Why is humor humorous? Why do we laugh at certain things (Like a man slipping on a bananna peel) but not at other things (Like a jumbo jet suddenly crashing)?
“Whenever a man hears it
he is young, and Nature
is in her spring;
whenever he hears it, it
is a new world and a free
country, and the gates of
heaven are not shut
against him”
–Thoreau, on
the song of the wood thrush
What if a jumbo jet lands on a banana peel and crashes? (“Oh the…hee-hee…humanity!”)
No, the jet skids to a stop on the runway, all the passengers come down the chutes, and as the get up to walk away, each person slips on an individual banana peel.
“If I pinch my nose with my fingers, close my mouth tight,
and blow real hard, I can make my ears bleed. It’s
not as cool as Superman’s X-ray vision, but it’s my own
special talent.”
This is probably a great debate, but that’s never stopped me before. 
There are books dedicated to determining the answer to this question. Henri Bergson was the best known, saying we laugh when we see someone acting in a mechanical way. The laughter comes when the mechanical action is interrupted, making the person seem human. In other words, the mechanical act of walking is interrupted by the slipping on the banana peel.
Personally, though, I think Bergson missed the boat.
Gerald Mast in THE COMIC MIND does a nice job of categorizing humor, though he doesn’t try to explain it. W. C. Fields said you couldn’t explain it.
I lean toward Michael O’Donoghue’s (and Mark Twain’s) view that humor is violence. That, plus pain and suffering. We laugh because we feel superior to the butt of the joke.
Puns are a major exception. Because they aren’t built on pain or suffering, they are the highest form of humor.
Finally, Isaac Asimov suggested that jokes are all part of an alien experiment. Once we realize it’s all an experiment, the data will be useless to the aliens and there will be no more jokes.
“What we have here is failure to communicate.” – Strother Martin, anticipating the Internet.
As Mel Brooks said:
I think that sums it up quite nicely.
…but when you get blue, and you’ve lost all your dreams, there’s nothing like a campfire and a can of beans!
Ok, that was just a story by Asimov, not a real suggestion about the nature of humor! It was a pretty good story though. A character got obsessed with the fact that no one seems to know where jokes come from. No one he could talk to could really claim to have made one up. The only jokes people made up were puns (which are not funny). Humorous anecdotes are not generally made up either - they are an account of something that actually happened. So since no one is making the jokes up, that leaves only one explanation…
I think it was Mark Twain who said something about analyzing humor being comparable to dissecting a frog: you may learn something but the frog dies in the process.
Chuck says: << Puns are a major exception. Because they aren’t built on pain or suffering, they are the highest form of humor. >>
I dunno 'bout that, I’ve heard some puns that caused me enormous pain and suffering.
Sir Charles Chaplin said that the seat of all humor is the arse.
Yeah, Ike, but he said that in a SILENT movie.
Isn’t it the case that almost all humour has to do with reversal of expectations? The situation leads you to expect one result and you find another.
One bird says to another: Ugh! How can you eat that worm? It looks just like spaghetti!
I think funny is the unexpected but obvious.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
To get to the other side. <-- well obviously, but you didn’t expect that answer the first time you heard it. That’s why jokes aren’t funny after you tell them.
Also…I think physical pain is funny…when it’s not you. That is still a mystery to me though.
I’d go with the superiority theory, which is entirely relative of course. Regarding the road rage story just the other day in San Jose, CA where a women gets off, hits a guy, and he gets out of the car, grabs her yappy poodle and chucks it into traffic where it promptly gets run over. I’m sorry, but that made me laugh…probably because I don’t like yappy dogs or their owners and thus feel superior and somehow “justified” that this happened.
My wife gave me “that look”, however, which made me realize just how subjective humor can be
knock, knock
who’s there?
A poor wretched homeless person tring to stay alive.
A poor wretched homeless person trying to stay alive who?
Please, I’m so hungry? Can you spare some food?
