Henri Bergson's 'Le Rire'
Bergson believed laughter is a means to create social conformity. It is targeted chiefly at behaviour that is considered maladaptive to the social and natural environment, and is a sort of social punishment.
The man who slips on a banana skin is funny because he failed to detect a change in his environment and make necessary adjustments in his behaviour. If he had been more attentive he would have walked around it instead of stepping on it and slipping over. When you, for instance, laugh at a classmate because he failed to give the correct answer (I know you don't do this, really), you are collectively punishing him/her. This is your way of making him/her conform to the required level imposed by the social system which you and the student are part of.
Analyse the poster in terms of Bergon's ideas on laughter.
Bakhtin's Carnival
Medieval and Renaissance European societies could be divided into two groups: the oppressive official culture, represented by the church and the state, and the popular culture represented by ordinary people. These societies were characterized by changes in levels of social tension. Release of tension was seasonal and marked by the carnival, as described by Mikhail Bakhtin.
Carnival in Europe traditionally begins 2-3 weeks before Lent. Lent is a period of sacrifice and fasting (that is, going without certain luxuries and foods, traditionally meat) that occurs in the forty days before Easter. (For a fuller explanation, see the Wikipedia entry Lent.)During carnival there was a temporary inversion of the metaphysical and social order.
As Bakhtin says, it was a "...temporary suspension of all hierarchic distinctions and barriers among men … and of the prohibitions of usual life." (Bakhtin 1984, p. 15). Emphasis was put on all things corporal with a rejection of the spiritual and intellectual. A King of Fools would be crowned, and whatever he decreed became law for the carnival period.
The authority of Church, state and social structure would collapse and be subjected to mockery. All participants would come in contact with each other and their more basic animal natures. Here the focus was to satisfy the pleasures of the flesh.
These aspects are personified in characters of Carnival and Lent seen in Pietre Breughel's painting The Fight between Carnival and Lent (1559). The two central characters are found at the bottom of the picture facing each other in a mock jousting match.
Carnival is the fat fellow seated astride a barrel and his lance is a meat skewer that carries a roasted pig. He represents everything associated with corporal pleasure and excess. He leads the carnival procession in which people are eating and drinking in disguise.
Lent, on the other hand, is very thin and gaunt. He represents the Church and its empahsis on the mind, the spiritual and sacrifice. Lent is followed by a procession of religious and political figures, but also by the poor and needy. They appear to be emerging from the church whereas the carnival procession is coming out of a tavern.
Through disguises, social roles could be reversed and social rules could be broken. For example, in Renaissance Italy it was not unknown for boys to dress up as nuns and try to molester priests!
The laughter that resulted from these antics was called by Bakhtin the 'carnival laugh'. It was derived from the release of tension through inversion, self abandonment and self ridicule.
Bakhtin believed that, in the fall from a highly stressed state to a lower state, participants come in contact with their inner natures and with the earth. It was in a sense a sort of dying during carnival, only to be reborn afterwards.
After the liberating effects of carnival, Lent would begin and the social order would be restored. Unlike that of the 'Bergsonian' laugh, which was a form of social chastisement through humiliation, the carnival laugh was positive and rejuvenating.
For more information click the following links:
Wikipedia: Carnivalesque
Carnivalesque
Joseph Meeker's Comic and Tragic Modes Summary
Joseph Meeker is a biologist who turned his talents to the study of literature. His contributions have an ecoogical and evolutionary flavour and can be classified as eco-criticism.His best known work is a study of comedy and tragedy.
Tragedy, he says, is characterised by a struggle between the hero and forces greater than himself. These forces may be Nature, the gods, fate, passionate love, hatred, morality, injustice and so on. The hero invariably dies in their attempts to overcome them and receives a heavenly and/or the earthly reward of rememberance for their sacrifice. The prerequisite for tragedy, according to Meeker, is that the universe cares about the sufferings of these extraordinary tragic heroes.
Meeker also argues that this tragic way or mode of behavior is a cultural artefact and somewhat "unnatural". People are not born with a predisposition to die for causes they are taught this, or they imitate examples of so-called heroes found in Classic and Renaissance literature. Comedy on the other hand is found wherever humans are. He suggests that it is universal, genetically based and therefore natural.Comedy is about avoiding conflict and always seeking a compromise such that would ensure your survival. Under the comic mode of behavior there is nothing worth dying for.
Meeker gives the example of Aristophanes' ancient Greek comic play Lysistrata to illustrate the comic mode. Here the heroine Lysistrata ends the war between Greece and Sparta by convincing the women on both sides to go on a sex strike. This forces their husbands to return home and get on with the business of providing for their families and producing more children; that is, creating more offspring who will carry 50% of their genes.
In other words the comic mode is evolutionary adaptive, whereas the tragic mode is an evolutionary dead end. A trait that is good for an individual leads to the successful transmission of its genes to the next generation. A trait that is bad for the individual leads to a failure to reproduce and to pass on its genes to the next generation. Dying for a cause, such that characterizes the tragic mode, cannot lead to a passing on of one's genes. It is impossible to have children or more children once you are dead!
