In
comedy the appeals are made to the head, not the heart. As audience members the playwright expects
us to see the incongruity (an intellectual process) of an action. Comedy, because of this coldly rational
appeal, lifts us out of the emotional aspects of an idea Shaw seizes on this
emphasis on the unemotional aspect of comedy (where our emotional defenses of
our pet theories are down) and for Shaw comedy becomes a lever for social
change.
Comedy is based on the principle
that no man knows what he is, that he cannot see his real mirror images but
only what he wants to see. Irony and
incongruity are the triggers of laughter.
These reversals, exaggerations or understatements surprise our mental
expectations and make us see things differently, however briefly. In that moment of jarring our expectations
with surprise and perhaps delight, the mind id prepared to let go of its former
way of seeing and believing.
A good comedy throws a strong
emphasis on a character who is simplified in such a way that we can readily see
the distortions that have made him a fool in other men’s eyes; we can see them,
that is, if we understand what is considered normal behavior in the society
reflected in the comedy. Norms are
there fore, very important in comprehending comedy. thus, the action in comedy consists of string of incidents that reveal
the fool in situation after situation where he always shows the same distortions,
the same variations from what is considered normal behavior Consequently, the fun of a comedy usually
consists of the reactions of the other characters to the continuing stupidities
of the principal character until he finally sees how distorted he is or the
others decide that it would be heartless to make him face his realities.
Henri Bergson, a French
existentialist, believed comedy is successful in changing our perception of who
we are in a society. Comedy rarely
threatens us emotionally or asks for our emotional support of the comic
character. Rather, comedy opens us for
an intellectual or perceptual change as we find a comic fool who is unaware of
his distorted view of the world.
Although we scorn this blindness in the character we realize we share
some of those same distorted views.
Although we say, I am not like that fool, we know there are times when
we might have done or said something foolish by this society’s standards. Bergson believes that in seeing the fool’s
blind repetition of an action, we sense our own rigidity and past reluctance to
change. In comedy we see how a
character’s reluctance to change makes him laughable.
Are there things that comedy
should not address? Comedy has no sense
of reverence and does not hesitate to take on the serious, the sensitive, or
the sacred. It is our emotional
attachment to something that makes comedy about it personally impossible.