Comedy

4. Comic wisdom

The popularity and value of comedy lie largely in its vision of human life, which contrasts sharply with the dominant ideologies of Western culture. Those ideologies treat as virtues such traits as respect for authority, duty, honour, single-mindedness, courage and a capacity for hard work. These have been promoted by armies and other patriarchal institutions since ancient times. An important way of inculcating them in society at large has been to celebrate them in epic and tragic art, which are full of military imagery. Indeed, patriarchies try to get us to think of everything in military terms. In the USA, social programmes are called ‘the war on poverty’; medical research is called ‘the war on breast cancer’; even programmes to stop violence are ‘the war on violence’! When military metaphors sink deep enough into our culture, life itself becomes a series of battles.

While blind obedience, single-mindedness, the ability to work constantly, and the willingness to die or kill on command are important for the conduct of war, it is not at all clear that they are virtues in all areas of life. Thus alongside the official ideology promulgated by epics and tragedy there has always existed an alternative ideology of comedy. Instead of promoting military virtues, comedy promotes the questioning of authority, mental flexibility, playfulness and the value of life. All of these threaten institutions of power in various ways, and as a result comedy has been suppressed in most cultures. However, because it addresses deep human needs, it has survived.

Comedies have different kinds of characters. Many serve as negative role models, examples of how not to act. In laughing at the miser, the prude and the pedant, as Henri Bergson pointed out, we are recognizing their mechanicalness, their ineptness at living a human life. But most comedies also have at least one character that we identify with and may even admire. Many of the roles played by Charlie Chaplin, Mae West and Groucho Marx are of this type. These characters are so different from epic and tragic heroes that their usual name, ‘comic heroes’, is misleading. We can call them comic protagonists.

The attitudes of these characters embody what is most valuable in comedy. Unlike tragic heroes, they play as well as work. They are not unwaveringly committed to any cause; nor are they prepared to die, or kill, to achieve their goals. Like tragic heroes, they face problems and enemies, but instead of confronting them head on with violence, they use trickery, perhaps by turning the power of the threat against itself, or with reverse psychology. When all else fails, they are not ashamed to run away. As the old saying goes, you’re a coward for only a moment, but you’re dead for the rest of your life.

Comic protagonists differ most notably from tragic heroes in their mental flexibility, a trait which comedy celebrates. The characters who lose in comedy are rigid creatures of habit; those who succeed are adaptable and think on their feet. Unlike tragic heroes, comic protagonists do not have fixed categories for thinking or acting. They can view situations from several perspectives and see many possibilities. Much of their thinking is lateral rather than vertical, to use Edward de Bono’s terms.

When confronted by problems, tragic heroes are given to emotions that make them mentally rigid and even obsessive. Comic protagonists keep an unemotional clearheadedness in the face of misfortune that allows them to think rather than feel their way through challenges. They do not engage in self-pity or curse their fate, but are more likely to laugh at their problems, as tragic heroes never do. As a result, they are more likely to bounce back from their mistakes and learn from them. The contrast here is fittingly generalized by Walpole’s maxim, ‘This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel’.

Since emotional disengagement and the ability to imagine alternatives are a big part of human freedom, comic protagonists are considerably freer than tragic heroes. They are often in charge of their lives as tragic heroes are not, and they end up victors, while tragic heroes end up victims.

It is often said that the tragic vision of life embodies wisdom. Solemnity and pessimism are considered hallmarks of wisdom. Western thinkers, with a few exceptions such as Democritus and Nietzsche, have usually thought wisdom to be a kind of seriousness about life. But that is all part of the traditional prejudice against comedy. Judged fairly, the comic vision reveals at least as much wisdom as the tragic.

Indeed, if wisdom includes emotional disengagement, seeing life from a higher perspective than usual and seeing it objectively rather than from a self-privileging position, then comedy seems wiser than tragedy. If wisdom includes a realistic attitude towards life, comedy’s tolerance for human limitations and its emphasis on adapting ourselves to an imperfect world seem to make it more realistic than tragedy. More fully than tragedy, too, comedy represents the richness of life – especially social life – in the many ways it may be lived and appreciated.

Comic characters make mistakes and suffer misfortunes, but through it all they are at home in their world, and they get by with a little help from their friends. Tragic characters, with their elitism and idealism, are not satisfied with living a merely human life. The central lesson of comedy is that we are finite and prone to error, but with a sense of humour we can still be happy.

The capacity for happiness seems to need some psychological technique for coping with finitude and fallibility, and humour is easily the most effective. Psychological studies have shown that humour is correlated not only with self-esteem but with creativity and a tolerance for ambiguity, diversity and change. Furthermore, humour has medical benefits – it blocks negative emotions, counteracts stress, boosts the activity of the immune system, reduces pain, and even has a laxative effect!

Both comedy and tragedy are reactions to the human condition, but as a dramatic form, an artistic sensibility, and an attitude toward life itself, comedy seems truer to human nature. The displacement of tragedy by comedy and tragicomedy in the twentieth century seems a step towards the acknowledgement of this fact.