The Origins of Humour

Honest, unforced laughter from a child is one of the most beautiful sounds in the world to my ears.

Daigoro likes to laugh. As mentioned frequently before, he's generally a happy kid. He'll laugh if we mug funny faces for him, if we blow raspberries ("zerberts") on his belly, if we do funny dances or somersaults for him. The thing that sets him off, though - the type of humour that sends him into gales of laughter - is pratfalls. He loves it when things fall down, slip or run headlong into other things. If you show him one of those dumb "Funniest Home Video" clips of cats and dogs having various "incidents", he'll giggle and laugh until his eyes tear up and he struggles to catch his breath.

He wandered into the computer room while I was watching Robot Chicken, a great little 10 minute filler show from [adult swim]. One episode has a segment with nothing but toy Cylon Centurions (from the old Battlestar Galactica sci-fi series) slipping, falling, crashing into each other (or unlucky Daggetts) and otherwise doing one long pratfall sequence. Daigoro thought it was hilarious and sat there laughing his head off. I just had to play it for him again. (If you're familiar with Robot Chicken: no, I didn't let him watch much more than that sequence. It does get pretty graphic at times)

I've read that the human grin (and laughter) is an outgrowth of the primate grimace; a facial expression primarily intended to communicate fear and discomfort. Showing teeth in most other mammals is a threat, which has probably been the downfall of many an unwary human who smiled broadly at a angry dog. I guess the difference with primates is that, living in troops and small bands, "smiling" communicates this fear and allows the rest of the band to understand what you're going through. I'm not too up on anthropology, but I have to assume that over time, this shared experience of fear turned into a communal release valve - a way of saying "I'm frightened of this (or this potentially happening to me) but we're still alive and laughing about it."

I don't know the exact quote - "all humour grows out of pain" or something to that effect. A corollary seems to be "comedy equals tragedy plus time".

Where does Daigoro learn to laugh at things? Marli and I don't typically watch pratfall based humour shows (funny though it can be) and we certainly don't laugh at Daigoro when he falls down. Yet he finds people (or animals) falling or tripping or getting bonked on the head the very pinnacle of humour at the moment. Is it because toddlers can relate to falling down or getting hurt - that the subconscious fear of falling and the relief of seeing it happen to someone else somehow translates into comedic gold?

Physical comedy is looking at the physical pain that one could be experiencing and someone internalizing it - turning it into something to be mocked, not feared. All our more elabourate comedy forms (satire, farce, parody) seems to stem from understanding the underlying pain or ridiculousness of a situation and simply laughing at it. Social pain - embarassment, awkwardness, humiliation - is still pain, especially to social animals like humans.

Not that Daigoro thinks about this sort of thing. He just laughs and laughs and laughs… because it's funny. That's all that's important, really.