Why is that Funny?
Sermon by Stephen D. Edington, March 26, 1995
Reading: - from Uh-Oh, by Robert Fulghum
Last Friday morning I started a fire in my woodstove using the comics section out of the Sunday newspaper. I the shower I drew all over myself with some Silly Soap left behind by my granddaughter. For breakfast, I ate a bowl of Cheerios topped with jelly beans. And drank a glass of Goofy Grape--a fizzy drink for kids. For background sound, on the stereo, a tape of one of Woody Allen's comic monologues. A live performance, with a roomful of people yukking their heads off. Tossing my briefcase in the closet, I headed for the door without any baggage. Meant to walk to my office downtown. At a snail's pace. As I went out the door, I noticed my granddaughter's red-and-white beanie with a propeller on top. It didn't fit, but it didn't fall off, either. It looked like one of the coolest yarmulkes you've ever seen. I put it on my head to see if I could walk fast enough to make the propeller work. I could.
I'd had a bad week. A draining downward spiral of unfinished business matched by the rising smoke of grumpiness, which set off my uh-ho alarm. And after going to bed on Thursday night in a junkyard-dog state of mind, it seemed wise to make tomorrow a better day. Experience tells me I can choose to do that. That I'd better do that or I'll be sorry.
Under these same conditions in times past I would take a day off--make up an excuse--but I can't call in sick anymore. Because now I'm self-employed--I work for me, and I'd know I was lying. For the same reason, telling the boss to stuff it is masochistic. If my work is my life then I can't quit my job or fire me because wherever I go, there I am again--the employee who won't ever go away.
No radical moves made sense--just some course adjustments are required. Beginning with breakfast and going to work. Anything I can do to lighten up. The winning move was the walk in the hat. Its hard to stay depressed when you are walking along wearing a too-small beanie with a propeller on top. Not a lot of people have seen a middle-aged man dressed in suit and tie, wearing a beanie like mine. People in cars honked, waved, shouted, "Go gettum, Grandpa." And once, at a stop sign, four teenagers sang a full chorus of the Mickey Mouse song to me and roared off laughing.
I figure the loss on my dignity, which was good for me, was balanced by the gain in amusement I gave other people. They got to work n good humor. They had something to talk about over coffee. I came to think of my wearing the hat and walking to work as a public service.
SERMON
I've never been much of a science fiction aficionado but I can get hooked on an occasional episode of Star Trek. My wife, Michele, on the other hand, can see the first 30 seconds of any program from the original Star Trek series and tell you exactly what is going to happen, scene by scene, for the rest of the episode. And she still watches it. But then, I can't talk. I've been known to read some of the same books over and over even when I know them practically line for line. When I do watch Star Trek, though, it is usually one of the programs from the sequel series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, that I actually prefer. And the reason for that is because of this one character in particular who completely fascinates me, a guy called Lieutenant Commander Data.
I say "guy", but Commander Data is not really a human being; he's an android. An android, at least within the context of this show, is an incredibly sophisticated robot who appears to be human in every respect but has been programmed with a superhuman amount of information. He is a computer who looks, acts, and largely behaves like a human being. Whenever the Enterprize finds itself in some sort of crises--as it inevitably does every week, otherwise there would be no show--it is Commander Data upon whom the crew relies to quickly give them the information and options they need to manage the crises. Commander Data commands the data, in other words. Data also always knows just what to ask the starship's computer--which is far more sophisticated then even he is--in order to gain information that he may not directly possess.
