Abstract
The standard situation of comedy occurs when characters on stage (or on screen) have to start acting out something (for example, being lovers) for other characters on stage. As redoubling is typical for comedy as such, the principle of theater itself appears to redouble here: the spectators off stage get the chance to observe theater in which certain characters turn the others into spectators in order to fool them. This displacement of the illusion from the real spectators to the acting spectators is the secret behind one of comedy’s basic principles: success. The main characters’ endeavors, their silly tricks and comedy maneuvers, are always successful. This is because the real spectators team up with the actors on stage and want them to fool the other actors. If it were about their own illusion, spectators would be more hesitant to accept this silly spectacle. However, the same does not go for the tricking actors. They are serving other people’s illusions, but in this process they themselves become completely caught up in them. As a result, they end up succumbing to an illusion that they never believed in—which is possibly comedy’s most hilarious moment.
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Notes
- 1.
Even Aristotle’s famous remark that “Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life” (Aristotle, Poetics, part II)—i.e., that tragedy’s heroes are of a higher rank than the spectators, whereas comedy’s characters belong to a lower one—can be read in this sense. This remark need not only be read in a sociological sense. It can also be read psychoanalytically: in tragedy, spectators relate to their superego. In comedy, on the contrary, they relate to an agency of observation which they locate definitely below their ego. For this agency I have suggested the notion of the “under-ego” (see Pfaller 2017, 193–201).
- 2.
- 3.
“En un mot, […] il semble que nous ayons cependant besoin de quelqu’un qui lui, pour notre satisfaction à nous, soit en proie à cette illusion. Tout semble machiné pour la produire mais chez quelqu’un d’autre, comme si nous étions de mèche avec les acteurs” (Mannoni 1969, 163f).
- 4.
I make this bold universal statement here, albeit of course being aware of the fact that it may only concern a certain type of comedies—a genre that may be called “comedies of deception.” To this type belong obviously the comedies by Billy Wilder which are examined here, as well as a good number of screwball comedies, for instance Libeled Lady, The Awful Truth, and I Love You Again, and many newer comedies, like Confidences trop intimes or L’étudiante et Monsieur Henri, as well as a number of films which are usually not regarded as comedies, like Hitchcock’s Steps and North by Northwest. Leaving the question of universality open, I claim that these comedies provide the clue for understanding the genre, just as comedy has, for Octave Mannoni, provided the clue for understanding a general principle of theater.
- 5.
One may regard deception here as an expression of the erotic drive: not only because in comedy the deception very often is about staged love, but also since every deception implies the erotic act of stimulating the imagination of the other.
- 6.
Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, 35, 29 (Plinius 1978, 55).
- 7.
Cf. Aristotle, Poetics 3.3 where he states that comedy may have originated from “those who lead off the phallic processions.”
- 8.
See for this for example Eder, who beautifully remarks with regard to Aristophanes’ Lysistrata: “For the phallos that gets here focused upon Aristotle finds many different wordings and wordplays ... Aristophanes transfunctions as it were the phallos into a rule for peace: the thicker the phalloi, the more probable it gets that men will over it forget about war. The citizens of Athens will not have taken umbrage at that; they had - due to the not yet long forgotten cult of the phallos - a different relationship to these matters.” (My translation, R.P.) German original: “Für den Phallos, der hier zum ‘Mittelpunkt’ wird, findet Aristophanes viele Wortvarianten und Wortspiele … Aristophanes funktionert den Phallos gewissermaßen zu einem Friedensregulativ um: je dicker die Phalloi, desto wahrscheinlicher wird es, daß die Männer darob den Krieg vergessen. Die Athener werden daran gewiß keinen Anstoß genommen haben; sie hatten—durch den noch nicht lange vergangenen Phalloskult—ein anderes Verhältnis zu diesen Dingen” (Eder 1968, 73).
- 9.
The German Version appears to render this paradoxical structure a bit more clearly:Verse
Verse Nun ist es Zeit, daß ich mit Verstand Mich aller Torheit entled’ge; Ich hab so lang’ als ein Komödiant Mit dir gespielt die Komödie. […] Ach Gott! im Scherz und unbewußt Sprach ich was ich gefühlet; Ich hab’ mit dem Tod in der eignen Brust Den sterbenden Fechter gespielet. (Heine 2014, 139)
Literally this would read: “I played the dying fencer, while having death in my own breast” (my translation). The true thing was there, but under the pretense of being just a representation, or “comedy.” - 10.
Of course, this second moment of “symbolic causality” in comedy where imitations become true has not escaped Alain’s attention either. Alain states: “Polite behavior can strongly influence our thoughts. And miming graciousness, kindness, and happiness is of considerable help in combating ill humor and even stomach aches; the movements involved—gracious gestures and smiles—do this much good: they exclude the possibility of the contrary movements, which express rage, defiance, and sadness. That is why social activities, visits, formal occasions, and parties are so well liked. It is a chance to imitate happiness; and this kind of comedy certainly frees us from tragedy—no small accomplishment” (Alain 1973, 45).
- 11.
Cf. Pfaller 2005, Introduction.
- 12.
Alenka Zupančič has remarked on this most aptly. She writes that the comical element “can stand at the two sides of an opposition. […] We could even say that what is comical is this reversibility as such” (Zupančič 2008, 112f.).
- 13.
It can be argued that what distinguishes an affect from an emotion is precisely such a redoubling—as the song line “I love to love you, baby” aptly tells: when we love the fact that we love, when we hate the fact that we hate, or when in shame, as Günther Anders has pointed out (Anders 2010, 28), we shame ourselves about our feeling of shame. With the second moment of comedy, laughter would thus be turned into an affect.
- 14.
In her discussion of Bergson, Zupančič appears to come close to this conclusion, yet does not draw it. If there is a misunderstanding at work here, it is therefore fully mine.
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Pfaller, R. (2019). The Three Moments of Comedy. In: Mascat, J., Moder, G. (eds) The Object of Comedy. Performance Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27742-0_6
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