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Can we laugh at Everything?

Thiago Ribeiro Leite.

During the Christian era laughter and the comic were especially
marked as kinds of behaviour; and as behaviour they were then submitted to
moral judgment which was mostly negative. Georges Minois tells us of the
times in Western history when laughter was condemned, regulated, etc.
Additionally, in philosophy several authors branded laughter as a vice and as
an unworthy impulse. We observe throughout this that the comic gesture
contains a problematic moral sense and this still remains today. But under
what terms does the comic become a moral problem? It appears that to be
classified negatively the comic must represent some opposition to the
establishment, to norms; in other words, laughter exercises, in an incisive
manner, some transgressive force. In different contexts, or even different
cultures, we can notice in those who wants to stop the laugh, a caution in
response to this transgressive force.
But, to be seen in these terms the comic must be understood as
behaviour, and the comedian is assessed as a joke maker; at this view, the
production of comicality as we see in theatre is understood as a moral
diminish gesture, or even as a representation of the lowly, and not as an
aesthetic rationale as seen in others Arts. I intend to demonstrate from a
Brazilian case study how the comic, which is in fact aesthetic, is being
measured by moral judgments as embedded a generalizing legal subjectivity.
In 2011, a TV comic show presented the sketch Casa dos Autistas
(The Autistics House) on Brazilian television. The program was a reality show
with autistics, in which characters stereotyped as mentally deficient behave
weirdly. There were no amorous intrigues, no fights, no co nversation, only
senseless shouts and gestures. Brazilian societys reaction was immediate.
Several lawsuits were filled against the program and the authors of the show
were accused of discrimination. Finally, the legal system condemned them to
pay a huge fine and the protagonists were obliged to make a public apology
for their tasteless joke despite the fact that no autistic person had
personally complained. The point is this that, today in Brazil and in other so called democratic countries, the comic can no longer be understood without

political implications; every laugh is morally problematic, direct or indirectly


criminal.
Therefore, we can restate the question posed by the French comedian,
Pierre Desproges, in 1982: can we laugh about anything? To which he
promptly replied: Yes, we can. But we cannot laugh with everyone. This
question captures the problem address here. First because it invites us to
think about comic functioning and its effects that extend beyond laughing. If
we can laugh about anything but not with everyone, this poses the problem of
laughter in terms of moral criticism, laughters limits and the regulatory regime
regarding its use.
In relation to the first question I will draw on Bergsons reflections on
the meaning of the comic to consider the functioning and effects of laughter.
In relation to the second question (what are the limits of laughter?) we turn to
Kant, who described how the juridico-moral experience is carried out in
modernity. But, lets begin with this last question.
As I mentioned, the comic shares a close relationship with the norm. In
this sense, norm has an intimate enemy: as an exception. And since norm
maintains this transgressing power we can state, as is said in philosophy, that
the norm never works as it is conceived; in other words, there is an
elementary inefficacy in precepts and it is from this inefficacy that the comic
emerges. The comic exists as a main force of that which it subverts.
This happens because, as Kant has demonstrated, the precept, or
Law, is understood as pure form, separate from all that is empyrean, from all
that is real difference. As Kant says, form is the only possible principle for
morality and for the Law; it is the purely rational principle of generalization.
The only morally good action would be the one that can be generalized
without contradiction, whose dispersion and recurrence would not cause
damaging consequences to order or society. So, as a pure form, the Law
does not previously establish what is good and evil, right and wrong. This is
the sense of all kinds of logic that state: well, if everyone were to do this, then
it would be bad... or it would be good. We can perceive the degree to which
we are Kantian, at least in Brazil, since we always think about actions by
generalizing their consequences in order to judge whether they are good or
bad. But, this is how the exception, which escapes the Law, subverts the

form: it is always a specific case that claims to be unique, and cannot be


taken in general. Deleuze states this in the following way: there is only oneway to subvert the Law, through comic reasoning. Not only because we laugh
when the Law fails, but also because only the comic subverts the Law it
through itself; only laughter can show us the absurdity of Law. As the Law has
an undetermined extension, an area of vagueness in which we are all guilty
without knowing what it is we are guilty of, the form of Law allows its own
transgression. In other words, being a simple way to generalize, all things are
then submitted to this test consequently everything is potentially a crime or
error. Finally, it is as even before a crime is committed, there is already a
culprit thus the only thing lacking is an individual to fulfil the role; here
stands the clown of existence to take the blame for what has not happened:
as in Kafkas The Process, in which the character K. was detained without
having done anything wrong. So, comicality can only be exercised by
subverting the form, always manifesting the singular, the specific case that
can never be considered in general terms. Being aesthetic, the comic requires
total contraction of the Case: the elements of, such a situation, within this
context, as a result of this or that object, etc.
Why can we laugh about everything? First of all, because the comic
subsists as a force under the formality of the Law, there is nothing that a
comedian could not see as funny by applying a set of compositions,
subverting the Law. Second, because of the undetermined condition of the
Law; the fact that it covers everything precisely because it is generic, also
implies any potential comicality, and, therefore, the comic will always perform
a rupture with the form of Law, favouring itself; increasing its own power with
this gesture. But we know that what is funny is not funny a second time
around, at least not in the same way. It is always necessary to change
something, at least the context. So the same joke cannot be generalized for
all situations (only if this senseless repetition is the joke). Now, is this not
always the argument of those who condemn the comic? That if one person
can say this or that, then many others will also do so...? That if we were to
laugh about everything there would no longer be order or respect? Or even
that the comic harms the integrity of the individual, and the supreme human
dignity? This is why one might feel that the comic does not recognize the

formal limits of the Law. It is in this sense that the condemnation of the
producers of The Austistics House suggests something more. This particular
idea of Law has consequences in the subjective formation of individuals; since
irresoluteness is the central feature of legal experience, the constitution of
individuals might be viewed as generic as it is grounded upon an embracing
uncertainty (like mans universal rights, equal rights, are derived from this
generic form). Thus, given that the comic is the subversive side of the Law,
that subversion of itself, one realizes that because of this internalization,
moral judgement will measure the comic, from inside, as an indifferent force;
and it is within this judgment that the comic will offend the so called integrity of
the individual and the overall form of the Law. If, according to Kant, the
generic form of moral principles is a formality by which the individual should
model his behaviour as rational, the comic will manifest itself as an internal
enemy force, since it places the specific case as unique, avoiding the
generalization that would give birth to a general form.
Lets now consider our first question in order to better understand why
generalizing moral judgments occur: what exactly does the comic do to the
person who laughs or causes laughter? First, laughter itself is an effect of
what we call the comical. Bergson explains that the comic is produced by a
play of the terms Mechanical and Something living, a rather aesthetic
terminology. Live movement is free and unimpeded while mechanical
movement is automatic and rigid: by this denomination the author recognizes
the comic in theatre, in caricatures, etc. Bergson concludes that the social
function of laughter is meant as an act to punish mechanical gestures, and by
this he ends up by giving more weight to the comic as moral behaviour
(punishment) than as an aesthetic work (creation). However, the author
himself indicates that perhaps the comic is precisely the point in which art and
life meet, and perhaps for this reason it is the starting point for other
understandings.
Lets take this formula something Mechanical vs. Something living
and think on the condition of sensibility, the aesthetical perception of
Bergsons

theoretical movement,

without considering

the

matter of

punishment. Although some may treat the comic as merely moral by, applying
the judgment in a thoughtless manner and generalizing its effects, would be

interesting to think about the possibility of an aesthecs of the comic, and


therefore of a comical sensibility. This would remove the perception of the
comic as a moral issue and release the comical thought as an aesthetic
event, which creates perspecti ves by condensing the case within an
aesthetical gesture.
We may believe that both within the person who laughs and within the
one who makes you laugh there exists some kind of comical apprehension,
some sort of comic sensibility of the formula: the relation between mechanical
and living. It seems that this formula expresses a kind of pure model of
transgression, between any relation, even between ideas. To laugh about a
small accident or to create a pun implies sensibility and perception of comic
ways of being. It is through feeling that the comic is meaning. As Muecke right
said: there is nothing that a controversially developed ironist, with a wellendowed mind, cannot consider ironical if he so wishes; there is always a
contrasting context somewhere (page 152). This is what we wish to call the
Comical Dimension of experience the comical side of things that we can
create.
Now lets take a specific example of comical procedure. It is usual in
several jokes that we accentuate a trait mechanically, exaggerating this trait,
such as in a caricature. Erich Auerbach calls this the spotlight technique,
which consists in excessively highlighting a small part of a big and complex
context, leaving everything else that could explain or order that part in the
dark (page 361). One can do this in daily life, or in a comedy. In any case, to
carry out this operation it is first necessary to consider that everything that the
spotlight will distort can be cut and manipulated we transgress the unity. We
consider the object as decomposable and we perform a cut, we accentuate a
trait until the set itself loses its unity. This sensibility recognizes the objects as
being free: free from their representations, from their parts, from their normal
relationships there is a transgression of these convencional predicates.
Words dont designate things anymore and can be thus linked in different
ways. The logic loses its causal need and a fact can unleash an absurdity.
Finally, it is within this cutting universe, through a connecting thought, that the
comical gesture lives, as a perception (a mechanical gesture of manipulating
the sensitive). It lives through its short and direct manner which interrupting

the formal discursive chains of its safe course: we can say connect-i-cut. As
Dufrenne says, happy is the one who thinks with his hands. This is why we
never fail to laugh when we see the participants of reality shows represented
as stupid and boring people.
Now we can perceive the real danger that the comic offers poses to
moral judgment. By recognizing objects as free, without being satisfied with
parts and unity, the comic can dismiss everything. Essentially a transgressor,
the comic appears to the generalizing morality as the essential escaping
force. A pure force that only wills itself, laughter only wants to laugh. However,
we admit that at some point we can feel some unpleasantness in relation to
the comic and to release ourselves of this it is necessary to make it
aesthetic. Not to contemplate upon it, because a joke is not properly beautiful,
but to produce short circuits in the formal order of the Law. Thus, we must
open up a space to an alternative way of receiving the comic, by finding the
possibilities that different laughter might imply beyond morality. It is only by
recognizing the force of the comic, and not the pleasure or its entertainment,
that we can better understand it as an aesthetic social phenomenon and give
it a new use. Only then can we think about cases with no general principle or
means of evaluation. This sensibility finally leads us to seek our own
comicality, to violate our own individual laws equally established by its form.
The comic offers us a synthesis of this amoral and unmeasured reasoning; by
comicality we release form, disconnect the apparent determination by
transpassing good and evil, thus affirming the power of thought itself.
Finally, we can say that moral judgment would never accept being
ridiculous. This would be to admit the fragility of its universalist pretention. But
we know that there is no base for these generalities and that the legal field
tends to be transformed once again. We can be ridiculous, since we are
infinitely different to each other and it is necessary to see in this a true ethical
principle instead of believing that we are all equal before an abstract Law.
This is what the comic wants to teach us, to live within our differences,
enhancing our thought; teaching us to live with our parts without unitary
sense, in a world with no single direction.

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