Anchors

Wikipedia informs us that we laugh to relieve tension and "physic energy."  In this case, then, I'd say that the tension we experience here is the result of our empathy for Collins and Fisher.  We identify with them, and release the discomfort through laughter.  Who has not had prolonged agonizing moments in the spotlight like this?  

* One time I hit four different kids with pitches over just a few innings in a Little League game.  Each was more humiliating than the previous.  The way I remember it, parents in the bleachers started murmuring after the second one.  After the fourth downed batter I was mercifully pulled out.  At the time, this did not seem funny.  I'm sure I laughed about it with the team later that season.

* At a job fair once, a principal asked me asked me what my 4th-grade reading program looked like.  I just kept saying the word "books."  I started out in Spanish (she wanted to see my proficiency), saying, "My reading program  is....Well, so we have books...I mean of course we have books, ha-ha....I mean, I choose a book for the class...and we have a different...different books, I mean...I mean, so..." and she said "go ahead and tell me in English" and that made no difference. Zip.  I said the same thing, with even more stammering.  The truth was, I hadn't prepared a way to explain my reading-class methods.  I didn't have a method.  If I did, it was: read a short story each day from the primer and then after lunch another chapter from our novel, and let's make notes of the challenging words/good turns of phrase, and now here's some questions of varying difficulty that I wrote this morning before school that make you go back to the text, and now let's explain in a paragraph how the kid from My Side of the Mountain is different from what we know so far about the kids hiding out in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, and yes, John, that's true, isn't it, most of our books do have to do with somebody running away.  

Now, had I just said that to the principal, it wouldn't have been too uncomfortable, but instead there was an Annie Hall-like conversation of subtitles running beneath whatever I was saying about "books" and it went like this: 

"We will not hire you."  

"I know. Let me say 'books' again though."  

"Okay, but only one more time, because the woman behind you in line look like a real candidate for this job."  

Afterwards, I went to the corner of the gymnasium where the "psychic energy" poured forth like a geyser.  Then I took a second and prepared an answer should somebody ask me this again. 

Other examples of tension-relieving laughter:

* Little J screaming and cracking up during a game of peak-a-boo.

* The collective tittering and exhaling following a fright in a suspenseful movie.

*  The way some high-school kids have a hard time keeping composure during any kind of project presentation.

Wikipedia also has this to say about laughter:

For example, this is how this theory works in the case of humor: a joke creates an inconsistency, the sentence appears to be not relevant, and we automatically try to understand what the sentence says, supposes, doesn't say, and implies; if we are successful in solving this 'cognitive riddle', and we find out what is hidden within the sentence, and what is the underlying thought, and we bring foreground what was in the background, and we realize that the surprise wasn't dangerous, we eventually laugh with relief.

This - the inconsistency, the idea of the undangerous surprise - makes me think immediately of the popular and hilarious "Shreds" videos, in which well-regarded musicians appear to be playing spectacularly poorly.  The surprise is that these great musicians sound terrible, and it's ultimately "undangerous" because we realize it's not real.  

Let's close with this one.  Tell me, do you think the wiki-explanation of the laugh mechanism applies here?  I do:

 

Comments

[Emily]

This is fantastic. Just, like... (scratches arm) ...you know, everything. Is. It would have been easier to see if the video fit the wiki description if you hadn't told us the joke first. So... yeah... Hi. I'm Camille's sister. I like wurds. Pocket door made me laugh and feel better at the same time. No, not dangerous. No, not. E

[Tom]

Thank you for reading and for this feedback Emily. Yes I see now, telling the joke first prevents a pure experience of the joke, and so makes testing the wiki-definition impossible. I also see that both sisters are analytical and candid and helpful as well as delightfully dotty.