Again, as already hinted, the odd is always relative to the custom of a locality or a class. A savage and a civilised man alike are wont to laugh at much in the appearance and actions of a foreign people; and this because of its sharp contrast to the customary forms of their experience.
The chief counteractive to be noted here is the impulse to distrust and fear the new and unfamiliar. A child may often be noticed oscillating between laughter and fear as some new strange sight bursts upon him. A savage must feel himself secure before he can freely indulge in laughter at all the odd belongings and doings of the white man.
(2) A special variety of the singular or exceptional which {89} is fitted, within certain limits, to excite laughter is deformity, or deviation from the typical form. It is certain that, for the unsophisticated palate of the child and the savage, bodily deformity is a large source of mirth. The dwarf, the hunchback, the cripple, the man with the big nose, and the like have been great entertainers of youth. The tendency to regard such deviations from type as amusing extends, as we know, to our perceptions of animals and of plants. A limping quadruped or a tree with a wen-like excrescence seems to reflect a human deformity and to share in its laughable aspect. Even a lifeless object may sometimes entertain us with its appearance of deformity. A house shored up affects us in the same way as a man on crutches, and the back view of a rickety tilted cart, as it wobbles down a street, may gladden the eye much as the sight of a heavy, ill-balanced human figure attempting to run.
While we may view the laughable aspect of bodily deformity as an example of the odd or deviation from the common pattern of our experience, we must not forget that it appeals to the more brutal element in laughter. All ugly things had in them for the Greek mind something contemptible or disgraceful. Much of the point of men’s laughter at deformity lies in a recognition of its demeaning effect on the person who is its subject. It is a clear manifestation of the impulse to rejoice in the sight of what is degraded, base, or contemptible. It is not difficult to detect this note of contemptuous rejoicing in the derisive laughter of the coarser sort of boy and savage, the kind of laughter illustrated in Homer’s description of the merriment of the Achæan chiefs at the sight of the misshapen Thersites, with his hump, his sugar-loaf head crowned with stubble, and his persecuting squint.[54] Here we seem to have an unmistakable ingredient {90} of malignant satisfaction, of rejoicing at another’s ills (Aristotle’s ἐπιχαιρεκακία).
Roughly speaking, we may say that the laughable force of a deformity varies with its extent. The droll effect of an enlargement of the nose or of a reduction of the chin increases, within certain limits at least, with the amount of the aberration from the normal dimensions. Yet it would be difficult to establish any exact quantitative relation here.
Again, all kinds of deformity are not equally provocative of laughter. In general, perhaps, positive additions or extensions, such as a big nose or big ears, are more conducive to merriment than reductions and losses; they seem to seize perception more aggressively. Then there are varieties of the deformed which probably involve special kinds of droll suggestiveness. Certain squints and twistings of the human face divine may move us as expressions of the roguish; a red nose or a shock of red hair may owe its force to its supposed moral symbolism. Long ears and other deformities affect us through their undignified reminder of affinity to a lower animal species. Much, however, in these preferences of the ruder sort of laughter looks quite capricious, and can only be set down to habit and imitation.
The impulse to laugh at deformity has a narrower and a wider counteractive. The first is pity, the second is the feeling of repugnance at the sight of ugliness.
The inhibition of laughter at deformity by pity and kindly consideration is one of the marks of a refined nature. Where the unsightly feature suggests suffering, whether physical or moral, such consideration may completely counteract the impulse.
Since deformity is a variety of the ugly, and the perception of the ugly as such repels us, we have as a further counteractive a fine æsthetic shrinking from what is {91} unsightly. A person endowed with this repugnance may have his capacity of enjoying the funny aspect of a deformity completely paralysed. At the other extreme, we have a readiness to make fun of all bodily defects, even when they are a revolting spectacle. The area of enjoyment for most men lies between these extremes, when the displeasing element of the ugly is mitigated, so that its effect is lost in the stream of hilarity which its drollery sets flowing.
It may be added that where deformity has been turned into a laughable quality the impulse to “make fun” has commonly been aided by other forces, more particularly a sense of relief from fear and a feeling of retaliation. This is clearly illustrated in the laughter of the people in the Middle Ages at the devil, the demons and the rest. Perhaps children’s rather cruel laughter at the hunchback contains an element of retaliative dislike for a person who is viewed as vicious and hurtful.