Laughter- Bergson's Article of Laughter

            As soon as I read the assignment for this blog, I immediately knew of the article that has affected my definition of comedy and laughter the most.  This is not to say that it changed my definition, for in all honesty, before this class, I have never sat down and tried to assign a meaning to anything.  It only provoked me to think about laughter in a way that I have not thought about it before.  This article to which I am referring to is Henri Bergson’s section of Laughter that we read.  The very basis of the sections we read was based on three simple facts: laughter’s basis is in humanity, laughter is void of emotion, and laughter needs company.  It is through these three simple ideas that he based the remainder of the article on and expanded it in a way that I am not sure I am personally capable of doing.  There is many points that he made which open my mind a little more, but due to the limiting length of the blog, I will stick to the one that was the most thought provoking to me.  This is the difference of concepts of vices in dramas and in comedies. 

            He begins this discussion by saying that you would expect a play that would be a drama to be named a proper name, while in contrast comedies would be common names.  This is something that I thought irrelevant until he went on to explain.  What I understood from his explanation is that an actor in a drama is his character, an unwavering mood, belief, or personality, and the play is identified by the name of that character.  While a comedy is based on the vice, the character is “unconscious”.  The character is more or less just a transportation system for the vice.  If the meaning of the play is to get the audience to laugh through that vice, and the expected result does not happen, the character would adjust to get the desired result. 

            When contemplating laughter before this class (if I ever did) it would be applied to comical people.  This concept that Bergson used, I used to explain this.  If a person’s desire is to be comical, and thrives to make people laugh, they adjust to get the desired result.  Those people who are full of emotion and expand their sentiment to every situation are consistent to their character for they are not expecting a desired result.  Not to say that the comical person is purely intellect, as suggested in the first section, but that person uses laughter to correct his actions for his purpose is to cause laughter.  This is just one segment of insightful details that Bergson brought to light about laughter for me.