Psychology of Laughter, Chapter 18

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LAUGHTER

Boris Sidis, Ph.D., M.D.

We have referred to the fact that the appreciation of a joke or of anything ridiculous depends on the audience. The same joke which sends one audience into convulsions of uproarious laughter meets with indifference and even disapprobation and hisses from a crowd under different circumstances. Education, race, religion, nationality, industrial and political interests, class and professional prejudices must all be taken into consideration. An ancient Hebrew, Greek, Roman, modern European, Chinaman, Hindoo, Zulu, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Mohammedan, capitalist, workman, artist, physician, engineer, all of them have their special jokes, pleasantries, and play, which appeal to particular people and to no others.

Conditions and circumstances should be taken into consideration. On solemn occasions, in cases of devotion and loyalty, or in times of grief and misfortune, the making of jokes and manifestations of mirth and laughter are not only unappreciated, but are even resented. "As, the grating of the pot under a pot so is the laughter of fools." Jests and jokes out of time and place not only show the absence of sympathy, but also the lack of understanding, and are often turned against the person who made them. The laughter-rousing activity, like all human activities, must have its function and fit into the general organic system of social relations. The joke must not be offensive to the people in whom we wish arouse laughter. The joke should be made at the proper time and when the people are ready for the ludicrous.

The social element and the psychological moment are possibly the most important factors in the appreciation of the ludicrous. There are times when people are ready to burst out into laughter at the slightest provocation. It remains for man to tap his audience, take aim and fire off his joke or jest at the proper moment. When a person makes a joke without regard to the social element and to the psychological moment the joke falls flat and person is regarded as lacking in taste, tact, and understanding. He is regarded as a fool and people laugh, not with him, but at him. In other words, the joke is like a suggestion which must take into account the character of the person's suggestibility in order to release the special subconscious energies and get good effect.

In the comic and the ludicrous the currents of thought may be analogous and parallel, or they may be opposite, but there must be suggestiveness which leads to the relations of contrasted superiority and inferiority.

A lusty young man after he had been married a few months began to fail, and grew very feeble. One day, seeing a butcher run over a ploughed field after a bull, he asked the reason of it.

"Why," says the butcher, "it is to tame him."
"Oh," says the fellow, "let him be married; if that don’t tame him I'll be hanged."

We have here a play on analogy of associations with strong suggestions of the state of the fellow and ridicule on marriage.

An Irishman was standing pear the railroad, when a freight train passed. There was a green flag on the rear of the caboose. The Irishman asked the man standing nearest him what that green flag meant. The man said: "It means another coming." A few days later, the man met the Irishman and his wife. They were wheeling a baby carriage. The carriage had a green flag on it.

        A witness in a law-case was asked: "On what authority do you swear to the mare's age?"
        "On the best authority."
        "Then why don't you say what it is?" urged the impatient lawyer.
"I had it from the mare's own mouth."

Here we have a play on association by analogy and a suggestion of the lawyer's stupidity.

"These things in the room are very dusty," said a mistress to her servant girl.
"If you please, ma'am," said the girl, "it is not the things that are dirty, it is the nasty sun that comes in and shows the dust on the things."

We find here the elements of opposition and analogy with a strong suggestion of stupidity.

The same is found in the anecdote of the man who fed his hens on sawdust to have them lay wooden planks. A similar example is found in the story of the Irishman who fed his hens on sawdust and then said that the young chicks had wooden legs and that one of the chicks was a woodpecker. Here the analogy is carried all through the anecdote, giving rise to absurdities.

The joke is often represented as a dramatic play in which the state of inferiority is played now on one, and now on the other of the dramatis personæ. The following may be taken as examples:

        An Irishman who was hit with a brick engaged a lawyer to put in a claim for $100. The claim was granted. The lawyer gave Pat $10. Pat with the money in his hand kept on looking hard at the bills.
        "What is the matter?" said the lawyer.
       "Begorra," said Pat, "I was just wondering who got hit with the brick―you or I."

        A man walking along the street of a village stepped in a hole in the sidewalk and broke his leg. He engaged a famous lawyer, brought suit against the village for one thousand dollars and won the case.
        After the claim was settled the lawyer sent for his client and handed him one dollar.
        The man examined the dollar carefully. Then he looked up at the lawyer and said: "What's the matter with this dollar? Is it a counterfeit?"

Pat met the village doctor, who was a sportsman, who was carrying his gun.
"Shure, Doctor," he said, "ye're a careful man, if your physic misses 'em, ye always carry yer gun:'

"Well, nurse," said the doctor, "did my prescription prove effective?"
"Shure, an' it did, sorr," was the reply. "He died that morning as quiet as a lamb."

