Humour? Be cautious!

Cheeniya · Jun 24, 2014

My dear Kerman
Slipping on a banana skin and tripping over a stone are two different things. The latter causes great alarm in the spectators who run to the victim's rescue to make him stand on his legs instead of on his head! We make solicitous enquiries about a possible injury in any part of his body and look thankfully heavenwards if he answers in the negative.

But slipping on a banana peel has an element of gymnastics that endears the victim to us. When he steps on the peel, he starts moving forward at jet speed without using his legs. This sudden onward motion makes him look for something to hold on so that he can have some control over his motion. Not finding any, he continues his journey until he finds himself on the ground. Such unexpected drama in our otherwise dull lives makes us laugh gleefully. I remember Peter Sellers doing it effectively in one of the Pink Panther movies.

Let us all stand up for decent humour. There is so much fun around us. Why ever have it at someone's expense?
Sri

nikitamjain · Jun 24, 2014

Very well said sir,
Its always good to be humorous rather than serious looking all the time, and at the same time its important to know where to draw the line. Humor should be such that it tickles not just u, but your audience as well, rather than finding it embarrassing or insulting.

Cheeniya · Jun 24, 2014

My dear Mindi
Know your audience! How true you are Mindi! I have experienced this in my own life when I was on the faculty of SBI's Staff College for a while. If I had a lecture session of a two-hour duration, I would spend the first 20 minutes trying to gauge the mood of the class. This mood would not be constant. It would be different at different stages of day. The worst session would be the one immediately after lunch when most of the students would be following Dr.Kalaam's advice of dreaming. Quite a few would have perfected the technique of sleeping with their eyes wide open.

Coming to joke-cracker's point of view, it will be really unfortunate if he runs into some hyper-sensitive guys. I have come across how they interpret the jokes in a thousand negative ways and feel more and more offended. These sensitive guys are more harmful to the cause of humour than the sarcastic ones. To be honest with you, I find IL the safest place to try our humour!
Sri

Cheeniya · Jun 24, 2014

Dear nikita
Humour is the greatest bonding factor in human relationship particularly the self deprecating variety. As you rightly say, it is important to know where to draw the line. If we find that our humour tends to get misunderstood, then it is better to stop it instead of continuing and trying to answer accusations at a stage when people start feeling offended.
Sri

PriyaKathiravan · Jun 25, 2014

Nice observations, Sir. I totally agree with your sentiments.
Humour is the yeast that leavens the hard dough of life, making it softer, airy and easier to consume. But if that leavening agent turns out to be too strong flavoured or acidic, instead of subtle, it is no longer beneficial but worsens matters.
In my experience I have observed that only a few people have that genteel , truly humourous nature. Most others go by the Gowndamani Guideline : " Insulting others is best humour". Its nauseating to say the least. Its appalling how an atrocious " comedian" like Santhanam has attained such huge fan following in our land . What does it say about the state of our " noble culture" ?

I am not saying we have to be stuffy and longfaced, but we can choose more judiciously what aspects of life to laugh at. And in which circumstances.
Laughing at self is most harmless and also builds character, but unfortunately not many do it.
In our school, we have taken a firm decision not to teach the smaller kids the supposedly funny rhymes whose themes are violent or pitiable , like Three Blind Mice , The OldWoman in a Shoe, GooseyGoosey Gander, Jack and Jill , Humpty Dumpty etc. If children are told its alright to clap and laugh when a humpty or jack falls and breaks bones, what empathy for fellow beings can we expect to bloom in their adult hearts ?

Cheeniya · Jun 25, 2014

Dear Priya
Your comparison of humour to yeast is the best that I have heard so far. How much of it is necessary and in what form to make this life to be like 'sailing along the silvery moon' is something that cannot be stated like a formula. The genteel, truly humorous nature is the gift of God. I have seen the high esteem in which people who possess this gift are held by the society. I have also seen how people with a warped sense of humour are abhorred by others.

Gowndamani and Santhanam have just destroyed the hoary past of Tamil humour but then they'll justify it saying that they are giving what is expected of them. It has become a vicious circle. All that we can ensure is that we do not get trapped in this vicious circle.

The ability to laugh at ourselves is certainly a character builder as you point out. It certainly helps us tide over difficult situations in life. You have made a very valid point there about not teaching children such rhymes as may have violent themes. The seed for hurting humour is sown by exposing the children to such rhymes. An excellent observation, Priya.
Sri

Aria · Jun 30, 2014

Cheeniya, the advantage of coming in late is I get to read your spiraling banister of posts in the thread apart from newel post. And it is a great feeling I tell you to step on each post learning something new , discovering a new word , angling from new perspective, meeting a new character in that gradient you ascend us into.

I once had a colleague who practiced humour. He used to send me links to various sites on a daily basis on how to improve one's sense of humuor. Can humour be cultivated, okay may be one can understand different types of humour better - black comedy , dead pan, raunchy , slapstick but can one develop humour, isn't that natural. But he was convinced that reading a joke a day, executing a technique a day will make him more rident to swing life's jesty nubbins.

But but Cheeniya, isn't humour subjective for the practitioner? I mean a lot is subjective, any feeling and emotion, when you like a person you like everything about them; but if you dislike, a jest is a jibe, a compliment is a flatter, caveat is contradiction. Can humour be absolutely defined what is delicate, risible, offensive, bawdy and vulgar? When I hear a badly timed jape , I think what if the audience was different would it have been appreciated , never know but err..let me not drag you into my tourbillion of ticklish thoughts that travel obliquely for no reason.

