ARISTOTLE AND THE AESTHETICS OF LAUGH
(Rodrigo Peñaloza, Feb. 2015)
If we express our feelings as a reaction to human behavior, we realize that the spectrum runs from painful to laughable, with indifference somewhere between these two extrema. Let us focus on the laughable. In particular, on the aesthetical laugh, that is, that kind of laugh that can be recreated by Art. According to Aristotle, the laughable or risibilis is a disharmony of mild proportions and with no painful consequences [vide, e.g., Ariano SUASSUNA, Iniciação à Estética, 1972, Ed. José Olympo, cap. 14]. Disharmony means a contrast between what actually is and what should supposedly be.
Aristotle’s definition of the laughable is given in his Poetica: “Comedy is, as we said, imitation of the paltry men, not, however, according to everything ugly, but it is the laughable portion of the imitation of the shameful. The laughable is some mistake, a painless shame and not destructive at all, just like, for example, the laughable face is something ugly and distorting without pain.” (Ἡ δὲ κωμωιδία ἐστὶν, ὥσπερ εἴπομεν, μίμησις φαυλοτέρων μέν, οὐ μέντοι κατὰ πᾶσαν κακίαν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ αἰσχροῦ ἐστι τὸ γελοῖον μόριον. Τὸ γὰρ γελοῖόν ἐστιν ἁμάρτημά τι καὶ αἶσχος ἀνώδυνον καὶ οὐ φθαρτικόν, οἷον εὐθὺς τὸ γελοῖον πρόσωπον αἰσχρόν τι καὶ διεστραμμένον ἄνευ ὀδύνης.) — Poetica (Περὶ ποιητικῆς), 5, 1449a, 32–36.
After Aristotle, every aesthetic theory of the risibilis is a kind of contrast theory. Let us see the main ones.
To Hobbes, the risibilis has two elements. One is the surprise, its unpredictability. The other is the feeling of superiority that the mocker has towards the one being mocked. Stendhal defines it symmetrically. Indeed, to Stendhal, we laugh whenever an apparent inferiority of ours becomes suddenly a superiority with respect to someone else. To Kant, the risibilis comes from the contrast between what we tensely expect and what really happens. It is a frustrated expectation. To Schopenhauer, risibilis is the logical disproportion between the actual thing and the idea we have of the thing. To Freud, the risibilis comes from the contrast between a presumed value and its actual degradation. If you, based on your stereotyped and overdated preconceptions about him, thought that Freud, regarding the issue of laughing, would attach to the aesthetic laugh any sexual component or any repressed sexual complex that reveals itself after a moment of distraction of after an equivocal term, then you were right. It was only after Freud realized that his sexual explanation of laughing was too Freudian, that Freud came up with the idea of contrast between presumed value and its actual degradation. To Bergson, we laugh whenever we wait for something mobile, flexible, alive, and gracious but instead we get something mechanized, automatized. The aspect of mechanization is a very interesting feature of Bergson’s aesthetic theory of the risibilis, but one which I will not go into here, for it deserves a whole separate treatment.
It is obvious that all these post-Aristotelian theories are contrast theories. They all share nevertheless a common defect, so to speak. They are unable to prevent a painful deception from fitting into their spectrum of contrast. Take, for instance, Stendhal’s concept. Suppose I see a beautiful lady, dressed with a standard cowgirl outfit, walking slowly on a normand greenfield, the stage of so many battles in history and uncountable love stories. She walks alien to everybody around, including myself and the other animals. She is gorgeous, hot, rich, elegant, intelligent, so superior. She is blond! She stops abruptely and turns her face to me, eyes wide open. I laugh initially, then I smile with embarrassment. She keeps staring at me and whispers “please…” with such a sweet voice and extending her hand to me. Not knowing how to react, unexpectedly raised to the position of a prince coming to her rescue on a white horse, I behave normally and ask a stupid question, “Did you step on the shit, honey?”, to which, scared as hell, she replies, “No, it is a landmine.” This is painful.
Aristotle, differently from the thinkers after him, was very clear from the start, since he was specific about the degree of contrast that characterizes the risibilis: a contrast of mild proportions. Final score: Aristotle 1 x 0 rest of the world.