Laughter

 

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

There are two types of people in the world, the agelasts and the hypergelasts- the non – laugher and the overlaugher. One wears a mask of a face and the other makes his face overwide to the accompaniment of high pitched sounds. Both are non- human, will of the wisp, not easy to understand. Laughter is a rebound of hilarity, a release of joyous feelings in gay abandon. It denotes a state of feeling, thrilling and amiable. Ancient scholars and sages in East and West have said, - he who laughs lives long. When a person laughs 315 facial muscles function but when a person cries only 13. Based on this the Grotowsky School of acting trains actors in muscle control and postures.

There are, however, many people who do not laugh even if their fancy is tickled by an incongruous event or an event of genuine bawdy banter. There are some who maintain gravity and suppress their true emotions. But normally a person laughs when he sees the mechanical in the natural, that is when something rigid and springy like the jack in the box happens. For instance when a healthy person especially a fat women slips on a banana peel while walking on a road and falls, your first impulse is to laugh. Unless she happens to be your mother. Laughter assumes the anaesthesia of the heart, that is non-involvement of personal emotions. Laughter is mainly a group activity. The social conscience disapproves of a peculiar or singular trait in a person to reform him. Any person who grows out of proportions with the social norms or behaves or functions above his station in life, he transgresses the accepted social praxis: the comic spirit eyes malignly at him. Laughter is the expression of a collective social psyche. You must have noticed that in a cinema hall when the auditorium is full, you burst out in full throated laughter at a comic scene. When the auditorium is half full or the viewers are scattered, your laughter is less boisterous. This happens because your social conscience is subdued. When you are secluded in a corner or when you are alone.

Laughter is a spontaneous psychic process and its quality depends on the level of sophistication of a society. In a primitive society laughter is rare as the consolidation of values, stabilization of societal norms takes time. When the middle class gets stabilized the norms of social behaviour become fixative in character. Laughter is not a moral judgement, it is a light hearted corrective measure which removes oddities and singularities from social behaviour. At the same time wit and intellectual humour too play a part in creating comic situation. Wit is the laughter of the mind. Alliteration when overused also provokes laughter.

Repetition of words or expressions at regular intervals after a time gets boring and this social boredom provokes the laughter of disapproval. If a teacher in the classroom says ‘for example’ after every two sentences, the students laugh. Similarly repetitive behaviour or appearance at a particular place without ostensible reason also makes us laugh.  The reason is mechanisation of a rigid pattern. Man by nature is flexible and dynamic, and therefore, whenever it shows symptoms of a machine or a string puppet his action provokes ridicule. In an office or classroom or a meeting situation if a person speaks or behaves in a manner transgressing the norms, people ‘condemn’ his ridiculous behaviour by volleys of laughter.

We have to however distinguish between ‘to laugh with’ and ‘to laugh at’. We laugh with a speaker whose witticism, sarcasm or tongue-in -cheek statement evokes intellectual sympathy. When your son or daughter tops the examination or gets a job you become happy and laugh in joy. A smiling thanksgiving to your deity also goes with it. This laughter is an expression of joy. But when a group of women in a ladies club sit together and laugh aloud continuously for five to ten minutes the dispassionate onlooker smiles not in joy but at the group of ladies who think laughing is a healthy exercise which prolongs life. Others go on clapping like an American audience after a philharmonic orchestra performance for full five minutes by way of appreciation. There are yet others who make mouths, pouting the lips in different ways to keep the face wrinkle free, in their bit to defeat time: if you are not a part of it you laugh. Shakespeare’s Puck would have said , ‘ O’ Lord What Fools these Mortals Be!’

But life is meant for laughter. Treat life as a funny game- wipe your hands across your mouth and laugh...  The world does not take care of itself and will not bother about you.