by Alexandra Guhde, PsyD

BENIGN VIOLATION

“My sensitivity is my strength…when somebody tells me to ‘stop being so sensitive!’ I feel a bit like a nose being lectured by a fart.”
                                                                                                                                                                    — Hannah Gadsby

Recently, I took a short course on humor writing. In addition to an awkward afternoon spent sharing original works of comedy,* the course reviewed the fundamentals of being funny. We learned about misdirection, the pull-back and reveal, the rule of threes, the art of the unsaturated sentence, and something called the benign violation theory of humor.

Though its title sounds darkly Freudian, the theory of benign violation is thoroughly modern. It was developed at the Humor Research Lab (aka HuRL), which is staffed by the Humor Research Team (aka HuRT), and is a real place at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Benign violation theory posits, “humor occurs when and only when three conditions are satisfied: (1) a situation is a violation, (2) the situation is benign, and (3) both perceptions occur simultaneously.” (e.g., pies in faces; pet shaming; or, a Jack Handey aphorism.**) The tension created by perceiving simultaneous opposites — safety and threat — is resolved by the punchline, and, ta da! — it’s okay to laugh.

Learning about the this theory, developed by the HuRT at the HuRL, made me think about Hannah Gadsby’s riveting, ‘meta’ stand-up comedy hour, Nanette. In Nanette, the Australian Gadsby does benign violation very, very well. (If only the piece I read out in my writing course were half as good.) But, besides being funny, Gadsby uses Nanette to demand recognition for the fact that, when comedy is personal, it comes at great personal cost: 

“Do you know why I am such a funny f*cker? It is because I’ve been learning the art of tension diffusion since I was a child. Back then, it was a survival tactic. I didn’t have to invent the tension… I was the tension. But now, I am tired of the tension.”

According to the theory of benign violation, the situation, for the listener, must be both dangerous and nonthreatening. Therefore, the joke teller’s pain — the necessary violation — whether it’s physical, emotional, or existential — must be rendered impotent. Otherwise, no punchline is possible. But, in life, pain is rarely benign. Tragedy plus time often add up to little more than tragedy, and time spent living with it.

Gadsby is done with being the object of her own jokes, and credits years of therapy to helping her believe she deserves better. Laughter, she tells us, is imperfect medicine. It can have serious side effects. Yet, at some point in our lives, we have all been noses lectured by farts. We need to be able to gentle that violation with a joke. And then, as Hannah Gadsby did, go get some therapy.

* The most notable was a lengthy tale of two spliff-smoking sea-dragons who always addressed each other as “bro”— despite being named Frederick and Hans — whilst debating whether or not to eat the antioxidant-rich, Speedo-clad body of a former Australian Prime Minister.

** “Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis.” — Jack Handey