This blog post is going to attempt to explore the types of laughter Julian Hanich explains about the cinema audience found within the context of an on-screen character- please don’t laugh at me. The types I have found most apt to my argument are, type 1 (amusement),2 (relief), 3 (conversation), 7 (distain), and 10 (mimicry) – going back and editing I didn’t talk about this, but it is included because the character is trying to appear more human. The idea of ‘laughing down’ at the comic object creates/signals a form of distance from the person laughing. “Laughter as a smug sign of superiority.” (Hanich,197) This concept is explained under the conversational type of laughter and best sets up the idea that laughing is not always joyous for some people. All three of the readings reference Bergson’s idea (or accidental conclusion) that laughing itself is mechanical, “We are moved to respond mechanically to stimuli.” (Parvulescu,146). This leads me on to my example… The Grinch (the one who stole Christmas).
The Grinch is a character who is socially inept. He doesn’t have social interaction and thus ‘laughs down’ at others or often to himself. Hanich asks, “After all, with whom would I communicate in my empty living room?” (195) The Grinch doesn’t understand or has the stimuli to laugh organically or spontaneously because of his solitude. He laughs mechanically, he cackles to himself or at people, almost mimicking what he thinks laughing should be. He laughs like a child, “Laughing children often throw their arms about. Grown-ups may hold their sides and slap their thighs or poke their elbows in their neighbor’s ribs.” (Elias, 284). This leads to a point Elias makes about how children laugh, “We are on safer ground with observations of children who, if they are not broken in rather early, often laugh quite unashamedly in triumph over others and at other people’s misfortune.” (293)
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The Grinch’s isolation is due to his humiliation as a child. Yet it is the only form of laughter he has had access to and in turn has learned. This disdain style of laughter suggests that “By laughing depreciatively I can further ‘degrade’ someone who I already consider lowly due to his or her inappropriate or ridiculous behavior, or I can ‘pull down’ and ‘put in the right place’ below me someone who I think has put himself in an unduly elevated position.” (204) The Grinch’s peers had put themselves above him by laughing at him as a child but now he (in the position like someone in a cinema with his elevated outside view) ‘laughs down’ at them.
To move away from this concept there is another great example that relates to a section in Hanich’s book about the similarity of screaming and laughing, type 2 (relief). In this film, the Grinch builds a sleigh but almost dies when it first takes off.
“By laughing – after all, an expansive outward movement of the body that goes along with exhalation – we try to get rid of what seems to be too close” (196) This also supports the idea of what laughing is, and as the Grinch himself says “Ha! Almost lost my cool there.”