Because I Could Not Stop for Gary Larson
Until very recently I’d thought for a long time that probably the best way to suck all the funniness out of something is to talk about why it’s funny. But there’s a better method of funny-suction out there—a method that sucks the funniness out of things so hard, so completely, with such vigor, that not even Weird Al himself—not even at the very Alapalooza-era pinnacle of his career—could sing life back into them. It truly is the 24k gold-plated CV62711 of funny-suction.
The method was developed back in the early 1990s by some psychological scientists who wanted to know if humor functions as a stress-reliever. So they presumably met one bitter wintry day in a dimly lit anteroom with a large fireplace casting grotesque shadows off the severed antelope heads that adorn the perimeter. And—between the gentle nothing-ceremonies of fogging and wiping their little circular spectacles, staring silently out the window to watch a single blackbird alight on the icy grey knuckle of a frostbitten elm, and puffing solemn and empty rain clouds from the meerschaum bowls of their elegant calabash pipes—they conversed in oddly placid dulcet tones about how they might gain some insight into this question.
It probably went a-little something like this:
Scientist 1: “Well, first we have to decide what’s funny.”
Scientist 2: “Ummm, I like Frasier.”
Scientist 3 (slamming his fist on the end table, rattling his snifter of brandy): “Bah! Frasier essentially destroys the years of work we psychologists have put into being taken seriously.”
Scientist 2: “Well, I mostly like the dog.”
Scientist 1: “Oh, yes. The dog is undeniably funny.”
Scientist 3 (regaining his composure somewhat): “Sure, the dog is funny. No one’s arguing otherwise.”
Scientist 4: “Did you see the one where Frasier and Niles don’t have tickets to the play, but they go anyway and wait outside for intermission? And they try to convince everyone that they were in there watching it the whole time?”
Scientist 1: “Niles is funny, too.”
Scientist 4: “Did you see the one where Frasier bought his dad the new recliner?”
Scientist 3: “Yes. Yes. Okay. So the dog is funny, and Niles is funny. But I think we should look for something with a broader appeal.”
(Everyone nods in agreement and thinks for a moment.)
Scientist 4: “What about Marmaduke?”
Scientist 3: “That’s closer than Frasier, but I don’t know . . .”
Scientist 2: “The Far Side!”
(The scientists all excitedly murmur their approval.)
Scientist 1: “Okay. We all agree The Far Side is funny. So we’ll use that as a stimulus to see if it lowers stress. So now we just need a stimulus to cause our subjects stress. “
(They all think for a moment.)
Scientist 2 (snaps her fingers): “I know! The inevitability of our mortal demise!”
Scientist 1: “Perfect! So we’ll make our subjects think about how they’re going to die, and then we’ll show them Far Side cartoons and see if that calms them down!”
(More excited approval-murmurs.)
Scientist 1: “So it sounds like we’ve got a plan. Let’s get to work!”
Scientist 4: “Did you see the one where the storm traps Niles and Daphne in Niles’s mansion?”
Exeunt
So, that’s more or less what they did. The funny-suckers set to sucking. If you’ve got access to back issues of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology (and, really, who doesn’t?) you can read all about it in their 1995 report, titled, “Perspective-Taking Humor: Accounting for Stress Moderation.” I’ll give you the rundown:
They found 88 people to participate in their study by advertising through posters placed around a campus. The participants signed some consent forms, the doctors gauged their moods, and then the participants “were asked to participate in several death-related tasks,” which had consistently resulted in Sean Penn-like levels of bummed-outness in previous tests, and in which they were asked to:
“draw out a lifeline plot indicating when important events would take place during their lives, including their deaths”;
“fill out death certificates on forms that were facsimiles of official certificates”;
“create a eulogy to be read at their own funerals” ; and
“[complete] a facsimile of a will for allocating their worldly goods at time of death.”
The lucky participants were then shown some Far Side cartoons, their stress levels were gauged, and finally—mercifully—they were paid five dollars (seriously) and sent off to drag their security blankets down the miserable, ever-attenuating corridor of pain that would be the rest of their lives.
But, hey, five bucks is five bucks, amiright?
And the results of the study?
“It is tempting to conclude that we have firm evidence attesting to the beneficial effects of perspective-taking humor; that persons capable of appreciating and understanding our Far Side cartoons are more apt to be circumspect in stressful situations; and that it is this form of humor that can be characterized as a mature defense strategy.”
Tempting, sure. But, alas, not even that one Far Side with the guy and the chicken on the desert island (C’mon, you know which one I’m talking about!) could provide the elusive panacea for the slings-and-arrows-existential-vacuousness that is the human condition.
Not. Even. The. One. With. The. Cows.
“However . . . we have not yet obtained direct evidence that persons who have access to this ‘mature’ defense actually do assume more abstract vantage points from which they perceive and evaluate their stressful experiences; nor can we be certain that responses to our Far Side cartoons adequately represent what we have called perspective-taking humor. The present findings represent a beginning, albeit one supported in other studies . . . in need of replication and refinement.”
And so science marches onward! Not resting until every man, woman, and child (provided, of course, that they are willing to fill out the proper consent forms) have crisp five-dollar bills in their wallets and a cold, gnawing blackness in their hearts!
And so, having completed my first of what I hope are at least a few more (slightly less death-centric) Wisdom Teeth blog columns, I leave you to meditate on this cartoon. But take heed, dear reader! And remember ye well the words of ol’ Friedrich (“Peachy”) Nietzche: “Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into The Far Side, The Far Side gazes also into you.”
