On Humor and the Purpose of Comedy: Why We Laugh at It

Comedy is not as universal as tragedy is. It is not necessary for one to find humorous what another finds so. The taste of humor varies not just from one culture to another, but really from one individual to another. The same could of course be said of tragedy. But there are at least two reasons why humor is the more urgent topic. First, the discrepancy in humor (for different cultural, social, political, or religious backgrounds) is by and large much wider than that in sadness. It is harder to explain to someone from a different culture why something is comical than why it is tragic. Second, it is rather difficult to offend anyone by over-dramatizing anything. Often, if one does not know the social cue, pretending to be empathetic is the safe way to go. In contrast, one slightly offbeat joke is enough to offend everyone in the room and thereby instantly relegate the joker to the outcast status. Comedy is where the problem of diversity, tolerance, and understanding takes its starkest form. For these reasons, it is important for us—given the context of our postmodern era—to take a critical look into the topic of humor. Provisionally, I would like to suggest that this peculiarity of humor arises from the explorative function of comedy which is to identify what aspect of life (for each individual or group) to take seriously or not, for figuring out which things to be sensitive to is conducive to survival.

When Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 94^th Academy Awards in 2022 in response to Chris Rock’s standup comedy roasting of his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, Koreans and Americans showed contradictory reactions. Whereas most Koreans found Chris Rock’s joke repugnant and defended Will Smith, the general consensus among Americans was that Will Smith alone was to blame. One of my American colleagues at that time even called Chris Rock’s joke mild and expressed a frustration with Will Smith’s violence. Regardless of whether the joke was appropriate, it is interesting to observe such a drastic divergence in opinion on the same incident by cultures. What is more interesting is that I, who spent the childhood in Korea, but was educated in the US, found myself to be in alliance with the American sentiment. Yet, it is not hard to imagine that the opinion could vary among 1.5 generation individuals as Korean-American is a spectrum identity, and I suspect that those who are closer to the Korean sentiment would not as well find standup comedy humorous in general. The contrast is clearer if I add my own experiences. I never offended any of my English-speaking friends by jokes, but I do often end up offending some of my Korean-speaking friends although the jokes I make in English are much darker and more insulting. (For this reason and a few others, I find myself better represented and accepted when speaking in English than in Korean although English is my second-language.)

Why such an extreme discrepancy? There are probably many contexts and dimensions as to why, but I think that one way to coherently account for this phenomenon is by explaining the explorative function of humor. Stephen Chow’s 1995 film, A Chinese Odyssey: Part 2 – Cinderella, is a classic comedy. It is a parodical recreation of Journey to the West, a Chinese novel published in the 16th century. The film is filled with many slapsticks and puns which make it hard to take the story seriously. But everything changes by the end of the movie where the Monkey King has to watch his lover, Zixia, die and fall out into the space. This scene changes the entire mood of the story, and the genre of the movie quickly changes from comedy to romance-tragedy. Why is it the case that, all of the sudden, the audience cannot find the movie funny anymore? Up to this moment in the story, everything from getting shot at by an archer to time-travelling was taken as something to be made fun of. What is so special about the scene in which the Monkey King had to let go his lover so helplessly?

In American standup, nothing is sacrosanct. Everything is subject to comedy. Here, along with Hip Hop, the freedom of speech is taken to its extreme limit. Racist jokes are made all the time and are unquestionably accepted. The audience volunteer to be roasted by the comedian. Dave Chappelle made fun of LGBTQ+. Russell Peters made fun of the people with disabilities.

