Comedy and its implications for society have been discussed throughout history by philosophers the world over due to the universal nature of comedy and humour. The topic of comedy was even discussed by ancient philosophers Plato, Aristotle, and Epictetus all the way to the modern day. The theories as to why we find particular things funny and other things not, vary. Some of the more famous theories are the ‘Superiority Theory’, the ‘Relief Theory’, and ‘Incongruity Theory’. Depending on which one we believe to be correct would help to answer whether or not comedy has a positive or negative effect on society and our psyche. The early philosophers generally agreed that comedy had a negative effect on us but later philosophers revised the theories around comedy and the general consensus became that comedy can have a positive effect on us.
Plato believes that comedy is damaging to us and details how that he believes that people (especially rulers) should not allow themselves to be susceptible to uncontrollable bouts of laughter as he says that “a fit of laughter which has been indulged to excess almost always produces a violent reaction” . He also comments that he finds the fact that the gods are detailed to laugh, up high on Olympus, disturbing as they are meant to be divine and therefore better than us and resultingly should not be in hysterics. This is one of the few instances that Aristotle agrees with Plato and writes that some forms of mockery were forbidden and mockery is a type of jest and therefore some jests should be forbidden. These philosophers believe that comedy and things we find funny come from the fact that we think ourselves superior to particular things or people. This is the ‘Superiority Theory’ which essentially is the theory that we laugh at what we believe we are superior to, whether that be other people or past versions of ourselves. We find humour in mocking and from this humour we make ourselves feel greater which, of course, we would describe as a negative trait to have; it seems that therefore laughter is simply us expressing our feelings of superiority which we naturally do not want to admit. This would, for example, perhaps explain as to why we find the character ‘Mr. Bean’ funny; because he is portrayed as a simpleton whose lack of intelligence often leads to his own humiliation. We find humour in the fact that we are intellectually superior to him and therefore reinforces the plausibility of this theory. This also accounts for why we find seemingly more offensive jokes funny such sexist or racist ones. There are however, flaws to this particular theory; we can argue that there are a multitude of things that we feel superior to such as animals, yet you do not actively laugh at them. Similarly, if you were to come across a beggar in the streets, you may be better off than he is but you do not laugh at his misfortune. We also must pay attention to some of the other things that we may laugh at, such as a magician who possesses superior skill or wit to us. We also regularly laugh at ourselves at particular moments, which of course would be somewhat paradoxical if the theory were true as we cannot find ourselves inferior to ourselves.
Another theory as to why we find things humorous is the ‘Relief Theory’; this theory equates our need for laughter to the release of pressure in a steam boiler. Laughter acts as a pressure- relief system for our bodies as it directs excess emotions towards something else instead. Freud believed this theory to hold true as he wrote that the most repressed emotions are that of sexual desire and aggression which is why many jokes have within them the theme of sex and/ or hostility. In engaging with comedy about sex we vent our libido; in laughing at a joke that targets a group of people that allows for us to vent repressed hostility that we would usually censor in most other social scenarios. The Relief Theory is sometimes used to explain as to why particular instances are humorous; because something unexpected occurs that does not follow the usual order of events. When witnessing anything in normal life you expect causal events to occur in the same pattern: A-B-C. However, when something unexpected happens you use the excess mental energy that you had planned to use in the form of laughter. This could explain as to why for example we find someone falling over funny, as we had expected just to see them continue the sequence and the mental energy that we had intended to use to continue to process the pattern, instead produces laughter. This also could potentially explain as to why in nervous situations it is somewhat common for people to start uncontrollably laughing in situations that one is not supposed to like a funeral or before doing something potentially dangerous. This theory therefore seems to show that comedy is in fact good for us, not just from a moral standpoint, but it also as a way of relieving ourselves of pent up negative emotions. This indicates that the reason for laughter is not because of some superiority complex that leads to us believing ourselves to be above others, but rather as a healthy manner of dealing with internal emotions that could otherwise be negative. There currently exists multiple laughing clinics as many believe that laughter releases useful hormones and leads to better mental and sometimes even physical health; this somewhat corresponds with the Relief Theory. Freud also suggests that potentially we also laugh at inappropriate times because it assists in dealing with the realisation that our own lives are beyond our control. However, there are also further arguments that are against the Relief Theory, such as in the realms of comedy, we regularly expect the unexpected; the classic ‘knock-knock’ joke for example, people know to expect something that does not follow the normal causal process, yet we still find these jokes funny. When watching a stand-up comedian, you know that the stories and anecdotes that they tell lead to something humorous and yet we still laugh. One could also argue that the energy that you use to process causal events is low and therefore the theory that we instead channel this energy into bouts of laughter seems to not make sense as the energy required to laugh is much higher.
Another potential theory is the ‘Incongruity Theory’, which is simply the theory that what we find to be comedic is simply the witnessing of something incongruous, which is something that is essentially unexpected and manages to subvert from your mental patterns. When a joke’s ending is incongruitous with its beginning then we regularly find this amusing; therefore, the humour of a joke stems from the incongruity violating our normal view of the world by breaking normal causal events. This theory is initially proposed by Aristotle and was supported by German philosophers such as Kierkegaard, Kant, and Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer claims that the incongruity that causes laughter is located between our sense perceptions of the world and our ‘abstract rational knowledge’ of the world that we perceive. Schopenhauer explains that we perceive unique individual things with many properties but when we group them under abstract concepts then we focus on just one or a few properties of individual things. An easy example of this could be how we group different breeds of a particular species under one word like ‘dog’ or ‘cat’. He further claims that humour is found in the incongruity between a concept and a perception that are supposed to be focused on the same thing, and he believes that this theory can work with any joke. Furthermore, Schopenhauer mentions that malicious laughter comes from how incongruous the previous conceptions that the subject had compared to how reality is now presenting itself. He also comments on the fact that humour is somewhat pleasurable and this comes from our animal nature of using perception to gain knowledge over using our thought. This theory seems to mean that comedy is therefore neither objectively good nor bad but rather a realisation of an incongruity between our perception of the subject and our abstract rational knowledge of the subject; essentially the humour of a joke can be explained by the absurdity of the scenario. The unexpectedness as it were. Comedy then could be argued to be a force for good in this context as it provides a sort of further analysis of the world which we as humans strive for.
Comedy can also be argued to actually provide some practical use to us, such as using it to study people’s psyche, but in particular, study the psyche of people from the past. Depending on the theory which you believe is correct about the nature of comedy, you can use these to analyse jokes that were once popular in different cultures and resultingly you can determine the mindset that these historical cultures had alongside other their other writings. We as people of the modern era may look at ancient jokes and regard them as simply not being funny, however the people of the time thought that they were and that poses other questions as to whether taste in comedy has somehow evolved or that some jokes are just so old that they have lost their incongruity. Old, particularly ancient, jokes seem unfunny to us but it could be explained by the fact that incongruities rely upon our view of how the world ought to be and this has clearly changed over the years, rendering these once funny jokes into unfunny ones. This shows how comedy is good for us in that it can be used to study the change in human psyche across time and culture. Comedy and a sense of humour is seemingly ingrained in all humans to varying degrees and while some may argue that this could be an example of some sort of divine creator, many would counter this by arguing that this is not epistemically justified and requires too much of a dogmatic leap of faith.
Noël Carroll comments on how comedy is but one of many forms of amusement that humans use to entertain themselves and generally believes in the Incongruity Theory