What's the definition of comedy? Banana. - Addison Anderson

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What makes us giggle and guffaw? The inability to define comedy is its very appeal; it is defined by its defiance of definition. Addison Anderson riffs on the philosophy of Henri Bergson and Aristotle to elucidate how a definition draws borders while comedy breaks them down.

Lesson by Addison Anderson, animation by Anton Bogaty.

What's the definition of comedy?

Thinkers and philosophers from Plato and Aristotle

to Hobbes, Freud, and beyond,

including anyone misguided enough

trying to explain a joke,

have pondered it,

and no one has settled it.

You're lucky you found this video to sort it out.

To define comedy, you should first ask,

"why it seems comedy defies definition?"

The answer's simple.

Comedy is the defiance of definition

because definitions sometimes need defiance.

Consider definition itself.

When we define, we use language

to set borders around a thing

that we've perceived in the whirling chaos of existence.

We say what the thing means

and put that in a system of meanings.

Chaos becomes cosmos.

The universe is translated

into cosmological construct of knowledge.

And let's be honest,

we need some logic cosmic order,

otherwise we'd have pure chaos.

Chaos can be rough

so we build a thing that we call reality.

Now think about logic and logos,

that tight knot connecting a word and truth.

And let's jump back to thinking about what's funny,

because some people say it's real simple:

truth is funny.

It's funny because it's true.

But that's simplistic.

Plenty of lies are funny.

Comedic fiction can be funny.

Made-up nonsense jibberish is frequently hilarious.

For instance, florp -

hysterical!

And plenty of truth's aren't funny.

Two plus two truly equals four,

but I'm not laughing just because that's the case.

You can tell a true antidote,

but your date may not laugh.

So why are some untruths and only some truths funny?

How do these laughable truths and untruths

relate to that capital-T, Truth,

the cosmological reality of facts and definitions?

And what makes any of them funny?

There's a Frenchman who can help,

another thinker who didn't define comedy

because he expressly didn't want to.

Henri Bergson is a French philosopher

who prefaced his essay on laughter

by saying he wouldn't define the comic

because it's a living thing.

He argued laughter has a social function

to destroy a mechanical elasticity

in people's attitudes and behavior.

Someone doing the same thing over and over

or building up a false image of themself and the world,

or not adapting to reality

by just noticing the banana peel on the ground,

this is automatism.