Engaging Humor

2. The Senses of Absurd Humor

2. The Senses of Absurd Humor Cold baths are more enjoyable when made with hot water. He’s so perverse, that he likes meat better than any other vegetable, except ice cream. My father and mother are first cousins, that’s why I look so much alike. It’s a lucky thing that water is liquid; if it were a solid like coal or marble, how could we get it to run through faucets?1 What is the difference between a duck with one of its legs both the same?2 Q: Why is there only one Eiffel Tower? A: It eats its young. There is a portion of humorous expression that has been termed by various commentators “nonsensical” or “absurd.”3 But what defines this subset of humor and how does it relate to some “standard” humor that lacks nonsensical or absurd characteristics?4 Does it employ different mechanisms or depend on different principles than other forms of humor? Mary K. Rothbart and Diana Pien, adhering to the notion that humor depends upon incongruity resolution, hold that jokes are nonsensical when they fail to completely resolve incongruities.5 To illustrate the notion of complete incongruity resolution, they cite the following riddle: “How far can a dog run in the forest? Only halfway. After that he’ll be running out of the forest.” Rothbart and Pien claim that the initial incongruity of the question and the punch line is “entirely meaningful” because the riddle answer is “definitionally correct.” In contrast, the riddle “Why did the elephant sit on the 14 engaging humor marshmallow? Because he didn’t want to fall into the cup of hot chocolate”6 is not completely meaningful because it adds an incongruous element—an elephant sitting in a cup of hot chocolate. Similarly, the joke “Why did the cookie cry? Because it’s mother was a wafer [away for] so long,” while phonologically resolving the incongruity of why the cookie was crying, creates the incongruity of a cookie having a mother.7 Rather than refer to the resolution of incongruity, I prefer to characterize humor as the perception of appropriate incongruity. If resolution means finding the correct solution to a problem,8 incongruity is never completely resolved .9 To perceive humor is to perceive an oxymoron. A tension between the incongruous domains always remains because the “resolution” is always spurious—never legitimate. Consequently, the relations between the incongruous domains can at best be characterized as having a measure of “appropriateness .” But there can be no resolution of the kind one expects in a problem of algebra, geometry, or even physical science. I am skeptical that the difference between completely and incompletely resolved jokes can be maintained.Incongruities are never completely resolved in jokes.There is no structural difference between ordinary humor and what has been called “absurd” or nonsensical humor. Every joke is in some sense absurd in that it rests upon a violation of logic, sense, reality, or practicable action. Conversely, those jokes that have frequently been characterized as absurd or nonsensical conform to the structure of other kinds of jokes—that is, they are rooted in the perception of appropriate incongruities. What remains is demonstration. A guy in the garment industry has a son who asks him, “Daddy, what kind of flower is that?” He says, “What am I, a milliner?”10 The incongruity in this joke lies in the father’s claim that he cannot recognize flowers because he is not a milliner, as if a milliner, rather than a gardener or florist, were an expert on flowers. The incongruity is appropriate, however.Milliners make women’s hats,and women’s hats are often decorated with flowers. The listener must deduce that since the father works in the garment industry, his view of the world does not extend beyond women’s apparel.Within that narrow world, the only person he can imagine as knowing something about flowers is a milliner. Hence the initial incongruity can be perceived as appropriate. Nevertheless, the father’s parochial view is at the same time preposterous. No one would accept the idea that someone in the clothing industry could The Senses of Absurd Humor 15 imagine the world in terms of that industry alone. No one should first think of a milliner, rather than a gardener or florist, as an expert on flowers. If humor is rooted in appropriate incongruities, these appropriate incongruities are...