Sometimes Laughter Isn't Enough

    When I first read the e-mail, I thought it was a belated April Fool’s Day joke: “I am deeply saddened to inform you that Michele Dufault, a Yale senior in Saybrook College, died last night…” Reality finally sank in after ten minutes of frantic searching online for more information. She was really gone. The entire day was filled with an empty feeling as my attention wandered during my first two lectures. I kept expecting Michele to suddenly appear out of nowhere and declare that everything is fine. But that never happened and I struggled to accept what happened.
    My day took a turn for the better when a friend of mine visited me for Bulldog Days. I was glad for the distraction it provided. We joked about how overwhelming Bulldog Days can be and how underwhelming high school is by comparison. I tried to keep up my usual self around my friends by making jokes and laughing because I thought laughter can keep the emotional pain. And I was right. Laughing distracted me from reality as if the tragedy never happened. For me, laughter served as a personal defense mechanism by reducing the emotional burdens that I had to endure.
    However, laughter could only serve as a temporary in a tragedy like this. It works as long as the laugher is disconnected from reality, a situation that cannot last. When I walked into the BRoom (band room) Wednesday evening, I was greeted by a somber atmosphere. The usual scene of chitchat and general merriment was replaced by subdued silence—which can be surprisingly striking. Laughter was brief and forced. Our collective grief and tears trumped the soothing effects of laughter. But I’m okay with it. Because sometimes sorrow and tears are the best psychological relief a person has in times of tragedy. Their effects can be much more powerful than laughter, which offers only temporary relief. True closure can come only after accepting the reality of the situation and realize the need to keep going.
    I will miss her.

Should we be laughing right now?

    Since the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, many people have come under fire for making jokes related to this disaster. The most prominent example is probably comedian Gilbert Gottfried, who was fired from his job as the voice of the Aflak duck for such jokes. This brings up a question we often ask ourselves: is it too soon to laugh during or after a tragedy?
    The answer is no, but how a joke is delivered may make it offensive to others and thus lose its potential healing powers.
    Humor and laughter play a key role in reducing stress. There is an easy explanation to why laughing temporarily takes our minds away from reality and helps us to physically and mentally relax. When people laugh, their minds are completely occupied with the joke's contents as well as why it's funny. Thus when an individual laugh, his mind is completely focused on the joke and loses track of other things happening around him. Laughter, especially during the time of tragedy, serves as a defense mechanism for the victims by relieving stress from the trauma. It is an outlet for people to express their emotions - grief, anger - so they wouldn't overwhelm the individual mentally. When these emotions become bottled up, an individual may gradually lose his sanity over time.
    However, there must be certain restrictions on the jokes made during a tragedy. Jokes aimed directly at the victims are not acceptable and generally offensive. Rather than helping to relieve the stress of the victims, these jokes seem to derive pleasure from the pain and misery. Furthermore, how a joke delivered to its audience also plays an important role in how it will be perceived. Gottfried's jokes regarding the earthquake were made on Twitter, meaning that everyone can see them. A problem with this is that not everyone shares the same taste and judgement toward the same joke. What is humorous and stress-reducing  for one person can be tasteless and disturbing to others. The joker must always keep in mind how others will react to the joke.

Hey, you started it

    After some research for this blog post, I decided that I need to expand my original definition of "defense mechanism." Laughter not only dampens the mood during a particularly serious situations, it may also points out to the innate ridiculousness of that situation (though people may might fail to notice initially). So why does this qualify as a defense mechanism? In this case, I think it exposes the drama and madness around people as nothing more than the results of their own stupidity and ineptness.
    This is particularly true in movies. The following is an excerpt from Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, featuring the great comedian Peter Sellers. 

Russian Ambassador: There were those of us who fought against us. But in the end, we could not keep up with the expense involved in the arms race, the space race, and the peace race. And at the same time, our people grumbled for more nylons and washing machines. Our Doomsday scheme cost us just a small fraction of what we'd been spending on defense in a single year. But the deciding factor was when we learned that your country was working along similar lines, and we were afraid of a Doomsday gap.

Muffley: This is preposterous! I've never approved of anything like that!

Russian Ambassador: Our source was the New York Times.

    There are several factors that make this conversation funny. First, the Soviet government decides that the best way to save money is the construction of a Doomsday machine. The Soviets could easily reform their economic system yet they chose a path that led to the world's destruction. Ultimately, the Doomsday machine was not made to fend off a powerful enemy but rather to help make more "nylons and washing machines." The audience has no choice but to laugh at a solution that fails to solve the problem.
    The ineptness of the Soviet government is further exposed when the Ambassador reveals their source of information to be the New York Times. You'd expect the government to utilize more incredible sources (the KGB perhaps. Or why else waste all that time with James Bond?). But the mass media, which profits greatly through exaggeration and lies,  is taken seriously by the Soviets without doubt. Not only do we laugh at the idiotic Russians, but we also get a laugh at the expense at the media, whose tactics of using fear to emphasize its importance backfires.
    But we also need to keep in mind of the time period in which the movie was made. During the Cold War, the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) was peddled as a way to prevent nuclear warfare. Ironically, MAD requires that each country build massive piles of nuclear weapons. Kubrick shows how foolish this line of thinking is. His comedic approach makes people realize their faulty way of thinking. Furthermore, the failure of MAD exposes the incompetence of the government. The characters in the film are portrayed as bumbling buffoons incapable of making the right decision and their failures to do their job eventually cause the destruction of human civilization. Kubrick and Sellers awaken the audience to the reality, in which the people they entrust to lead them are not as capable as they think. Laughter not only forces people to realize this, but helps them to cope with reality. After all, if people perceive the ineptness of their government in a non-comedic situation, they will probably be paralyzed with fear and despair.

