So, as I'm raking the yard today I started thinking about how hard I laughed when I saw this:
It's nonsense. It's absurd. It's something that SHOULD make sense... but doesn't. Visually, it follows the tropes that lots of political soundbites adhere to, in an effort to make their point and make us see things their way - hark, scenes of tranquility and a guy who really gets it! Ah, so comforting. So reeking of loaded rhetoric.
So, okay, gibberish is funny - given. Why? Well, maybe it's the sound of words that don't belong together just tickling that bone in the ear that nobody really cares to learn the proper name of - myself included. I tend to prize good grammar and syntax, so being forced by the visual medium to try and assimilate all the words which don't belong together into phrases which do actually make a sort of disconnected kind of sense is a treat. It might not work so well if all you heard were the words themselves. So, a sentence like "I think it'd be cool to get four porpoises, a wet Nigerian, and do the merry lunch limbo. That'd be a bad ass mission.", as spoken by a well-dressed politician, paints a very distinct image in my head. Under what circumstances this might become a reality it's hard to imagine, but your brain can still make a sort of absurd leap into the territory where disbelief is indefinitely suspended.
The question that still remains is why the absurdity of this whole thing is so dang enjoyable. What is it about this style of humor that makes me laugh so much? Sarcasm doesn't. Puns don't. Witty banter and retorts are a close second. But there's a sheer exuberance in how hard I laugh when I see something that utterly baffles me. Is it because I don't have the faculties to process the information rationally? Does anyone? Not knowing how to react sort of leaves you with one option - and that's to laugh. It suddenly upends your normal thought process and forces your brain to make an emergency decision in how it translates this insane stimuli, visual and linguistic.
I think that this is indicative of a larger phenomenon, though. And i think that it's a reaction to the world around us. Millions and millions of years ago, I'm sure a neanderthal who saw a predatory beast might not have burst out in laughter - probably just screams of terror, until it learned how to overcome the immediate threat - but we have evolution on our side. Maybe it's become more instinctual over time to laugh at something unknown and fear-inducing as a coping mechanism. We as a species have clearly moved beyond the limitations of spoken language and invented literally thousands of languages in which we can express "HOLY SHIT I"M ABOUT TO DIE". Physical languages, too. The point is, the world as we know it has gotten progressively more fucked up in tandem with how we have become civilized (mostly) denizens of this planet.
So when two airliners strike into the heart of the World Trade Center, we don't laugh - we have the faculties to say "what the actual fuck is wrong with someone who would do this?" Or when a gun-toting maniac mows down classrooms full of innocent children, we don't laugh, we prosecute the perpetrator and defend the livelihoods of the people who have had a hole ripped into their existence by the nonsensical actions that have suddenly invaded their world.
But all that leaves a lingering sense of inexplicable dread and unshakable unknowing. How does any of this madness make sense? Why does the world, full of people who can articulate the intricacies of astrophysics and travel into the reaches of our universe, continue to spawn events that defy good sense and logic? It's unfair, it's absurd, and it's nonsensical. This over-arching morass of modern dread, paranoia and unrest seems to stem from the fact that we can't yet explain the horrors that happen every day around the world. And so, if we can't shirk off the events themselves, we have to find a way to deal with their effects elsewhere.
Perhaps as we entertain ourselves we're able to laugh at what we don't, or can't, understand. There's nothing else for it but to laugh! It's a bit of a stretch, perhaps, to say that our sense of humor is partially defined by this after-effect of compartmentalizing traumas. But the thought remains. Is our interest in absurd humor as a culture a bi-product of an increasingly mad world?
I may have just gotten way too philosophical for my own, or anyone else's good. Though Newt Gingrich doesn't seem to think so. I'll see you for the merry lunch limbo.