Theory of Humor Series, part 13, The Sociologists Had it Right

This series of blog posts began as an analysis of the comic quality of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole. After about ten posts, I had only just laid out the theory of humor I am using to frame the analysis. In early 2018, I was invited to write a book chapter on Toole and Confederacy, so now I will only use this series of blog posts to more fully articulate that theory of humor.

I had been pacing myself at one posting per month, because I was running low on ideas about Confederacy of Dunces, but now that I am looking at all of humor, the entries have been piling up.

In my intense research leading up to my book chapter, I have stumbled across the research programme of the sociological analysis of humor. I believe that I need to modify my theory of humor (and the more I investigate, it has turned into my own theory of humor).

I found this sociological programme through this article: Weisfeld, Glenn. (1993). "The adaptive value of humor and laughter." Ethology and sociobiology 14 (2): 141-169. I read it because of the evolutionary angle. Weisfeld reflexively dismissed group selection citing the old canard of Williams, 1966. So I disagree with his evolutionary assessment. But then Weisfeld helpfully pointed to Fine's paper from 1983 and Martineau's paper from 1972. See citations below.

Fine and Martineau have opened up for me a world of studying the social functions of humor. The research programme has stretched back to the 1940s. Their work has caused me to reevaluate my theory of humor, broadening the "disparagement aspect" into a general "employment of humor for social ends."

The problem I see with the sociological programme is that the various researchers have mixed the interpersonal and small group social functions with the social functions operating at the scale of a mass industrial society. The reason that is important is because humor and laughter as instincts evolved in small groups. By focusing largely on ethnic groups and class conflict in large societies, the programme obscures the fact that the social functions of humor are part of the core of humor. That allows researchers, such as Hurley, Dennett, and Adams (see Part 14 of this series), to argue that the evolutionary origin of humor comes from the solitary functioning of the isolated brain.

I would write more, but I am just embarking on the exploration of this body of work.

Martineau, W. H. A model of the social functions of humor. In J. H. Goldstein & P. E. McGhee (Eds.), The psychology of humor. New York: Academic Press, 1972.

Fine. G.A. Sociological approaches to the study of humor. In Handbook of Humor Research, P.E. McGhee and J.H. Goldstein (Ed). New York: Springer-Verlag. 1983, Vol. 1, pp. 159-181.

NOTE from June 30th: In looking back over my notes, I see that a book I have been heavily influenced by, Michael Mulkay's On Humor (Basil Blackwell, 1988), bills itself a sociological study of humor. So my discovery of the sociological school is a bit backwards. I started in the sociological school. My bad.

Theory of Humor Series, part 12, Hey Dummy! Christie Davies Theories and Targets of Stereotype Humor about Stupidity

This series of blog posts began as an analysis of the comic quality of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole. After about ten posts, I only just laid out the theory of humor I am using to frame the analysis. I have now been invited to write a book chapter on Toole and Confederacy, so now I will only use this series of blog posts to more fully articulate that theory of humor.

For a quick recap, humor has IMHO two fundamental aspects: incongruity, a contrast that causes the brain to try to resolve a puzzle of interpretation, and disparagement, a non-violent way to adjust the dynamics of a group status hierarchy, an adjustment which can be either gentle or aggressive. I will try to refrain from calling it MY theory of humor, as the theory is largely pieced together from various strands of the long tradition of trying to define humor.

In the last blog post, I affirmed the fact that, in a mass culture, stereotype humor is common and is used to assert the prestige hierarchy among different groups and classes within the society. In the book Jokes and Targets by Christie Davies (Indiana, 2011), he puts forth a theory regarding jokes about stupidity. Stupidity jokes are, according to Davies, far and away the most common jokes in the folklore collections available. Davies even has a chart, showing for many nations which other nationality or regional group tends to be the target of their stupidity jokes. (He could have also had a chart of the states in the United States and of the neighboring state targeted within each of them.)

Davies rejects the idea that stupidity jokes are strictly about superiority and power within the society, because some occupational groups which are targeted for stupidity jokes are in fact high status. His theory is that the targets of stupidity humor are more likely to be seen as working more closely than others with physical objects and the soil rather that mental activities. So a theoretical physicist will have stupidity jokes about engineers. Neurosurgeons will joke about orthopedic surgeons, who use hammers and saws on bones. Davies theory seems to disprove my theory.

