CHAPTER XVIII SUGGESTION AND THE COMIC We have referred to the fact that the appreciation of a joke or of anything ridiculous depends on the audience. The same joke which sends one audience into convulsions of uproarious laughter meets with indifference and even disapprobation and hisses from a crowd under different circumstances. Education, race, religion, nationality, industrial and political interests, class and professional prejudices must all be taken into consideration. An ancient Hebrew, Greek, Roman, modern European, Chinaman, Hindoo, Zulu, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Mohammedan, capitalist, workman, artist, physician, engi'neer, all of them have their special jokes, pleasantries, and play, which appeal to particular people and to no others. Conditions and circumstances should be taken into consideration. On solemn occasions, in cases of devotion and loyalty, or in times of grief and misfortune, the making of jokes and manifestations of mirth and laughter are not only unappreciated, but are even resented. "As the grating of the pot under a pot so is the laughter of fools." Jests and jokes out of time and place not only show the absence of sympathy, but also the lack of understanding, and are often turned against the person who made them. The laughter-rousing activity, like all human activities, must have its function and fit into the general organic system of social relations. The joke must not be offensive to the people in whom we wish to arouse laughter. The joke should be made at the proper time and when the people are ready for the ludicrous. The social element and the psychological moment are possibly the most important factors in the appreciation of the ludicrous. There are times when people are ready to burst out into laughter at the slighest provocation. It remains for man to tap his audience, take aim and fire off his joke or jest at the proper moment. When a person makes a joke without regard to the social element and to the psychological moment the joke falls flat and the person is regarded as lacking in taste, tact, and understanding. He is regarded as a fool and people laugh, not with him, but at him. In other words, the joke is like a suggestion which must take into account the character of the person's suggestibility in order to release the special subconscious energies and get good effect. In the comic and the ludicrous the currents of thought may be analogous and parallel, or they may be opposite, but there must be suggestiveness which leads to the relations of contrasted superiority and inferiority. A lusty young man after he had been married a few months began to fail, and grew very feeble. One day, seeing a butcher run over a ploughed field after a bull, he asked the reason of it. "Why," says the butcner, "it is to tame him." "Oh," says the fellow, "let him be married; if that don't tame him I'll be hanged." We have here a play on analogy of associations with strong suggestions of the state of the fellow and ridicule on marriage. An Irishman was standing near the railroad, when a freight train passed. There was a green flag on the rear of the caboose. The Irishman asked the man standing nearest him what that green flag meant. The man said: "It means another coming." A few days later, the man met the Irishman and his wife. They were wheeling a baby carriage. The carriage had a green flag on it. A witness in a law-case was asked: "On what authority do you swear to the mare's age?" "On the best authority." "Then why don't you say what it is?" urged the impatient lawyer. "I had it from the mare's own mouth." Here we have a play on association by analogy and a suggestion of the lawyer's stupidity. "These things in the room are very dusty," said a mistress to her servant girl. "If you please, ma'am," said the girl, "it is not the things that are dirty, it is the nasty sun that comes in and shows the dust on the things." We find here the elements of opposition and analogy with a strong suggestion of stupidity. The same is found in the anecdote of the man who fed his hens on sawdust to have them lay wooden planks. A similar example is found in the story of the Irishman who fed his hens on sawdust and then said that the young chicks had wooden legs and that one of the chicks was a woodpecker. Here the analogy is carried all through the anecdote, giving rise to absurdities. The joke is often represented as a dramatic play in which the state of inferiority is played now on one, and now on the other of the dramatis persona. The following may be taken as examples: An Irishman who was hit with a brick engaged a lawyer to put in a claim for $100. The claim was granted. The lawyer gave Pat $10. Pat with the money in his hand kept on looking hard at the bills. "What is the matter?" said the lawyer. "Begorra," said Pat, "I was just wondering who got hit with the brick-you or I." A man walking along the street of a village stepped into a hole in the sidewalk and broke his leg. He engaged a famous lawyer, brought suit against the village for one thousand dollars and won the case. After the claim was settled the lawyer sent for his client and handed him one dollar. The man examined the dollar carefully. Then he looked up at the lawyer and said: "What's the matter with this dollar? Is it a counterfeit?" Pat met the village doctor, who was a sportsman, and who was carrying his gun. "Shure, Doctor," he said, "ye're a careful man, if yer physic misses 'em, ye always carry yer gun." "Well, nurse," said the doctor, "did my prescription prove effective?" "Shure, an' it did, sorr," was the reply. "He died this morning as quiet as a lamb." "Don't you know that the sun will injure your brain if you expose it in that manner?" said a priest to a laborer who was busily working on the roadside with his head bare under the broiling sun. The man wiped the sweat off his forehead and looked at the clergyman. "Do you think I'd be doin' this all day, if I had any brains?" he said, and he gave the handle another turn. Speaking of her boy to the priest the doting mother said, "There isn't in the barony, yer riv'rence, a cleverer lad nor Tom. Look at thim," pointing to two small chairs in the cabin. "He made thim out of his own head; and, fair, he has enough wood left to make me a big armchair." Waiting till Pat came out of the saloon the priest accosted him thus, "Pat, didn't you hear me calling?" "Yes, your riverence, I did, but-but I had only the price of one." A priest, discoursing one Sunday on the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, said in error that five people had been fed with 5,000 loaves and two small fishes. It having come to the priest's knowledge that his mistake had given rise to a large amount of controversy (one Murphy declared particularly that he himself could do such a miracle), he (the clergyman) decided to rectify the mistake. Next Sunday, on concluding his sermon, he said, "I should have told you last Sunday that 5,000 people had been fed with five loaves and two small fishes." Looking down on Mr. Murphy, he said, "You could not do that, Mr. Murphy, could you?" "Ah! sure yer riv'rence, I could aisily," he replied. "Why I'd give them what was left over from last Sunday," answered Mr. Murphy. "Now, Pat," said a magistrate sympathetically to an "old offender," "what brought you here again?" "Two policemen, sor," was the laconic reply. "Drunk, I suppose?" queried the magistrate. "Yes, sor," said Pat without relaxing a muscle, "both av them." |