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The future of humor
NORTH- HOLLAND
1 The Future of Humor J O S E P H F. C O A T E S
In a brief encounter with a friend several weeks ago, we searched a r o u n d for a timely subject for discussion, and I asked him what he thought o f Intel's difficulties. His response was, "Oh, you mean Pentium Valdez!" We carried on from there. The humorous encapsulation o f his opinion illustrates a theory o f humor p r o p o s e d by Henri Bergson. In thinking about Inters p r o b l e m with the Pentium chip, one is likely to consider questions o f security, quality control, mismanagement, and so on. But the catch phrase "Pentium Valdez" instantly does two things: it derails you from thinking about the Pentium p r o b l e m along traditional lines and at the same time captures the central issue with a metaphoric reference to Exxon's bungle with the A l a s k a n oil spill. The metaphor implies mechanical repetition by one firm o f the errors o f another firm. Bergson provides deep insight into the first o f two questions central to any theory o f humor. First, what is it that makes something humorous? Second, what determines the intensity o f that humor? His philosophical position was that all o f life evolves in one o f two directions. The one direction best exemplified by the ant is complete a u t o m a t i o n and absolutely p r e p r o g r a m m e d control o f the behavior o f the organism in all situations. The ant is a machine with no real ability to create. The alternative line that organic evolution t o o k was h u m a n k i n d , whose characteristics are the reverse o f that o f the a n t - we revel in creativity, spontaneity, and elan, His theory of h u m o r takes off from his philosophical position. A n y t h i n g that makes us seem like the ant, that reveals automatic or mechanical behavior o r that takes control from us is so incongruous with our basic nature that it is the core o f humor. The theory applies just as well to slipping on a b a n a n a skin, when this creative animal is taken over by the forces o f gravity over which he has no more control than does a rock rolling down a hillside. On the other hand, it equally well fits the pun. We are moving along an intellectual path almost as if our thinking were on a railroad track, following along with what is being said or written and suddenly we are diverted onto a sideline. There is a lapse between the time we are diverted and the Address reprint requests to Joseph F. Coates, Coates and Jarratt, Inc., 3738 Kanawha Street NW, Washington, DC 20015. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 50, 185-188 (1995) © 1995 Elsevier Science Inc. 655 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10010
0040-1625/95/$9.50 SSDI 0040-1625(95)00024-5
186
J . F . COATES
time that we catch up with the diversion. That is the source o f the humor, we move down the track like a machine not instantly realizing the diversion. F o r example, what are the basic beliefs o f the Quakers? In thinking about the question, one would run through some notion o f G o d and sin and evil, or any o f those things that one associates with theology and that particular group. The answer is that Quakers have three basic beliefs: the f a t h e r h o o d o f G o d , the b r o t h e r h o o d o f man, and the n e i g h b o r h o o d of Philadelphia. Clearly, one is derailed by that pun framed loosely a r o u n d the sufftx " h o o d . " A n o t h e r illustration, "Have you heard about the physics professor who got hit with the revolving d o o r ? " " N o . " "He had a moment o f inertia." The pun there plays both on the technical phrase " m o m e n t o f inertia" and on the c o m m o n meanings of the individual words "moment" and "inertia." Perhaps the best c o n t e m p o r a r y exemplar o f Bergsonian h u m o r is W o o d y Allen. His h u m o r is so much by f o r m u l a that once I reveal it to you, you will undoubtedly go off and create your own examples. The typical W o o d y Allen setting is a serious situation, often a dramatic one, which he unfolds or describes with two or three pithy phrases, and then adds an absolutely irrelevant terminal r e m a r k diverting us from the line of thinking along which he h a d been carrying us. The typical example o f Allen's formula for humor is in his story o f the Irish genius, a make-believe poet. When he gets to writing about the poet's family life, he says a b o u t the poet's wife, "Polly never realized the extent o f her husband's genius and told intimates she thought he would be most remembered not for his poetry but for his habit of emitting a piercing shriek just before eating apples." We often get comfortable with stylized h u m o r , even when the f o r m u l a is clear, because we relish the o p p o r t u n i t y to anticipate the diversion in the second or so between the beginning and the end of the situation. F r o m Jimmy Durante, Jack Benny, Fred Allen, on to W o o d y Allen, the f o r m u l a humorist has won the hearts of middle America. The same Bergsonian model applies equally well to television shows like "Roseanne," "Married with Children," "Seirffeld," or "Cheers." We understand the situation so well that the diversions are easily g r a s p e d - t h e key to mass entertainment. The same Bergsonian humor shows up in cartoons. A classic example is the New Yorker cartoon that has in the b a c k g r o u n d a space craft crashed or at least landed in the desert. A n extraterrestrial is