Laughter is the title of a collection of three essays written by French philosopher Henri Bergson, first published in 1900. It was written in French, the original title is Le Rire. Essai sur la signification du comique ("Laughter, an essay on the meaning of the comic").
The three essays were first published in the French review Revue de Paris. A book was published in 1924 by the Alcan publishing house. It was reprinted in 1959 by the Presses Universitaires de France, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Bergson.
In a foreword published in 1900, but suppressed in 1924, Bergson explains that through the three articles, he wanted to study the laughter, especially the laughter caused by comic, and to determine the principal categories of comic situations, to determine the laws of comic. He also added a list of works and studies about laughter and comic.
In the preface written in 1924 to replace the initial foreword, Bergson explains that his method is entirely new because it consists in determining the process of comic instead of analyzing the effects of comic. He specifies that his method does not contradict the results of the other one, but he assumes that it is more rigorous from a scientific point of view. He adds a larger bibliography.
The first essay is made up of three parts:
1. Du comique en général (Of comic in general)
2. Le comique des formes et le comique des mouvements (Comic of forms and comic of movements)
3. Force d’expansion du comique (Force of expansion of comic)
In a short introduction, Bergson announces that he will try to determine what is comic, but he does not want to give a rigid definition of the word, he wants to deal with comic as part of human life. His ambition is also to have a better knowledge of society, of the functioning of human imagination and of collective imagination, but also of art and life.[1]
General facts on comic
Bergson begins to note three facts on comic:
The social role of laughter
Bergson now assumes that comic requires the use of intelligence instead of sensibility, and he tries to determine what is the real role of intelligence in a comic situation. He takes the example of a man falling down in the street in front of passers-by. Laughter is caused by an accidental situation, caused by a movement. The source of comic is the presence of a rigidity in life. Life is defined by Bergson a perpetual movement, it is characterized by flexibility and agility. Comic situations, such as that of a falling man, are situations where movement is not flexible.
However, comic is not only based upon unusual situations, but also upon characters and individuals. Bergson takes the example of absent-minded people, a common source of comic. People tend to associate individuals with a comic character, which increases comic. In addition, when we make fun of somebody for one of his vices, it is because the individual is unaware of his own vice while we are aware of it. Thus laughter forces people to be better and to suppress their vices, because laughter makes them be conscious of them. This is why Bergson asserts that laughter has a moral role, it is a factor of uniformity of behaviours, it eliminates ludicrous and eccentric attitudes : « Beyond actions and attitudes that are automatically punished by their natural consequences, there remains a certain inflexibility of the body, of the mind and of the character that society would like to eliminate to obtain a greater elasticity and a better sociability of its members. This inflexibility is the comic, laughter is the punishment ».
Comic and forms of materiality
Laughter can be caused by ugliness, but ugliness is not always comic. To laugh about ugliness, we need to have a naive, immediate, original approach, not to think. We also have to focus on a specific feature of the person and to associate the person with this feature. It is the same with cartoonists, who exaggerate physical and natural features of people. Our imagination see in everyone the efforts of the soul to dynamise materiality, the soul or the mind give flexibility, agility and animation to the rigid body and to materiality. However the body tend to rigidify itself, and it produces a comic effect: « When materiality succeeds in fixing the movement of the soul, in hindering its grace, it obtains a comic effect. To define comic in comparison to its contrary, we should oppose it to grace instead of beauty. It is stiffness rather than ugliness ».
Comic of gesture and movements
Bergson concludes as an immediate consequence of the previous chapter that « attitudes, gestures and movements of the human body are subject to laughter precisely in the way that body makes us think to a simple machine ». Humans tend to laugh when they see the effect of a machine within the human body. This is why when we concentrate our attention on a particular gesture made by a speaker to better express his thinking, we automatically find it comic whereas this movement in itself is not comic. We also laugh when someone imitate somebody else, because to imitate somebody, the imitator reproduces the most mechanical, the most unconscious movements and gestures of the person. This is also the case with the parody of an activity. For Bergson, this explains also why, as Pascal had noted, when we see two faces that look like very much, we find it comic, while the faces alone are not comic.[2] And finally: « This is because really lively life is not supposed to repeat itself. Where there is repetition, complete similarity, we suspect that there is mechanism behind life. That diversion of life towards mechanism is the real cause of laughter. »
Comic and human imagination
At the beginning of chapter five, Bergson thinks again about his method of analysis. He recalls that to look for a unique method of comic does not make sense. However, there is a central cause of comic, and all comic situation are derived from it. This central cause is mechanism applied to life, and all comic effects are articulated around this cause by our imagination. There are three main directions in which our imagination is oriented to produce comic effects, three general laws: