems to be lacking is a sense of the

ridiculous, the instinct that helps man to livepeaceably with himself and gets a frazzled storeclerk through the Christmas sales rush. A sense ofthe ridiculous is difficult to fabricate because itusually dwells among real people in real situations.

Hence the masters of written humour are usual-ly the ones with the talent to give wild and granddimensions to essential truths about the humancondition. It takes courage to be funny, becausepeople are loath to be told just how ridiculous theyare. One master humorist, P. G. Wodehouse, wrotein the introduction to a book ten years ago: "Peopleare very serious today, and the writer who refusesto take them seriously is viewed with concern andsuspicion." There can be no such problem with thegag writers of the mass media a decade later: it isall too obvious that they look upon amusing thepublic as a very serious business. Perhaps that iswhy their assembly line jokes so often seem limp.

The true humorist, said Wodehouse, ~’is certainlythe man least likely to succeed. He is like the dovesent out from the Ark which could find no parkingplace... Humorists as a class are gloomy men, andit is this sense of being apart from the herd, ofbeing, as one might say, the poison ivy rash on thebody politic, that makes them so..."

Another splendidly funny writer, E. B. White,carried this theme further in his introduction toA Subtreasury of American Humor. He wrote thatthere is a deep vein of melancholy running througheveryone’s life. "Practically everyone is a manic

depressive of sorts," White mused, "with his upmoments and his down moments, and you certainlydon’t have to be a humorist to taste the sadness ofsituation and mood. But, as everyone knows, thereis often a rather fine line between laughing andcrying, and if a humorous piece of writing brings aperson to the point where his emotional responsesare untrustworthy and seem likely to break overinto the opposite realm, it is because humorouswriting, like poetical writing, has an extra content.It plays, like an active child, close to the big hotfire which is Truth. And sometimes the reader feelsthe heat."

It can launch a sneak attackon the funny-bone at any time

We all feel that heat in our personal lives fromtime to time, and given the choice between laugh-ing and crying, we mostly choose laughing. Oursense of humour is our first line of defence againstlife’s vexations and woes. A sense of humour can bedefined broadly as the quality of appreciating theludicrous and incongruous elements in events oridea. To put it more simply, it is that sensitive andvulnerable thing, our funny-bone.

Humour has a kind of life of its own, and it canlaunch a sneak attack on the funny-bone at themost unexpected times and places. For example, a

retired beauty queen attempted in a magazinearticle not long ago to describe A Day in Her Life.¯ She set off with grim purposefulness, then ran intoa spot of trouble early in her morning. "I’ll eitherhave my-answering service call to wake me up or Iuse a dumb little alarm clock that ticks, ticks,ticks," She wrote. "Then I get ready in a hurry... Isweepall the last minute things that I’ve lined upon the bureau into a bag. As I’m leaving I checkmy b0dyto make sure I’ve got all my clothes on."

If only for an instant, this girl had turned theserious and dull routine of preparing to face theworld into a comic turn on her own doorstep,presenting a ludicrous image to the reader’s ima-gination. Often such a picture will be produced

within a person’s own mind. The story is told of acouple fleeing in their night clothes to a bombshelter while their block was being flattened dur-ing the Blitz in London. They had scarcely reachedthe street when the woman turned to go back intothe imperilled house.

"What are you doing?" shouted the Cockneyhusband.

"Have to go back. Forgot my false teeth.""For God’s sake," the husband cried above the

din of the falling bombs, "They’re not droppingsandwiches, you know!"

Not everyone would find a story like this amus-ing, because a sense of humour is such an individ-ual matter. Some people appear to others to haveno sense of humour at all. This does not seempossible in light of the fact that to accuse a personof not having one is an unforgiveable insult. In thewords of essayist Frank Moore Colby: "Men willconfess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth or awig. How many of them will own up to a lack ofhumour? The courage that could draw this confes-sion from a man would atone for everything."

A rational explanation may enda quarrel, but it kills a joke

To dissect humour, to take it apart to see whatmakes it tickle, is futile and destructive. Nothingcan alter the mood of a story-teller so radically asthe whined complaint from a listener, "I don’t getit." A rational explanation may end a familyquarrel, but it positively exterminates a good joke.

