The first frame, titled What We Say to Dogs, features a terse man jabbing his finger at his dog while yelling, “Okay Ginger! I’ve had it! You stay out of the garbage! Understand, Ginger? Stay out of the garbage, or else!” The second frame, titled What Dogs Hear, shows the same man in the exact same pose, but only revealing the words as Ginger hears them, “blah blah blah Ginger blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Ginger blah blah blah blah.”īut perhaps best of all, humor results in laughter, and laughter is an end in itself. The particular strip to which I am referring is split in two and portrays the inane assumptions we make when talking to our pets. THWONK!!! A massive axe flies and sticks into the wall over his head.Ī dour librarian stands menacingly at the end of his bed, “1872 BLOODY weeks overdue.”Īnd then there is Gary Larson’s strip The Far Side. “Oh, we have a wonderful anxiety of yours tonight, Binkley! Hoo boy, it’s really the pits!! Look what I found in the back of the closet- Green Eggs and Ham-An old library book you checked out in 1983!! Now wait while I fetch THE ENFORCERESS!”īinkley looks at us and asks, “The Enforceress?” In their exchange, we recall both the terror and ridiculousness of our own childhood fears. Mike Binkley is an adolescent boy haunted nightly by the creatures that emerge from his “closet of anxieties.” In one strip, the regular host of his anxieties (a dinosaur-esque Giant Purple Snorklewacker) bounces up and down on his bed teasing him about the horrors to come that evening. Or consider Berke Breathed’s comic strip Bloom County. It begins in self-satisfied cleverness and ends in a self-conscious, Michael Scott-ish awkwardness:Īfter that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation. Take this greeting exchange between the innocent aristocrat dandy Bertie Wooster and his friend Motty. Wodehouse bender, and if there is anyone who gets human nature like Shakespeare, Austen, and Dickens, it is P.G. It helps us to cope, it smoothes our social intercourse, and it explores human nature.
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So funny, in fact, that we will lionize it in memory, talk about it in years to come, and, yep, laugh all over again. Yes, we may blow milk out of our nose or pee our pants, become momentarily breathless or painfully doubled-over, but *whew!* now that was funny. A chuckle or chortle, a snort or a snigger, a groan or a titter, a hoot or a howl. Some of us “get it” while others furrow their brow. Humor can be corny or bawdy, innocent or edgy, a knock-knock joke or a drawn-out tale with a glorious punch line. We want to watch things that make us laugh and read things that make us laugh and spend time with people who make us laugh. Laughter is such a gigantic part of our lives that we actively seek it out. I know there are zoologists or anthropologists out there that may challenge me with how the dolphin cackles or the golden retriever guffaws, but they will be hard-pressed to show me how the same animals tour among their mates and offer stand-up routines, make romantic comedies, or pen memoirs riddled with ridiculous anecdotes and hilarious one-liners. He is a kid, and it is just the kind of question a child of the modern world might ask. (By the way, for those interested in the comics with the best mix of wit and philosophy, Calvin & Hobbes, Peanuts, Bloom County, and The Far Sideare difficult to beat, but I digress.)Įxploring the origins of humor is not my current reason for writing, but let’s just say that the mesmerizing magic and infinite wonder of what makes us laugh (and why) is a bit more complicated than the assumption that “Evolution gave it to us.” But that is why Calvin explores it in the way that he does. Calvin winces, “I can’t tell if that’s funny or really scary.” And then, they come to a dead halt where Hobbes (Calvin’s stuffed tiger-come-to-life) muses, “I suppose if we couldn’t laugh at things that don’t make sense, we couldn’t react to a lot of life.” Calvin stands dumbstruck as Hobbes walks on. Over river and dale the two tread while exploring the oddity of laughing at nonsense and appreciating absurdity. “Isn’t it strange,” Calvin wonders, “that evolution would give us a sense of humor?” He continues to struggle with just what evolutionary advantage such an odd but enjoyable trait could confer. Calvin begins by presuming humor is evolutionary.
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Home › Articles › Contributors › The Deeper Meaning of LaughterĮarlier today, I came across an old Calvin & Hobbes comic strip in which the undaunted duo unpack the origins of humor.