Writes Joshua Rothman, in "Why Are Kids So Funny? The emergence of humor so early in life suggests something important about human nature" (The New Yorker).
I think part of why little kids are funny is that they've got loving adults gazing at them all the time and responding with delight. The kids are playing to the audience. And the parents' reports are subjective.
Then the other reason kids are funny is that they haven't been socialized yet. They're not holding back, worrying that something might be stupid or weird or disgusting. Adults need a little courage to be funny. We're inhibited and afraid of embarrassment and the loss of status. To be funny is to take some risk, but little kids are utterly blind to the risk. These are people who shit their pants on a regular basis.
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Dogs play their whole life and know they are playing.
Wittgenstein as far as I know was not concerned with what made people special. He made some famous mistakes about animals (if a lion could talk, we couldn't understand him, when animal trainers talk to and understand lions all the time. Vicki Hearne's theory is that Wittgenstein's lion is himself.)
“ These are people who shit their pants on a regular basis.”
So Biden is the greatest comic ever? RR, JSM
LOL - Ann - Very funny!
The river of laughter in which we swim begins in infancy and contains great quantities of poop.
What is the genesis of "That's not funny"?
Althouse said…
“They're not holding back, worrying that something might be stupid or weird or disgusting.”
For me, that’s the appeal of commenting on Althouse in a nutshell.
My high school Latin teacher suggested an alternate scientific name for humans -- Animal ridens.
Children have a gay predisposition that is unfettered by the burden of expectation of swimming with the sharks.
Boys and girls are conceived without the belief that a queer character is not a weird imperative and so the burden of responsibility lands lightly on their shoulders.
“Aristotle, Wittgenstein, Sartre.” Interesting how these lefty “intellectuals” seem to call on the classic education they happily deny today’s children.
Roy T and me,
We used to sit together for hours.
All we did was laugh.
I used to take care of one of my great-nephews who was about ten to twelve weeks old. I propped him up on my knee where he could see me and then we used to sit together and I would make funny noises and he would laugh. We did it for hours while his mother napped, it's one of my favorite memories.
The whole point of the story is that he knew at that age that I wasn't speaking English and that I was making jokes. Pretty young for that, some say. But I've always that babies learn the inflections of their native language in the womb.
A child is unburdened by his choice.
It's the "emperor's new clothes" thing. Children see obvious realities -- or at least contradictions and inconsistencies -- that adults have learned not so see. Unlearn what adults have learned and you could be Jerry Seinfeld or Steve Martin or Steven Wright.
Back when we were interviewing comedians for our mag, we noticed that ten seemed to be a turning point for most. That was the age at which people "discovered" that they had a sense of humor." Of course, what they actually discovered was that, at the age of 10, "shit got real" and sacasm and irony entered the picture. All these under-10's with their funny noises a shit jokes are pikers. We get the old switcheroo, we understand what the adults are laughing at. At this point, he amateurs drop out and can't keep up with those who underrstand _real_ humor. Kinda like finding out you can't hi a major league fastball. It was fun while it lasted.
My four-year-old grandson can make his 5 month-old baby sister laugh uproariously----much more so than can her mom dad, and grandparents. Go figure.
Babies laugh- it seems to be an integral emotion wired right into us. It takes 13-17 years of intense indoctrination to remove that sense of humor but it only works on the 20% that are hard core leftists.
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