1. explaining humor kills it
2. comedy = tragedy + time
3. comedy is culturally specific
I think they are malarkey.
Let's take the first truism: explaining humor kills it. The problem with this assertion is that, as with anything involving comedy, context is so crucial that it is difficult to say that anything isn't funny in all situations. A classic comedian trick is to explain a joke whenever they believe that the audience didn't fully get it and that they were owed a bigger laugh. One might object: well this is just the exception that proves the rule. You aren't explaining something that is funny in this case; you are explaining something that isn't funny, which makes it funny. But that's not true, because the joke could have gotten a bit of a laugh in the first instance. The point of explaining the humor is not just to do the opposite of what a comedian is normally supposed to do. That's certainly part of the fun, but doesn't totally explain it all. The real purpose of this exercise is to actually point out the fun of the joke. The same holds true for footnotes that explain jokes in works of literature: they often make it possible to laugh at a joke that wouldn't have gotten a laugh otherwise. In all of these cases, the joke is being explained in advance, and if anything it increases rather than decreases the humor.
As with truism one, the problem with truism two is that it underestimates the way that comedy allows us to take a cold, analytic attitude toward the world. Truism one assumes that comedy cannot take place in an environment where critical thought occurs. However, I think that comedy and critical distance have a similarity. When someone cites truism two, that comedy is tragedy plus time, I always call to mind another truism about comedy, one that I think is more accurate: tragedy is when I cut my finger, comedy is when you fall down a well and die. The point of this saying is, of course, that there is some selfishness in comedy. "It's funny cause I don't know him," to quote Homer Simpson laughing at a video of people getting injured. This is the essential truth behind superiority theory: if we feel above something, it is easier to laugh at it.
I think, however, the more important insight here is really one about tragedy: tragedy is the original genre of "first world problems." Everything seems tragic when you have no perspective. The smallest little things take on world-historical importance. The attitude of comedy is a different one. Of course, this is not to knock Hamlet as a play about a selfish little brat. But isn't Hamlet kind of a selfish little brat? His tragedy is that he gets too caught up in his own personal drama. Tragedy depicts someone in the grips of some personal crisis and shows how these tiny things can destroy a person. We feel the classic tragic emotions, terror and pity, not laughter, when we see someone going through this ordeal.
At the same time, there is a proximity between tragedy and comedy because both depict "tragic" things. The difference is one of attitude. The tragic person can never take tragic pleasure in his or her situation. It seems overwhelming and suffocating. It is tragedy that actually requires distance from the tragic situation, not comedy. Tragedy depicts someone being overwhelmed and consumed by misfortune. You could even argue that tragedy is the response to a situation we adopt when laughter is not possible but we still require some relief. If the person suffering cannot demonstrate resolve, then we cannot laugh, but we can mirror the pain. The point of this is to provide solidarity and perhaps, the beginning of a new attitude. It is not unlike how a caring parent will mirror the misfortune of a child: if the kid spills something and is embarrassed, then a parent will spill something too in order to create a sense of shared adversity. It is at this point that tears turn to laughter. This is why many funerals feature as much laughter as they do crying. Tragedy, I would argue, is a precursor to comedy, one that seeks to restore a sense of safety and solidarity to an unsafe and lonely situation.
In the case of tragedy proper in a work of art, we do not feel the sense of total relief because we cannot witness the other person "snapping out of it" and finding relief in our shared solidarity. Tragedy, then, is a later, more artificial, more inorganic reaction to the world that is predicated on the distance of viewership and the situation of the theater. There is nothing wrong with this, of course, but it is necessary to remember that the notion of a "pure" sadness is really a somewhat unnatural condition. It isolates and develops one moment of the cycle of morning and sadness. Comedy, by contrast, looks at the total situation. It depicts resilience and rebellion in the face of tragic situations. With comedy, the most horrifying indignities and misfortunes can be funny. This is the essential truth behind comedy and its refusal to give in to the laws of reality. It says: my dad died this morning, my grandma died this afternoon, but on the plus side I just found twenty dollars! who wants pizza?!
The role of tragedy is not to cancel this laughter but to restore a note of seriousness into its levity. It is easy for comedy to turn into an unwillingness to face up to problems and to avoid facing unpleasant feelings. Tragedy prevents comedy from becoming a defense. It forces the comic attitude to confront and feel deep pain before it returns to its carefree attitude. It returns a note of vulnerability and reflectiveness to the comic universe, but I would contend that it is still very much part of the larger comic universe, rather than comedy being a respite from a larger and essentially tragic universe.
Tragedy and comedy have a close relationship, but no one would claim that tragedy is culturally specific. For whatever reason, however, they claim that comedy is culturally specific. Why is this? The same subjects are the fodder for both comedy and tragedy: sex and death. The difference is not the material, but the attitude toward the material. This is the problem with the third truism: it begins with a very limited notion of comedy, one that excludes most of its typical subjects. It is not surprising, then, that it would find the result that it was looking for. Comedy is a form of resilience and resistance, and there is no better example of this than its refusal to comply with the rules we establish for it.
And just like that, I blew up all the conventional wisdom ...