Naturally, I don't see this as disproof. Within the small social group, higher status individuals are more likely to be concerned with the political dynamics of the group, to maintain their status. The leader has to use a broad intelligence to assess not only the immediate situation but its long-term implications for the leadership and the group. So an individual who is an expert at handling the material basis for the group's survival is necessary for the group, but that individual might not be awarded the highest status by other group members. One joke Davies tells is of the engineer who dies in the electric chair because he points out the faulty wiring before he sits down. The engineer is focused on the immediate physical problem but does not see the long-term implications of having an electric chair that works.

So I see these stupidity jokes about occupations as still being about adjusting status within a social group. Another group I have noticed that my own society finds worthy of being a gentle target are dentists. Two of the comic strips in my daily newspaper have a family whose patriarch is a dentist. Again, we need dentists, but they make their living by sticking their hands in other people's mouths, which has a natural element of physical comedy. They are given wealth and a secure place in the economic hierarchy, but they don't have to compete politically within the broader society to earn that place. So there is a tension between their secure status and their lack of stress over fighting to maintain that status. Joking about them brings them down a peg and reasserts the dominance of those who have status due to their political skills and social intelligence. Within the household of the dentist, there are no financial worries, so it is a safe environment where one can afford playfulness and joking. But the head of the household cannot be described as heroic, and that leader can be portrayed as goofy without losing the status inherent in his or her profession.

On a side note, I am not a student of Davies, only having dipped into one of his books, but I have read elsewhere that he rejects the claim that jokes themselves can be tools in social action. He has claimed that a joke is a thermometer, taking the temperature of the masses, rather than a thermostat, which can manipulate the crowd. I completely reject that position. I see humor as fundamentally about status dynamics within social groups. The play of children is often in a make-believe world, disconnected from the adult status hierarchy, but with its own play hierarchy. The absurd humor of youth can be an escape from the unitary worldview of the dominant forces within the adult group. Ridicule and satire can challenge the status position of members of the adult group. Those in power can use humor to delegitimize others who are trying to claim some dignity within the group. (One reason so much humor about African Americans is now so toxic is because it was used to promote a culture in which that segment of the population was belittled to the point of being dehumanized.)

So no, humor can be part of the toolkit of social action, for good or ill.

Theory of Humor Series, part 11, Sociology of Status

This series of blog posts began as an analysis of the comic quality of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole. After eight posts, I had only just laid out the theory of humor I am using to frame the analysis. I have now been invited to write a book chapter on Toole and Confederacy, so now I will only use this series of blog posts to more fully articulate that theory of humor.

For a quick recap, humor has IMHO two fundamental aspects: incongruity, a contrast that causes the brain to try to resolve a puzzle of interpretation, and disparagement, a non-violent way to adjust the dynamics of a group status hierarchy, an adjustment which can be either gentle or aggressive. I will try to refrain from calling it MY theory of humor, as the theory is largely pieced together from various strands of the long tradition of trying to define humor.

In part 4, I described a theory of humor in which humor is set within the context of a small human group, where a status hierarchy exists among the members of the group, who all know each other. Humor can act as a method of playfully challenging or reasserting the status of members without threatening to tear the group apart or commit violence against group members. I made the point that social psychology shows us that status orders arise naturally within human groups and are unavoidable.

In part 5, I emphasized that, while all groups have status orderings and humor can act as a gentle way to adjust the group status structure, sometimes the ordering within a group is oppressive to some members. Humor in those situations can be used as a mechanism of oppression. In part 8, I talked about stereotype humor as a pathology of humor within large groups, an easy way to get a laugh without a detailed knowledge of the target of the humor.

I was recently reading a sociological study. That book demonstrated for me that some sociologists (perhaps all) have viewed status hierarchies strictly through the lens of large groups in a mass society, rather than through the lens of personal interactions in small groups. This particular sociologist defined "social classes" as groups within the society united by economic interests, whereas "prestige groups" were defined by a common social status afforded members of those groups.

From the perspective of prestige groups within large societies, I would have to say that stereotype humor is the norm, not the exception. Stereotype humor is a mechanism that one prestige group can use to adjust the status level of another group, specifically downward. When leaders of a group want to challenge the position of their group within the prestige hierarchy, they reject the stereotype humor as unacceptable. Such jokes become politically incorrect.