struggling across the desert obviously saying something. As our eyes fall to the caption we read, " A m m o n i a , a m m o n i a . " Visual h u m o r in films and photographs are exemplars of the Bergsonian humor. Charlie Chaplin at his best in " M o d e r n Times" is the person not only caught up in the machine, b u t the one who becomes part of the machine. The Keystone Kops, the Three Stooges, Laurel and H a r d y , all in the early stages o f the film industry, offered a heavy dose o f the physical side o f Bergsonian humor, but always with a strong dose of the verbal or cognitive side as well. In an illustration o f the shift to the cognitive, the results o f the New York magazine competition, the instructions were to change one letter o f a familiar non-English phrase and redefine it. Examples are "posh m o r t e m - d e a t h styles o f the rich and famous" " M a z e l t o n - - l o t s of luck .... Amicus puriae -- platonic friend." One can combine the cognitive and the physical in interesting ways. The New York Times'Metropolitan Diary had the story of a w o m a n burdened with packages approached by a man who asked, " M a y I give you a hand?" He clapped three times and scurried away. A fat colleague, a m a n about 100 pounds overweight, came into my office one day and mentioned in the course o f conversation that he was becoming fat. I had observed over the previous month that he seemed to be losing weight. I mentioned to him that I
FROM MY PERSPECTIVE
187
was surprised, that I thought he was losing weight, and he said, "Yes I am, I used to be obese, and now I'm getting fat." The second question, what determines the intensity o f the humor, is equally interesting and does not have a Bergsonian response. A complementary theory suggests that the intensity o f h u m o r lies in how closely it approaches the threshold o f the offensive or the unspeakable. The assumption is that each o f us has a b o d y o f expressions, beliefs, ideas, concepts that are not to be spoken about, much less challenged. The intensity o f the h u m o r lies in how close we can a p p r o a c h without overstepping the b o u n d a r y to unacceptable affront or insult. The primary implication is that the intensity o f h u m o r is not absolute, but situational. That is borne out by everyone's experience. Right now, we are in the midst socially o f a movement to political correctness that is making it virtually impossible to publicly make a j o k e a b o u t ethnic, racial, religious groups, or the handicapped, about either gender, regional behavior, political party, or just about any o f the traditional sources o f humor. To the rescue for those who have high thresholds o f h u m o r , however, there is always Maladicta, the international j o u r n a l o f verbal aggression. The scatological remark, the religious insult, forbidden language, wicked jokes guaranteed to be offensive to blacks, Catholics, gays, Jews, men, women, and W A S P S . F o r example, passing some reader's thresholds, " H o w many feminists does it take to change a light bulb? Five. One to change the bulb and 4 to write a magazine article about it." To test the threshold, tell this j o k e in five different social situations if you dare. The new liberation in movies, TV, rap music, and language in general has surely made it difficult for children and young people to experience much by way o f verbal humor. The d r o p p i n g o f limitations on the scatological, the sexual, and the profane, making so much that was previously forbidden acceptable in public discourse makes it difficult to be h u m o r o u s about sex or excrement because o f the shifting threshold. Consequently one sees young people pushing harder and harder to find new limits and being relatively unsuccessful at it. This contributes to a general ambiance a m o n g younger people o f unconstrained vulgarity. O n the other hand, it is interesting to note how, with the relative decline in serious belief in religion, there is a definite shift from religious, blasphemous, and p r o f a n e h u m o r to scatological and sexual humor. W h a t will the future hold now that we have the two keys to h u m o r and its intensity? First, new technology will introduce new bases for humor. The general f o r m u l a will not be different from the past, only the content will change. One can see this already happening with information technology and computers as rich sources o f humor. The evolution o f humor, with the evolution o f information technology, is clear. In the heyday o f the mainframe, you will recall the cartoon in which the scientist standing in front o f the gigantic m a i n f r a m e asks a question o f this putatively omniscient machine, "Is there a G o d ? " The response comes out, "There is now." In today's cartoon: a person is sitting at his screen when a face appears at the window and says, " P a r d o n me, I am lost on the information highway. C a n you give me directions?" Or he, at the console, "I just ordered us a pizza on-line. H o w do I d o w n l o a d it?" Because we are a society o f information workers, we can expect a diminishing number o f farmer j o k e s and factory jokes and much more by way o f office and white-collar jokes. The changing m a k e u p o f society and political correctness will simultaneously restrict the range o f publicly acceptable humor against the diverse groups, but m a k e it more sly publicly. A t the same time intensity will increase in those limited circles where it is tolerated.
