We’re hardwired to laugh.

Capers know their humour, folklore professor says

It’s been a few decades since neuroscientists were informing us about their studies that proved we are born to laugh and we learn to cry.

We are truly wonderfully made.

These days, I feel like I’m going to have to retrain my face to laugh.

The isolation and all the other repercussions of a worldwide COVID-19 pandemic have been bad enough. But add to it all the horrible news that has touched our hearts over the past 15 months, and it has been hard on everyone in Nova Scotia.

And yet, we still yearn to get together with others and have a laugh.

There is a lovely quote about laughter that is attributed to a number of sources including, wrongly, the Qur’an.

It goes like this: “They deserve paradise who make their companions laugh.”

Well, wherever it came from, the sentiment is nice. Joyful people are badly needed in anyone’s life. Humour lifts our spirits and gets us through some dark times.

There are a couple of ways we shine as humour-loving people: we can be those who produce humour for others to enjoy or we can be people who enjoy the humour produced by others. I imagine we are all a mixture of both.

Hard times, such as this pandemic, have historically been the catalyst for some great new jokes to tell.

For example, this one: who ever dreamed that the insulting phrase: “I wouldn’t touch them with a six-foot pole” would become a national policy.

Or, what about this one? All those years growing up our parents told us we would amount to nothing if all we did was lie around the house all the time. Well … look at me now, dad. I’m saving the world by staying in bed all day.

And thanks to Google, you can find hundreds more just like that.

FOCUS OF RESEARCH

Comedy, including standup comedy, is the focus of research for Ian Brodie, associate professor of folklore at Cape Breton University.

He says people in Cape Breton are well-acquainted with using humour to support them through the dark times.

“Comedy and humour are everywhere and certainly in Cape Breton. If you look at things like nicknaming traditions, pranks at the mines and the (steel) plant, and writing parodies, you see a people who are not always living in ideal economic circumstances.

And with some uncertainty about the future leavening that tension by naming it, playing with it, and creating something joyous from it,” he said.

Brodie, author of the definitive book on standup comedy called: “A Vulgar Art: A New Approach to Stand-up Comedy” (UCB Press, 2016), says that by turning to comedy, we are able to release our frustrations, our fears or our anger. And by turning to comedy — both in and about the challenging times — we claim some form of ownership.

And while we can certainly spend time chuckling to ourselves over something we find funny, laughter is best experienced as a team sport.

In fact, Brodie notes in his book, “A Vulgar Act,” that standup comedy is a collaborative act between the comedian and the audience.

Personally, I have always found that when we laugh with others, it bonds us together. I was greatly amused at the beginning of the pandemic with all the ways people were finding to mark off their six-foot distance from others.

The most creative of these efforts was often put on social media for the rest of us to see and have a laugh. The attempts at humour were appreciated by many and lifted our spirits as we settled into the “we’re all in this together” mindset.

We need to laugh almost as much as we need air and water. Its benefits include reducing life stress, lifting us out of depressive moments and it probably helps reduce anxiety.

Have you ever been in an elevator with someone who is scared of them? Invariably, they will be the one trying to make a joke out of how close they feel to death by falling.

And so, Brodie is able to see how the pandemic is spawning humour that years from now, other future folklorists will point to as indicative of our unusual times.

“Everything from the increasingly silly songs for timing out your handwashing, to playful units of measurement for gauging social distancing, to jokes and memes about the meaninglessness of time and schedules — we’ve seen people taking the sudden change in how we are meant to operate, and again, looking at it through a delightfully fractured lens.”

And the words “fractured lens” is a great way of putting it. Our lens is indeed fractured these days, and so what better way to ease the pain than finding something to laugh at.

So, why do we turn to comedy in non-challenging times?

“For me,” said Brodie, “the answer is much about how joy is a goal that needs no further justification. It simply is. Perhaps in darker times it is more valued and perhaps it is more valued because it seems harder to produce.”

He says that although joy can appear to be indifferent to grief for those who are grieving, nevertheless, it is the stuff we turn to most often.

My hope for all of us, then, is that very soon we can all gather together in large groups of happy, humourfilled people who will bless us by filling our souls with mirth and joy before we return again to the normalcy of life and all its challenges.

Now go find a joke to tell.