Applying Bergson's Ideas: Absence of Feeling

On my last blog post and in our last meeting, I argued that Zanetto in The Venetian Twins was a pitiful figure, one of the truly honest characters. I failed to see the comedy in his tragic and untimely death. 

However, as I was reading Bergson's article on laughter, I realized exactly why I could not see Zanetto as anything but pitiful. 

"Here I would point out, as a symptom equally worthy of notice, the ABSENCE OF FEELING which usually accompanies laughter... I do not mean that we could not laugh at a person who inspires us with pity, for instance, or even with affection, but in such a case we must, for the moment, put our affection out of court and impose silence upon our pity..." Bergson, page 4b.

That was my problem. When I looked at Zanetto, I could not "impose a silence upon my pity" or feel anything other than affection for him. I only felt bad for the poor guy. But after reading the article, I went back and viewed portions of the play, and this time I shut my pity off. I viewed Zanetto with indifference and tried to think of him as nothing more than a clown. It worked. His mishaps were now funny, not miserable. Who knew making myself a cold bastard would change things unhappy things to funny ones? 

For kicks and giggles, I watched a video of people falling, slipping, sliding, etc. and tried to feel sorry for them the whole time. Somehow watching these people hit the floor was not very much fun when I thought about how they were probably injured afterwards. I watched the video again and attempted to stop relating to them. Suddenly I could not stop laughing. 

So I found through careful experimentation, that Bergson is correct in his assertion that "laughter has no greater foe than emotion."