Processing Humor

C.P. Snow was right in 1959 when he talked about the "two cultures"--it's a shame that as fields get more specialized, well-ranging knowledge falls by the wayside. Let it never be said that Spit Takes widened that divide (in fact, we've talked science here before).

So--with that in mind, let's visit an awesome article from earlier this month on the New Scientist site. The Comedy Circuit: When Your Brain Gets the Joke is a brief but in-depth exploration of what researchers learn when applying fMRI scans to people on the receiving end of humor (watching sitcoms, reading cartoons, etc.). 


I won't go in to all their discoveries, because they already have (and it truly is worth your time), but here are some highlights that I appreciated: 

No two brains are the same, however, and how these differences are reflected in our sense of humour is the subject of much research. Men and women, for example, seem to process jokes slightly differently. Although both sexes laugh at roughly the same number of jokes, women show greater activity in the left prefrontal cortex than men (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 102, p 16496). "This suggests a greater degree of executive processing and language-based decoding," says Mobbs. As a result, women take significantly longer than men to decide whether they find something funny, though that doesn't seem to spoil their enjoyment of the joke. Indeed, women show a greater response in the limbic system than men, suggesting they feel a greater sense of reward.

How gratifying to see these results talked about in an elevated and fair way, as opposed to some other ridiculous treatments I've seen.

The researchers hope that pinning down the brain processes involved in understanding jokes could shed light on a number of medical conditions. Mobbs, for example, hopes that studying humour will provide insights into depression. "It is believed that the reward system is disrupted in depression and it would be interesting to see if this deficit extends to more complex social processes such as humour," he says.

Samson, meanwhile, hopes it could contribute to our understanding of autism. Previous research has suggested that people with autism have difficulty understanding comedy, but her work shows that they can understand and appreciate certain types of jokes as well as anyone...This could change the way we interact with autistic children, she says.

They make a point of showing that while volunteers with Asperger's had difficulty with processing so-called "theory-of-mind" jokes (those that require empathizing with characters--i.e., when one character doesn't get what the other is talking about), they enjoy visual puns as much as other control groups.  I'm glad there is support for my belief that puns are the most accessible form of comedy, and not the lowest, unless lowest happens to be used as a the fruit-hanging descriptor, for example, puns are low-hanging fruit that everyone can reach, in which case...never mind, I guess I am fine with that verbage.

I [heart] New Yeah

An Op-Ed in today's New York Times discusses the glories of the pun. It's an interesting article, if a bit unfounded (why is a student at Fordham Law writing an op-ed for the NYT about puns?).

Spit Takes is actually in New York City this week, and found this article to be particularly apt, as we are getting ready to depart for lunch in Chinatown at [the?] New Yeah Shanghai Deluxe...a restaurant name that lives in that gray, swampy area somewhere between intentional puns and language barriers. Thai Me Up, a place we passed yesterday, is of course squarely in the pun district. Maybe they offer sub(missive) sandwiches?

Comedy Crisis

Since the primaries really got dirty last spring and summer, the comedy world has been all in a dither about whether they will be able to make good jokes out of the Obama administration. As I mentioned on this blog previously, many digs about Obama are built on public perception of him, rather than him as a person. On the New York Times "Laugh Lines" blog today, the editor of About.com's political humor page (I know...About.com has a wha?) interviews various comedy writers about their next four to eight years.

MAD Magazine's guy's response is predictably threadbare and worn: "Why am I optimistic? Look who Obama has included in his inner circle — the Clintons! Talk about a humor stimulus package!" Ugh. Really? I'm not saying there aren't still details to be mined for comedy between Bill and Hillary, but come on. That's like making a joke about Hugh Grant and transvestite hookers or Milli Vanilli. STALE.

Baratunde Thurston, besides having the best name I've seen in months, is the web and politics editor for The Onion. I liked his take:

For the first few weeks, I plan to scream for joy and hug strangers on the street as I’ve done continuously since the night of Nov. 4. Then I plan to keep writing material that uniquely illuminates this country’s socio-political reality while causing laughter and self-urination among my audience. That’s what political comics do. Too many people had one Bush-is-dumb joke and thought that made them the next Mark Twain. The arrival of a president fluent in English should raise the bar.

