I am going to make you laugh. Ready? Deep breath ... and ... expletive. Lude sexual reference. Human excrement. Geena Davis. Did you laugh? I'd venture to say no. However, you can't blame a girl for trying. But, perhaps, and just perhaps, a small smile crept across your face. For one fleeting moment you might have felt the incomprehensible, visceral urge to chuckle, titter even (Did I get you with titter? No? ... Damn).
I don't deny that on most occasions, potentially humorous references to human sexuality and fecal matter are cheap attempts at comedy that stem from the jokester's general lack of effort-I can't say that I've ever really enjoyed toilet humor. But say I was trying with all my might to elicit a gut-wrenching, side-splitting, involuntary response with a joke or a comment about something as banal as flatulence. Say, for example, my life depended on it. If this were the case, I could (or rather, would be forced to) find a way to spin a joke that would not only be funny, but universally funny.
Let's face it; humor is a completely subjective venture. Not everyone finds the witticisms of Dane Cook palatable, and I know from experience that several members of the baby-boomer generation generally do no understand Andy Samberg's Saturday Night Live Digital Shorts. And yet, I've certainly experienced moments when an entire room full of people who've never even met are all laughing in unison at the very same thing. It happened when I saw Mean Girls and again, when I saw Anchorman. So how did they do it? What does Tina Fey or Will Ferrell know that we don't? How did they get a darkened theater full of complete strangers to burst out in spontaneous laughter?
The answer lies in both the context of the situation and the delivery of the performers. Would you howl with the same kind of laughter while watching a Will Ferrell flick if you were sitting alone in your basement surrounded by nothing but cheese puffs and a half-empty bottle of Arbor Mist? Well, given that you've consumed half a bottle of Arbor Mist all by your lonesome, even "Antiques Road Show" might be guffaw-inducing at this point.
Regardless, the secret that both Fey and Ferrell are privy to has to do with not only the nature of the comedy, but also the medium through with the general public is intended to experience this comedy. Laughter is in many ways a social phenomenon. When one person starts to laugh, it is incredibly difficult to stifle your own giggling response. Thus, the age-old saying, "laughter is contagious."
We laugh because we cannot help it. Even the very sound of someone's laughter can be funny. I have several friends whose brand of laughter is so absolutely ridiculous that I can't help but laugh myself. Their laughing only makes me laugh harder.
One such example of this phenomenon occurred in Tanzania in 1962. Three girls began to laugh uncontrollably in school. A few minutes later nearly two-thirds of the school were afflicted with the laughter contagion, and the school had to be shut down.
Eventually, nearly 1,000 people across Tanzania were affected, until even neighboring Uganda was feeling the effects of the outbreak. Herein lays the key to the ultimate success of a well-crafted comedy.
When experienced in a social setting such as a theater, one might even be inclined to laugh at a joke that wasn't really all that funny, simply because everyone around them is laughing, too. Now this isn't to say that you'll suddenly feel an inexplicable urge to emit a hardy guffaw at the slightest inkling of laughter. As I said before, humor is subjective.
But it is very, very hard to laugh alone. So already I've put myself at a disadvantage in trying to make you, my dear reader, laugh at this particular article.
Reading is more often than not a solitary activity, so unless you are reading this aloud to ten of your closest friends (and I wouldn't be the slightest bit offended if you were), I can't imagine you ever breaking into spontaneous giggles because I happened to write something that you found brilliantly hilarious. You might smile a bit, or think to yourself, "I want to find the chick who wrote this and shake her hand, or possibly pay off her student loans," but I don't see you manifesting your amusement with loads of laughs.
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I've essentially put myself at the mercy of your personal taste in comedy. Just because I think Steve Martin is a comic genius, doesn't mean you do (although, I won't be your friend if you don't), and you probably won't like my article if I keep his or Sloane Crosley's humor in mind as I write this.
It's the risk humorists take, and it's a pretty big risk when you think about it. If you don't laugh because of what I have written, I have failed. I have failed epically. The entire point of my endeavor will have been rendered irrelevant.
It is part of the reason I haven't written a column since before the Amusement was conspicuously absorbed by The Miami Student: I'm paralyzed by the thought of failing.
Representing the comedic tastes of an entire university is a heartily daunting task, one that I'm nearly always afraid to take on. So do me a favor, would you? Read this article aloud to someone, and read it in a chipper German accent while in your skivvies while hula-hooping. And if you happen to have a parrot handy, place that sucker on your shoulder and feed him a few crackers because I don't know too many things that are funnier than a half-naked, fake German hula-hooping with a parrot.
If nothing else, at least I'll know you laughed.
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