I failed twice this week to convince reasonable people that laughter is not a signal of happiness but rather a symptom of nervousness or unease. You don’t laugh outloud at something because it makes you happy. You laugh because something exposed a nerve, or exasperated your faith in humanity. One can get sore from laughter. Can you get sore from happiness?
When Eddie Murphy recited his immortal poem “CILL MY LANDLORD” did the audience at Saturday Night Live laugh because this darkly humorous ode made them happy? I think they laughed because it opened a too-real window into a prison cell.
To wit, I’ve been laughing for days now at something I saw on YouTube last week. It was the farthest thing from funny, and on account of that it is just that: hilarious.
Someone posted a video to YouTube demonstrating how to use a laserjet printer to print directly onto a CD or DVD. The person who posted the video was black. 5 years after he posted it someone commented on the video: “Fucking nigger.” It’s as completely wrong as anything I’ve seen lately. Such an innocuous video earns a raw shit smear from some anonymous blowhole on the Internet, and I’m sorry if it makes me a horrible person but I’ve shaken my head and laughed at this textual sewage since the moment I spotted it.
Another memorable incident which demonstrated to me that laughter is not about happiness but untapped emotions involved my father. The last time I made him laugh really, really hard was about a year before he died. We were at a restaurant where a woman was loudly and somewhat annoyingly bragging about how wonderful her child was, and how well that child was doing in school.
My dad grumbled “I hate it when parents brag about their kids.”I replied “It’s better than them saying ‘My kid’s a fucking idiot.'”
I had made my dad laugh like this before but he was younger and more able to absorb a big long chortle and guffaw. This time, in his relatively frail state, he laughed so hard I thought he might spit up a lung or otherwise rack his innards into squalor.
I think I know why he was laughing like that. Or rather, what I do know is what my mother had told me. As a child my father was mercilessly ridiculed and made to feel inferior by his mother. She took this meanness on the road, telling others what a fucking idiot my dad was when he failed to get into any decent schools. She would never have used those exact words but the sentiment was there. I think my “fucking idiot” response to dad’s complaint about the fawning parent opened that life-long wound in him, sending him into paroxysms of laughter not because he was happy but because he was not.
It is hard to think of anything that makes me happy that also makes me laugh outloud. Happiness could have me siling, sure. Beaming, even. But laughing? It would depend on the broader circumstance. If you win a close and hard-fought election for public office you might be expected to laugh it off, laugh off the tension that accumulated before the win. But would one approach the alter on their wedding day, the most important and possibly best day of their life, would they approach the alter laughing?
For me happiness is comfort, mutual self-assurance, and calm. Happiness is not a state of mind that manifests itself with cathartic or transformative symptoms.
Maybe I do not know what happiness is. I just don’t think that laughing at the vulgarity and stupidity of society is a symptom of happiness. It’s a symptom of unease, showing that a raw nerve had been touched.
…
I just responded to an email from someone asking what here copies of The Etude music magazine are worth. I told her the truth: not much. But don’t throw them out. Drop them at a thrift shop. They are far likelier to find a happy home that way versus eBay….
