Life Cycles

The last time I was able to visit my son in his room at the nursing home facility where he lives (before the COVID-19 lockdown became a thing), we watched part of an episode of a situation comedy from the mid 90’s. He laughed at something one of the characters said or did, and at the same time I said, “How rude and terrible!” He assured me “This is hilariously funny.” I disagreed. As I left his room, I felt uptight and wondered why some people find such behavior to be funny. It’s certainly not funny when someone in your home behaves that way. Two of us watched the same program, and only one of us laughed. The other felt slightly fearful. Why? A reasonable answer is found in the research of Peter McGraw and Joel Warner, a couple of modern philosophers, some say; a professor-behavioral economist and a journalist turned scientist, they say. These two investigators have developed a widely accepted theory as to why we find some things funny. Their “Benign Violation Theory” basically states that humor happens when three conditions exist simultaneously (imagine a venn diagram here, with two, interconnected circles; in one circle is “Violation,” in the other circle is “Benign.” The space where the two circles overlap contains “Benign Violation”). The three conditions are: 1) there is a violation of our accepted rules such as someone is out of line or threatening in some way, 2) the situation is perceived as benign or safe, and 3) both of these things happen at the same time. For instance, in the episode of the sitcom, one of the characters stood very close to his shorter, younger brother and yelled, flailing his arms up and down. An elderly woman, the supposed mother of the two fully-grown men, yelled at her boys and some sort of tray was dropped onto the kitchen floor. The ‘laugh track’ played and everyone was supposed to find this very funny. My own son didn’t feel threatened at all by the described behavior (which would’ve been completely unacceptable, if it had happened in, say, the high school cafeteria or in the dining room of the nursing home), and he laughed very loudly. That behavior, however, stirred feelings of anxiety in me. Without even thinking of it, my body and mind responded to the behavior on screen as it responded when someone began to fly into a rage, in a long-ago chapter of my life’s experiences. It wasn’t funny at all. The theory of benign violation explains this, too. When something hits too close to home, it’s not funny. As it turns out, beauty AND funny are in the eye of the beholder. Be well.