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SECTION:
Laughter in East and West
Chair of the section/Suggestions, Abstracts, Contributions to:
Email: Han-Soon Yim (Seoul)
ABSTRACT: "In contrast to Western theater," so states Otto C. A. zur Nedden, "the tragic" is lacking in the old theatrical art of India. Here the hero may not die, a tragic outcome is even forbidden. The preference of Indians for comedy, which may be deduced from their antipathy toward the tragic, shows their inclination to optimism, a tendency that in a certain respect appears to be applicable to all of Asia. For example, take in addition the so-called "oriental smile" as a starting point, by which is meant that Asians would react with a smile after making a serious mistake, to which Europeans would react with horror. Incapable of the quick change of facial expression characteristic of Europeans, the smile of the Asians also continues longer. Many old and new statues of Buddha in the far-eastern temples also confirm this same phenomenon, in that they more or less smile, and, in contrast to Christian altar pictures, in which very often the painful and sad scene of Christ carrying the cross is represented in the center. It would interesting to investigate, whether on the basis of these representations one could develop a workable thesis of the Asiatic preference for laughing and for comedy and also document it, if possible, in anthropological terms. In complete contrast, to be sure, one does not find in Korea the habit of smiling, which in the age of the cold asphalt culture could contribute some lightness to the population there. Solely in the interest of tourism the saleswomen in the department stores are supposed to, so one could once read in the newspapers, be trained to such a degree that at least in the year of the World Championship, they should smile just as friendly at the foreign customers as the Westerners smile.
The high esteem for smiling in every day life suggests that laughter together with the comic and comedy belong to the universal qualities of human activity. This idea touches on nothing else than Bachtin's concept of "dialogue," which, in connection with the idea of the popular "Laugh culture of the carnival," has produced a decisive change in the discourse about the comic and comedy. Even the noted smile, you see, contains a moment of emancipation, which goes beyond the traditional superiority or contrast theory of laughter and suggests, for example, the unifying effect of Lessing's "true comedy" or that "highest freedom of the spirit," which Schiller attributed to comedy. For the smile seeks contacts and, similar to laughter with its well-known contagiousness, is intended to overcome one's separateness as well as the exclusion of the other. Thus, one should look for the universal unifying aspect in the phenomenon of laughter itself as well as in the final stage of the previous research findings, in order to conceive, if possible, a kind of unifying deep structure of laughter for the East as well as for the West. A much more promising beginning point for this approach is the well-known paradox that the comic in comedy is aimed at the intellect, but the attention is directed at the physical. Laughter as an expression of intellectual perception of a comic subject or phenomenon is realized normally by means of specific individual sounds, facial expressions and gestures, that is, by the body, just as the comical in its fully realized, comprehensible form occurs only in the comic theater by means of sensual presentation.
One of the most current themes of research into the comic is the question of the mediation or, as the case may be, of the mutual penetration of the two basic forms of the comic: a "comic which consists of putting someone down, of ridicule as an intellectual phenomenon," on the one hand, and, on the other hand, a "comic of building someone up, of affirmation of the oppressed underdog and outcast person and thus the recognition of the pleasure principle" (Bernhard Greiner).The validity or invalidity of the dichotomy of both forms will likewise be subjected to a through examination as well as the "medial bases" or .the unity theories of the comic, which, among others, Joachim Ritter has proposed. He wrote: "What transpires and is understood in laughter is this mysterious connection of the trivial to existence; it is comprehended and played out not in the manner of delimiting seriousness, which can only keep it as the trivial away from itself, but in such a way that it becomes visible and audible as something that belongs to the excluding order." What is informative here is the proof that in the comic "the identity of something standing opposite and excluded with the excluding agency" is created. With the insight into the (dialectical) unity of excluding reason (norm, authority, order, idea, appearance, ideology) and of the excluded areas of life, which reason considers foreign and trivial (body, sexuality, vitality, appearance, reality), the limitation of a rational approach to the world is made evident. Reason, which "with the fixing of its sense of being excludes the infinite," makes one, according to Ritter, "conscious of the limit of reason," whereby its limitation is shown in the fact that it "is separated from the fullness of that life which it can only encounter as something trivial and worthless." The investigation here will be to show that this theory of laughter can also be fruitful for the understanding of the "Asiatic preference."
Of course, it will still be necessary to ask critically, whether, in view of the currency of the newly examined ideas of Freud, Ritter, Bachtin and others, the still older, preserved theoretical beginnings such as Lessing's principle of the contrast of appearance and reality, Bergson's structural analysis of the comic, Hegel's and Marx's conception of the anachronistic comic, etc. have already become untenable. They contain lasting elements, which are still essentially of undiminished usefulness for the understanding of the structure and effect of the comic. For the formulation of a deep structure of the comic, we can above all still consult with great profit Henri Bergson, whose theory of the comic was called the classical view of the 20th century. His basic idea of vitalism is more relevant today than ever and can even be reinterpreted and transposed to accord with Bachtin's culture of laughter. For Bergson, you see, it is always the mechanical in the liveliness that creates the comical: "Du mécanique plaqué sur de vivant; voilà une croix où il faut s'arrêter, image centrale d'où l'imagination rayonne dans des directions divergentes." This central picture of the comic can be productively applied to the interpretation of European as well as Asian examples, even if one may not accept his concept of comedy, which is mainly based on Molière, in all details as a social corrective. His opposition to the mechanization of life, to rigidity, automatism and distraction as comic weaknesses of people as well as his idea of real life being constantly in flux remind one, for example, of theTaoism of old China, which, using analogous pictures and metaphors and with the famous picture of water out front, turned against the Confucian organizational principle, which was felt to be hostile to life.
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