188
J . F . COATES
There will always be special groups with their humor. As occupations diversify, we can expect that there will be more rather than less humor o f great amusement to the insiders but without significance to most of us. Aging will surely have a dramatic effect on humor. W e will move to m o r e and more age jokes by the elderly on themselves. Yet at the same time there may well be a kind o f prudishness harking back to their youth. W i t h the arrival o f new ethnics in the society, we are already seeing the emergence of the Hispanic joke, and that will expand. We surely will have more Vietnamese and more Chinese jokes, that is, jokes in which those people are the butt of the humor. To some extent the humor will be limited to communities in which the minorities are located, but they surely will become prominent as the groups grow and spread. Within those ethnic communities there will be lively humor a b o u t the base population o f whites and blacks much as there is t o d a y about whites a m o n g blacks. As we move to a continually better-educated society, the pattern will move from the animal commitment side, the physiological, the sexual, and the scatological, on through the physical, the slapstick, and the clowning, through the occupational to more and more verbal, subtle, and intellectual jokes. The biological principle that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny applies to h u m o r as both the individual and the society mature and shift from the physical to the cognitive as their basic activities. The influence of social change is already visible in the virtual death of dialect humor simply because there are too few dialects for most o f us to be exposed to and hence to appreciate. The dialects, or more properly the accents, we are familiar with have a limited humorous appeal. Southern dialects and Boston dialects are still a source o f limited humor. We have not yet begun to publicly ridicule the accents and dialects of the new immigrants, although one does hear frequent play on the accents of Asian Indians. We will surely see more technologically based h u m o r coming out of new developments in science--jokes about drugs, pharmaceuticals, genetics, new materials, and so on. Science's latest finding is that people who stir their coffee with their left h a n d are weird. W h y is that? The typical respondent will conjure up all kinds o f pop psychological explanations for that. It is delightful then to see them draw back when the response is "because most of us use spoons." Brace yourself for millennium h u m o r as a transient event. A l m o s t surely an endless source o f h u m o r for a brief period, o d d visions, visitations, rising mountaintops, cult leaders, and so on will be the topics. "She put so much yeast in the bread, I thought it was the second coming." Received 21 February 1995
1 The Future of Humor J O S E P H F. C O A T E S
In a brief encounter with a friend several weeks ago, we searched a r o u n d for a timely subject for discussion, and I asked him what he thought o f Intel's difficulties. His response was, "Oh, you mean Pentium Valdez!" We carried on from there. The humorous encapsulation o f his opinion illustrates a theory o f humor p r o p o s e d by Henri Bergson. In thinking about Inters p r o b l e m with the Pentium chip, one is likely to consider questions o f security, quality control, mismanagement, and so on. But the catch phrase "Pentium Valdez" instantly does two things: it derails you from thinking about the Pentium p r o b l e m along traditional lines and at the same time captures the central issue with a metaphoric reference to Exxon's bungle with the A l a s k a n oil spill. The metaphor implies mechanical repetition by one firm o f the errors o f another firm. Bergson provides deep insight into the first o f two questions central to any theory o f humor. First, what is it that makes something humorous? Second, what determines the intensity o f that humor? His philosophical position was that all o f life evolves in one o f two directions. The one direction best exemplified by the ant is complete a u t o m a t i o n and absolutely p r e p r o g r a m m e d control o f the behavior o f the organism in all situations. The ant is a machine with no real ability to create. The alternative line that organic evolution t o o k was h u m a n k i n d , whose characteristics are the reverse o f that o f the a n t - we revel in creativity, spontaneity, and elan, His theory of h u m o r takes off from his philosophical position. A n y t h i n g that makes us seem like the ant, that reveals automatic or mechanical behavior o r that takes control from us is so incongruous with our basic nature that it is the core o f humor. The theory applies just as well to slipping on a b a n a n a skin, when this creative animal is taken over by the forces o f gravity over which he has no more control than does a rock rolling down a hillside. On the other hand, it equally well fits the pun. We are moving along an intellectual path almost as if our thinking were on a railroad track, following along with what is being said or written and suddenly we are diverted onto a sideline. There is a lapse between the time we are diverted and the Address reprint requests to Joseph F. Coates, Coates and Jarratt, Inc., 3738 Kanawha Street NW, Washington, DC 20015. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 50, 185-188 (1995) © 1995 Elsevier Science Inc. 655 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10010
0040-1625/95/$9.50 SSDI 0040-1625(95)00024-5