I would like to argue, nonetheless, that such use of humor between prestige groups does not have to be oppressive. Just as gentle teasing can be inclusive in small groups (see part 6 of the series), not everyone within a target group of stereotype humor might take offense. What comes to mind is the example of the Prairie Home Companion. Garrison Keillor would joke about the Bachelor Norwegian Farmer. Knowing many Norwegian-Americans, I am unaware that they in general took offense, and my sense was that many Minnesotans of Norwegian ancestry were flattered by the attention. The teasing indicated that Norwegian Americans were part of the in-group, though perhaps not at the peak of the status hierarchy. It also acted as a mechanism for putting forth a Midwestern cultural identity and celebrating it.

One could even argue that Keillor was offering a rural American cultural identity which was an alternative to Southern cultural identity. Many rural Americans have been attracted to the humor of Jeff Foxworthy and others and identify themselves as Southern, even when they do not live in an area that was part of the former Confederacy. Keillor's Norwegians offer a rural identity that is decidedly not Southern. My own family is from Appalachia, and could choose to identify with a hillbilly cultural identity, as celebrated in such shows as Hee Haw. Sometimes Appalachian identity is lumped into Southern identity, but in the American Civil War, Appalachia generally fought for the North against the Confederacy (Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, West Virginia, which was the only region to secede from the Confederacy, and Western North Carolina and Maryland, etc.). I found it interesting that my own father passionately embraced Keillor's Midwestern vision rather than a cultural identity with the South, though he did enjoy watching Hee Haw just to annoy my mother (perhaps challenging her pretension that we were not culturally part of Appalachia).

In putting forth a theory of humor as a status adjustment mechanism, I focused on small group status dynamics. I believe that the small group is the origin of the status instinct within humans, and the dynamics of the small group long predates humans, being part of the behavioral repertoire of all social animals. Hominids have lived in small groups millions of years before we humans formed mass societies. So when trying to define humor as a characteristically human behavior, small group dynamics and personal interaction should be used as the base context within which to understand it as a social behavior.

Nevertheless, in hindsight, I should have acknowledged that stereotype humor fits neatly into the sociology of status within mass societies.

Theory of Humor Series, part 10, Changed Priorities Ahead, No Joke

Someone contacted me and invited me to write a chapter for a prospective book of criticism on John Kennedy Toole. I have accepted the invitation. Good thing I dragged this series out without ever getting to the meat of the issue. I plan to take this topic and create the book chapter. I will continue in this series to articulate my own general theory of humor, but not use it to analyze Confederacy of Dunces. You will have to buy the book for that. Or interlibrary loan it. However, if the book project falls through, I may finish this series as originally envisaged here online.

Photo use allowed, credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/petereed/138369750

Blog Interrupted by Father's Death

I had a post written and ready to put on the John Kennedy Toole Research blog for March 1st. However, my father died on February 21st. I am now dealing with my father's estate far from my home computer with the text of the post. Click here for the obituary.

What is relevant for my writing on the theory of humor is that my father had a keen sense of humor, which he enjoyed cultivating. He helped educate and inform my sense of humor. In the obituary on the website, we even slipped in a joke. It says, "And some say because of his reputation for punctuality, his portrait now hangs in the waiting room of the hospital’s new Family-Centered Maternity Suite." But his reputation was that he was never punctual. For those in the know, that explains why his portrait hangs in the hospital waiting room.

Much of his humor was in context and usually related to the foibles of individuals around him. Once when I was young, he was driving a crowded car. I passed gas that was extremely foul smelling, and it filled the silent car. He cleared his throat and in a calm voice said, "You know Vernon, it's not the smell we mind so much ... it's the burning of the eyes."

Because of his humor, he was often asked to MC the roasts for doctors at the hospital who were retiring.

In his last year of life, despite a severe stroke, he was able to enjoy humor, and once in that last year, I was able to get him to laugh until he cried. He will be missed.

Theory of Humor Series, part 9, Two Schools of Thought Become One Theory

This series of blog posts has as its ultimate goal an analysis of the comic quality of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole, though I am not in any rush to get there. I am as much interested in developing a general theory of humor.