Raising the bar is good, though I suppose hugging strangers on the street is not always the best course of action. Here is Peter Gwinn, a writer for The Colbert Report:

We do face a serious problem, because now that George Bush is no longer president, nothing is funny in the entire world. I expect that in 2009, most of my own comedy will consist of reading Laffy Taffy wrappers out loud: “Why are rhinos so wrinkly?” “Because they’re hard to iron.” That joke right there will always be comedy gold, at least until America elects a rhino president.

Another example of a good bad joke, thank you, Peter.

Catastrophe!

Friend-of-the-blog Patty sent Spit Takes a link to an article in today's Telegraph about people who laugh at bad jokes. According to scientists* at WSU, four in ten people laugh when told a bad joke. Of course, their sample size is small, but for the purposes of their argument, we'll assume that extrapolating from it is kosher. Their experiment consisted of telling almost 200 people this joke:

"What did the big chimney say to the little chimney?"
"Nothing! Chimneys can't talk!"

Of course, they probably could have done better if they had used a funnier "bad joke." I didn't even laugh at the chimney joke, and if I don't laugh at a bad joke, it is a baaaad joke. There are no puns, no subverted expectations, no offensive jabs--it's as if a three-year-old who has just begun to understand the concept of "joke" had tried to come up with something on her own. Off the top of my head, here are set-ups to three examples (answers at the end of the post, to heighten the suspense!) that come to mind as better bad jokes than the chimney one:

1) "What's brown and sticky?"

2) "Two muffins were sitting in a oven. The first one turned to the second and said, 'Man, it is hot in here!'"

3) "Did you hear about the fire at the circus?"

All of those are stupid, yes, but at least they require at least a little brainpower. 1 and 3 are built on wordplay, and 2 is built on the idea of setting up presumptions and then immediately tearing them down. It can be hard to pull those off, but arguably, the king of that is Steve Martin. Here's an excerpt from an SNL monologue he did in 1977. Unfortunately, I can't find it on YouTube so you'll have to project your own version of his enunciation onto the transcript (it was his smarmy, stylized-eagerness phase); my bolds are there for your convenience:

Okay! Hey, does anybody know where I can get some cat handcuffs? I've gotta get a pair of cat handcuffs. Either two little ones like this, to go around the little paws...or a big one that hooks onto my arm and then hooks onto the cat. I found out my cat was embezzling from me, so I've gotta get a little pair...of cat handcuffs, so...Well, I found out that when I'm away, he goes to the mailbox, picks up the checks, take them down to the bank and cashes them. The way I caught him, I went out to his little house, where he sleeps at night, and there was like $3,000 worth of cat toys out there. And you can't return them, because they have spit all over them. I don't know where he is now, I guess he went out to Catalina, or something like that, I don't know... [ audience groans slightly ] No. He bought a catamaran, and went out... [ audience groans again ] No, he got it out of a catalog... [ groans ] This is a catastrophe!

Ah, jeez! Terrible, but funny. This was back when Steve Martin could do both of those adjectives together, of course, instead of just one or the other...for the love of Pete(r Sellers), please let the Pink Panther franchise rest in peace.

The Telegraph article concludes with a quick explanation of why people laugh at bad jokes ("because they [are] surprised at receiving such a bad punchline"), but then, they put a little English spin on it by discussing Christmas crackers, and listing some terrible jokes compiled by a psychologist at Hertfordshire University. My favorite was

"Why were the rabbits eating the motorway?"
"It was a dual cabbageway!"

because I had to stare at it for a bit before I remembered that the British use weird words like "carriageway" in everyday speech. Har!

Got a good bad joke? Share it in the comments!

1) A stick.
2) Holy shit, a talking muffin!
3) It was in tents.

* "Scientists," really. It was a bunch of assistant English professors. No wonder this story didn't make the papers over here.

