11 Funny Things About Humor (and How it Can Save the World)

I try to write humor, among other things, for young readers. I did a thesis on “Surprise” which is the big daddy of humor, and so studied funny kid lit stuff like CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS for months. It was a blast. I continue to ponder how it works and doesn’t, and how to create it. Here’s what I’ve learned.

The funniest thing of all about humor is that it is powered by unpleasant truth, cruelty, darkness, fear, despair and shock. Put that in your pipe.

Carol Burnett said, “Comedy is pain plus time.”

According to E.B. White, “Humor plays close to the big hot fire which is the truth, and the reader feels the heat.”

And Mark Twain said, poignantly, “The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.”

2. Therefore, it’s downright ironic that it’s dismissed as light and frivolous.

3. Humor’s pretty black and white: either it works and we laugh, or at least smile, or it fails. Often miserably.

Football coaching legend Lou Holtz said, “The problem with having a sense of humor is that often the people you use it on aren't in a very good mood.”

4. Humor is fragile: It’s entirely subjective, so therefore not only cultural, but influenced by maturity, intelligence, education and context. With or without friends and alcohol. It can be transitory and ephemeral and is often untranslatable (and I’m not even talking about languages).

One man’s guffaw is another woman’s groan and a third person’s confused blink.

An agent posted on her website, “Don’t submit humor that’s not funny.”

5. It’s hard. If you’ve ever tried it, in any form, you know humor is hard to do at all, let alone well.

6. Humor is risky. See 3, 4, and 5.

7. In literature, film, and theater, humor tends to be undervalued critically, with a few exceptions such as the SCBWI Sid Fleischman award, Lambda Literary Award for Humor, and the Canadian Leacock Medal for Humour. Readers and audiences love it and will pay handsomely for it. But critics tend to be more dismissive. Mel Gilden, a TV and adult and children’s fiction writer said, “Look at any list of arts awards… Pulitzers, Newberys, Nebulas, Edgars, any list you like. You'll see that most of the award winners are serious dramatic tours-de-force about the human spirit in conflict with great adversity. Humor, on the other hand, is thought to be trivial. If it's funny, it can't be important.” See number 2, the irony of being dismissed as frivolous.

8. Screenwriter guru Robert McKee calls comedy “The Angry Art.” He says it springs from a mindset that sees humans and our behavior as absurd and assumes that we will inevitably screw things up. This world view is in contrast with the dramatist’s, who admires and respects human behavior and believes that “even under the best of circumstances, humans are noble and magnificent creatures.” Now that’s kind of funny.

Humor is such a wonderful thing, helping you realize what a fool you are but how beautiful that is at the same time.

Lynda Barry

9. Humor really is the best medicine. Academics continue to probe its powerful healing effects. Gelotology is the study of the effects of laughter on the body. (They’re good.) Did you know there is laughter yoga? And not surprisingly, there is humor and laughter therapy, where it’s paramount that the therapist laugh with the patient and not at the patient.

10. Humor is Grace. It keeps the world sane. Humor allows us to look straight into the darkness and deflect it with a snort.

11. Last and definitely not least, it may just save the world. See number 9 and 10 .

In prehistoric times, mankind often had only two choices in crisis situations: fight or flee. In modern times, humor offers us a third alternative; fight, flee - or laugh. Robert Orben