Laughing Twice

Why do people request old routines from comedians? Jokes they have heard before?

Why do we laugh at the Brain Surgeon sketch in the first episode of the third season of “That Mitchell and Webb Look” even though we can see the punchlines coming?

Watch it now. It’s a great sketch and beautifully acted. But if you don’t want to watch it, you lazy lazy bastard, let me summarize it for you:

The sketch in question is about a brain surgeon at a party who demeans the other party goers by asking them one after the other what they do for a living and always responding to their answer with a version of “Well… It’s not brain surgery, is it?”

And although he basically says the same thing every single time, the audience also laughs every single time.

But here’s the thing: The laughter is justified. It IS funny!

And why do act-outs work? Sometimes a comedian tells us a joke and then acts it out and we laugh, even though he already told us the joke. The only difference now is, that we see him “do” the joke. So why do we laugh?

While writing this book and thinking about comedy one question kept nagging at me: If a key element of a joke is surprise, why are some jokes funny the second time, the third time or even every time you hear or think about them? Why do some jokes work, even though we can the punchline coming?

And I’m sad to say I don’t have definitive answers to these questions. Professor John Morreall writes in his book Comic Relief:

“The core meaning of “incongruity” in standard incongruity theories is that some thing or event we perceive or think about violates our normal mental patterns and normal expectations. Once we have experienced something incongruous, of course, we no longer expect it to fit our normal mental patterns. Nonetheless, it still violates our normal mental patterns and our normal expectations. That is how we can be amused by the same thing more than once.” Comic Relief by John Morreal (New Directions in Aesthetics) Wiley, page 11

But if that is the case, shouldn’t every joke we find funny make us laugh at least twice? The comedian and comedy teacher Tim Ferguson theorizes in his book “The Cheeky Monkey”:

“We rarely laugh at the same thing twice because, having learned, we’re less susceptible to surprise a second time. If we laugh repeatedly at the same thing, it’s because it remains a consistent (if only notional) threat to our equilibrium.” The Cheeky Monkey: Writing Narrative Comedy by Tim Ferguson Currency Press Kindle-Version, Chapter “The Nature of Laughter”

So… just jokes that seem to be particularly threatening to us keep us laughing? Is that the answer? I don’t know. I do have my own thoughts on the subject but they are far from being the definitive answer. But let’s take another look at our Formula anyway:

“Create or use an already existing assumption and fulfill or disappoint it in a surprising and satisfying way.”

Now one possible explanation I can think of to why a joke we heard before is funny again to us is because they fulfill our assumption of how the joke goes in a surprising and satisfying way. And when I say surprising I mean that our memory is bad. We never recall a joke or a routine exactly so the small differences between what we remember and thus expect and how the joke actually goes, is enough to fulfill our assumption BUT in a surprising way.

If the audience requests a certain routine from a comedian there are enough differences (different wording/delivery/audience, live vs. recorded, etc.) to make a difference in the assumption and the fulfillment of said assumption to be still surprising enough.

The same goes for act-outs. Although the comedian just told us what he is going to do, the act-out of it provides us with enough difference that it is still surprising enough.

In other words: What we imagine in our heads when a comedian tells a joke and seeing it acted out fulfills our assumptions but in a surprising and satisfying way.

This could also be the reason why a sketch like “Brain Surgeon” makes us laugh several times in short succession with more or less the same punchline: The delivery, the circumstances, the wording are different enough to fulfill our assumption in a surprising way.

But I’m not sure. All I know is that you can’t laugh twice if you haven’t laughed once.

And for that you need the element of surprise.