Julian Hanich’s essay on the phenomenology of cinematic laughter discusses a variety of cinematic laughing types that occur as either film laughter (in response about a movie or piece of media) or cinema laughter (in response to other viewers). Type 4, which Hanich describes as comprehension laughter, or laughing as a signal of understanding, contains two subsets. The first is the laughing response from the vain viewer, who, as he describes, is “proud to have spotted the comic core”, and thus “joyfully or rather narcissistically honors his or her own insight and communicates it to the other viewers”. This viewer is in opposition to the selfless viewer, who “altruistically communicates that there is something peculiar to understand”.
Brian Griffin, the Griffin family’s sentient dog from the TV show Family Guy, is known for being politically contrarian and a performative activist. He consistently wishes for something to fight against without valid or passionate reasoning and wishes to assimilate himself with higher social and intellectual statuses.
The gag I chose to represent this moment of vain comprehension laughter refers to an episode whereby Brian and Stewie (the family’s youngest albeit wisest member) are exploring multiverses and stumble upon the Washington Post political cartoon universe. Already, the gag relies on a viewer’s understanding of contemporary American politics and printed media. The Washington Post is understood, at least in the Family Guy context, to be traditionally liberal, though criticizable for its reductive, preachy, and unclear political editorial cartoons. It is exemplified in this scene through the obvious labelling of objects and characters rather than trusting the audience to grasp these metaphors by themselves.
As Stewie reads aloud the different political elements that play into this scene, such as the Mccain-Feingold dinner platter representing the Mccain Feingold Act or the bloated cat symbolizing the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), Brian succumbs to a hearty and vain long-lasting chuckle.
Brian’s character is emblematic of surface-level political engagement. This engagement he presents with politics demonstrates more about his own self-perceptive enlightenment than any actual political understanding. Stewie catches on to this smug attitude and, in a way, can be a version of what Hanich calls deictic laughter. His crude response to Brian’s faux-intellectualism signals a much more nuanced understanding of the self-satisfactory editorial cartoons and informs the viewer of his social distinction from other unknowing viewers as much as Brian’s misunderstanding.
Julian Hanich, “Chuckle, Chortle, Cackle: A Phenomenology of Cinematic Laughter,” The Audience Effect: On the Collective Cinema Experience (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), 189-216.
The fact that Brian begins the segment describing that multiverse as a drug trip and switches to laughter only after Stewie begins describing everything also points towards the shallowness of this comprehension laugh. Beyond comprehension, there is also a degree to which Brian could be attempting a mimicry laughter: he gives the laugh he imagines someone would give from his aspired-to intelligentsia position. Whatever the case, Family Guy makes very clear its position that there is nothing comically valuable to laugh at in its target.
I think this is a great impression of laughter in attempt to show comprehension. I have been in many situations where I’ve laughed at something Ive merely understood just to project that I have. Nice to know Brian has too