The character of Data is portrayed by actor Brent Spinney and he comes off as a very pleasant, affable, and even engaging android. While apparently human in most respects--except for his clown-like white face--one of the human characteristics that Data does not possess is a capacity for humor. He doesn't get jokes. He cannot understand why a particular happening is funny, or why the rest of the crew is laughing over some incident or other. Wise-cracks and double-entendres go flying right by him. He can only "think"--if in fact that is what he is actually doing--on a very literal level. He sees the other crew members laughing about something, and he recognizes that this laughter of theirs is something they value and even seem to need. So, good android that he is and always wanting to increase his store of information, he will ask for an explanation of this phenomenon called laughter and why it is occurring. The crew members will dutifully try to explain it to him; and their attempts to explain why something is funny is even funnier than whatever it is they are attempting to explain. In the character of Commander Data the writers of this particular Star Trek series have a near-perfect comic relief device, a robotic genius who cannot catch a joke that practically any normal minded human being could.
But, to stay with for just a bit longer, there is also an element of sadness, if not pathos, about the character of Mr. Data. He is valued, respected, and seemingly even loved by the other crew members, but he can never quite be a part of them. He cannot laugh with them. He can program, or command, himself to affect laughter--and he does at times--but he cannot actually laugh from the depths of his own person because he really not a person. The sadness one sees in Commander Data come precisely at those near-hilarious moments when the humor of a situation escapes him, because it is also then that he gets the message that as valued a member of the crew as he is, there is also a barrier between him and the living beings--be they human, Klingon, or whatever. Portraying Data in clown face is a nice touch. The clown is the one who makes people laugh while also being the sad outsider.
Its intriguing that the means by which the writers of this program chose to remind the viewers that Data is not really human was to deny him the capacity for laughter and humor; and while Data himself cannot feel sadness he can evoke feeling of sadness on our part because of what we see lacking in him. Maybe this was the way by which the show's creator, the late Gene Rodenberry, put forth the idea that the ability to laugh is one of the most defining of human characteristics.
The fear I had when I wrote my Newsletter piece for this Sunday was borne out as I began preparing for today: There is no better way to kill off humor than to try to analyze it or to present a sober minded discourse about it. One of the books I recently picked up on the subject, called A Psychology of Humor proved to be, for me anyway, practically unreadable. It was also one of the unfunniest books I've ever tried to read. I was glad I'd only borrowed it from the library and not bought it. I discovered--to no great surprize, really--that to try to break the subject of humor out into component parts is also to have it fall apart on you and run through your fingers like so much sand. At the same time I didn't just want to stand up here today and simply tell a bunch of jokes and funny stories, as much as I enjoy that. (I will throw in a few) I found myself aiming for some kind of middle ground this morning between a killing analysis of humor, and what would no doubt be a feeble attempt at stand-up comedy.
I'm also aware that the subject of humor itself is really not much of a topic for conversation or discourse. Sharing a good joke or story, having some witty conversation, enjoying the irony or the hilarity of a particular situation or circumstance--these are things we just do because they enhance our lives and make the experience of being human all the more enjoyable, or sometimes, more bearable. Its a little like being caught up in a good movie or a good book. We don't generally stop and think, "Why am I caught by this book or movie?"; we just take the experience for what it is. We like being entertained, and there is certainly nothing wrong with that. Later we might reflect upon the "why" of it all.
Recognizing that, there are still a couple an angles I want to try out in looking at why we laugh, and at what makes something funny. They each have to do with razor-thin edges. One is the razor-thin edge between laughter and pain; the other is the edge between a sense of the comic and a sense of the tragic, if not absurd, dimension to life. These are edges I'm quite sure we have all stood on at one time or another in our lives--an edge where some of you may be standing right now.
As for the edge between laughter and pain, we heard a song by Charlie Chaplin a little earlier. Chaplin, who was born in 1889, was raised in one of the poorest sections of London at that time. When he was five years old his father died of alcoholism, and a few years later his mother went insane and had to be institutionalized. He struggled along as best be could and somehow got into doing pantomimes as a child in London's music halls. He toured the United States with a mime troupe when he was 21 and decided to stay and make a go of it in the movies--then in their very infancy. Chaplin achieved fame by developing the character of the "little tramp" who copes with life's cruelties as best he can by also finding some humor in them. As a London street urchin to whom life had been terribly cruel he knew the part well. I doubt that the laughter Chaplin generated, and took part in himself, with his "little tramp" character eliminated the pain that was behind it. But it built some much needed space around the pain--both for himself and for the people who identified with his character.
