Why do we laugh at jokes but groan at puns? And what does this have to do with politics and Experience Stacks? (Issue #109)
Here’s a puzzler: why do we laugh at jokes but groan at puns?
I admit this is an overgeneralization. Not every joke is funny, and not every pun is groan worthy, but it’s not a bad rule of thumb (which would be a pun if there were a king named Thumb… did you groan a little?).
It’s a sad truth that there’s no faster way to drain the joy out of humor than to explain it, but since I’m after bigger game than just a chuckle I hope you’ll indulge me.
Jokes require a clear narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, even if the narrative is short. You think a story is going one way, but then at the last moment it pivots, adding a context that retroactively makes sense.
Examples:
Knock Knock?
Who’s there?
An interrupting cow.
An interrupting cow—
Moo!
Here the joke is that the teller breaks the expected resolution of a Knock Knock joke (making the respondent say something silly with the word “who”) by becoming the interrupting cow before the respondent can finish.
Q. How many Harvard undergrads does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. One. He holds the lightbulb and the universe revolves around him.
Q. How many Californians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. None. Californians don’t screw in light bulbs—they screw in hot tubs.
With all light bulb jokes, the joke is that the act of screwing in a light bulb (or not) points to a stereotype.
Jokes do not rely on surprise. You can know where a joke is going (either because you’ve already heard it or you just see it coming) and still smile or laugh… particularly if the teller adds a new twist.
Jokes are also always at least a little bit mean. As Sheridan quipped in The School for Scandal (1777) “the malice of a good thing is the barb that makes it stick.”
Wit. If you take the story out of a joke, then you get wit—a punchline with no setup.
Winston Churchill described his predecessor as Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, as “a sheep in sheep’s clothing.” That’s funny, but it’s not a joke.
You can even be mean to yourself. On his deathbed, Oscar Wilde allegedly quipped, “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.” Then he died.
Puns are wordplay that contain no malice and at best vestigial narrative. When I asked Perplexity.ai for five puns, here are the groaners it came back with:
I used to be a baker, but I couldn’t make enough dough.
The magician got so mad he pulled his hare out.
I’m reading a book on anti-gravity—it’s impossible to put down!
I’m friends with 25 letters of the alphabet. I don’t know y.
I’m writing a book on hurricanes and it’s blowing me away.
The reason we groan at puns is that puns cheat: you think that there will be a logical, narrative resolution, but at the last moment the context changes from sense to nonsense. Here, the pivot is from the meaning of words to homophones (when two words have the same sounds like y and why) or from one word or phrase meaning to another (dough as the stuff you bake with versus dough as slang for money).
Triple threats: Jokes do not require wordplay, but the best jokes combine narrative, malice, and wordplay. These jokes can still be short, like this mean but funny series:
What do you call a man with no arms and no legs on the beach?
Sandy.
On the wall?
Art.
On the floor?
Matt.
In the pool?
Bob.
In a pile of leaves?
Russell.
In a hot tub?
Stu.
All these jokes hinge on the word “call,” which means both describe and name. The joke is that the man’s permanent name and temporary situation coincide.
It’s not just jokes that combine narrative, malice, and wordplay. Wordplay in the middle of an otherwise serious situation can arrest and deepen our attention in both aesthetic and dangerous ways.
For a low stakes (because fictional) example that I’ve written about before, when Juliet is about to stab herself in the stomach she says, “oh happy dagger, here is thy sheath,” punning on the Latin word for sheath, which is vagina.
An example with higher stakes came in O. J. Simpson’s 1995 murder trial when his attorney, Johnnie Cochran, created a rhyme to brand his argument in the minds of the jury: “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” (This was about a pair of gloves the murderer used that Simpson could not or would not put on.) To many observers, Cochran’s argument was not persuasive logically, but the aesthetic density of the rhyme helped to mask the lack of evidence. (I’ve talked about rhyme and attention here.)
On nonsense, politics, and Experience Stacks.
A few paragraphs ago, I talked about the shift in context from sense to nonsense, and I want to dig into what I mean by nonsense.
In my essays about Experience Stacks over the last few years, I’ve explored how idiosyncratic context can make experiences hang together in ways that are often layered and invisible but still powerful and memorable. In February, I wrote about how Experience Stacks are non-linear, and present-focused.
This time, I’ve been trying to convey that—like jokes and puns—Experience Stacks don’t have to be sensical to be powerful.
Nonsense does not mean incoherent. It means that something lacks meaning—it’s not attempting to convey information—but not that it lacks pattern. Music is all about pattern. It conveys or amplifies emotion (just think about the soundtrack of a scary movie) but it doesn’t convey information.
Using words, you can say, “that dog has no tail” with ease. You can’t do the same with music, but music can make “that dog has no tail” a sad story about a dog that lost its tail in a painful encounter with a lawnmower or a whimsical story about corgi butts.
As we enter the most polarized, contested, and hot-blooded election season of my lifetime, it’s important to pay attention to both the sense and the nonsense of what candidates say. Something can make no logical sense—or even be a downright lie—and still have persuasive power. Triple threat jokes have story, wit, and malice that make us laugh, and it doesn’t matter that they aren’t true.
When the other side’s candidate says something, and you can’t understand how anybody could ever believe it, are you hearing the music behind the statement, the wit and malice behind the story that makes it arresting?
Maybe, just maybe, if we listen for the music that others are hearing, we can find some empathy for their positions, no matter how much we may disagree with them. That empathy is important because, once the election is over in November, we still want to be the United States of America, and it’s hard to be united with people you don’t understand.
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