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The first point to which attention should be called is that the comic does not exist outside the pale of what is strictly HUMAN. A landscape may be beautiful, charming and sublime, or insignificant and ugly; it will never be laughable.
This made me laugh.
Several have defined man as “an animal which laughs.”
NOTE
Rats emit long, 50-kHz ultrasonic calls that are induced during rough and tumble play, and when tickled by humans.
It’d be fun to imagine alien laughter and think how they’d perform it with different anatomy and cultures.
I forget the exact text and where I read it but there was something about laughter and sex as two actions where the human becomes robotic, automatic and uncontrolled. (In some sex)
In a society composed of pure intelligences there would probably be no more tears, though perhaps there would still be laughter;
Let us then follow this logic of the imagination in the special case in hand. A man in disguise is comic. A man we regard as disguised is also comic. So, by analogy, any disguise is seen to become comic, not only that of a man, but that of society also, and even the disguise of nature. Disguises
Let us then return, for the last time, to our central image: something mechanical encrusted on something living. Here, the living being under discussion was a human being, a person. A mechanical arrangement, on the other hand, is a thing. What, therefore, incited laughter was the momentary transformation of a person into a thing, if one considers the image from this standpoint. Let us then pass from the exact idea of a machine to the vaguer one of a thing in general. We shall have a fresh series of laughable images which will be obtained by taking a blurred impression, so to speak, of the outlines of the former and will bring us to this new law: WE LAUGH EVERY TIME A PERSON GIVES US THE IMPRESSION OF BEING A THING.
Repetition - you see a figure once, then him repeatedly multiple times during the day. It becomes laughable.
Inversion - picture certain characters in a situation, if you reverse the situation and invert the roles you have a comic scene.
Interference - a situation where two altogether series of events is capable of being interpreted by two different meanings at the same time.
What is the object of art? Could reality come into direct contact with sense and consciousness, could we enter into immediate communion with things and with ourselves, probably art would be useless, or rather we should all be artists, for then our soul would continually vibrate in perfect accord with nature. Our eyes, aided by memory, would carve out in space and fix in time the most inimitable of pictures. Hewn in the living marble of the human form, fragments of statues, beautiful as the relics of antique statuary, would strike the passing glance. Deep in our souls we should hear the strains of our inner life’s unbroken melody,—a music that is ofttimes gay, but more frequently plaintive and always original. All this is around and within us, and yet no whit of it do we distinctly perceive. Between nature and ourselves, nay, between ourselves and our own consciousness a veil is interposed: a veil that is dense and opaque for the common herd,—thin, almost transparent, for the artist and the poet.
Umberto Eco - The Frames of comic ‘freedom’
The tragic effect is realized when
- there is a violation of rule (call it a code, social frame, law, a set of social premises) which is committed by someone we can sympathize with, since he is a character of noble constitution, not so bad as to be repulsive, not so good as to escape identification,
- we recognize that the rule has been broken since we feel it to be either still valid or at least sufficiently justified in context
- we agree it was bad
- we suffer with the hero
- we feel peaceful when we realize the sinner has been rightly punished. The comic effect is realized when
- there is violation of the rule
- the violation is committed by someone we do not sympathize with
- we feel superior to this misbehavior
- our pleasure is a mixed on because we not only enjoy the breaking of the rule but the disgrace of the animal-like figure
- we are neither concerned with the defense of the rule or compelled toward compassion.
The carnival is connected with comedy. By assuming a mask, everyone can behave like the animal-like characters of comedy. We can commit any sin while remaining innocent. In carnival even kings can act like the populace.
Very seldom does the business of entertainment display real humor. More frequently it sells carnival. When a real piece of humor appears, entertainment becomes avantgarde: a supreme philosophical game. We smile because we feel sad for having discovered for only a moment, the truth. But at this moment we have become to wise to believe it. We feel quiet and peaceful, a little angry with a shade of bitterness in our mind. Humor is a cold carnival.