I got the idea of humor and laughter building a space around pain from a book I actually did like called The Healing Power of Humor by a fellow named Allen Klein. I was struck by these words of his, "When we can allow some humor to be part of our pain, we are not as directly involved in our suffering ... It is not that our pain has diminished; its just that the space around it has gotten bigger." That's good. Our human capacity for humor and laughter does not by itself change our life circumstances; does not alter the facts--so to speak--of our existence. But it can create a more manageable and life-giving space within which we deal with those facts and circumstances.
I do have a story to go with this point that concerns one of my stranger moments in my life in the ministry. About four or five years ago, here in Nashua, I was asked to conduct a funeral service for a family. The man who had died, a father and a husband, had quite suddenly and unexpectedly passed away from a heart attack. He'd been getting on in years but was still in good health. As is often the case in a situation like this where the family has no church membership or any particularly strong religious ties they ask the funeral director to find the local LOM for them. That's "Least Offensive Minister." The funeral director then goes and calls the local Unitarian Universalist clergyperson. I don't say that to make light of anyone's grief or loss, but it does happen that way.
I go to meet with the family, and it was a very difficult and painful time for them. As we got into talking about the kind of service they would like and how they wanted the man who had died to be remembered someone asked if I would say something about how much he loved the outdoors and liked to go hiking and camping in the mountains and by lakes and woods. Of course I would, and I make a note of it. Then someone said, "But he sure didn't like the ocean and sand and beaches"; and for the first time I saw some faint smiles come to some faces. Someone else then said, "I think you should mention that, too", and the others--some still slightly smiling--nodded in agreement. So, I made a note of that as well.
The funeral was the next day, and I conducted it using the suggestions and wishes the family had given me. In the course of a brief eulogy I said that the deceased was remembered for his love of the outdoors and for his love of hiking and camping in the mountains. Then I added, "But I understand he was not very fond of oceans, sand, and beaches." From what seemed like out of nowhere this great burst of laughter came forth. It actually caused me to reflexively move back from the podium a step or two. It seemed like everybody in the room knew about the man's aversion for the ocean and the beach in a way that was terribly funny. Everybody knew except me, that is. I may have delivered the punch line, but I was the only one in the room who was not in on the joke. The family filled me in later. I've forgotten the details, but they had to do with some very unpleasant--and yet still comic--experiences he'd had at the beach a few times that finally caused him to swear off ever going again. Those very few words on my part apparently brought back a lot of humorous memories around the subject.
Did that incident take away the pain of the family's loss? No, it did not. Did it lessen the grief of the family? Maybe just a little, although it was clear to me that there was still quite a bit of grieving to do. I rather think that what that short burst of mirth did was, to use Mr. Klein's words again, create some bigger space around the pain so there would be some room for healing along with the grief.
While I am on this point about the narrow edge between humor and pain I should also note how humor can inflict pain as well as facilitate healing. Humor can be employed to malign someone's race, ancestry, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and the like. It can be used as a way of generating resentment and anger towards that which is feared, hated, or misunderstood. But, and this is where it really gets tricky, with just a slight twist humor that deals with race, ethnicity, religion, and so forth can also be used as a way of confronting prejudice and hatred itself. Lenny Bruce, who during the late 50s and early 60s worked along that edge as well as any comic in recent memory, had a routine where he would haul out just about every racial, religious, ethnic, or sexual epithet one could think of--not for the purpose of maligning anyone or engendering hatred, but rather as a way of getting his audiences to confront their own fears, prejudices, and hatreds towards those of whom he was speaking. When he was in his prime, which is to say before the combination of the legal harassment to which he was subjected and his own drug abuse overtook him, Lenny Bruce had a way of creating space with his humor where his listeners could take a more honest look at themselves, and their fears and their prejudices. Personally I am very wary of this kind of humor because it is so easily misused and misunderstood. I'm nowhere near as daring as Mr. Bruce was, and if I going to err in using humor I prefer to err on the side of sensitivity. To get into a discussion now on the topic of politically correct language, and whether it does or does not inhibit free speech and honest dialogue on sensitive issues would take me too far afield this morning. But I believe humor can be a very powerful and positive tool in making us all more accepting and appreciative of human diversity if it is truly used towards that end.
