Why are jokes funny? Why do we laugh? In "Funny Peculiar, " Mikita
Brottman demurs from recent scholarship that takes laughter-- and
the broader domain of humor and the comical--as a liberating social
force and an endearing aspect of self-expression. For Brottman,
there is nothing funny about laughter, which is less connected to
mirth and feelings of good will than to a nexus of darker emotions:
fear, aggression, shame, anxiety.
Brottman rethinks not only the mechanisms of humor but also the
relation of humor to the body and the senses. To this end, she
provides an engrossing account of the life and work of Gershon
Legman, exiled author, publisher, and sexologist, Alfred Kinsey's
first bibliographer, and legendary compiler of the dirty joke. Like
Freud, Legman was convinced of the impossibility of understanding
humor apart from sex, and Brottman shows how his two massive works
on the subject, "Rationale of the Dirty Joke" and "No Laughing
Matter, " provide a framework for understanding the ambivalent and
often hostile impulses that underlie the comic impulse in its
various guises. In lively and enlivening chapters, she traverses
dirty jokes, the figure of the "evil clown" in popular culture, the
current popularity of "humor therapy," changing fashions in
stand-up comedy, and the connection between humor and horror.
Brottman's sparkling prose, laced with wit, does not obscure the
seriousness of "Funny Peculiar." It is a thoughtful and
wide-ranging elaboration of the Freudian claim that joking, in
point of fact, is no laughing matter.
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