Jerry Seinfeld on George Carlin

Today in the New York Times, Jerry Seinfeld has an op-ed piece about George Carlin. It's short, so I'll plunk it in below in its entirety:

DYING IS HARD. COMEDY IS HARDER.
June 24, 2008
By Jerry Seinfeld

The honest truth is, for a comedian, even death is just a premise to make jokes about. I know this because I was on the phone with George Carlin nine days ago and we were making some death jokes. We were talking about Tim Russert and Bo Diddley and George said: “I feel safe for a while. There will probably be a break before they come after the next one. I always like to fly on an airline right after they’ve had a crash. It improves your odds.”

I called him to compliment him on his most recent special on HBO. Seventy years old and he cranks out another hour of great new stuff. He was in a hotel room in Las Vegas getting ready for his show. He was a monster.

You could certainly say that George downright invented modern American stand-up comedy in many ways. Every comedian does a little George. I couldn’t even count the number of times I’ve been standing around with some comedians and someone talks about some idea for a joke and another comedian would say, “Carlin does it.” I’ve heard it my whole career: “Carlin does it,” “Carlin already did it,” “Carlin did it eight years ago.”

And he didn’t just “do” it. He worked over an idea like a diamond cutter with facets and angles and refractions of light. He made you sorry you ever thought you wanted to be a comedian. He was like a train hobo with a chicken bone. When he was done there was nothing left for anybody.

But his brilliance fathered dozens of great comedians. I personally never cared about “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” or “FM & AM.” To me, everything he did just had this gleaming wonderful precision and originality. I became obsessed with him in the ’60s. As a kid it seemed like the whole world was funny because of George Carlin. His performing voice, even laced with profanity, always sounded as if he were trying to amuse a child. It was like the naughtiest, most fun grown-up you ever met was reading you a bedtime story.

I know George didn’t believe in heaven or hell. Like death, they were just more comedy premises. And it just makes me even sadder to think that when I reach my own end, whatever tumbling cataclysmic vortex of existence I’m spinning through, in that moment I will still have to think, “Carlin already did it.”

What a great piece. It refrains from any oozing sentimentality and captures some sincere peer-to-peer reverence, which in my book is pretty much the best kind. Best of all, the article itself is structured like a great stand-up joke: a throwaway anecdote ends up the basis for the punchline at the end.

I wonder if there is a term for this type of joke set-up already, like Hitchcock's MacGuffin. If not, I'm ready to coin one: the sleight-of-hand execution reminds me of Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem in the Harry Potter books. In Half-Blood Prince, Harry runs across the "discolored tiara" when he's hiding his Potions book from Snape. And, of course, that old trinket ends up being pretty important by the time we get to Deathly Hallows.

Well diademed, Mr. Seinfeld. And happy travels, George.

More Mood-Killing Political Humor!

In the June 2nd issue of The New Yorker, Lawrence Wright has a piece on the current fractious state of Al Qaeda, going back to its roots at Cairo University in 1968 with the group Al Jihad. It is absolutely worth a read, if only to humanize and make fallible the ideologues behind it all. The article focuses on the rift between two former cohorts, Ayman al-Zawahiri (Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant) and Sayyid Imam al-Sharif (who goes by Dr. Fadl, and who authored two of the most influential books on modern jihad). It seems Fadl has come to believe that indiscriminate violence is not the most effective way to spread Islam, and has written a new book from prison in Egypt that renounces his old methods of jihad as ineffective and against the will of God.

Last May, Fadl sent a fax to the London branch of the Arabic newspaper Asharq Al Awsat briefly stating his new beliefs: "We are prohibited from committing aggression, even if the enemies of Islam do that...[t]here is a form of obedience that is greater than the obedience accorded to any leader, namely, obedience to God and His Messenger."

So why does this bit of news belong on my comedy blog? Because two months later, Zawahiri released a snarktastic video response, proving that even that even those with the most misanthropic view of life can somehow still be funny. "Do they now have fax machines in Egyptian jail cells?" he inquired. "I wonder if they're connected to the same line as the electric-shock machines."

