How often do the clowns pretend in their foolery that they are automatons, or that they can move only by mechanistic motions. They find need, too, in their ludicrous acting, for mechanical properties—slap sticks, absurd objects, or toys.
It is very certain that there are some forms of motion productive of laughter that do not imitate actions natural to the human organism, but seem to acquire their power of risibility from their resemblance to mechanical motion. This is on the order of the notion that Bergson has elaborated upon in his treatise in explanation of the comic. He states, in substance, as one law of the ludicrous, that the human body appears laughable when its movements give a similitude of a machine in operation. There is no question of the correctness of this view as a matter of mere exterior observation. Rather it seems to us that machine-like movements in organic bodies amuse us because of the rhythmic, orderly, or periodic occurrences of these movements in themselves, and not to any matter of comparison.
In a boisterous low comedy it is always incumbent upon the victim of a blow to reel around like a top before he falls. It never fails to bring laughter. An effect like this is easy to produce in animated cartoons. There is no need to consider physiological impossibilities of the human organism, the artist can make his characters spin as much as he pleases.
In a screen picture two boys will be seen fighting; at first they will parry a few blows, then suddenly begin to whirl around so that nothing is visible but a confused mass and an occasional detail like an arm or leg. It will be exactly like a revolving pinwheel. This is made on the film by having a drawing representing the boys as clinched and turning it around as if it were a pinwheel.
In a panorama screen effect it seems to be sufficiently realistic, for laughter purposes, to have the legs and arms of the individual in a hurry give a blurred impression, in some degree, like that of the spokes of a rapidly turning wheel.
The pinwheel effect of the two boys that have come to blows is produced by turning around to four different positions a drawing representing the boys fighting.
It is an indisputable fact that the human mind finds fascination in any movement resembling a rotary one. Witness the interest that a novel mechanism or an automatic toy creates in a shop-window. Such interest is still further stimulated if there is an added item of anything of the human, or something definite accomplished in the operations.
We require, it seems, if we are really alive, not occasional, but constant, stimuli of some sort. When we become weary of toil—which in itself is often an unwelcome and imposed form of stimulus—we seek stimuli in recreation. Or if we haven’t energy enough for the self-stimulation of sports, or the like activity, we look for it outside of ourselves.
Perhaps it is music, exciting us metronomically; or a play where our emotions are agitated—rhythmically or in dissonance; maybe it is a circus or the music-hall, where color and sound vibrations stimulate us. Everywhere it will be some form of measured time, movement, or rotation, whether the theme be comic or serious.