Ha! (4 page)

It would be easy to say that the Kagera children simply experienced a breakdown. Asked to live in two worlds at once—not British or African, not black or white, not even adult or child, but a combination of each—they failed to cope. But laughter isn't a breakdown. Convulsing on the floor while meowing like a kitten is a breakdown, but laughter is something entirely different. It's a coping mechanism, a way of dealing with conflict. Sometimes that conflict comes in the form of a joke. Sometimes it's more complicated than that.

Consider the story of Conchesta, one of the children affected by the outbreak. As a teen she, too, had been overcome with laughter during the epidemic, and when asked about the laughter later she claimed that it mostly struck girls who “were not free.” When the reporter asked if Conchesta felt free, her answer was immediate.

“When you live with your parents and you're that age, no one is really free.”

Conchesta's story reveals a brain mired in conflict. At the time of the outbreak she had been seeing a nearby boy, but like most pubescent girls she was prohibited from spending time alone with members of the opposite sex. Normally an established courtship process would have allowed the relationship to bloom under close scrutiny, but Western values had changed everything. Catholic and Protestant churches began offering villagers money for joining their congregations, bringing with them new rules for sex and marriage. Clans disintegrated, and so did established structures for young, pubescent girls to find possible mates. Conchesta wasn't free at that time because she didn't know who she was anymore. Her brain was in a state of transition.

Conchesta's story was typical among the Kagera children, but her explanation for the outbreak was less scientific. Before the outbreak, she said, the village had been struck by an infestation of caterpillars, which grew mostly in nearby fields. These caterpillars, though individually harmless, had a history of arriving in swarms in late winter and early spring. They could destroy an entire crop in a matter of days, so their appearance was anything but welcome. Children were warned to stay clear of the fields for fear of disturbing the visitors and drawing their ire. Those struck by the laughter, according to the legend, had ignored the instructions and crossed a field, killing several of the caterpillars and angering their spirits. The laughter was those spirits' retribution.

Nobody thought to ask whether Conchesta was one of the children who had illicitly crossed the fields, or to associate the outbreak with another unique aspect of the caterpillar—that it, too, inhabits two worlds at once. At birth it's a larva feeding on leaves and grass, a destructive force capable of wiping out entire crops in just a few days. But inside its cocoon, it's an African Armyworm moth, waiting to emerge and fly to distant lands hundreds of kilometers away.

In the second scenario, Gilbert Gottfried told the most obscene joke in the world to an audience already wary of offensive material, yet he succeeded because his joke communicated a sensitive and subtle idea—one that endeared him to the audience. The idea here is that obscene jokes are intended not to offend but, rather, to question what it means to be offended in the first place. Obscene humor challenges accepted norms and makes us laugh not
despite
its depravity but
because
of it.

Humor—especially offensive humor—is idiosyncratic. People have different thresholds for what they find offensive, and they vary widely in their responses when that threshold is crossed. Still, Gottfried's brazenness in tackling prevailing sensitivities head-on was impressive. Had he simply told his audience to chill out, he would have been booed off the stage. Had he spewed vile and filth outside the context of a joke,
the audience's reaction would have been even worse. Humor provided him a tool. And he used it expertly.

Gottfried's joke also reveals the jointly psychological and social nature of humor. There's an old saying that if you want to make a point, tell a story—but raising several points at once requires humor. Cutting-edge humor never involves just a single message. There's what the humorist is saying, and all the rest left unspoken. When Gottfried told
The Aristocrats
joke, he wasn't celebrating perverseness. Rather, he was sharing his desire to be funny while also remaining respectful to the recent victims of 9/11, and the only way to do both was to have his audience struggle with the same challenge. That required showing them that even the vilest words don't physically hurt anyone.

Even animals use humor as a tool for diffusing tense situations. For example, chimpanzees bare their teeth in laughter during friendly interactions, especially when meeting strangers and forming new social bonds, and dogs, penguins, and even rats have all been shown to give hearty chuckles during rough-and-tumble play. Consider, for instance, a study conducted by members of the Spokane County Regional Animal Protective Service. They recorded the grunting noises made by shelter dogs during play, noises that seemed eerily like laughter. When those same noises were broadcast over speakers in the shelter, the dogs not only became more relaxed but also played more. They wagged their tails and generally acted as though they were relaxing in a comedy club rather than being confined in a kennel.

Our similarity to other species isn't limited to laughing, either—some animals even demonstrate a rather provocative sense of humor. A case in point is the chimp named Washoe, one of the first animals to learn American Sign Language. Washoe was raised by primate researcher and adopted parent Roger Fouts, and according to one frequently repeated account, one day Washoe was sitting on Fouts's shoulders when suddenly and without warning he began to pee. Of course Fouts was disturbed by the incident, as anyone would be under such circumstances, but then he looked up and saw that Washoe was
trying to tell him something. He was making the sign for “funny.” The joke, apparently, was on Fouts.

The third scenario asked why Laura would crack a joke while watching the closing scenes of
Titanic.
We could ask Laura herself, but psychology suggests that doing so would provide an unreliable answer. Laura probably doesn't know any more than we do. We can only look at her actions, which brings us to “Yo, Adrian!”

