Humor is Rooted in Tragedy

It's been my experience as someone who draws a variety of cartoon work that inevitably a piece will offend someone when you did not intentionally mean for it to offend. And when someone tries to explain why they're offended they often have a hard time of it because they've never truly contemplated what makes people laugh.

My basic philosophy when I work as a cartoonist is that humor is rooted in tragedy; in the things that ordinarily make us sad, horrify us or in general are unpleasant. This is because humor is a coping mechanism for tragedy. That is its primary function, though I believe it can have some other lesser functions too. Funnies are based on "the unfunny".

The first objection I can already imagine hearing from any number of readers is what about "clean humor"? It's based on what is pleasant not unpleasant, so you're wrong. I've drawn clean humor, also called family humor, and if I go back and examine it I can still find tragedy. Maybe it's not overwhelming such as major bodily harm or death, maybe it's something small like a depressing realization or a bump on the head. I don't mean to imply that tragedy has to be extreme. Humor can deal in tragic elements; smaller bits and pieces. Tragedy is the best word to use to describe the overall underlying theme of most humor. We're not always talking earthquakes and tornados, sometimes we're talking about the tragedy of a daughter despising her mother.

The Peanuts, considered to be classic clean humor and definitely classic family humor because of Charles Schulz's occasional gospel messages, is very tragic in how it defines its characters. The main focus of the strip is Charlie Brown where we derive humor from his lack of accomplishment and his constant failures. In real life this sort of person would grow up needing therapy, be involved in abusive relationships, probably not have a very good career, and ultimately might turn to drugs or suicide. Worst of all, due to his self esteem issues he would end up marrying Lucy.

Lucy Van Pelt is tragic in that she displays some of the most horrid personality flaws that we despise: loud ego, insulting of others, treachery (pulling that football out from under Charlie Brown), and greed. Ahh, but you might suggest Snoopy then, he's not tragic. That's debatable. As a dog we can forgive him for using Charlie Brown and sometimes siding with the other kids when they laugh at his mistakes (see The Charlie Brown Christmas Special) but what about his pretend adventures in violence with The Red Baron? He is after all imagining how he could kill someone in an aircraft.

Linus would be the best bet for a pleasant character. His tragic flaw is simply that he is insecure without his blanket and therefore might need to be in therapy with Charlie Brown. He also is kind of preachy but we can leave that alone.

The point being with that quick analysis is to show that The Peanuts is very amusing (the earlier work is better than the later) due to tragic characters which really are representations of adults because not too many kids can quote scripture like Linus or monetarily exploit someone like Charlie Brown for "a nickel a listen" like Lucy. The comic strip was the medium for Charles Schulz to explore what he either experienced or witnessed as dark human flaws.

So by looking at a well known family feature we don't even need to talk about the obvious humorous cartoons and comics that make no apologies for not always being family friendly or having clean humor. I can name a few: The Simpsons (oddly enough, now accepted as family entertainment), South Park, Family Guy, Adult Swim, and various Anime such as Ghost Stories (the English version is often in bad taste, just a personal recommendation).

I could go into another round of examples using sitcoms like The Brady Bunch but you should be able to see that right away: It starts with parental death, uses jealousy and arguing, shows sexual frustration, highlights a broken nose, and ends with an unwanted Cousin Oliver. In contrast the unapologetic Married With Children exploits all of those themes too (okay, maybe not Cousin Oliver unless he was one of Kelly Bundy's dates).

I know trying to explain this philosophy of humor = tragedy is going to bring up a lot of objections and I'm not going to claim that there aren't exceptions to the rule. We might find a nice, polite joke to tell a kid that makes them smile or a pun that is really silly and because of it causes everyone to laugh; but I'm speaking about the majority of humorous material. When people object to humor that is "not nice" they don't get it. All humor is primarily "not nice".

Once I had a frustrated reader get upset with me about a supposedly violent cartoon and I replied to him with my philosophy. He shot back, "Well, then, is anything off limits? Are you going to make jokes about rape and pedophilia?"

I then replied and wanted to know if he had watched Late Night With David Letterman or The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in the last week. "How many people laughed at jokes about pedophilia on mainstream TV do you think?" I asked. He understood what I was getting at immediately. This is the time when The Catholic Priest Scandal broke out. Jokes were in almost every routine concerning pedophilia and they were being laughed at by large mainstream American audiences. It was funny because it was so ridiculously tragic.

As for rape, how many people have laughed at the possibility of "man-rape"? Those jokes are almost cliche in sitcoms where a main character ends up in jail with a big thug sitting next to him. As for female rape that is humor where most comedians fear to tread...But I've caught it on occasion from stand-up female comics to movies trying to be outrageous. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. My point being not to say that rape is inherently funny but that the tragedy of rape can and will result in humor. You can't assume that a subject is off limits just because it is so horrible and uncomfortable to talk about. It will be the viewpoint and how the joke about rape is told that will decide if it is funny. Obviously a pro-rape joke by a criminal offender is not going to make us laugh--we would be appalled. But a female comedian who has survived rape and is using humor as her coping mechanism? We can laugh and sympathize with her even as she is letting us experience one of her darkest moments.

I think we're getting too serious here but I know that the ultimate objection to the question of humor having no limits is usually rape or murder. Anyone with half a brain should know we make a ton of jokes about murder but rape is a harder one to address. Let me just say that there are no limits to what can be humorous because we cannot control tragedy; but there are issues with timing and talent in how the humor is presented.

Violence as humor is the easiest to show as far as examples. Most of us raised before the nineties were weaned on it in the form of Looney Tunes--and if you were lucky you also watched a lot of Three Stooges shorts. Bugs Bunny and the gang and those Stooges have produced some of the most violent entertainment available for kids on TV and we don't give it a second thought. How many parents sit their kids down to watch Daffy get his head blown off or Moe poke Curly's eyes out?

Even worse than these examples let's consider one of the most popular shows everyone is familiar with: America's Funniest Home Videos. Witness the pain, the sarcastic comment and then hear the audience laughter. How many testicles suffered so you could be amused--and again, this is a family hour show.

If all of these examples haven't convinced you that "Humor Is Rooted In Tragedy" then I believe you are hanging onto the prejudice that there is a defining line between what is appropriate to laugh at and what isn't. If you find yourself in this situation you will also find yourself slowly out of date because what is appropriate is often the standards of one generational mindset-influenced by religion, political philosophy or social activism--trying to apply itself to current and future generations not blinded by older biases. Each generation will repeat this mistake thinking that the new generation's taste in humor is inappropriate.

The final objection is agreement. Agreement that humor is indeed based on tragic circumstances. This is because the person agreeing believes we are in a more violent, uncivilized society than the past. The more shocking humor they are exposed to the more they think the world is at an end. Nothing further could be from the truth. It seems according to statistics as entertainment becomes more violent and sex more on display that real violence lessens and unwanted pregnancies decrease. This is a discussion for an entirely different article but I didn't want it to be an "out" for those who look down on bad taste in humor as defining the moral decay of society in peril. We are a better society than the supposedly clean-humor-lovin' generations of the past.

So feel free to throw off the restraints placed upon you by others who deem what is appropriate to laugh at and what is not. It doesn't mean you have to be a joke-telling-jerk though or an insensitive person. Because being funny is still an artform; when making jokes about tragic circumstances it has to be done in such a way that the joke doesn't fail. Often the joke has to be sympathetic to the victim in order to make us laugh too.

Humor is very tricky and not easily defined but while it possibly has a required structure in order to be funny it does not have limits and it is most certainly rooted in tragedy.