Laughter in the Holocaust

    Dr. Chaya Ostrower is a professor at Tel-Aviv University in Israel and her Ph.D thesis focused on the varying functions of laughter during the Holocaust. The paper is based on interviews with hundreds of Israeli Holocaust survivors. She divides the main role of laughter into the following: defense mechanism, aggression, sexuality, intellectual and social interactions. Many people have treated the subject of laughter during the Holocaust as taboo, but I think examining this topic would be a great way of revealing the function and importance of laughter.
    On laughter's role as a defense mechanism, Ostrower points out the importance of laughing as a way to deal with the overall traumatic experience in the concentration camp. One interviewee said, "there were many people who died before their time was up because they did not know how to laugh at themselves." An important distinction must be drawn here. Laughter by the prisoners was not aimed at the experiences they were undergoing, after all, there is nothing funny about the concentration camps. Rather, their laughter is directed at themselves and others around them. It helps to divert attention away from the atrocities happening all around them. People who refused to laugh probably had a difficult time understanding why they were subjected to such terrible and inconceivable things. Humor provides insulation against trauma and helps people to cope with it. For the prisoners in Auschwitz, laughing gives them hope and the strength to keep going.
    The various other functions further prove that laughter is an integral part of human existence. It helps people to persevere through madness by reminding them of their humanity. One of the main goals during the Holocaust of the Nazis was to erase the humanity within the prisoners - by humiliating them, by subjecting them to brutal conditions. However, as Ostrower points out, laughter created a sense of community among those who laughed. We consider the capacity to laugh at a joke as a sign of someone being a complete and normal huma being and an integral part of a functioning society. In a sense, the humor and the jokes were perhaps the last connection many prisoners had with the world they once knew.
   Ostrower's paper makes similar arguments to Kessey's quote in the previous post. Both emphasizes the importance of laughter as a way of dealing with the madness and cruelty in the world. Kessey's point that those who could not laugh eventually succumbs to the pressure runs parallel with the point that many during Holocaust died because they were incapable of dealing with the stress.

We live in the cuckoo's nest

"You have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy." - from Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

    The above quote was from a narrative by Chief Bromden, who has been locked up in a mental asylum for years, during a fishing trip organized by a new patient, the rebellious Randle McMurphy. Prior to the arrival of McMurphy, the patients (as well as the staff) are intimidated into submissions by the domineering Nurse Ratched, who does not hesitate to deprive the patients of the most basic needs - food, medicine, etc. - and subjects them to electro-shock therapy and even lobotomy. In other words, she's willing to do anything to maintain her absolute control over the asylum. 

    However, McMurphy constantly undermines her authority with his antics and his ability to inspire the other patients. His most important and effective tool is his laughter. In a place constantly filled with chaos and madness - caused by patients and Ratched - McMurphy is able to maintain his sanity through laughter. The Chief implies that for many of those locked up in the asylum, social pressure and oppression drives people insane rather than their inner nature. Ratched and her staff's cruel treatments of the patients are constant reminders to those locked up that the world they live in is miserable and they have virtually no chance of escaping from it. Those who succumbs to the uncontrollable external factors eventually becomes "plumb crazy." I think that "crazy" here refers not only a loss in mental capacity but also inability to cope with reality. This is obvious in the case of the Chief, who pretends to be deaf and mute at the beginning of the novel. 

    McMurphy's roaring laughter reminds the patients that even in a chaotic world, misery doesn't necessarily have to be the only outcome of life. Eventually, the entire asylum follows his lead and helps to end Ratched's reign of terror (though this comes at the price of McMurphy's life). In a cruel and repressive world, people need laughter to give them the energy to keep going and hope for a better future. When Ratched robs the patients of their courage to laugh, they see the world as it is rather than how it should be. But McMurphy and his laughter gradually awaken the patients' desire for a life that they want but couldn't achieve. 

    I think that this is a great example to support my claim that laughter serves as a defense mechanism against physical and mental pains, especially those caused by circumstances beyond a person's control. For McMurphy and many people in the real world, laughter is the only way to cope with a society seemingly filled by madness and cruelty. "Laughing it off" seems like a flippant attitude toward difficulties life, but that kind of attitude might be best way to deal with it. Not doing so will slowly but surely deprive a person's strength and willingness to embrace reality. The change in the attitude and behavior of McMurphy's fellow patients points to this conclusion.

   So the next time life knocks you down, don't mope. Laugh it off and move on. 

Why I'm writing

This blog is part of my assignment for Writing Seminar I: Laughter taught at Yale University. The class is aimed at understanding "what is laughter and what does it mean?" and I will attempt to explain and analyze one of the most important functions of laughter: defense mechanism. In the context of this blog, "defense mechanism" will primarily deal with ways of reducing emotional stress, pain, and embarrassment.
So why is this important? I think that sometimes for certain situations in life, laughter may be the only method to prevent us from being overwhelmed by things that we cannot control. For example, when someone slips and falls, the outbreak of laughter might be that person's attempt at reducing embarrassent or even physical pain. One can argue that it is inappropriate to laugh in certain situations to laugh. But in some cases, laughter might be interpreted as a psychological response to prevent a mental meltdown. Hopefully, I can find enough evidence to prove my claim.