"Don't you know that the sun will injure your brain if you expose it in that manner?" said a priest to a who was busily working on the roadside with his head under the broiling sun. The man wiped the sweat off his forehead and looked at the clergyman. "Do you think I’d be doin' this all day, if I had any brains?" he said, and he gave the handle another turn.

Speaking of her boy to the priest the doting mother said, "There isn't in the barony, yer riv'rence, a cleverer lad nor Tom. Look at thim," pointing to two small chairs in the cabin. "He made thim out of his own head; and, fair, he has enough wood left to make me a big armchair."

Waiting till Pat came out of the saloon the priest accosted him thus, "Pat, didn't you hear me calling?"
"Yes, your riverence, I did, but―but I had only the price of one."

        A priest, discoursing one Sunday on the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, said in error that five people had been fed with 5,000 loaves and two small fishes. It having come to the priest's knowledge that his mistake had given rise to a large amount of controversy (one Murphy declared particularly that he himself could do such a miracle), he (the clergyman) decided to rectify the mistake. Next Sunday, on concluding his sermon, he said, "I should have told you last Sunday that 5,000 people had been fed with five loaves and two small fishes." Looking down on Mr. Murphy, he said, "You could not do that, Mr. Murphy, could you?"
        "Ah! sure yer riv'rence, I could aisily," he replied. "How would you do it, Mr. Murphy?"
        "Why I'd give them what was left over from last Sunday," answered Mr. Murphy.

        "Now, Pat," said a magistrate sympathetically to an "old offender," "what brought you here again?"
        "Two policemen, sor," was the laconic reply. "Drunk, I suppose?" queried the magistrate.
        "Yes, sor," said Pat without relaxing a muscle, "both av them."

Two witnesses were at the Assizes in a case which concerned long continued poultry stealing. As usual nothing could be got from them in the way of evidence until the nearly baffled prosecuting counsel asked in angry tone of voice, "Will you swear on your soul, Pat Murphy, that Mike Hooligan has never to your knowledge stolen chickens?"
The responsibility of this was too much even for Pat. "Bedad, I would hardly swear by my soul," he said, "but I do know that, if I was a chicken and Mike about, I’d roost high."

An individual of somewhat doubtful appearance was applying for a situation as a van driver. On being asked for references, he mentioned one of the dealer's old hands who was called in and questioned as to the applicant’s honesty. The referee rubbed his chin meditatively for amoment, and said, "Honest? Well, guv'nor, his honesty has been proved agin and agin. Faith, he's bin tried sivin toimes for stealing, and eschaped ivery toime!" The applicant was not engaged.

"How about reference?" inquired another mistress, after she had talked matters over with an applicant for a situation.
"Oh, Oi like yer looks, mum," said the applicant, "and Oi won't ask yez for any."

"Bridget, I don't hardly think it is the thing for you to entertain company in the kitchen."
"Don't ye worry, mum. Sure, an' I wouldn't be afther deproivin' ye of the parlor."

"Goodness, Jane, what a kitchen!" exclaimed Mrs. Brown. "Every pot, pan, and dish is dirty, the table perfect litter, and―why, it will take you all night to clean things up! What have you been doing?"
"Sure, ma'am, explained Jane, "the young ladies has just been showin' me how they bile a pertater at their cookery school."

        "Is Mrs. Wicks at home?" asked a caller.
        "No, mum," said Bridget.
        "Oh, I'm very sorry," said the caller.
        "So am I, mum, but she's really out this time."

"And remember, Bridget, there are two things that I must insist upon―truthfulness and obedience!"
"Yes, mum," said Bridget, pointedly. "And when you tell me to tell the ladies you're out when you're in, which shall it be, mum?"

"Tintion !" exclaimed the sergeant to the platoon, "front face, and tind to rowl call! As many of ye as is prisint will say ‘Here' and as many of yez as is not prisint will say 'Absent.'"

"If ye was to be stung by a wasp, Pat, phat would ye do first?" asked Mrs. Murphy.
"Howl, bedad !" was Pat's laconic reply.

"Are ye much hurt, Pat?" inquired Mike of his companion, who had met with an accident. "Do ye want a docthor ?"
"A docthor, ye fule," exclaimed Pat. "After being runned over by a throlley car? Phat Oi want is a lawyer."

        An Irish navvy once changed his lodgings. The following morning, when he got up, his new landlady asked him how he had slept.
        "Not a wink," said Pat, as he began scratching himself. "Why! what's the matter? There's not a single flea in the house!" snapped the landlady indignantly.
        "No, be jabers," replied Pat, "they're all married got children."

At a favorite watering place two Irishmen went out in a small boat, and one of them jumped into the water to have a swim. After indulging to his heart's content he was making for the boat when his companion picked up the towel, and threw it overboard to him, saying, “Shureif ye come in jist now, yez will wet the boat, so yez l better dry yerself where yez are before coming aboard."

