Notes for a Critique of Humor
1. Humor is often very satisfied with itself. It is the weapon of the self-assured. One evident source of this kind of smugness currently is the self-certainty and self- satisfaction of the bourgeois. As the bearer of a universal empirical, utilitarian and mercantile culture the bourgeois is above all spiritualistic, sentimental nonsense. In short he is what Arnold and others labeled the philistine; hence his smirking satisfaction at any and all forms of disenchantment whether of religion, or love or art. A great deal of modern comedy, superficially supposed to be ‘subversive’, is in this vein and is, as such, a defense of the status quo. Even the absurdism of Monty Python (which I enjoy as much as the next person) is about how any and all claims to ‘seriousness’ are just stuff and nonsense. Absurdism is a very conservative form of comedy (all critique is neutralized as ‘serious’) and that is both its strength and its vitiating flaw: conservatism here devolves into a reflex