186
J . F . COATES
time that we catch up with the diversion. That is the source o f the humor, we move down the track like a machine not instantly realizing the diversion. F o r example, what are the basic beliefs o f the Quakers? In thinking about the question, one would run through some notion o f G o d and sin and evil, or any o f those things that one associates with theology and that particular group. The answer is that Quakers have three basic beliefs: the f a t h e r h o o d o f G o d , the b r o t h e r h o o d o f man, and the n e i g h b o r h o o d of Philadelphia. Clearly, one is derailed by that pun framed loosely a r o u n d the sufftx " h o o d . " A n o t h e r illustration, "Have you heard about the physics professor who got hit with the revolving d o o r ? " " N o . " "He had a moment o f inertia." The pun there plays both on the technical phrase " m o m e n t o f inertia" and on the c o m m o n meanings of the individual words "moment" and "inertia." Perhaps the best c o n t e m p o r a r y exemplar o f Bergsonian h u m o r is W o o d y Allen. His h u m o r is so much by f o r m u l a that once I reveal it to you, you will undoubtedly go off and create your own examples. The typical W o o d y Allen setting is a serious situation, often a dramatic one, which he unfolds or describes with two or three pithy phrases, and then adds an absolutely irrelevant terminal r e m a r k diverting us from the line of thinking along which he h a d been carrying us. The typical example o f Allen's formula for humor is in his story o f the Irish genius, a make-believe poet. When he gets to writing about the poet's family life, he says a b o u t the poet's wife, "Polly never realized the extent o f her husband's genius and told intimates she thought he would be most remembered not for his poetry but for his habit of emitting a piercing shriek just before eating apples." We often get comfortable with stylized h u m o r , even when the f o r m u l a is clear, because we relish the o p p o r t u n i t y to anticipate the diversion in the second or so between the beginning and the end of the situation. F r o m Jimmy Durante, Jack Benny, Fred Allen, on to W o o d y Allen, the f o r m u l a humorist has won the hearts of middle America. The same Bergsonian model applies equally well to television shows like "Roseanne," "Married with Children," "Seirffeld," or "Cheers." We understand the situation so well that the diversions are easily g r a s p e d - t h e key to mass entertainment. The same Bergsonian humor shows up in cartoons. A classic example is the New Yorker cartoon that has in the b a c k g r o u n d a space craft crashed or at least landed in the desert. A n extraterrestrial is struggling across the desert obviously saying something. As our eyes fall to the caption we read, " A m m o n i a , a m m o n i a . " Visual h u m o r in films and photographs are exemplars of the Bergsonian humor. Charlie Chaplin at his best in " M o d e r n Times" is the person not only caught up in the machine, b u t the one who becomes part of the machine. The Keystone Kops, the Three Stooges, Laurel and H a r d y , all in the early stages o f the film industry, offered a heavy dose o f the physical side o f Bergsonian humor, but always with a strong dose of the verbal or cognitive side as well. In an illustration o f the shift to the cognitive, the results o f the New York magazine competition, the instructions were to change one letter o f a familiar non-English phrase and redefine it. Examples are "posh m o r t e m - d e a t h styles o f the rich and famous" " M a z e l t o n - - l o t s of luck .... Amicus puriae -- platonic friend." One can combine the cognitive and the physical in interesting ways. The New York Times'Metropolitan Diary had the story of a w o m a n burdened with packages approached by a man who asked, " M a y I give you a hand?" He clapped three times and scurried away. A fat colleague, a m a n about 100 pounds overweight, came into my office one day and mentioned in the course o f conversation that he was becoming fat. I had observed over the previous month that he seemed to be losing weight. I mentioned to him that I
FROM MY PERSPECTIVE
187
was surprised, that I thought he was losing weight, and he said, "Yes I am, I used to be obese, and now I'm getting fat." The second question, what determines the intensity o f the humor, is equally interesting and does not have a Bergsonian response. A complementary theory suggests that the intensity o f h u m o r lies in how closely it approaches the threshold o f the offensive or the unspeakable. The assumption is that each o f us has a b o d y o f expressions, beliefs, ideas, concepts that are not to be spoken about, much less challenged. The intensity o f the h u m o r lies in how close we can a p p r o a c h without overstepping the b o u n d a r y to unacceptable affront or insult. The primary implication is that the intensity o f h u m o r is not absolute, but situational. That is borne out by everyone's experience. Right now, we are in the midst socially o f a movement to political correctness that is making it virtually impossible to publicly make a j o k e a b o u t ethnic, racial, religious groups, or the handicapped, about either gender, regional behavior, political party, or just about any o f the traditional sources o f humor. To the rescue for those who have high thresholds o f h u m o r , however, there is always Maladicta, the international j o u r n a l o f verbal aggression. The scatological remark, the