The most intriguing facet of Bergson’s analysis of laughter is his ongoing analogy of the mechanization of laughter as a “living thing,” or as a historically unfolding social process. Published in 1901, Henri Bergson was writing amongst his contemporaries who were mostly interested in the processes of the unconscious in psychological terms, most notably Freudian psychoanalysis. However, Bergson’s text is distanced from any stringent psychological examination, focusing on the more sociological aspects of laughter as an ultimately human process sustaining social boundaries and mores. Laughter is a part of society just as much as society is a part of laughter.
Bergson takes the famous adage of man as an animal that laughs and turns it around, claiming that man “might equally well have [been] defined as an animal which is laughed at; for if any other…produces the same effect, it is always because of some resemblance to man, of the stamp he gives it or the use he puts to it” (Bergson 2). Narcissistically, humans are only able to laugh at objects or people within the human realm—narcissistically projecting a mode of humanness to the object of laughter. However, what is most peculiar about this particular point is “that a comic character is generally comic in proportion to his ignorance of himself. The comic person is unconscious” (Bergson 5). Laughter is an inherently human action revolving around the human enterprise. However, in order to become a successful comic, one must be a human without being a human—one must physically exist as a body and shirk consciousness itself (one of the defining elements of humanity) in order to be successful. That is not to say that those in a comatose are comedic geniuses, rather, that comedic geniuses are unconscious of the way in which humans are tacitly or explicitly expected to behave. The more successful one is in losing one’s humanity for the sake of comedy depends on the naturalness of the cause of laughter. “The more natural we regard the cause to be, the more comic shall we find the effect” (Bergson 6). The more natural, or rather, the more explicitly human a process is, the funnier the outcome of a situation will be. We laugh at the purely human; yet, one’s comedic credentials come with this ability to create comedy unconsciously, without the most primordial sense of humanity. This is not simply a formula for comedic gold, but an insight into social boundaries. Not only is consciousness an important part of defining humans from anything else, but also emotion. However, “indifference is [laughter’s] natural environment, for laughter has no greater foe than emotion” (Bergson 2). Laughter strays from emotion, like consciousness, in that both act as natural attempts to justify this strange staccato noise and the shaking of one’s limbs at the immediate experience of it.
The lack of justification given for this phenomenon allows it to act as a social spectre, and “it is in this sense only that laughter ‘corrects men’s manners’” (Bergson 9). The threat, ‘they’re all going to laugh at you!’ is an all too common statement used to scare someone from acting a certain way—the threat of being deemed, essentially, a human without humanity (without consciousness or emotion) is a social threat in itself. Within a world of human exchange, what could be worse than losing one’s humanity? “By the fear which it inspires, it retains eccentricity, keeps constantly awake and in mutual contact certain activities of a secondary order which might retire into their shell and go to sleep…” (Bergson 10). The thought of stepping out of the boundaries of unspoken social contracts of consistency and predictability is too much for the non-comedians to fathom. In this way, laughter keeps people in check with the expectations of society with the issuance of an unspoken threat of ridicule while at the same time answering back to humans—formed out of purely human social exchanges.
