Throughout history, there has been one kind of person who could speak truth to power. There was one kind of person who could point at the elephant in the room and make everyone see it. There was one type of person who could tell the crowd that the king had no clothes.
Well, say it and survive.
That would be the Jester.
Today, we call them comedians, actors, goofballs, class clowns, and the like. They are the ones who make us laugh. You see, there are three human reactions to the unknown. In fact, it is this third reaction that makes us human. The first two you’ve heard of: fight or flight. Fight comes about when any animal believes that the unknown can be bested. Can it be eaten, dominated, killed, humped, or run off? Fight it. If the answer is no, run away. We, as humans, have developed a third response. We laugh.
Now, there are scientists who have examined this response, and say that it is born out of our ability to form a mental construct of the world around us. When something challenges that construct, for a moment, our brains try and figure out the connection to the rest of our world. It is this shifting of mental gears that brings about humor, a release of tension, and the saying that, “Humor is the best medicine.”
That may very well be true. With our complex minds, circular thought is quite a dangerous reality. Many people fall victim to this self destructive trap. Humor is the back door. It is the way out. It is the interruption in our mental process that helps us survive.
I find myself drawn to this idea. You see, there are three things that bring about change. Those three things, oddly enough, are fight, flight, or laughter.
Examples of fight would be the French and Russian revolutions, and the beginning of our own here in the States. Treat the kinsmen that control you the same way you would treat those of another tribe and kill them. Blow them up. Shoot them. Set them on fire. Fight them.
Flight would be the response of any losing side in a war where the losers survived. Run away, make it harder for the aggressors to chase you than to stay where they are.
Finally, there is laughter. Purposefully distorting the reality of the audience to, perhaps, realize that the view of reality they have is distorted. It brings about social change. Take, for example, the Seven Dirty Words. George Carlin listed these words in 1972 as part of a joke, pointing out that the American culture seemed unable, at the time, to handle such language.
Now, you might think that just joking about these words has little or no effect on things. You’d be completely wrong.
It led to a clear definition of what was indecent for broadcast on American airwaves. And, since then, some of these seven words have been used on Television. Shit was uttered for the first time by Mandy Patinkin on Chicago Hope. Fuck appeared first in 1978’s Scared Straight!. Piss has been pretty common place, usually in the term “pissed off”. Tits was used in 1990’s Trials of Rosie O’Neill.
Things changed, over time. It is laughter which brought it about. It is laughing about the unknown which makes it a bit less unknown, and a bit more acceptable.
Remember the controversy over depicting Muhammad with a bomb for a hat? Is it really the image of Muhammad that upsets some Muslims? Or is it the ridicule?
Laughing at something can also diminish its fear value. It is not uncommon for people to laugh when faced with deadly danger. In fact, laughter can be connected with courage. Imagining a crowd in their underpants is a known method for diminishing stage fright. Laugher itself may be born out of a fear response, attached, instead, to rectifying one’s world view with the real world.
To sum up, it is the Jesters of the world which can help us through fear, help us change our world view, and show us the absurdity of things when they appear nothing but serious. It is the most dangerous of us that can cause laughter, because it allows the rest of us to be more than we thought we could be.
Think back on the sitcoms you have seen. Did they not deal with hard issues? Did they not cause us to reevaluate our world? When Harry Stone dealt with a younger judge, didn’t that help us deal with the next generation coming in and maybe being a bit better, a bit faster, a bit stronger that we were at the same age? When Alex Keaton took amphetamines, didn’t we think about drug use? During all of the relationship drama on Friends, didn’t we all see some of ourselves in the situations?
Saturday Night Live has been a major force in elections, a circus mirror to presidents, and has said what we were all thinking about the famous but could not say.
Let laughter be my shield, wit be my weapon, and humor be my armor. I have the ability to be more influential than Beck, Coltier, Limbaugh, or anyone else.
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