Editor’s Note: The following article originally appeared in the College of Arts and Sciences 2024 Fall Alumni Magazine.

Throughout history, there have been many theories to explain the role of humor and why we find some things funny. The oldest, purported by Aristotle, Plato and Hobbes, is the superiority theory, which argues that we find others’ misfortunes and shortcomings funny because they make us feel superior. What do you think?

KF: I think some political satire falls into that category. When you watch the late- night talk shows, many of the hosts employ satire to poke at political figures in a way that positions the rest of us as superior.

TC: A recent, huge social media hit was “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X. It’s a song that is in many respects poking fun at country music cliches sung by a queer Black male singer. So, if you were inclined to laugh along with someone putting country music in this odd context, you might feel superior for being in on the joke. Others might feel they are being made fun of and be put off.

SS: Shakespeare was certainly very interested in the psychology of humor and humiliation, especially in shared humor at the expense of another. Consider Twelfth Night’s humiliation of the stick-in-the mud, uppity steward Malvolio, who is cruelly pranked by lower order members of his household. It is hilarious in its exposure of Malvolio’s fantasy life and his ludicrous erotic and social aspirations, and the audience seems to enjoy the joke more fully because we watch the pranksters and the pranked at once, as if this somehow exonerates us from spectating on Malvolio’s misfortune.

Some say people laugh to release pent-up psychic energy. In particular, Freud argued that humor permits the expression of normally taboo impulses and desires. Thoughts?

KF: That’s certainly true in stand-up, which allows people to express things that they ordinarily are not allowed to express, particularly in a time where there is controversy over the bounds of acceptable speech. That’s why stand-up comedy is generally more effective than a canned joke you can tell anywhere—because it taps into emotions, anxieties, desires or aggressive feelings.

SS: Shakespeare used lots of ribald and scatological jokes, especially about cuckolds and venereal disease. But I don’t think it’s limited to the vulgar or taboo. Humor was used in early modern writing across genres as a way to cope with difficult life experiences—grief, illness, death. Laughter was—as it still is— understood to be a good antidote to lift and lighten heavy spirits that were believed to cause or worsen disease, both physical and spiritual.

TC: In popular music, I think of “Poison Ivy” by the Coasters, which was popular in the 1950s. It employed witty wording and used poison ivy as a metaphor for venereal disease, which certainly wouldn’t have been talked about in a popular song. Figuring that out is what makes the song funny.

So, things become funny when they’re not what we expect?

TC: Parody is a good example because it plays on familiar conventions and tropes that are given an unexpected twist. This is Spinal Tap poked fun at the excess of rock masculinity and sexuality that had built up over the 1970s and early 1980s and was easy to laugh at. A song that immediately comes to mind is Weird Al Yankovic’s “Amish Paradise,” which is his parody of “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio. Placing a rap song in an Amish community is an unexpected twist on a familiar convention that is able to draw laughs.

KF: The comedian John Mulaney has a great sketch about a horse loose in a hospital, which was a brilliant way of describing how people felt when Trump was president and no one knew what was going to happen next. “There’s never been a horse loose in a hospital before.” It was very effective because it was an unexpected metaphor.

SS: My first book was on Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, a 400-year-old medical text, that is often laugh-out-loud hilarious. While most of the book is what we might call “serious,” I do think there’s much in it that’s deliberately funny.

So, the element of surprise is an important component of humor?

TC: It goes back to the unexpected. In mainstream music, that could be as simple as clever wordplay, puns and metaphors, through absurdist lyrics, like the B-52s’ “Rock Lobster,” or the deadpan vocals used by the New Wave group The Flying Lizards in their cover of “Money.” It’s the juxtaposition and incongruity of knowing the original and hearing it done by a monotone British female singer that makes it humorous.

KF: Incongruity is a big element of stand-up—something out of the blue that’s not expected or a non sequitur. In my stand-up class, students always try to write transitions. I tell them they don’t need transitions because sometimes the lack of a transition is funny in itself. If you jump from one topic to another and it’s surprising, that in itself is a laugh.

Does sharing a joke with others make it funnier?

SS: Certainly, Shakespeare’s plays were written for a social setting on which the jokes absolutely depend. The pleasures of a “bad” joke capitalize on social energies and emotions that have to do with social norms. Live theater also makes seemingly silly things thrilling or wonderful in ways you would not expect adults to fine pleasurable. Take, for instance, the myriad versions of disappearing and reappearing gags that seem like variations of peek-a-boo.

TC: A lot of the comedy that happens between music performers and listeners is in live settings, with the artist interacting with the audience. A heavy metal riff at a concert is not in itself funny unless it’s performed unexpectedly by a country artist, for example, as a musical joke. It all comes down to having an understanding of the artist and their references.

KF: The shared joke only works if both sides find it funny. In order to make you laugh, you have to know what you’re laughing at. I invited students to see a Jewish comedian who used a lot of Hebrew and Yiddish terminology. A lot of the non-Jews didn’t get it. Jewish humor actually evolved because Jews were outsiders and had a different perspective. Borscht Belt humor was specifically targeted to a Jewish audience.

Three professors are sitting around talking about humor. What’s the punchline?

KF: Humor is truth told in jest.

TC: A great song can make you cry—sometimes tears of laughter.

SS: The line “The worst is not so long as we can say, ‘This is the worst’” in King Lear can be delivered as a statement of existential horror or as a Monty Pythonesque punchline. The latter is often much more moving.