A Thousand Shades of Humour
There are a thousand shades of humour and the more of them we understand the better. I am wondering if a healthy sense of humour isn’t always linked to the discovery of something new. Then it has the effect of repairing a broken world, restoring fractured relationships and refreshing hope.
It could be a story that leads to a punchline, an unexpected twist or connection and then (so the teller hopes) to the eruption of laughter which is as involuntary and enjoyable as a sneeze. Laughter releases tension, relaxes, restores perspective, brings strangers together, gives a fresh start. Women, they say, are attracted to men who make them laugh. Men, I know, like women who laugh at their jokes. There are several shades of laughter in this gender aspect of humour alone
There are darker shades, too. We all like to see a pompous oaf or bully slip on a banana skin. He deserves it and it brings him down to earth with rough justice. But news reels from Nazi Germany showed neighbours and passersby standing laughing as a family of Jews were dragged out into the street, humiliated and beaten. How to understand that shade? Or a presidential candidate’s mocking mimicry of a handicapped person during a public speech getting a laugh from the crowd.
There may always be a small trace of cruelty even in the lighter shades of humour. But, as in children’s laughter at funny stories, it remains essentially good-humoured; it avoids the sadistic and avoids kicking someone repeatedly after they are down or picking on the old, poor or vulnerable. There is a line along the spectrum of humour. Crossing that line is risky, whether it’s merely to test the limits or to deny such a line of self-restraint exists at all. Is there really nothing that can’t be laughed at? Getting it wrong has cost more than one comedian their career. The public thirst for stand-up comedy, a contemporary form of the boundary-pushing court jester, is funny, in another sense, when we encourage an entertainer to test our limits.
We don’t laugh at things we know well unless a new perspective on them is exposed which then makes us see the familiar in a different light. The old is re-made we are happily saved from staleness and boredom. Humour can save relationships in this way. When a discussion or relationship has slipped into a stalemate or standoff, for example. Nothing new is happening and the familiar has become toxic until a wave of humour from the right side of the line, restores connection and celebrates life even in pain, suffering and injustice. Then healthy humour declares a truce, the resumption of communication helps the divided to see each other in a new light.
Our polarised public landscape needs this kind of breeze of humour rather than the cynical and cruel ‘humour at what ceases to amuse’ that T.S. Eliot associated with the dark side of ageing. Rage disguised as humour.
Healthy laughter is medicinal and in gentle ways works small miracles.