Summary of 'Hamlet and the Animals' by Joseph Meeker
Meekers states that at the time of the writing of Hamlet the tragic world view was in decline and the comic one on the rise. Hamlet as a character was confused about where he should stand. Meeker suggests that Hamlet was uncertain whether the universe was governed by moral rules or the law of the jungle.
Hamlet's unwillingness (or inability) to take violent revenge against his uncle Claudius for the presumed murder of his father, is interpreted as being a more natural or comic behaviour. Hamlet prefers to avoid physical combat with his uncle. He is instead distracted by various minor adversaries, whom he engages and defeats verbally. Meeker argues that verbal attacks are, quoting Shakesperean schloar Harold Goddard, ".. a diluted form of murder".
The object of intraspecific conflict is to gain ascendency over an adversary not to destroy them. If the dominant animal realises it can make a kill it will turn away and attack an inanimate object to expend its violent energy. This is what ethologists, or animal behaviourists call 'redirected aggression'.
After the play The Mouse Trap, Hamlet is beside himself. Meeker argues that this is a kind of 'redirected aggression' or catharthis. He compares his comportment to a moose attacking a willow bush instead of killing its adversary. Fighting to the death is unnatural but acquired culturally.
Redirected aggression shows the value of life over honour and exclusive dominance. This kind of avoidance of dangerous aggression more in common with comedy than tragedy.
Meeker tries to deal with Polonius' unfortunate death by the hand of Hamlet with another ethological argument. After the play the Mouse Trap, Polonius is hiding behind a tapestry in Gertude's chamber hoping to overhear the ensuing conversation between Hamlet and his mother. He moves, the movement is seen by Hamlet, he cries: "How now! A rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead." This he argues is an example of pseudospeciation. Here the enemy is treated as another species facilitating the killing; an ancient technique used by militaries and murderers alike.
Meeker asserts that Hamlet tries throughout the play to avoid violence by converting "...actions into words, violence into argument, murder into a game. He thus reverses the usual processes of tragic action, which usually move from word to deed , argument to battle, threats to murder. He is the master of redirected aggression..." However, at the finale violence cannot be avoided, and Hamlet, Laertes, Claudius and his wife Gertrude lie dead.
Commentary on Meeker's Hamlet
The ideas of the Comic and Tragic Mode resonate and have a certain appeal. His work on Hamlet on the other hand is spurious and I think he is mistaken.
In the essay 'Hamlet and the Animals' contained in The Comedy of Survival, published in 1997, Meeker asserts that Hamlet tries throughout the play to avoid violence by converting "...actions into words, violence into argument, murder into a game. He thus reverses the usual processes of tragic action, which usually move from word to deed, argument to battle, threats to murder."
Meeker cannot credibly claim that Hamlet does this, when what he does is convert his violent thoughts, or intent, into violent words. This is not the same thing as converting a violent act into words.
But even this is only partially true. Apart from the unintentional slayings of Polonius and Laertes, Hamlet has Rosencrantz and Guildenstern killed, and by his own hand kills his uncle/step-father Claudius.
Meeker also claims that Hamlet might demonstrate redirected aggression. Animals that have the ability to kill an opponent of the same species do not. Instead, they turn away when they sense their adversary is defeated, and attack some defenseless object. This is no doubt true, but it does not transfer to Hamlet's situation either physically or verbally.
Meeker cites the example of Hamlet's verbal attack on Polonius and Guildenstern after the fracas of The Mousetrap. He purports that these characters are innocent even though they are allied to the king.
'The three message-bearers are all allied to the king and so represent the enemy, but all are personally harmless to Hamlet. There is no direct threat in their manner or intentions regarding him...Hamlet attacks them with the weapons he controls best: metaphor, wit, and imagination.'
It is really difficult to accept Meeker's argument. For Hamlet they are disingenuous spies and constitute a threat albeit an indirect one. They are certainly not innocent. This is at its best a very tenuous example of redirected aggression, at its worst it is not at all.
I think that Hamlet's motives for not acting and taking violent revenge are not expressions of redirected aggression. They are not simply because his behaviour does not fit the definition.
Instead, Hamlet's inaction is due to his uncertainty which can be interpreted as cowardice. Nevertheless, Hamlet does not fear dying or killing. What he fears is the possible threat of divine punishment for committing suicide or murder; hence, "Conscience doth make cowards of us all".
Meeker has built his essay on a very weak and erroneous foundation of so-called redirected aggression. Once this concept is dismissed then the house of cards collapses.
I feel that this essay on Hamlet undermines what is an original idea of The Comic Mode.
The tragedy in Meeker's work is that he is convinced of its veracity to the exclusion of all others possible points of view:
"So obvious and simple an explanation would surely have occurred to someone long ago and the problem of interpreting Hamlet need not have filled so many dreary books." p.42.
This essay is a warning to us about how easy it is to see what we want to see in a text.
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