Humor and Cringe : What are They, Exactly?

We all have that one friend who can make the entire room burst into laughter. We've also all felt that uncomfortable itch and goosebumps when you see a cheesy scene on the screen, hear that trying-too-hard professor making obsolete jokes, or see your parents doing awkward dance-moves. Humor has been an important ingredient in our culture. It's not only been a personality trait, but also been incorporated in literature, films, theaters, variety shows, social media, and other categories of the art and entertainment industries. Memes, for example, has become an e-culture that is representational of the digital media era. Social media influencers arise through humor-themed clips (such as those on Vines, TikTok, Dubsmash, etc.). Stand-up comedies What exactly, then, is humor? What makes it powerful? What makes something funny or cringy?

Humor, generally, is a game of sudden relief and arousal, or an unexpected spark of positive familiarity. It is a sudden catalysis of a relatable idea with a novel interpretation, generating an intense, amusing realization. It is when we suddenly feel "Hey, I've never thought of it that way!" The combination of the "unexpected" and the "positively familiar" seems conflicting, since something unexpected or unknown usually elicit fear. However, when followed by a resolution, this conflict evokes amusement and laughter. The reason is that the positive realization instantaneously removes/resolves certain pressure in the environment and establishes resonance within a group. Therefore, our mind becomes dominated by a snap of relief and connections.

Another way to analyze humor is through the benign violation theory, postulated by Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren. This theory explains that humor is generated only when all of the following are present:

1. The situation is a violation

2. The situation is benign

3. Both appraisal occurs simultaneously.

Here, violation refers to messing with a conventional norm, value, or belief. This violation can, of course, be deeply offensive if not carefully handled. Choosing what to mess with and how to mess with it, therefore, has to be benign in principle. What makes something benign? McGraw points out three characteristics that contribute to making a violation benign. First, the audience are not committed deeply to the subject of violation. Second, the subject is psychologically distant to the audience (in terms of time, for example.) Third, there's an alternative explanation that appropriates the violation. From my perspective, these three principles share the same root of psychological barriering. The subject and the method of violation must be conducted in a way that the audience can view with a distanced, relaxed attitude, which prevents them from "taking it personally." or "thinking too hard." The matter is whether the subject already has a safe-distance (principle 1 & 2), or the speaker can cleverly establish a safe-distance (principle 3.) For example, a Christian would probably find it offensive if you make a joke about the Bible, because it is something that he emotionally and spiritually devotes to. If, however, the speaker can persuade him to "lighten-up", or creating an atmosphere that eliminates the idea of being personally threatened or attacked, then the violation becomes benign (still, it is very difficult to pull people temporarily out of something that they associate themselves intricately with.)

Deliberation as Humor's Poison

What sabotages humor the most is deliberation, both of the speaker and of the audience. Delivering and receiving materials of humor is like being in a relationship, in which trust ensures the right focus of attention, and relaxation ensures no obsessive focus on the specific. If the speaker appears to be "trying to hard", the audience feels the pressure to satisfy it (we all know what happens when we force our affection on somebody in a relationship: usually, it drives the recipient away because the focus is now on responding to an act rather than feeling the intention.) If the material or the language is too deep or complex to relate to, it also means forcing the audience to "deliberately interpret." As a result, their attention is disturbed, and it becomes less likely for them to recognize and appreciate humor. It is like watching a movie. If the movie contains a rigid execution of the plot or the characters, we feel like idiots being forced to accept what the director feeds us. We can also take a philosophical approach to explain what deliberation does. Immanuel Kant once said, “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.” In other words, Kant advocates that we should not treat people as "tools", or manipulate them to gain what you desire. Think about it. Don't we all feel uncomfortable around those who only cares about what we can benefit them, such as some direct sales personnel or cooperations? This can also explain why deliberation can be a poison to humor. We intrinsically don't like to be restrained by rules, being told how to act and what to feel, especially in an environment where we are suppose to relax. Therefore, if the speaker tries to elicit laughter in any seemly "unnatural" ways, we feel the sense of discomfort: cringe. It is a pressure created by disharmony, the exact opposite of the relief brought by humor.

The Trickster Archetype

The power of humor can perhaps be more easily pictured through the Jungian archetypes, which personify psychological complex into symbolic "characters" that repeated occur in our cultures. Jung believes that a part of our unconscious, namely, the collective unconscious, is inherited from our ancestors rather than shaped by our personal experiences. The collective unconscious includes universal patterns of motifs called the archetypes. An easier way to understand this is to think of the archetypes as humans' universally shared genes within the psyche, or the intrinsic formulas programmed within us before we were born. Each archetype models a combination of tendencies in personality and behavior. As we interact with our surroundings during growth and development, we gradually become embodied with the characteristics of a dominant archetype, which manifests in our thinking and behavioral patterns. In other words, the collective unconscious is like the software of a video game (intrinsically installed within us), where there's a set of roles (the archetypes) available: warriors, mages, marksman, assassins, and so on. Once we advance to a certain level, we gradually acquire skills/abilities of a certain role that we choose (although in reality, we don't really consciously "choose" which archetypes to dominate our personality.) Jung believes that the collective unconscious explains why there are certain things that resonate with all humans intuitively and universally. For instance, why are there such parallels in symbolic and mythical patterns between different religions, despite they originate from different parts of the world? Why do these symbolic meanings (manifested in mythical stories, for example) perpetuates throughout our civilization? Why can Harry Potter, the Avengers, Justice League, Lord of the Rings, and the Matrix become world-wide phenomenons? Jung would believe that part of the reason is that these stories and characters contain ingredients that reflect our archetypes or other materials of the collective unconscious. The divine oracle who possesses the truth, the hero/heroine who must enter the realm of malevolence before reincarnated with power; the vicious monster/demon who wishes to turn the hero/heroine to darkness, all of these are symbolic images of the archetypes.

Among the archetypes, the trickster is perhaps the most representative in terms of expressing the character of humor. The image of the trickster is often portrayed in movies and literature, such as captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean, the Chashire cat in Alice in Wonderland, and the jester (also known as the fool) Feste in Shakespear's Twelfth Night. They are easily spotted, for they always exhibit not only a peculiar manner, but also a distinctive use of language. Although unpredictable and seemly foolish, the trickster is not trivial figure who merely serves to entertain. The trickster is powerful and craftily wise. Packaged with humorous and symbolic contexts, the trickster speaks of the truth that others is afraid of expressing. He is keen and observant to his surroundings, making him a strong survivor and adapter. He can efficiently utilize his resources to find his way through situations, making him slippery to catch. Therefore, the trickster is often immune to some of the social constrains that we bear, for he possesses the creative power to linger on the grey areas, lightening serious, controversial topics into novel, entertaining messages.