"Pat, why didn't you wipe the cobwebs off this champagne bottle before you brought it to the table?" said host.
"Well, sor," replied Pat, "I thought I'd better not, as I saw you putting them on only last night, sor."

The following series of jokes may, with benefit, be studied. The inner meaning of the ludicrous is disclosed on the basis of my theory of implied relation of superior and the inferior:

        A man once received as a present from a sea captain a fine specimen of the bird which sailors call the "laughing jackass." As he was carrying it home, he met a brawny navvy, who stopped and said to him, "What kind of bird is that, sor?"
        "That's a laughing-jackass!" explained the owner genially.
        But Pat was not to be taken in with any story of kind, and, with a twinkle in the eye, he responded, "It’s not yerself; it's the burrd Oi mane, sor!"

An Irish peasant, who was anxious to know what a phrenologist was, inquired of a friend, and received the answer, "Why a person that can tell by the feel of the bumps on your head what kind of a man you are."
"Bumps on me head, is it!" exclaimed the peasant. “Begor, then, they'd tell him more what kind of a woman my wife is!"

"Why don't you get your ears cropped?" cried a big cabman to an Irishman who was trudging after a drove of donkeys. "They are a precious sight too long for a man."
"Are they?" said Paddy, turning round and looking his assailant fully in the face. "Then, be jabers, yours are much too short for an ass!"

"Are there any fish in the pool to-day?" asked a gentleman of an Irish peasant.
"Fish is it?" said the peasant. "It's fair polluted with them!"

        A man who was much annoyed at Pat's muttering one day said, "Pat, does it never occur to you that your constant talk and muttering to yourself are a great annoyance to people who happen to be about? Why do you talk to yourself?"
        "Shure, sir, Oi have two raysons for that."
        "What are your reasons?"
        "Wan of thim is that Oi like to talk to a sinsible man and the other is that Oi like to hear a sinsible man talk.”

Edmund Burke was one day addressing a crowd in favor of the abolition of slavery. In spite of his eloquent appeals the crowd began to get hostile, and at last a rotten egg caught him full in the face. He calmly wiped his face and quietly said, "I always said that the arguments in favor of slavery were rather unsound!" The crowd roared, and from that time he was unmolested.

Barry Sullivan, the tragedian, was playing in "Richard III." When the actor came to the lines, "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!" someone in the pit called "Would a donkey do, Mr. Sullivan?"
"Yes," responded the tragedian, turning quickly on the interrupter. "Please come round to the stage room."

"And who is it lives there, Mike, in that big stone house?" inquired a tourist.
"Why," replied Mike, "that old gentleman I was telling you of, that died so suddint last winter."

An Irishman on weighing his pig exclaimed, "It don’t not weigh as much as I expected, and I never though it would."

        Mike, on opening his pay envelope, exclaimed, “Faith that's the stingiest man I ever worked for."
        "Phwat's the matter wid ye; didn't ye git as much as ye expected?" asked a fellow workman.
        "Yis," was the reply, "but I was countin' on gittin more than I expected."

        "'Tis very fortunate," remarked Mr. Grady wisely, "that hay be not as hivy as coal."
        "For whoy, Pat?"
        "Shure a ton of the stuff would weigh so much that a poor man could not afford to kape a cow."

An Irish squire, seeing a man who was engaged in painting a gate on his estate working away with unusual energy, asked, "What are you in such a hurry for, Murphy?”
"Sure, I want to get through before me paint runs out,” was the reply.

The published report of an Irish benevolent society says, "Notwithstanding the large amount paid for medicine and medical attendance, very few deaths occurred during the year."

"My britheren," said an Irish preacher on one occasion, "there are some German philosophers who say there is no Resurrection, and, me britheren, it, would be better for them German philosophers if, like Judas Iscariot, they had never been born."

An Irishman was one day hurrying along a country road in the south of Ireland, when he was met by a friend who exclaimed, "Why, Patrick, what's all your hurry to-day ?"
"Och, be jabers," replied Pat, without stopping, "I've got a long way to go, and I want to git there before I'm tired out."

        "There's a man in the dinin' room, sor, makin' trouble because he can't have his regular seat," said a waiter, addressing a hotel proprietor.
        "Go back, Mike, and propitiate him," said the proprietor.
        "Look here, misther," said the waiter to the guest a little later, "if yez don't like the way things is run in this house, get out or I'll propitiate yez pretty lively."

In all those examples, when closely studied and their character fully realized from the standpoint of suggestiveness and allusion, we invariably find that the subject of laughter is mental failure, stupidity, human folly, whether individual or social.