religious insult, forbidden language, wicked jokes guaranteed to be offensive to blacks, Catholics, gays, Jews, men, women, and W A S P S . F o r example, passing some reader's thresholds, " H o w many feminists does it take to change a light bulb? Five. One to change the bulb and 4 to write a magazine article about it." To test the threshold, tell this j o k e in five different social situations if you dare. The new liberation in movies, TV, rap music, and language in general has surely made it difficult for children and young people to experience much by way o f verbal humor. The d r o p p i n g o f limitations on the scatological, the sexual, and the profane, making so much that was previously forbidden acceptable in public discourse makes it difficult to be h u m o r o u s about sex or excrement because o f the shifting threshold. Consequently one sees young people pushing harder and harder to find new limits and being relatively unsuccessful at it. This contributes to a general ambiance a m o n g younger people o f unconstrained vulgarity. O n the other hand, it is interesting to note how, with the relative decline in serious belief in religion, there is a definite shift from religious, blasphemous, and p r o f a n e h u m o r to scatological and sexual humor. W h a t will the future hold now that we have the two keys to h u m o r and its intensity? First, new technology will introduce new bases for humor. The general f o r m u l a will not be different from the past, only the content will change. One can see this already happening with information technology and computers as rich sources o f humor. The evolution o f humor, with the evolution o f information technology, is clear. In the heyday o f the mainframe, you will recall the cartoon in which the scientist standing in front o f the gigantic m a i n f r a m e asks a question o f this putatively omniscient machine, "Is there a G o d ? " The response comes out, "There is now." In today's cartoon: a person is sitting at his screen when a face appears at the window and says, " P a r d o n me, I am lost on the information highway. C a n you give me directions?" Or he, at the console, "I just ordered us a pizza on-line. H o w do I d o w n l o a d it?" Because we are a society o f information workers, we can expect a diminishing number o f farmer j o k e s and factory jokes and much more by way o f office and white-collar jokes. The changing m a k e u p o f society and political correctness will simultaneously restrict the range o f publicly acceptable humor against the diverse groups, but m a k e it more sly publicly. A t the same time intensity will increase in those limited circles where it is tolerated.
188
J . F . COATES
There will always be special groups with their humor. As occupations diversify, we can expect that there will be more rather than less humor o f great amusement to the insiders but without significance to most of us. Aging will surely have a dramatic effect on humor. W e will move to m o r e and more age jokes by the elderly on themselves. Yet at the same time there may well be a kind o f prudishness harking back to their youth. W i t h the arrival o f new ethnics in the society, we are already seeing the emergence of the Hispanic joke, and that will expand. We surely will have more Vietnamese and more Chinese jokes, that is, jokes in which those people are the butt of the humor. To some extent the humor will be limited to communities in which the minorities are located, but they surely will become prominent as the groups grow and spread. Within those ethnic communities there will be lively humor a b o u t the base population o f whites and blacks much as there is t o d a y about whites a m o n g blacks. As we move to a continually better-educated society, the pattern will move from the animal commitment side, the physiological, the sexual, and the scatological, on through the physical, the slapstick, and the clowning, through the occupational to more and more verbal, subtle, and intellectual jokes. The biological principle that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny applies to h u m o r as both the individual and the society mature and shift from the physical to the cognitive as their basic activities. The influence of social change is already visible in the virtual death of dialect humor simply because there are too few dialects for most o f us to be exposed to and hence to appreciate. The dialects, or more properly the accents, we are familiar with have a limited humorous appeal. Southern dialects and Boston dialects are still a source o f limited humor. We have not yet begun to publicly ridicule the accents and dialects of the new immigrants, although one does hear frequent play on the accents of Asian Indians. We will surely see more technologically based h u m o r coming out of new developments in science--jokes about drugs, pharmaceuticals, genetics, new materials, and so on. Science's latest finding is that people who stir their coffee with their left h a n d are weird. W h y is that? The typical respondent will conjure up all kinds o f pop psychological explanations for that. It is delightful then to see them draw back when the response is "because most of us use spoons." Brace yourself for millennium h u m o r as a transient event. A l m o s t surely an endless source o f h u m o r for a brief period, o d d visions, visitations, rising mountaintops, cult leaders, and so on will be the topics. "She put so much yeast in the bread, I thought it was the second coming." Received 21 February 1995