Universal Humor

What is universal humor? Does it exist? Why is it an important concept?

In my opinion, universal humor would appeal to people regardless of culture, gender, age, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, or race. Universal humor would appeal to some innate collective consciousness, and provoke laughter without regard to differences between people.

I think that universal humor is impossible to achieve. Humor emphasizes differences, tensions and incongruities. It ridicules “the other” and “the self,” exposes contradictions in belief, and makes fun of social customs or norms. Humor can shock us by not adhering to polite restraints. All of these – the differences, the social customs, etc. – differ greatly around the world, and within each culture. Even within races, genders and orientations, communities develop specific ways to use and interact with humor (some of which we’ve explored in this blog.) Age groups present their own challenge, as some experiences are more relevant, and therefore more or less funny, to individuals of a certain age.

Despite the elusive character of universal humor, I think that it’s an important concept to consider. Universal humor, is, if you will, the anti-humor. It opposes the nature of humor – the specificity of jokes and anecdotes that make them funny. This specificity is key to comedy. Without it, humor is meaningless, because humor is derived from identification and ridicule of a specific culture. Take “guy movies,” for example, which often rely on bodily functions for comedy. In a society that doesn’t regard bodily functions as undignified and shameful, fart jokes wouldn’t be funny.

So far on this blog we’ve discussed the divided nature of gendered humor. While this may seem to be negative, it is important to consider the fact that gender divisions create an opportunity for humor, usually of the in-group variety. The multiplicity of comedy genres around gender is evidence of the creative and all-encompassing field of humor. We use humor to understand and codify that which surrounds us – therefore it is no surprise that humor is used to identify and emphasize differences between groups.