Why do we laugh? As a bonding mechanism laughter is a language of sound and gesture that connects us, and so like any relational aspect of our expression it has a double side of love and self. We laugh for good reasons and we laugh to make ourselves feel better at other people’s expense. Since comedy is a relational endeavour it is also a moral endeavour, and since the most profound comedy is full of metaphor and composed of trope, it has much in common, and indeed is at it’s best synonymous with poetry.
We should not presume success in culture qualifies comedy as “good”. Comedy that merely laughs at other people has the capacity for great popularity. This is “exclusive bonding”, the kind of connectivity that defines you not in positive aspect but in opposition to other groups of people, an impulse rooted in tribalism. Comedians such as Jimmy Carr have made a career out of the kind of comedy consisting of types of “ha ha you’re disabled!” jokes designed to make cheap laughs from mockery of those ‘beneath’ us.
This is not to say that comedy should not be controversial or push the fringes of free speech in society. Comedians are commentators of society, and like poets they constitute the highest points of consciousness in a culture. Because comedy laughs at incongruity and hypocrisy it is always opposed to arbitrary forms of power. The more imbalanced our society is, the more comedy is…