Here's another story that may explain what I'm struggling to say here. Not too long after Michele and I had been married I was attending some large family social event with her relatives. Everybody there was first or second generation Italian-Americans. The only exceptions were a few "out-laws" like me who had married into this family. Somewhere in the course of the festivities people started jokingly referring to the wine we were drinking as "guinea red." Now "guinea", as you probably know, is a term for Italian that in most form of discourse is only slightly less offensive than "wop" or "dago." But in that particular setting the term kept getting funnier and funnier to the point that even we out-laws decided it was OK to laugh along with everyone else. In a way that is hard to describe now I came away from that setting with a better understanding and appreciation for the heritage I'd seen displayed. I saw that within that setting, the laughter over the term "guinea red" gave cohesion and solidarity, if not a sense of honor, to a group of people who were proud of their ethnic identity; and I understood that pride better than I had before by being there and laughing with them. The operative phrase here, of course, is laughing with them. If I were to walk into an Italian restaurant and say to the waiter, "Bring me a bottle of your guinea red," I'd probably get thrown out, and would deserve just that. The edge, then, between humor that enhances our common humanity, and humor that demeans or destroys that humanity can be a very fine one indeed--but is one that needs to be respected.
The other "humor edge" I want to speak to today is the one between a sense of the comic and the tragic or absurd dimensions to life. I mentioned Charlie Chaplin a little earlier. In the book to which I also referred, Mr. Klein's Healing Power of Humor, he points out how so many of the people we associate with comedy had to deal with tragic absurdities in their own lives: "Jackie Gleason's father deserted him ... W.C. Fields ran away from home because his father was going to kill him ... Art Buchwald's mother died when he was very young, and Carol Burnett's parents were both alcoholics who constantly fought with each other." All of which leads me to conclude that I'd never make much of a comic because I had too normal of a childhood.
When it comes to someone who has an eye and a heart for the tragic and who can also make me laugh harder than anyone else, its the novelist, essayist, and avowed Unitarian Universalist Kurt Vonnegut. I did a whole sermon on him a couple of years ago, so this will only be a quick revisit. Vonnegut once remarked, "Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion .... I myself prefer to laugh since there is less cleaning up to do afterward." Like a lot of things that Vonnegut says that line is an example of his use of humor to put some distance between himself and a world that he at times finds too painful to look, or talk about, head on. The thing with Vonnegut is that, for all of the irreverence in his writing and speaking styles, he is an intense moralist. He really wants us all to live in a world that is free of pain and suffering; and he has seen more than his share of both. Vonnegut's mother died insane while he was growing up in Indiana and his son Mark had a schizophrenic breakdown (from which he has now fully recovered and is a pediatrician in Boston). He was a POW during the Second World War in Dresden when it was bombed--presumably by mistake--by the Allies, and he had to help clean up the debris and the dead in the aftermath. This gave him the setting for his best known novel, Slaughterhouse Five.
But rather than just rail straight out at the absurdity of the cruelty and suffering and death that he seems unable to turn his eyes away from, Vonnegut responds with a comic absurdity of his own. In his latest collection of essays called Fates Worse Than Death, he has one in which he outlines a grand and elaborate proposal for 12-Step Programs for people who are addicted to preparing for war and making munitions. Its written with the kind of sardonic wit and style than Mr. Vonnegut has down to a science, as it were. At first you laugh at the absurdity of the whole idea of munition makers and procurers going to 12-Step meetings and confessing their addiction to weapons of mass destruction to the rest of the group; until you realize where the real absurdity is which is the weaponry itself.
