4 from ritual to theater and back: the efficacy ... - AAAARG.ORG

Figure 7.4
ethology and theater 281
In 1905 Freud explained “joke-work” by offering a model analogous
to his ideas concerning “dream-work.” Freud thought dreams
and jokes worked in much the same way, expressing/concealing
unrecognized desires. Freud’s model (interpreted by me in figure 7.4)
explains how farce especially, and maybe all theater, accomplishes the
complicated task of uniting an in-group, threatening an out-group, and
bringing repressed materials to the surface. Joke-work condenses,
inverts, and displaces images, actions, and associations. A successful
joke – and a farce is a string of successful jokes comprising a coherent
structure that is itself a joke – is an extremely dense, specially coded
communication. In releasing laughter the joke liberates laughter’s
double purpose of threat and bond. It also stunningly erases the gap
between audience and performer: the audience hears the performers,
laughs as a response; the performers hear the audience laughing,
perform as a response; and so the farce progresses. As Freud wrote:
And here at last we can understand what it is that jokes achieve in the
service of their purpose. They make possible the satisfaction of an
obstacle that stands in its way. They circumvent this obstacle and in
that way draw pleasure from a source which the obstacle had made