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More on the Nature of Humor
At my seminars I teach that humor is not
positive; it is negative. It is a mirror of
human faults. We laugh at people's stupidity,
clumsiness and misery. Compliments will not make
people laugh - unless there is an insult
embedded in it. Only insults have the potential
of being funny. I sometimes challenge people to
tell me a joke that doesn't make anyone look bad.
Sometimes people take me up on the challenge.
Usually they'll tell me a riddle. Many riddles
do, in fact, contain an obvious insult, but they
don't always. They are usually based on
word-plays, or double-entendres, in which
a word has more than one meaning. It took me a
while to realize who riddles make fun of. I
believe the answer is that it makes fun of the
listener. We are asked a question that we know
is going to have a stupid answer, meaning an
answer that cannot possibly be correct or
logical. We respond to the question as though it
is valid, then we are hit with a
ridiculous answer that is possible because of
the second meaning of the word. The answer is
usually something we couldn't possibly think of
on our own because it not logical, but the
answer is so simple that we feel stupid for not
having though of it by ourselves. The
riddle-teller therefore has made a fool of us,
and we laugh.
But my main concern here is jokes, not riddles.
It sometimes takes me a while to figure out what
was degrading in the joke. I want to tell you
about one that had me stumped, till I realized
that practically everything about it was
degrading. In essence, I had been searching for
a tree, not realizing I was staring at a forest.
A Jewish therapist at a recent Anger Control
Made Easy seminar in Tampa told me the joke in
response to my challenge. This excellent joke
is, by the way, quite well known; I had first
heard it when I was a child. It goes like this:
A man strikes up a conversation with a mohel. (A
mohel is a Jewish scholar who is trained to
perform circumcisions, the ritual in which a
Jewish male is initiated into the religion by
surgical removal of the foreskin of his penis at
the age of eight days. Ouch!)
Man: What do you do with the foreskins?
Mohel: I put them to good use.
Man: How?
Mohel: I sew them together and sell them as
wallets.
Man: It must take an awful lot of foreskins
to make one wallet. Is it really worth the effort?
Mohel: Oh, but these aren't just ordinary
wallets. When you rub one, it turns into a
suitcase!
For a while, I feared I was presented with a
joke that actually doesn't make anyone look bad.
But then it hit me. All of it is demeaning!
There are at least four ways I
can think of that this joke puts people down.
1. In the Jewish religion, body parts are
considered sacred, to be treated with the utmost
respect. Body parts may be disposed of only by
burial, giving it the same respect accorded to a
complete deceased human body. For a mohel to use
foreskins to make wallets would be an absolute
outrage. So the joke insults the mohel's
morality and religiosity.
2. The joke subtly makes fun of Jews for being
cheap. The mohel doesn't want the foreskins to
go to waste, so he makes some extra money
turning them into luggage.
3. It disparages the male sexual organ, the
penis. Though it is often the brunt of jokes,
the penis is an extremely important and
treasured part of the male anatomy, and a wonder
of biological engineering as well. However, it
seems to have a mind of its own. With a mere
rub, it quickly inflates itself and jumps up
ready for action, frequently against the will of
its owner. My male readers certainly have little
difficulty remembering the consternation of
adolescence, when we had to hide that
embarrassing bulge in our pants. So this joke
degrades the male penis by basely portraying it
as a mere piece of machinery that retains its
ability to grow even when disconnected from the
human body.
4. Similar to riddles, it insults the
intelligence of the mohel and his questioner by
having them believe something that is
impossible. Only an idiot could think that a
foreskin retains the ability to engorge itself
after it's cut off from the body.
So you won't think that it is only me who
has come up with the crazy idea that humor is
insulting, I want to share a quotation I
recently came across. It is by that great
British writer and philosopher, George Orwell:
"The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human
being but to remind him that he is already
degraded." Many humorists and comedians
understand very well that humor is about making
people look bad. It is the mental health
professionals, who are supposed to be experts at
understanding human nature, who have the hardest
time accepting this 'ugly' aspect of our nature.
Read Previous Newsletters
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Toastmasters and Humor |
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I love Toastmasters. I wrote about it in a
newsletter a couple of years ago. Few group
activities improved my life the way my one year
of participating in Toastmasters did. And it is
practically free to attend.
The central theme of the latest issue of
Toastmaster magazine was humor. The articles
all encouraged us to use humor, and gave some
ideas how where to find material and how to
incorporate it into speeches. Humor was consistently
presented as something positive and uplifting.