Vonnegut has had enough dealings with mental illness in his own family that it, too, is a subject of much of his writing and lecturing. Here he walks just enough of a line between humor and madness so as to humanize the madness itself and sensitize his readers and listeners to what it is for someone's internal world to take a turn towards absurdity. His brand of humor is not for everyone, as I've come to learn. For some folk he's too much, and I can understand why. But I see in Vonnegut someone who needs his sense of the comic in order to keep from completely capitulating to the tragedy for which he has such a sensitive, if not overly-sensitive, eye. His humor provides some space around some of our deepest human tragedies, thereby allowing us to see them.
Finally, I think its our capacity for laughter and celebration that save us from our more ponderous and self-important selves. The movie Zorba the Greek has been around now for some thirty-five years, and its closing scene is still one of my favorites of all the films I've seen. Many of you are familiar with it I'm sure, but let me see if I can quickly set it up. There are two main characters is the film, a youngish British man played by Alan Bates and who is usually just referred to as "Boss". The person calling him "Boss" is Zorba, this dionysian, life-loving, and considerably older Greek man played by Anthony Quinn. Boss has come into some land on a Grecian island and he has this big business scheme and plan to construct a means of bringing logs down from the mountain he owns so they can then be taken away by ship to be sold for lumber. Since he knows nothing about the construction of such a mechanism he hires Zorba to help out with, if not oversee, the project. The movie is about the relationship between Boss and Zorba and it has all sorts of sub-plots and side trips, with this log hauling project always hovering in the background. Zorba is a good worker when he works, but he's also very big on wine, women, and song and dance; in fact he loves to dance, often laughing hard while he does. He drives Boss crazy because the Boss just wants to get the job done and the project completed. But in some subtle and barely noticeable ways, the ways of Zorba start to rub off on Boss. Well, they finally finish the project. They have these towers and trestles and ropes and cables running all up and down this mountain that are supposed to propel logs down to the beach; and its time to test it out. Boss stands on the beach to watch as Zorba runs a test log down the line. But on the first--or maybe its the second or third--log something goes wrong and the whole project, tower by tower, post by post, collapses like a row of dominos. Zorba is quickly on the beach with Boss, and the two just stand there looking at the folly of all their labor. And Zorba starts to laugh; and Boss sort of joins in. And then the Boss says to Zorba, "Teach me to dance." That's how it ends--Zorba and Boss (Quinn and Bates)--dancing together on this beach with all their work scattered all over the side of the hill.
So why is this one of my favorite movie scenes? I'm not exactly a dance-and-laugh-on-the-beach-while-your-entire-life-investment-goes-down-the-drain kind of guy. Really, I'm not. Few, if any, of you are either. But its good to be reminded now and then, even if its just in a movie, that life is more than our labors; and what we, of necessity, have take so seriously on one level, is at the same time the stuff of laughter on some other level of living and being. The sadness in a character like Commander Data is that he can't move from one level to another; he would have to be human in order to do that.
Then there are human beings like Bob Fulghum--a Unitarian Universalist minister turned national court jester--who have an uncanny knack for living on both levels at the same time. What better display of that than walking to one's office, adorned in suit and tie, with a too-small beanie and propeller on one's head. Its not quite dancing on the beach with Anthony Quinn, but its close enough. And why is that funny--in addition to his looking ridiculous I mean? Why did it evoke the kind of responses that it did, leading Fulghum to conclude that walking to work adorned as he was, was a public service? I think its because for at least a time it lifted him and those who saw him outside of themselves. It gave him and them some unexpected, but always welcomed, space--perhaps not in this instance around personal pain--but just around the demands of life to which we seem to be constantly responding. That's what good humor does. It gives us a little extra space--a little extra space for living, for loving, maybe even for dancing.
Copyright © 1994 by the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Nashua NH. All rights reserved.