Tell me one thing - how do you remember so many things -- always a mot juste , always a perfect quip, always a anecdote to sweep the readers in your posts. I forget half that I read and the rest I get confused. I don't know if humour can be cultivated, can be tamed and further more can be cautioned but I know that it cannot be superceded than what you possess and you have a sense of humour that amazes me everytime I read wondering Man! Oh Man! What is he, he is something, but what the name of Momus is he, who can write on any subject and nothing but a soft melody of sweetest laughter is provoked on reading.

Cheeniya · Jul 1, 2014

Aria
And the advantage of your coming in late is that I get a quality overview of all my rambling that makes me believe that I too make sense! All the pride that gets fed by your unstinted appreciation should actually be making me swell but unfortunately the pride for once finds itself totally nonplussed by the total lack of scope to make me swell any further!

Can humour be practiced? I strongly believe that sense of humour is an inborn quality. It gets transmitted through the DNA. Some have it and some do not. Among those who have it, some have the healthy kind and some have the hurting kind that focuses mainly on the shortcomings of others. Humour does not grow by reading jokes. It just gives you the ability to appreciate humour by being able to laugh at them. Real sense of humour is the ability to see the humorous side of everything in life. People with such an inbuilt ability become a fountainhead of jokes. They do not narrate jokes to elicit laughter in a gathering. Their very take on life will be laced with humour that just being with them brightens our lives. They belong to the category of people who make us happy when they come in.

You are absolutely right in expressing those doubts about the subjectivity of humour. I wonder if there is anything called objective humour. Because of its very subjective nature, humour has a thousand faces. The face that I see may be enchanting to me but you may find the same face repulsive. That is the reason why I have advised caution in the title of my Rambling while engaged in a light hearted banter. I have encountered quite a few situations when my friends suddenly turning hostile at some of my harmless jibes. It was then I realised that the reaction to humour depended on the other person’s mood too.

Your last paragraph just indicates that you are getting accustomed to my rambling! That is giving you the ability to see the all the fun in my writing, both intended and unintended! And when you express it in such wonderful terms, it is a reward that knocks at my door like Manna from the Heavens!
Sri

satchitananda · Jul 3, 2014

AS usual, I have arrived late. Or should I say fashionably late. No, I don't like being late, fashionable or staid. So I shall simply call myself Late Kate.

I agree with Aria when she says humour is subjective. What is seen as extremely funny by someone would be seen as a "kadi joke"/ poor joke / being silly by another. Again the question of whether one laughs at a joke or takes it amiss is something that will always render the person cracking a joke in an iffy position.

Again the same joke - let us take the example of bawdy jokes - would appear in bad taste, yucky to one at one point in time, but at another, the person might be able to see a kind of situational humour in the joke and split his/her side laughing.

Same goes for limericks. They are funny, but very often they have a double meaning. Depends on which side one decides to look at. Look at "Matilda ..." by Harry Belafonte, "Shame and scandal in the family ...". Take them light heartedly, they are funny. Take them seriously, one can start questioning the moral value of the song.

Jokes cracked about women, mils ... the female of the species in general are these days looked at askance by most feminists. I think I am a "moderate" feminist. Unless the jokes are particularly vulgar, it is quite funny once in a while to have a laugh at them. We women too have our stock of "Oh Men!" jokes.

Having said all this, yes, somehow the antics by clowns in a circus is very painful - the joke is at their expense only because they are afflicted physically in terms of height. Tun-tun (Uma Devi) in old Hindi films is another person whom I feel sad about - her weight was made fun of. Like Kelly said, I find it unacceptable that fat women, unmarried women "of a certain age" and not so "good looking" women are made fun of. Somehow the humour on our Indian stage and cinema (with certain exceptions e.g. P.L. Deshpande, Sai Paranjape, Hrishikesh Mukherjee .....) leaves a lot to be desired.

And on that note, apologizing profusely for my FB being as long as the OP, I sign off to go watch or read something that might make me laugh. :-D Maybe I shall seek out some older rambling of your's to accomplish that goal.

Cheeniya · Jul 4, 2014

My dear Late Kate,
I agree with your agreeing with Aria! Humour IS subjective. I will give you an example. All my friends know that I am a diehard fan of PG Wodehouse and many of them also say that I must be crazy to find him funny at all! In this very forum, many have asked me who is PGW in the same manner of Sharapova asking who is Sachin! Again the acceptance of a joke in good humour depends on the mood of the person, situation in which it is cracked and the place.

To be honest with you, bawdy jokes were a great favourite of mine for a major part of my life but now they leave me glum. Limericks, of course, are of a different class. They are mostly meant to be bawdy and they have no pretensions about it. Some are pretty decent but they are hardly liked! Listen to this classic one:
There was a young lady named Bright
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She went out one day,
In a relative way,
And returned the previous night.

My friends call this a vegetarian limerick! It is beautifully summed up in this limerick:

The limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical.
But the good ones I’ve seen
So seldom are clean
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

Harry’s Matilda always left me in great doubt why she ran away to Venezuela. And Harry displays no tinge of remorse in lamenting how she took his money and ran away to Venezuela! On the contrary, I could sense a great delight in his lamentation! It is the way in which he sings that makes the song comical!

Tun Tun of Hindi movies, Angamuthu of Tamil movies were all pathetic characters in movies. When Tun Tun was shown as a seriously good hearted person in one, the audience just hated it! Fortunately we are well past that saga though traces of that tendency continue to linger. People like Sridhar and Balachander ushered in a lot of decency in humour. Who can forget Sridhar’s Baliah-Nagesh encounter and Thangavelu’s lying through his teeth about his literary prowess!
Sri