One of the purposes of comedy is to render things less serious. By being ridiculed, the once serious and despairing matter becomes insignificant. Humor is one way in which people gain superiority over the causes of their sufferings and hardships. In “The Absurd” (1971), Thomas Nagel explains how the human ability to step back and survey one’s own life as a whole from an imaginary vantage point of view yields his life absurd and meaningless. On the one hand, one cannot stop taking his life seriously insofar as he is engaged in it. On the other hand, the contingency and arbitrariness metacognitively recognizable re-presents his life as insignificant and in some sense ridiculous. Something like this is going on with comedy. That is, by being subject to comedy, things are being looked at from a more comprehensive point of view. The contingency and arbitrariness of the thing under scrutiny make it hard for one to take the matter seriously anymore. There is a sense in which the ridiculed subject becomes insignificant and inferior. It would not be a coincidence that bullies harass their victims by making fun of them, not by crying over them. Humor gives us the sense of superiority, the feeling that we have overcome the hardships and sufferings. The thing that we laugh at can no longer bother us, and we can move on once we realize or accept that the matter is unimportant.

If we take everything seriously and are sensitive to every single detail of our life, we will end up spending too much energy and not achieve anything. Sincerity has limits. Harry Frankfurt defines bullshit as the lack of any concern for truth and distinguishes it from lie. Both liars and honest people belong to the same game insofar as both take truth seriously and differ only in their goals in respect to the truth; also, the liar needs to believe that he knows the truth in order to lie just as much as an honest person does. In contrast, a bullshitter does not play the epistemic game of truth at all. He does not care whether what he says is true or not. In bullshits, truth is ridiculed and becomes insignificant. Comedy is a type of bullshitting in regard to things we take seriously, usually the causes of our sufferings and hardships. Even the repetitive punishment of Sisyphus, the cause of his despair and grievance, can become the subject of comedy. From the Nagelian point of view, there is something contingent and arbitrary, therefore ridiculous, about the eternal Sisyphusian rock-moving business. One need not imagine Sisyphus happy, for one can imagine him funny instead.

When Chow’s movie changed the mood of the story by the tragic scene, it presented to the audience one aspect of our life that cannot be ridiculed at least within the context of the relevant cultural or social background. One could laugh at the characters getting shot at by the archers, but the experience of helplessly losing a lover strikes us as something not to laugh at. For whatever reason, the need to be engaged in and take this romantic incident seriously overrides the possibility to step back and take a look at it from the above. By the thought-experiment conducted via the movie, we discovered that we cannot detach ourselves from such an experience.

Different individuals and groups (cultures, social classes, partisans, and religions) have different things to be sensitive about. For some, being shot at by the archer could be something to laugh at. But a soldier in the middle of a battle has to be sensitive to this danger. However, if the soldier continues to take the danger seriously even after being discharged, he will develop PTSD. The cost of over-sensitivity is anxiety disorder. The cost of over-transcendence is the loss of touch with reality. The function of humor (and bullshit) is to figure out which things to be sensitive to so that one can find the golden mean between anxiety disorder and the loss of touch with reality. (It is for this explorative function of comedy that the freedom of speech in standup must be guaranteed. By testing which subject could be ridiculed, one would find the balance between over-sensitivity and over-transcendence.)

The extreme discrepancy in humor comes from the fact that different individuals and groups have different things to be sensitive about. If someone makes a joke about something that a certain culture takes seriously, the joker will be seen as inconducive to the survival of the group members. This is where the difficulty in switching the humor gear comes up. Not all jokes are of course innocent. Some jokes are inappropriate. But it goes both ways. The group’s repulsion towards the joke could be the indication that the joker must actually take the matter seriously. If someone constantly makes jokes about a task at the workspace, the co-workers could set him on the right track by scolding him, “This is not a time for a joke!” The joker can then apologize to his co-workers and amend his behaviors. However, the fact that one could make a joke about it could also be the evidence that people are too sensitive about the subject. (One's modus ponens is another's modus tollens.) Perhaps, the manager is too ambitious and makes employees work over-time unnecessarily. If so, one joker must rise up and show how ridiculous the entire situation is. Here is the hard question. Is it the time to bring one down to the earth or lift everyone else up to the heaven? The answer can be given only by jabbing at the situation through entertaining humors and seeing if they were appropriate. The joker is just as a crucial component of the community as everyone else is.