How odd that Zawahiri, a man partly responsible for probably thousands of deaths, goes to sarcasm as his first line of defense. I guess unfettered, wild-eyed zealotism isn't something you can constantly sustain. And for me, it's particularly uncomfortable because that sounds like something Ben Karlin and his team would have come up with for Jon or Stephen. Comedy is a strange weapon, isn't it?

Boys Don't Make Passes at Girls Who...Don't Laugh At Their Jokes

In the Seattle Times this week, there is an article called, “When it comes to dating, show her the funny” by Nicole Tsong. Blech to that title, but it’s the Seattle Times. They always pull shenanigans like that. Double blech, however, to the tone of the article, which I will excerpt below. It addresses straight relationships and relies on exploring "traditional" male/female roles, and how each gender uses (or doesn't use) humor in romance. The article leaves gay relationships entirely out of the equation, unsurprisingly.

To begin and to keep things balanced, let's start with a good quote:

"If you think of any social relationship, shared laughter is one of the markers of success," said humor expert John Morreall, a professor at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. "A person who tries to be funny and doesn't get a response from the other person, that's real failure."

True. But that little gem of common sense is followed by this nauseating chunk a bit later:

Boys and girls are socialized early with distinct approaches to humor, said humor expert Morreall. Boys are encouraged to entertain and act out, while girls learn to appreciate a joke, not put on the show.

That dynamic is prevalent in dating. To put it bluntly, men want someone who laughs at their punch lines, while women look for someone who makes them giggle.

There are exceptions, of course, with the rise of female comics who have appropriated male humor, like the brash Sarah Silverman. Others have succeeded with a more feminine style, like funny but gentle Ellen DeGeneres. But in general, men are expected to be the funny ones.

Oh, where to start...I’m going to leave that first paragraph alone, as making declarative, sweeping generalizations about gender relations isn’t really my scene. So, going down the list: doesn’t EVERYONE want someone to laugh at their jokes and then make them laugh in return? Isn’t that how friendly communication works? Most properly socialized women I know want men not to amuse them like dancing monkeys but to engage them in discussion. And that bit about “appropriated male humor” manages to both be condescending and faux-women’s libbish all at the same time, which is quite a feat.

So how do we approach this cognitive dissonance? I like to solve problems with rudimentary evolutionary biology (seriously, I do), and it turns out people who experiment on grad students do, too:

In a study published in the academic journal "Evolution and Human Behavior," psychologists Eric Bressler and Sigal Balshine tested graduate students with pictures attached to funny and nonfunny statements and evaluated the way it affected how men and women viewed each other.

They found that humor makes men more desirable to women but does not affect men's view of women.

"We found no evidence that men prefer humorous women as partners," they wrote in the article "The Influence of Humor on Desirability." But "women preferred humorous men as relationship partners, even when the humor they used was unsophisticated."

Men tend to like women who respond to their humor and banter easily, but do not necessarily want the woman to be aggressively funny, Morreall said. Which also means women can get away with being unfunny far easier than a man.

Ooh, lucky us. We don’t have to turn in our comedy homework.

I’ve always found funny men more attractive than non-funny men, as have most of my similarly picky lady friends. You are attracted to potential mates that espouse qualities you desire for your future self and your offspring, should you elect to have any, and if you would like happiness and friendly communication to come your way, well...you develop a junior high crush on Jon Stewart that will never go away.

I’d argue that a good radar and appreciation for humor IS the same thing as a sense of humor. Think about it--people you know who appreciate funny things tend to be funny in their lives, and are able to share jokes with other like-minded folks. When was the last time a conversation you were having devolved into a series of quotes from “The Simpsons” or “The Office”? That might just be aping someone else’s material, but appreciating and celebrating it together is a shared humorous experience.

Between this Seattle Times article and the recent underwhelming feature in Vanity Fair, “Who Says Women Aren’t Funny?” I’m beginning to despair that this tendency to overanalyze gender relations through humor isn’t going the way of phrenology any time soon.

So I’ll guess just shrug it off and close by aping a line from “Futurama:”

It’s true what they say. Men are from Omicron Persei 7, women are from Omicron Persei 9.