To define humour, however, is not such a point-less exercise, for it has an ancestry which is -- likethe English aristocracy--both distinguished andpeculiar. The word comes directly from the Latinword for moisture, humor. It was originally appliedin ancient medical usage to the four principalfluids of the human body: blood, phlegm, choler(yellow bile), and melancholy (black bile). perfect person had a mixture of the four fluids inperfect proportion, it was said.

An imbalance produced a "melancholy" man, or,at the other end of the scale, one who was "sang-uine", from the Latin word for blood. According tothe Encyclopedia Britannica, each of the four com-plexions had specific characteristics, and thereforethe words carried more meaning than now. For

example, a choleric man was lean, hairy, proud,ambitious, revengeful, shrewd -- and yellow-faced.

By the 16th century, "humour" came to mean amood or unbalanced mental condition; somethingto be laughed at. So by the time the Renaissancewas in full swing, "humour" was a subject forcomedy writers whose main function was to exposeto ridicule irrational behaviour or improper con-duct. ~Humour" had a whole new meaning, andmanufactured laughter was here to stay.

Laughing at oneself is one of man’snoblest and most difficult acts

Comedy, of course, was no instant hit. Man hadbeen laughing at himself for centuries. The Greekcomedies of Aristophanes (450 B.C.) still play appreciative audiences, and in England there ex-ists a book of jokes that was published in 1526-- almost ten years before Miles Coverdale trans-lated the first complete Bible to be printed inEnglish. Levity beat piety to the punch.

But comedy and humour are not necessarilysynonymous. A sense of humour is much more thanthe ability to laugh on cue. Nor is laughter inex-tricably linked to a sense of humour.

For instance, men at war laugh, harshly, when awave of terror has swept over them and left themunharmed. Laughter is no less pleasurable when itsprings from fear than when it springs from joy.And in fact people will laugh for no other reasonthan because they are happy. They will laugh--albeit a trifle guardedly -- at their own mistakes,and laugh with considerably more gusto at thefoolishness and misfortunes of others.

Laughing at oneself is one of the noblest andmost difficult things a person can do, for it takescourage and intelligence to recognize your ownfoolishness and deflate your own pretensions andpomposities. The great men of humour have al-ways laughed at themselves before anyone else.Stephen Leacock was proud of his Doctorate ofPhilosophy, but he knew how to keep it in perspec-tive. "The meaning of this degree," he once said ina lecture, "is that the recipient has been examinedfor the last time in his life and pronounced full.After this, no new ideas can be imparted to him."

Humour comes in all kinds of packages from thepractical joke to the studied epigram, but thelaughs people remember most fondly are usuallythose that crop up unexpectedly in the course ofeveryday life. The following incident occurred on aLondon subway train crowded with homeward-bound workers on a miserable winter’s evening. Inthe leading car, a well-dressed man bearing anumbrella and bowler suddenly stood up, opened thedoor leading to the driver’s compartment and dis-appeared inside. After a moment of mystificationwhile the train clattered on, a work-begrimed andweary-looking man said to no one in particular,~Well, that’s that, then. We’re off to Cuba." Every-one in the coach felt warmed.

It’s this sense of communal camaraderie thatheightens one’s appreciation of the value and needfor humour as an aid to living. A problem shared,goes the old saying, is a problem halved; but plea-sure shared is pleasure magnified.

Finding sources of laughterin a cruel and trying world

Shared laughter is often the product of sharedhardship or adversity; of people being up againstthe same vicissitudes. A few years ago Canadianauthor and broadcaster Tony Aspler wrote anendearing and eloquent tribute to the humour ofthe Jewish race. Jewish humour, he noted, has abittersweet quality of world-weariness and self-denigration. The history of the Jewish people hasshown them that a sense of humour is a strongshield against suffering.