Why wasn’t that funny? It was something bad happening to someone else.
Well, actually, it’s not funny because nothing actually is happening to him. He’s just there. (Yes, there are cases in which humor can be found in repose, but we’re not talking about hat right now.)
Take that same bum, set him to some Benny Hill music, and have him sneaking around the back of a diner – getting hit on the head when he looks in a dumpster, chased away by a cook brandishing a frying pan, and so on – and you’ll have the makings of comedy.
…but when you get blue, and you’ve lost all your dreams, there’s nothing like a campfire and a can of beans!
The best explanation of humor that I’ve ever heard is that it’s a reaction to a situation which would normally be threatening/stressful/etc but for whatever reason isn’t. If you’ve ever listened to a baby laughing then you could probably tell how close it was to a cry-laughing is, in this case-nothing but a started cry, but cut off quickly. (Think about why people laugh when they’re tickled, it’s similar to an attack, but no physical damage is in store, and the person doing it is generally not someone who is out to harm you.)
On the issue of more abstract humor(like the banana peel) my best guess is that it’s simply us seeing something that would be quite disturbing/painful, but knowing that it’s not real, that the person wasn’t badly hurt etc etc and hence finding it funny. (If you saw someone in real life walk over a banana peel, fall down hard, and start bleeding from a badly fractured skull, well, it wouldn’t be too funny now would it?)(if the answer is “yes it would be funny” then you scare me)
In jokes it’s generally the quick changing of perspective that the punchline affords that provides the humor. What was a serious, or even possibly stressful, situation before hand becomes a ludicrous and amusing one afterwards, hence the laugh.
Still later, Gerald did a terrible thing to Elsie with a saucepan.
I laugh when I hear the unexpected
If at first you don’t succeed you’re about average.
(1) Man suddenly slips off a jumbo jet and crashes into a banana peel.
(2) Jumo jet suddenly crashes into a man slipping on a banana peel.
(3) Jumbo jet slips on a banana peel — and a man suddenly crashes
(4) Man suddenly peels jumbo banana and a jet slips and crashes.
(5) Slip peeled off by man but his jet lags and his banana suddenly crashes.
Who says a plane crash isn’t funny? It all depends on presntation: A jet crashing that puts on a show is funny: uneventful crashes are “tragic”. And what about:
(6) A jumbo jet peels a man and suddenly crashes.
(7) A crashing jumbo jet slips on a peeling man. (Sorry bout that one anyway…)
(8) A jumbo jet slips on this post, and crashes into the man who wrote it. And the peasants rejoice, “Yay”.
Ittybitty boy plays at his ittybitty schooldesk during his homeroom teacher’s attendance call. Crashing his ittybitty toy train into his ittybitty palm, he chuckles and chortles and laughs aloud. Teacher storms over. “What the fuss you think you doin’!?” the homeroom teacher interrogatively belts. I’m watching the banana-eating fussin homeroom teacher’s plane crash, the boy offers madder-of-fakly.
Homerooom teacher slaps homeboy with a severe backhand crack across the side o’his head. She sends the boy to the principal’s office with a note describing the boy’s undesired conduct and suggests that he not be returned until he can “demonstrate improved conduct.” After school, the same teacher stops in the principal’s office to pick up whatever, and notices the boy still there sitting in the “Thou Shalt Not” bench near the principal’s office door. His homeroom teacher notices he is playing with his ittybitty toy plane—repeatedly sending it to flights and bringing it to smooth landings, now. “So, you’re still imagining you have your homeroom teacher up in that toy airplane,” the homeroom teacher yelts. “Nuh uh,” says the boy. "Whuddoyoo mean, ‘Nuh uh,’ snaps the homeroom teacher, “I see you flying that toy plane!” “Yeah,” answers the boy, “But if the homwroom teacher was in it, I’d crash it.” (I just made this joke up. It’s somewhat of a variant to a joke I recently heard about a boy playing in the sand…)