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davidgoldfarbOn rec.arts.sf.composition, the topic of humor came up. I mentioned a theory I have, that there are at least four different pathways in the brain that trigger the same reward mechanism (i.e., laughter). zeborahnz asked me to expand on this, and I wound up writing a fairly long essay (someone on rasfc said "This isn't your Ph.D thesis?")...which I want to post here so that I have access to it at will. (And who knows, perhaps even someone will read it and find it edifying.)
As I said, it's long...so a cut.
I think of them as puzzle-solving, recognition, social bonding, and social domination. (I'm actually not completely sure that recognition should be counted as a separate category; there was a time when I would have said "three" instead of "four". But on the whole, I think it is.)
"Puzzle-solving" involves a logical juxtaposition of opposites, a setting-up of seemingly-contradictory world views that must be reconciled. It's an evolutionary outgrowth of world-modeling as survival behavior.
"Recognition" is also such an outgrowth; it involves identifying something outside of what might be its normal context, or noticing a pattern. Sometimes the pattern can be completely artificially constructed, as when some lame gag or catchphrase becomes funnier through repetition. It's the in-joke, the reference, the running gag.
Here's an example of recognition humor: there's a story (it might be Joanna Russ's "Useful Phrases for the Tourist", but it might not) that is a phrasebook for an alien language. This language has a word for "being torn between wanting to stay in your nice warm bed and having to get up and pee." The humor there comes, I think, mainly from
recognizing the situation described, at having it isolated as a word-worthy concept.
Here's an example of a joke that I think combines puzzle-solving and recognition:
How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb? A fish.
For that one, you need to recognize the form of the joke, and remember facts about surrealists, in order to figure out why a non sequitur was deployed right there. If you've never heard a light bulb joke before, or aren't familiar with the surrealist movement, the joke will fall flat.
This may be the place to note that I've had the experience of struggling with a difficult puzzle and, on solving it, being moved to laughter.
"Social bonding" is laughter used as an expression of solidarity. Steven Pinker, in How the Mind Works, notes that it's a great pleasure to go out with a group of friends and talk with them and laugh with them; but, he notes, some researchers have taken transcripts of what some such groups have actually said, and most of it just really isn't funny when seen by itself. ("You had to be there.") Laughing with someone is a way of bonding with them. It's the principle behind the TV laugh track.
"Social domination" is easy to understand: it's ridicule, the putdown, slapstick, embarrassment humor. Laughing at rather than with.
Now, elements of social domination work their way at least a little bit into nearly all comedy. When Abbott and Costello do "Who's on First?" the humor is mainly the puzzle-solving of figuring out how all the violations of the use-mention distinction are working -- but there's also just a bit of looking down on Costello for not understanding what's going on, when you do.
Thinking about all this almost makes me want to go into cognitive science. I would *love* to see brain imaging done on people viewing different kinds of comedy -- e.g., Bedazzled vs. the Three Stooges. If I'm right, then there should be different but overlapping parts of the brain active for each.
(It's entirely possible that something like this has already been done. If anyone knows about it, please tell me! It's also possible that the differences are finer-grained than current imaging techniques can pick up, or that there's just too much variation in how individual brains are "wired".)
The above also, I think, sheds light on the perennial question of why so much SF is so serious. To have a really SFnal joke, you need to build up *two* different alien worldviews, and get them ingrained in the reader's brain to the point where they can be juxtaposed and then resolved at a level of unconscious processing. But building up even one alien
worldview is a difficult and lengthy task.
Lois Bujold could do _A Civil Campaign_ late in the Vorkosigan series, because she was drawing on a lot of previously-built worldbuilding. A lot of other SF and fantasy humor is based on parody and spoof, in
effect parasitizing other peoples' worldbuilding (and also drawing on the recognition pathway); still other examples juxtapose an SF or fantasy setting with intrusions from mainstream reality.
Sources: My foundation for a lot of this was the aforementioned _How the Mind Works_; its chapter on humor was enlightening reading for me, and I recommend the book. I do think that in his conclusion to the chapter, Steven Pinker incorrectly conflates puzzle-solving with social domination. (My terms, btw, not his.) I was also influenced by the discussion in a panel on SF humor at the 2006 Worldcon, and by conversations with Katie Schwarz and Teresa Nielsen Hayden.
