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the following: we have Humor when, given a comic situation, we reflect on it and attempt to understand why the original expectation has not been fulfilled; or when, given a situation that is not yet comic (the miles gloriosus is still strutting about and has not slipped yet), we anticipate the Comic that is potentially in it, in order to warn ourselves that our system of expectations can be defied at every step of the way. |
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Humor, then, would be the reflection that is exercised either before or after the Comic, maintaining the possibility of the opposite, but eliminating our detachment and our superiority. If, rather than detached from, we find ourselves within a comic event (if it is we who slip), then we respond, not with laughter, but with tears. Because of this, Humor should always deal either with our past or with our future. But then how could one say that it may deal also with our present, as Pirandello's work would seem to demonstrate? What may be necessary is to complete Pirandello's definition as follows: Humor may reintroduce both the detachment and the sense of superiority, by speaking of a present event which we suffer as tragic, as if it had already occurred or were still to occurin any event, as if it did not involve us. In the essay at least, Pirandello does not say this. But he does do it in his work. Curiously enough, the theoretician of this Pirandellian process was not Pirandello but Brecht: the problem is that of Verfremdung, or ''estrangement." I must show what happens to me as if it didn't happen to me, or as if it were not true, or finally, as if it happened to somebody else. Now, what does Pirandello do in his work? He doubles up the character and the actor, he has true events happen while saying that they are part of the performance of the actors, or he has actors play a role while insinuating the suspicion that what they are acting out is actually happening to them. |
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At this point it might be useful to resort to a precision of classification that Pirandello lacks, and to distinguish better than he does a few categories of Humor and the Comic, thus revealing that it is the category of Pirandellian Humor which is not sufficiently discussed by Pirandello: |
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The Comic: Something contrary to the natural order of things is happening, and I laugh because it does not concern me (detachment) and because it allows me to feel superior. Example: the decrepit old woman heavily made up. |
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Humor I: Nothing Comic is happening, but I understand that it may very well happen: I see a beautiful woman and I humorously reflect on the fact that thirty years from now she may very well be a made-up old |
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