At the turn of the twentieth century, the French philosopher Henri Bergson published three essays that were later compiled into a book, "Le Rire" (Laughter). This small book is perhaps his most significant legacy; indeed, some consider it a philosophical treatise on comedy that parallels Aristotle's treatise on tragedy.
In the essays, Bergson dwells on slipping on a banana peel, noting that people find this funny because the person behaves similarly to an object trying to maintain balance itself and avoiding falling to the ground. That is, unexpectedly slipping to the ground is inconsistent with humans' ability to walk, making the person's awkward movements resemble those of a machine.
Yet, we stop laughing if slipping leaves the person with a broken hand or leg. The human condition- the antithesis of mechanical movement- evokes sympathy for the person and their pain in us, we who could all find ourselves in that same position.
One aspect of what Bergson sought to illustrate here is that human suffering cannot be comedic material. Decades later, Charlie Chaplin wrote in his memoirs that if he had known about the Holocaust at the time, he would not have made "The Great Dictator," with its ridicule and parody of Hitler. Wherever it runs into human suffering, laughter goes the other way, even when the joke is made at the expense of the person who inflicted the pain himself.
In this school of comedy, one laughs "with" the other, not "at" him. As Bergson also says, laughing alone is difficult and rare, and it is easier and more commonplace to laugh with others, as laughter demands collective complicity.
There is an opposing school of comedy that fascism, especially its German manifestation, presented in its most distilled form. It mocks pain and disability, punishing the disabled with physical annihilation and those in pain with scorn.
A recurring motif of "fascist comedy" (a misnomer) was taunting their opponents by forcing them to drink castor oil and forcibly shaving off men’s beards. In turn, weaklings (such as "modern" women who were "not genuine Aryans" and "effeminate" men, as well as Jews, foreigners, leftists) perpetually "starred" in these "comedies." This “humor” revolves around an armed and powerful figure making a mockery out of the unarmed and weak, who are removed from the realm of "men" and placed into that of "women."
We know the premise that underpins this conception of humor and comedy: anyone who is not physically and mentally strong, not "worthy of life," must die, at least according to “Mein Kampf.” Moreover, their death ensures that their deficiencies will not be passed on to their children. The same applies to patients who cannot be cured, as getting rid of them is rendered "a corrective measure in favor of better quality." Such people are not warriors, and they never will be; what they are is a perpetual financial burden on the nation, the state, and hospitals.
The renowned comedian Woody Allen equipped us with a wholly antithetical position: "People never hate you for your weaknesses, they hate you for your strengths.” His cinematic oeuvre portrayed the lives of people who are weaker than others, reflecting universal experiences of emotional and personal disappointment, as well as not conforming to a social behavioral code. The "antihero" has the upper hand here, not the "hero," who becomes the butt of the joke because of his strength and heroism.
However, the same heroic strength that Woody Allen mocks is vaunted by those who are consumed by an infallible leader, an infallible doctrine, and human beings who have been mechanically programmed to behave in the ways they do in their military parades, which strip them not only of their weakness but also their humanity. Watching the parades of ideological and quasi-ideological armies, one cannot fail to notice this robotification that turns the parade into an aesthetically pleasing and synchronized, but also ridiculous, spectacle.
Years ago, when Hezbollah was at the height of its power, its rejectionist buddies, particularly on social media, began mocking the weak and unarmed as a form of comedy. This continued after the "Support War" but was compounded by the defeat’s aggravation of resentments and tensions. In both instances, this "humor" has evoked disgust rather than laughter: it taunts children with special needs simply because their parents opposed Hezbollah, and, despite the perpetrators’ kinship with those mocking their victims, women and men who had survived assassination attempts that left a permanent mark on their bodies.
While this "comedy" is funny to the twisted and the deranged, many of the mentally sound have been objecting to this behavior and the moral code that underpins it.
The fact is that there is another reason why these militant milieus have no sense of humor or congeniality. Their literature is replete with epithets for opponents: traitors, agents, insects, and rats... that leap above humor and congeniality in the first place, immediately getting to murder and genocide, activities they honed and mastered.