(Whew!)
zeborahnz asked me to expand on this, and I wound up writing a fairly long essay (someone on rasfc said "This isn't your Ph.D thesis?")...which I want to post here so that I have access to it at will. (And who knows, perhaps even someone will read it and find it edifying.)As I said, it's long...so a cut.
I think of them as puzzle-solving, recognition, social bonding, and social domination. (I'm actually not completely sure that recognition should be counted as a separate category; there was a time when I would have said "three" instead of "four". But on the whole, I think it is.)
"Puzzle-solving" involves a logical juxtaposition of opposites, a setting-up of seemingly-contradictory world views that must be reconciled. It's an evolutionary outgrowth of world-modeling as survival behavior.
"Recognition" is also such an outgrowth; it involves identifying something outside of what might be its normal context, or noticing a pattern. Sometimes the pattern can be completely artificially constructed, as when some lame gag or catchphrase becomes funnier through repetition. It's the in-joke, the reference, the running gag.
Here's an example of recognition humor: there's a story (it might be Joanna Russ's "Useful Phrases for the Tourist", but it might not) that is a phrasebook for an alien language. This language has a word for "being torn between wanting to stay in your nice warm bed and having to get up and pee." The humor there comes, I think, mainly from
recognizing the situation described, at having it isolated as a word-worthy concept.
Here's an example of a joke that I think combines puzzle-solving and recognition:
How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb? A fish.
For that one, you need to recognize the form of the joke, and remember facts about surrealists, in order to figure out why a non sequitur was deployed right there. If you've never heard a light bulb joke before, or aren't familiar with the surrealist movement, the joke will fall flat.
This may be the place to note that I've had the experience of struggling with a difficult puzzle and, on solving it, being moved to laughter.
"Social bonding" is laughter used as an expression of solidarity. Steven Pinker, in How the Mind Works, notes that it's a great pleasure to go out with a group of friends and talk with them and laugh with them; but, he notes, some researchers have taken transcripts of what some such groups have actually said, and most of it just really isn't funny when seen by itself. ("You had to be there.") Laughing with someone is a way of bonding with them. It's the principle behind the TV laugh track.
"Social domination" is easy to understand: it's ridicule, the putdown, slapstick, embarrassment humor. Laughing at rather than with.
Now, elements of social domination work their way at least a little bit into nearly all comedy. When Abbott and Costello do "Who's on First?" the humor is mainly the puzzle-solving of figuring out how all the violations of the use-mention distinction are working -- but there's also just a bit of looking down on Costello for not understanding what's going on, when you do.
Thinking about all this almost makes me want to go into cognitive science. I would *love* to see brain imaging done on people viewing different kinds of comedy -- e.g., Bedazzled vs. the Three Stooges. If I'm right, then there should be different but overlapping parts of the brain active for each.
(It's entirely possible that something like this has already been done. If anyone knows about it, please tell me! It's also possible that the differences are finer-grained than current imaging techniques can pick up, or that there's just too much variation in how individual brains are "wired".)
The above also, I think, sheds light on the perennial question of why so much SF is so serious. To have a really SFnal joke, you need to build up *two* different alien worldviews, and get them ingrained in the reader's brain to the point where they can be juxtaposed and then resolved at a level of unconscious processing. But building up even one alien
worldview is a difficult and lengthy task.
Lois Bujold could do _A Civil Campaign_ late in the Vorkosigan series, because she was drawing on a lot of previously-built worldbuilding. A lot of other SF and fantasy humor is based on parody and spoof, in
effect parasitizing other peoples' worldbuilding (and also drawing on the recognition pathway); still other examples juxtapose an SF or fantasy setting with intrusions from mainstream reality.
Sources: My foundation for a lot of this was the aforementioned _How the Mind Works_; its chapter on humor was enlightening reading for me, and I recommend the book. I do think that in his conclusion to the chapter, Steven Pinker incorrectly conflates puzzle-solving with social domination. (My terms, btw, not his.) I was also influenced by the discussion in a panel on SF humor at the 2006 Worldcon, and by conversations with Katie Schwarz and Teresa Nielsen Hayden.
(Whew!)
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Date: 2008-12-31 02:46 pm (UTC)I'm looking forward to watching the process of her "getting it," as I've done with other more abstract language concepts.