I never really thought about laughter before starting this
course. I always thought it was just a
response to something funny. I thought
laughter was laughter and it was simply caused by something funny happening. One text we discussed in particular showed me
that laughter was not just laughter and that the idea could be more complex
than I had thought. This text was The Nose Dance.
In The
Nose Dance, one of the Carnival Plays, we discussed a specific type of
laughter. That specific type was the
carnivalesque laughter. The Nose Dance
is a short play about an ugly nose competition in which the competitors argue
about who has the ugliest nose. This play
is an example of the carnivalesque laughter because every one of the competitors
are on the same level, every one of them are “laughing” at each other, and the
target of the laughter is something out of the ordinary.
This
laughter is distinct from the laughter we experience today. In most cases if someone is being laughed at
for having a very ugly nose they are not going to join in and laugh with those
laughing at him or her. Today, he or she
would be excluded from the laughter rather than included. Just like that, my thoughts on laughter
changed. There is more than one kind of
laughter and it is more complex than it just being a reaction to something
funny.
I agree there are different types of laughter. I think about comedy, where some is trying to entertain you, and laughter due to funny situations (like tripping on a rug), vs. the harmful laughter, which would be the laughter towards someone because of a physical deformity (ugly nose) or some other character flaw. That type of laughter is not necessarily comedy.
ReplyDeleteI think that all laughter at its core is a reaction to something abnormal, to say it blandly. The motive behind which we laugh is where we can easily see a difference. As is pointed out in this post, there are different reasons that go with laughter, but for its existence, there must be a break in the fabric of custom, if that makes sense. Like, when you hear a funny lyric on the radio, it might be funny because you weren't expecting it, it was particularly raunchy, or something along those lines; these are all things that are out-of-norm for the standard idea of merely riding in the car listening to "normal" radio.
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