COMEDY

6LAUGHTERPerhaps even if nothing else today has any future, ourlaughter may yet have a future.Friedrich NietzscheSatisfactory explanations of laughter have always been notoriouslyelusive. As Bergson put it, ‘ this little problem…has a knack of bafflingevery effort, of slipping away only to bob up again, a pert challengeflung at philosophical speculation’ (Bergson, 1980:61). Across thecenturies, laughter has been variously understood as vice or cowardice,as delight caused by surprise, the product of defamiliarization, a meansof averting antisocial conflict, or an extra-linguistic bark signalling thelimits of understanding. Aristotle, noting that laughter is exclusive tohuman beings, believed that an infant could not be considered trulyhuman until it had laughed its first laugh at forty days old. Byacknowledging laughter as essentially human, every discussion of it alsotends to contain an idea of what being human means. A furtherphenomenon unifies all theories of laughter: they all take it to be themanifestation of a perfectly serious urge, process, or function, just likeDutch historian Johann Huizinga’s theory of the serious importance ofplay. Laughter is never just fun, as in all accounts of it the human beingis using their laughter to serve a social, psychological, or physiologicalneed. This chapter will survey a number of the most prominent theoriesof laughter in order to show how this idea, so closely associated withcomedy, has been used as a means of understanding human identity.CHRISTIAN LAUGHTEREarly Christianity was hostile to laughter. Nowhere does the NewTestament mention Christ laughing, although he twice wept, and