COMEDY

COMEDY IN THE ACADEMY 27Chapter 6, claims that humour is born in moments when the life force ismomentarily usurped or eclipsed by an involuntary manifestation ofautomatism or reduction of the body to a lifeless machine. The fullestarticulation of comedy as vitalism appears in Susanne Langer’s study ofaesthetics, Feeling and Form, which also calls Bergson ‘pre-eminentlythe artists’ philosopher’ (Langer, 1953: 114). For Langer, art is anintuitive and essentially creative process driven by the need to be alive.Comedy is:an art form that arises naturally wherever people are gathered tocelebrate life, in spring festivals, triumphs, birthdays, weddings, orinitiations. For it expresses the elementary strains and resolutionsof animate nature, the animal drives that persist even in humannature, the delight man takes in his special mental gifts that makehim the lord of creation; it is an image of human vitality holdingits own in the world amid the surprises of unplanned coincidence.(Langer, 1953:331)This version of the comic exists in the routine obscenity surroundingmarriage celebrations, in the jubilant nicknaming of genitalia, or inbouts of celebratory drinking that follow a triumph, however minor.What is important, emphasizes Langer, is that the comic spiritconstitutes an essential element of being human and, more importantly,being alive. This definition is complicated by the very full tradition ofblack humour that exists in Western culture, and which is prevalent inboth literature and social interaction. Jokes about death or the fear ofdeath can be devastatingly funny, but do not seem to conform toLanger’s model unless morbid reflection itself constitutes a triumphantacknowledgement that one is still breathing. What is important aboutthe work of Bergson and Langer is that it positions comedy at theontological centre. In claiming for comedy a close relationship tofertility ritual, rites of passage, and reproductive events, these writersreintroduced comedy into the academic mainstream as a genre in whichthe fundamental imprint of human existence is as evident as in its tragiccounterpart. However, in doing so they also reproduced the terms of theargument that elevated tragedy and denigrated comedy: even thoughcomedy has been shown to be an object worthy of significant study, it issimultaneously shown to be closer to nature than art, and closer,therefore, to the body than the soul.