Despite all the pages of advice, never are we
told
what makes something funny. Not even one article
clearly indicated that humor involves portraying
people's faults, weaknesses, and misery. The
closest the articles came to this was to
encourage us to talk about our OWN faults and
miserable experiences. Never are we told that it
can be okay to make OTHER people look bad.
One article quotes the famous speechwriter,
Peggy Noonan: "Humor is gracious and shows
respect. It shows the audience you think enough
of them to want to entertain them." Sure. Really
gracious and respectful. By making people look bad!
The same article contains the following example
of a good joke:
Ted Turner, Jack Welch and Bill Gates all die on
the same day and arrive at the Pearly Gates. God
asks each to answer one question - What do you
truly believe in? - before they can be granted
entry. Ted Turner says: "I believe in speed and
accuracy. Give people what they need quickly and
reliably, and you'll be successful." Great,
says God; come in and sit at my left hand. Jack
Welch says: "I believe in product quality and
being No. 1 or No. 2 in your marketplace. That
will make you successful and an asset to
society." Wonderful, says God; come on in. Then
Bill Gates steps up. "What do you believe in?"
asks God. Gates says: "I believe you are sitting
in my chair."
Funny? Of course. But it is highly insulting to Bill
Gates. What did he do to deserve this? Create a
service that revolutionized the world and made
him the richest man on the planet? But that is
the nature of humor. Complimenting Bill Gates
would not make us laugh.
By the way, it is acceptable to insult Bill
Gates because he is more powerful than we are.
To make fun of someone below our position is
usually in bad taste. And that would make it
"bullying", because it is not okay to pick on
someone weaker. Good, moral people only insult
stronger people.
To read earlier article about Toastmasters... »
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Movie Recommendation: Eight Mile |
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I had been intending to watch this movie for a long
time, but when a seminar participant last week
in Baltimore recommended it to me because she
said it illustrated what I teach, I decided to
see it right away.
I'm often told by mental health professionals
who work in the inner cities that my methods
couldn't possibly work with their populations -
that there is no way that these residents of the
"jungle" could allow themselves to be insulted
without getting mad. They think I don't
understand their culture and I am insulting
their population by expecting them to behave
according to my values. Personally, I can't help
feeling that the mental health professionals who
say this to me are the ones who are truly
insulting the inner city population. They are
suggesting that they are a lower kind of human
being for whom the rules of civilization cannot
apply.
8 Mile is a powerful, fascinating story roughly
based on the pre-fame experiences of the white
rap star, Eminem. This movie is not for
children, and if you do not tolerate profanity,
violence, and sex, it is not for you, either.
But it gives an inside look at the dark,
dangerous world of the inner city. Eminem (real
name: Marshall Mathers) plays a tough, fearless
young white man perfectly at home in the Black
community, and seeks fame and fortune as a rap
artist by competing in "battles." These battles
are competitions in which the contenders, rather
than hitting with fists, take turns attacking
each other verbally.
The audience is dazzled by the brilliance of the
competitors, who have 45 seconds to barrage
their opponent with a spontaneous flow of rhyming
insults. As in American Idol, the audience
determines the winner. When I do my seminars, I
engage in insults with my volunteers, but I am a
complete infant compared to these hard-hitting
rappers. And the insults aren't just imaginary
- they hit each other by attacking what they
know to be true about their opponents. Like
boxers, the contenders are not angry at their
sparring partners. Their goal is to win over the
audience with the best insult display,
by they are personally unfazed by the insults.
They have honest respect and admiration for their
opponents' skill. There are
several episodes of true physical violence
interspersed throughout the movie, but the
fights are over money, sex partners, and
retaliation for
physical abuse of family members, not insults.
The clincher of the movie is the very last
scene, which is also the reason the seminar
participant excitedly came to tell me about the
movie. Eminem faces off against the reigning
champion, and this time they are given 90
seconds rather than the normal 45. Eminem goes
first. What he does completely catches his
opponent off guard. Instead of insulting the
champ, Eminem spends most of his allotted time
insulting himself! He calls himself "white
trash" and recounts of all his mistakes, losses,
and misery, only at the end finishing up with
insults about his opponent. When it's the
champ's turn, he is utterly speechless. There
is nothing insulting left to say about Eminem,
and he forfeits the contest.
So there you have it, the idols of the inner
cities are masters at handling insults in public
without getting upset. And our experts in human
behavior tell me that inner city people can't be
taught to handle insults without getting upset.
Sure.
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