I have been rereading my blog entries from May to December of 2017, the first eight parts of this series, and I have discovered that I unconsciously practiced a sleight of hand, which I now want to point out and make explicit.

In Part 3 of this series, I tried to characterize the two main schools of theories of humor. At the end of the entry, I simply stated that theories that claim a.) humor deals with incongruity and b.) humor deals with disparagement are not incompatible. What I did not say was that the theory to which I myself subscribe includes both incongruity and disparagement.

In Part 4 of this series, I focused in on what I consider to be a core fact of human nature, that, because we are a social species, we naturally form status hierarchies within groups. I then argued that one can understand the disparagement aspect of humor within the context of small group status hierarchies. So I slipped quietly from saying, a.) "many theories of humor focus on disparagement," to saying, b.) "all humor does in fact have a disparaging aspect." I then added to my theory that humor acts as a social status regulator to Mulkay’s theory that the humor mode allows a diversity of interpretations of reality within a group.

In Part 5, I tried to define comedy, and I did so in the context of a theory of humor focused on small group social regulation. So I was applying a theory of humor that I hadn’t explicitly defined, but slid into sideways. In Part 6, I discussed the fact that some disparagement in humor can be oppressive, but emphasized that not all disparagement has to be oppressive. But again, I was presuming that all humor has a disparaging aspect. In Part 7, the topic was a comic device that employs incongruity, but I then discussed how it is often used in a context in which there is disparagement. In Part 8, I showed how stereotypes allow for convenient incongruity and disparagement, assuming a theory of humor that contains both.

So there you have it: the theory I use posits that all humor has two aspects: incongruity and disparagement, and that the disparagement can be used to regulate social status within a group. That regulation can be oppressive but does not have to be. I defined it very clearly in paragraph two of part 7, but I presented it as though I was simply recapping something earlier arrived at. Now I am stating clearly that that is the theory of humor I am using in this study.

Best of John Kennedy Toole Scholarship #16: Rudnicki 2

For the last eight months, I have been writing a series that is exploring the nature of humor in general and the humor of A Confederacy of Dunces in particular. Because my ambition is to articulate an entire theory of humor, even after eight installments I have not even gotten close to bringing up Toole's book. So for this post, I thought I would pause with my humor theory series and actually have a blog post that talks about Confederacy of Dunces.

As I said in June 2013, I would like to offer an annotated bibliography, one citation at a time, of the best of the scholarship on Toole's Confederacy that is findable via MLA Bibliography (as opposed to obscure). Here is item number sixteen:

Citation: Rudnicki, Robert. "Euphues and the Anatomy of Influence: John Lyly, Harold Bloom, James Olney, and the Construction of John Kennedy Toole's Ignatius." Mississippi Quarterly 62, no. 1-2 (2009): 281-302.

Annotation: This article has the distinction of being the first scholarly article on Confederacy to use information from the Toole Papers at Tulane University. Rudnicki has two main theses: first, that Ignatius's overwrought style was influenced by Toole's study of the Renaissance dramatist John Lyly; and second, that Toole is an interesting subject to use when studying the question of literary influence. On the first thesis, Rudnicki shows evidence from Toole's B.A. Honor's Thesis that he was quite familiar with Lyly's trademark rhetorical style called Euphuism. Rudnicki then demonstrates that Euphuistic elements are present in the discourses of Ignatius Reilly. As for the second thesis, Rudnicki shows how Toole's style matured by comparing his juvenile work, The Neon Bible, with his later work, Confederacy. For theory, he refers to Harold Bloom.

Oddly, Rudnicki does not seem to have extensively studied the archives, and he repeatedly makes assertions about the influence of a given writer on Toole without offering any evidence or analysis to support the claim of influence. For example, he off-handedly refers to Salinger’s possible influence, without having mentioned Toole’s written praise for Salinger found in the Toole Papers. It would not be such a big deal, except that his thesis is the use of Toole as an example of literary influence. One might suppose that he would therefore be careful about documenting actual evidence of potential influence. This weakness is one reason this article only made it to sixteenth place in my rankings.

Despite these issues, this article is good, as it was the first to use anything from the archives, and it does a good job of both demonstrating the influence of Euphuism and discussing the general problem of speculating about influence.