What is comedy? There are many theories on offer across the centuries, from Dante’s Divine Comedy, to Charlie Chaplin’s mocking of the machine, to Bergson’s theory of comedy as the moment in which the machine breaks through the human. There’s modern comedy, sitcoms, stand-up, all kinds of similar nonsense abounds. What I’d like to contribute today is a new interpretation of comedy I came to myself while reading Walter Benjamin’s essay on Charlie Chaplin, a theory of my very own.
Tragedy & Comedy
The key element of this new theory of comedy I’m developing is the relationship of tragedy to comedy. It has been said quite famously that comedy is tragedy plus time, but for most of us this is not enough. Merely referencing some historic tragedy such as the black plague is hardly good for a laugh, unless we’re free of its consequences in some form or another. The black plague could hardly have been good for a laugh during a global pandemic like during covid-19, just as 9/11 can hardly be funny for someone who lost their entire life’s savings when the airplanes finally exploded.
Can there be comedy without tragedy, without horror? I think the answer is probably not. I think the horrors of life provide a stockpile of psychic energy for comedy to make use of, for comedy to tap into and channel, and without horror, without tragedy, there cannot be the moment of redemption which comedy so famously brings about.
It’s here that we get to my argument. Comedy is a form of Escapism, though it’s not just any form of escapism, it’s escapism from tragedy, from horror, from the terrors of doom. The comedic moment is the moment when the hero, the comedian, whoever, having fallen into the pit of despair, leaps out of the moment of doom and returns to a certain form of social lightness and easiness. Comedy is this exact leap, the leap from the tragic depths to the heights of uncontroversial easy living. I think what has often happened in recent times is that comedy has become too caught up in tragedy and despair, in bullying and mean-spirited comments, and this social lightness has been forgotten. That’s not to say we’re doomed to suffer forever in the pit of hell and doom. NO! We can fly out of the hall of nightmares on a beautiful solid gold helicopter.
The key idea here is that tragedy is the descent into hell, and comedy is the ascent from hell into heaven. Comedy is the bridge between the two, it’s a beautiful elevator you can ride away on. This is why a completely neutral person is rarely funny, they don’t go deep enough to trick others into having a bit of a laugh. Tragedy descends into hell and stays there forever, while comedy takes the magic leap out of doom and ascends on a shining cloud of smiles and joy and laughter into the heights of infinity. A comedian is someone always going back and forth between the two emotions of doom (hell) and escape (heaven). Comedy is the transformation of doom into smiles.
Escapism
Now finally we can articulate what is meant here by escapism. It’s not just any old escapism. This isn’t your grandfather’s escapism. What we’re talking about here is fully charged escapism, the kind with jetpacks and rocket boosters, the kind with an engine powered by ten thousand beautiful horses. That’s what I’m talking about! The truth is that this theory of comedy is so simple even a baby can understand it. The reason many people aren’t funny is because they love tragedy too much today. In this modern world of industrial machinery, the same machinery which Chaplin so gracefully slipped and dipped and danced through, we today are caught in the gears. We stared into the gears of doom with special glasses on, so we can see it better.
On the other hand, a comedic approach to the wheel of doom would be to imagine a beautiful future of vacation and laughter, where we all play with toys and dance and sing and appreciate the beauty of this world for ever, dancing out of the wreckage of the industrial age into a new post-apocalypse, a post-apocalypse made of laughter.
Think of it like this. Why is Heaven the ultimate joke? Because heaven is the escape from hell, and from Earth, it’s the moment of silly detachment and pure hope which makes comedy possible in the first place. Heaven on Earth then, would be a world where we learn to escape tragedy again and again, without abandoning it or refusing its lessons. The whole method of escapism as comedy is an understanding that every joke begins as a tragedy, which redeems itself in the moment of the final punchline. For this theory to work, you need the ability to say something everybody is okay with. You introduce a problem, but then you make it okay again. That's escapist comedy.
Think of just a few examples. Why is it funny when someone slips on a banana peel? According to the escapist theory of comedy, it’s because we know that the banana peel could only have been placed through the negligence of another human being, and in the moment when someone slips and falls on the banana peel we laugh because we know that we ourselves have escaped that terrible fate. We laugh because we are not responsible, because we are not to blame, and if we’re lucky, for the joke to truly land to thunderous applause, the one who slips on the banana peel will leap to their feet and say “I’m okay!” in this moment we have the true punchline. Everything goes back to normal, which is the funniest possible outcome here.
This is the structure of comedy. We have the descent into the moment of doom, when the man slips on the banana peel. This is our tragedy. Now, the man leaps to his feet, unharmed, and says that he’s okay. This is the comedic ascent, the rise to glory out of the depths of doom, of hell itself. Perhaps he throws the banana peel into a trash can. Now the man resumes walking as if the situation never even happened. Everybody goes back to normal, and laughs. They laugh because all is well, all is redeemed, everyone has escaped from the tragedy as if by magic, and life will carry on.
What’s great about this theory is that it also explains why many horror movies are funny to viewers. Most of us are well aware seeing these films that they are merely movies, they’re not real, and we often notice little slips or goofs in these films which make us laugh. Perhaps the characters or dialogue does not take the situation in the film fully seriously, or perhaps the audience refuses to take the horrors fully seriously. This is the same escapist structure of comedy, we laugh because we have escaped. In the end tragedies become boring stories in dusty history books. Life goes back to normal and people bumble along, cluelessly escaping the perils of doom.