Three Things to Remember from Morreall's "Comic Relief"

In Comic Relief, Morreall discusses the theory of humor and attempts to explain and analyze humor’s presence in society. After reading the book, three take-home messages I gathered were: 

1. Humor disengages.

A continuous theme throughout Comic Relief is that humor is disengaging. Morreall offers explanations to how humor is disengaging on different levels. Firstly, Morreall suggests that humor disengages us from “conceptual and practical concerns.” (ch.3) This is based on the idea that humor is built upon incongruous ideas and cognitive shifts. Basically, humor creates a mental jolt, disengaging us from our mental concepts. Furthermore, he suggests that a story can be humorous over the passage of time, from a distance or if one has no role in the situations; in other words, a comic situation is humorous if we is disengaged from the situation.

Additionally, in the discussion of Tragedy vs. Comedy, Morreall suggests that comedy disengages one from emotion, as it “fosters a non-emotional, playful attitude.” (ch. 4)  It disengages us from now “negative emotions” such as stress and anger, allowing us to rationally analyze a situation. Moreover, as part of the discussion of the Negative Ethics of Humor, one of the claims was that humor is irresponsible. In this, it was argued that humor disengages us from our responsibilities because it can distract us from the things happening around them. And it can divert us from taking appropriate action when given a task of concern. Also, as humor results in laughter, it can be physically disengaging due to laughter's physiological effects on the body. These are just a few examples showing how Morreall supports his argument that humor is disengaging. Throughout the rest of the book, he explains the positive and negative effects of humor based on this ongoing theme.

2. Humor is play and laughter is its play signal.

Laughter is a sign of security. This is in the context of his discussion of the evolution of humor. He suggests that play is a disengaging activity, occurring in the “absence of urgent physiological needs.” (ch. 2) In this, he claims that humor is a form a play and that laughter is a result of humor. It evolved as a “false alarm” signal, signifying safety and security. It signals others of this, causing them to laugh too, contributing to laughter’s contagiousness. This is probably why humor is more enjoyable when in groups, rather than when alone. As humor is a mode of play, it suggests that it occurs when danger is not around, furthermore giving that overall sense of security. It sends the message “We’re safe. We can enjoy this.” (ch. 2) I feel that this is why when we see a group of people laughing, it can be welcoming. However, laughter can be unwelcoming as well, when it is associated with the negative effects of humor as noted in Chapter 5.

3. Humor is not emotion. 

One argument that Morreall makes is that, though anciently believed to be an emotion, humor is not an emotion and is actually a mode of amusement. He describes amusement to be the “playful enjoyment of cognitive shift that naturally leads to laughter” (ch. 4.) He suggests that humor is not an emotion because it does not have all of the following four qualities that emotions have:

1. Beliefs and desires cause

2. physiological changes, which together motivate

3. adaptive actions. The person’s

4. sensations of those physiological changes are the “feelings” in emotions. (ch.2)

Here, Morreall suggests that emotions are an adaptive trait. Contrarily, humor may inhibit adaptive responses since it causes laughter, which may physically prevent us from taking adaptive action. Moreover, emotions tend to engage us in situations like how fear can put us in a “flight-or-fight” mode, whereas amusement disengages us from situations.

These are three ideas in Comic Relief that I wanted to highlight because they were ideas that I had never thought about before. They gave me something to ponder upon and brought to light different aspects of humor that showed me that humor isn’t as simple as I thought it was to be.