As we've seen, humor is often thought of as involving jokes, even obscene ones like Gottfried's. This, however, was a different situation entirely. Laura laughed while surrounded by dozens of crying people, none of whom thought her actions were appropriate for that moment. In fact, several people shushed her, including her mother-in-law, something that would never have happened had we been watching a comedy. There was no social expectation of laughter, and no punch line, either—only an embarrassed wife and a crowd of angry moviegoers.

The American Film Institute lists “Yo, Adrian” among the most influential lines in movie history, though it isn't recognized for being deep or meaningful. On the contrary, it's just one of those phrases that comes out of our mouths. When the
Rocky
movies were first released, everybody was mimicking Stallone's slurred “Yo, Adrian.” The line is even repeated in the sequels, and in each case it's portrayed as an honest, unsentimental call to Rocky's love. This isn't to say it's a simple or meaningless line. Far from it—it's genius. After Rocky survives his fight with Apollo Creed, his call to Adrian is a touching climax. Punctuating the scene with a short, slangy line is real life. It's the noticeable absence of sentimentality.

I can't say what Laura felt, but obviously she wasn't moved by the DiCaprio character's demise. My guess is that her brain needed a way to resolve the conflict between watching a tragic death on-screen and feeling like her emotions were being manipulated with a sledgehammer. “I
just saw all the people crying and for some reason I imagined Sylvester Stallone, I mean Rocky, out there in the water too, yearning for Adrian,” Laura told me afterward. “And I asked,
What would Rocky say?
There was no getting it out of my head at that point. I wanted to cry, I really did. I just really wanted Rocky to be out there too.”

In Laura's reaction we see another important psychological principle governing humor, which is that we react to humorous situations everywhere, and we've all laughed at situations that only we thought amusing. Laura was the only person laughing in the theater because only she found the overwhelming sentimentality entertaining, her brain struggling to resolve her opposing emotions about what was happening on-screen. On the one hand, she experienced sadness while watching hundreds of people tragically drown, including the male lead character. On the other, she could see director James Cameron treating the emotional climax in front of her the same way he treated the action-based climaxes of his earlier films,
Aliens
and
The Terminator
—with nonstop fury. That's a lot to ask of anyone.

It may seem that each of our three laughter case studies has moved further and further away from the traditional concept of humor. They have, but as we've seen, humor isn't just about being funny; it's also about how we deal with complex and contradictory messages. It helps us resolve confusing feelings, and even connect with others in times of stress. Laughter is simply what happens as we work through the details.

T
HE
E
LUSIVE
C
ONCEPT OF
M
IRTH

Imagine that it's the middle of the twentieth century and you have just volunteered to participate in a study on humor. The researcher wants you to view a series of hand-drawn cartoons. Act naturally, he says, and laugh only when the feeling strikes you.

The first cartoon depicts a man casually raking leaves, next to a buxom woman tied to a tree. There's no explanation, just a woman who looks irate and a man who appears happy to be experiencing the outdoors without his partner able to interfere. The second cartoon
shows a man and a gorilla walking into a pet store next to a sign reading “Pets bought and sold.” In the second frame, the gorilla walks out of the store holding a stack of money in his hands. The third cartoon is from
The New Yorker
and depicts two skiers, one facing uphill and the other down. Behind the downhill skier is a set of tracks passing around a tree. Except that the path of the left ski passes to the left of the tree and the other to the right. The uphill skier looks on in befuddlement.

None of these cartoons is particularly funny, but you chuckle at the second one—the one with the gorilla—as well as at the last one with the skiers. You notice that the researcher is taking copious notes, and when the test is complete you ask him how you did. He says you show signs of anxiety. Why? He replies that the first cartoon, the one featuring the tied-up woman, is a “sensitive stimulus.” Anxious people and schizophrenics tend to be disturbed by the thought of involuntary restraint and thus don't laugh at that one, whereas normal people find it amusing because they recognize that the violation is minor and that the man is just using an unusual, and potentially humorous, means of enjoying a sunny day. The researcher goes on to tell you that the other two cartoons, the ones with the gorilla and skier, aren't particularly provocative, so it's interesting that you found those amusing. Normal people typically require that their humor make them a little uncomfortable, and these cartoons shouldn't satisfy that need.

But don't worry, he adds. It's only one assessment.

You have just taken the Mirth Response Test, a humor tool from the mid-twentieth century that was once popular enough to be featured in
Life
magazine. It's based on Freud's theory that humor is our way of resolving inner conflict and anxiety. According to Freud, we constantly desire things such as food and sex. At the same time, our anxieties keep us from acting on these desires, leading to inner conflict. Humor, by treating these forbidden impulses lightly, allows us to relieve inner tension—in other words, it permits us to express ourselves in previously forbidden ways. This is why successful jokes must be at least a little provocative. Too much anxiety and we withhold the laugh. Too little and we don't laugh because our humor system isn't engaged at all.
The funniest things are those right in the middle. Individuals suffering from schizophrenia or high levels of anxiety generally enjoy only the milder cartoons because they have enough stress in their lives already. Everybody else prefers more of a middle ground.