It is no accident that many of the greatestAmerican comedians have been Jewish. Theircultural tradition abounds in didactic tales empha-sizing the virtues of justice and piety; wit andhumour are employed to get their meaning across.But more than anything, Jews are able to laugh atthemselves; they are even able to find laughter inthe discrimination they suffer. Aspler told thestory of a Mr. Moses Greenbaum, who had workedhard all his life to build up a fortune and decidedthe time had come to enjoy his wealth.

A golfing addict, Mr. Greenbaum had a con-suming ambition to play on a superb course whichunfortunately belonged to a club whose member-ship was restricted to Gentiles. So he decided to

build up a whole new non-Jewish identity in orderto join the club. He moved to a new neighbourhood;he cut off all contact with his family and friends; hechanged his name by deed poll to Charles Mont-morency Ffoulkesmythe. His application to theclub was accepted. He. was so delighted that hedecided to use the facilities the very day his mem-bership card arrived.

Among the delights of the club was an inviting-looking outdoor swimming pool with a large num-ber of people sitting around it. The ex-Mr. Green-baum immediately changed into swimming trunks,scampered out to the pool, and surveyed his fellowmembers before plunging in. The water was icy.The shock made him gasp: "Oy vey. v’ Lookingsheepishly around as he trod water, he added in aloud voice: "Whatever that means..."

If the vein of Jewish humour runs more richlythrough present society than those of other so-called minorities, it is only because the Jews havehad more experience in replenishing and refiningthe supply. Oppression and persecution, ratherthan dulling the human spirit, has honed theirsense of humour.

Many people regard as abhorrent the poking offun at another people’s social customs or nationaltraits. But the Jews -- and the Scots, the Irish andthe Newfoundlanders- have been telling storieson themselves for generations.

The vogue for "Newfie" jokes in Canada appearsto have waned, and not before time, but that some-times harsh and bleak island has produced a warmand generous breed of people who appreciate life’sabsurdities to the hilt.

For example, a small fishing village in New-foundland had acquired a new fire engine afteryears of scrimping and saving by the town council.The old one was decrepit beyond repair, but itsdisposal had caused a crisis within the community.The council finally called a public meeting, and theentire adult population turned out. The air in thehall filled with tobacco smoke and suggestions forthe fire truck’s future. Someone suggested sellingit for scrap, and others argued it would cost more totransport it to the junk yard than its sale wouldrealize. Another advised mounting it on blocks and

ALSO AVAIl ABIE IN FREN( H AN[) IN BRAII l

using it as a centre-piece for the children’s play-ground. Various mothers objected strenuously onthe grounds it would be too dangerous.

Tempers were flaring, husbands were snarling atwives, and the meeting was getting completely outof hand. Then came one of those inexplicablepauses that can cut a hubbub dead, and an ancientfisherman rose to his feet. Said he, "Why don’t wejust keep the thing and use it for false alarms?"Everybody went home laughing.

A sense of humour is the ultimate safety-valveon temper’s head of steam. The situation, as theIrish put it, may be disastrous but it’s neverserious.

Do we appreciate our everydayjesters as much as we should?

Literature is filled with characters whose solerole was to cheer up melancholics, to make tragedyseem ridiculous. Shakespeare’s kings had theirclowns; Dickens’ Cockneys had Sam Weller. CIt’sover and can’t be helped.., and that’s one consola-tion, as they always say in Turkey, yen they cutsthe wrong man’s head off.")

They still thrive in everyday life. Any large cor-poration has at least two indomitable office boys.ILike policemen in the grimmest reaches of a com-munity, they always seem to come in pairs.)Waiters or barmen, given half a chance, like toplay a mild joke on a favourite customer. Workerson assembly lines, social club members, team-mates in amateur or professional sports -- all havea resident jester. Are they appreciated? Probablynot enough.

To return to P. G. Wodehouse: "People are al-ways writing articles o’r delivering lectures abouthumour, generally starting off with the words,’Why do we laugh?’ One of these days someone isgoing to say, ’Why shouldn’t we?’ and they won’tknow which way to look."

Humour is out there, tottering around trying tocope with life’s set-backs. It ,just needs care andexercise in our own daily lives, and everything willbe fine.

THE ROYAL BANK OF CANADA 197,el/PRINTED IN (’ANADA