Gene Weingarten Below the Beltway
Gene really kills Hear the one about the really depressing humor column?
T
his just in: I teach a class in English as a second language. My students struggle with humor, trying to be funny in a language that is not their own. Can
you help them by outlining the basic forms and structures of English-language comedy? — Sarah Hopson Dear Sarah — It is indeed a tragedy when the great
gift of humor is denied to people merely because of a language barrier. Fortunately, you came to the right place! By deconstructing some timeless jokes, I shall create a brief tutorial in American Humor Appreciation so your students can experience the same unbridled joy as the rest of us.
“Take my wife … please.” This classic Henny Youngman
formulation deftly combines the rhetorical devices of irony and surprise: At first, Henny appears to be referencing his wife as an example of something; then, we learn that he is instead offering the lady to anyone who will take her off his hands. We laugh, but why? Because in Henny’s comedic
dilemma, we recognize a basic truth: Over time, love often becomes a straitjacket. As the physical imperfections of aging inexorably take their toll, sexual desire diminishes; meanwhile, increased familiarity with a person will sometimes create an emotional numbness, leading to a poisonous domestic environment that can scar us so badly we are never again capable of love, trust or the capacity for true happiness. Okay, possibly that joke might not have been a great
example of unbridled joy. Fortunately, I’ve got a million of ’em.
“Did you hear about the constipated
mathematician? he worked it out with a pencil!” “Worked it out!” See, that’s hilarious! Okay, it’s
true that on a deeper level this is funny because in this amusingly exaggerated battle between a man and his lower intestinal tract, we recognize the fundamental absurdity of our existence: Life is an inevitably fatal
disease. Sooner or later, our own bodies will assassinate us.
“Q: how many psychiatrists does it take to change
a light bulb? a: only one, but the light bulb really has to want to change!” Shrinks are funny! Zey all talk like Freud, mit faintly
evil Cherman accents. Though the message of this joke is a bit disturbing, to tell the truth, it certifies a central experience of psychiatry: Patients frequently resist making the very alterations of behavior that will bring them relief. We are the proverbial man who keeps hitting himself in the head with a hammer; unlike that man, though, we are not doing it because it feels so good when we stop. We are doing it because, in one of life’s cruelest perversities, we dread pain, yet crave it. Hmm. I think we have to
dumb this down a little. Okay, a lot.
“Q: What time is it when
you have to go to the dentist? a: Tooth hurty!” Now we’re cooking! Pure,
innocent pun fun! This will just slay your average 4-year-old. To adults, though, the pun genre
is most valued when it elicits not a laugh but a wince. It’s why puns are called “groaners.” They are actually designed to inflict a small degree of pain, which we find satisfying. Why? Because we are a hostile species. The impulse to pun is the same as the impulse to wage war: to annihilate. Last, consider what is perhaps the prototype for all
jokes in the English language: “Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the
other side!” This classic joke uses the twinned tools of absurdity
and non sequitur to amusingly lay bare the final paradox of life. The central comfort of our existence — the notion that life has meaning — is a lie, a pathetic self-deception to which we cling because to confront the truth would be to descend into madness. The chicken crosses the road for the same “reason” we walk through our days on Earth: no reason at all. You’re welcome, Sarah.
E-mail Gene at
weingarten@washpost.com. 36 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | JUNE 13, 2010
ILLUSTRATION BY ERIC SHANSBY
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