Comic Potential

My morning routine is to walk down to the neighborhood drug store and buy the newspaper. Today, having done so, I was walking back home as I distractedly glanced at the day's headlines, and I couldn't help but feel my foot twitching a little, as though to pull me off course.

Looking down, I saw it: that iconic symbol of slapstick mirth; that crescent-shaped object with the viscosity of whale oil and the stealth of a jungle tiger: a banana peel. It tried to exert its mystical force on me and lure me close, but as an experienced practitioner of the comedic arts, I was immune.

Perhaps I would not have been so inoculated from danger had this been simply (I say simply, of course, but clearly there is nothing simple in this object!) a banana peel. But it was, in fact, the whole banana; black and over-ripe to the point that even the fruit flies ignored it. However, even in this state, the potential for slip-and-fall hijinks was powerful indeed. If there had been any bushes nearby I would have hidden in them until the unsuspecting laborers appeared, each of them holding one end of a long sheet of plate glass, and enjoyed the ensuing hilarity.

But I continued home--though it really did amuse me to see a banana peel there, lying in wait.

An hour or so later, I passed by the same spot again and was not surprised to see that the end of the banana was squished; someone had had a narrow escape. And maybe the banana peel was evolving; stripping down to its comedic essence; in a sort of inside-out metamorphosis, the peel was shedding its cumbersome core to emerge in all its comedic splendor and wreak havoc among the unsuspecting pedestrians. I realized that it was only a matter of time before the peel would be open like a tempting and slippery flower in the center of the sidewalk. Whole troops of Oakland hipsters would soon veer unknowingly toward it, then slip and slide in a scene choreographed with the precision of an Ice Capades spectacular.

Or not. Its possible that in an hour or so, a bicyclist or two will have squished the banana, and some passerby will have crushed it with a boot. The sun may have dried it out, and someone might have kicked most of it to the curb. All that would remain would be a harmless black smear. Comedy is like that. Not like a harmless black smear, but like the banana: the potential is there, but it takes a particular combination of things to actually make it funny.

Humor is rooted most importantly in surprise, but there are some important qualifications to the nature of that surprise. Namely, it is the type of surprise that is neither threatening, nor promising a benefit. If I had actually slipped on that banana peel and fallen, I might have been amused IF I hadn't been hurt. If I were hurt, I'd just feel like a fool with a limp.

But let's take a step back. Let's say you were watching me as I distractedly walked along the sidewalk, reading my newspaper. You see the banana peel. Your expectation is, probably, that I'll step on the banana peel and slip. If you've made a judgement about me for reading the newspaper while I walk--that is, that I'm a fool to do it; that I'm a clueless rube--then if I slip on the banana peel you might laugh because there's a certain surprise and satisfaction in seeing fools get their due.

But maybe you haven't made that judgement about me. Ironically--given the cliched nature of this scenario--if you're watching and I do slip on the banana peel (ideally doing some dramatic twists and turns on my way earthward) you'd probably laugh anyway, not because you're surprised by the actual fall, but because you're surprised by the fact that I did the cliched thing. In part, you'd be laughing at my ignorance, and in part you'd be surprised by your own predictive skills. After all, we don't expect to see our predictions actually come true in the moment.

However, let's say I were an old man (older than I am at least) and I slip, with no slapstick panache, and I break my hip. As I writhe in pain, you'd probably come running to help, and it probably wouldn't be funny to you at all. Unless you're some kind of sadist. You're not, are you? Good. I didn't think so.

I suppose though, even if I were injured in such a fall, and I were in traction in the hospital, recovering, I'd consider the scene and I'd probably laugh at my own stupidity. I'd be surprised by it (though I should never be surprised by my own stupidity) and the pain medication would have kicked in too, so it would be all the more easy to laugh about it. As the observer, you, my rescuer, would probably look back on the scene and laugh, too, because the pain that you observed would by then have become something of an abstraction, and what would be left would mostly be the absurdity of it. You might tell the story at a cocktail party: "This man was walking along, not paying attention, and there was a banana peel RIGHT IN HIS PATH! He didn't see it--he just walked closer and closer, and I thought, c'mon, he HAS to see it. But NO! Bam! He fell! I couldn't believe it!"

Yeah, go ahead and laugh,  you cruel monster. Do you know how many months I'll be in physical therapy? And that was a serious break! They had to fasten my pelvis together with steel pins. I clank when I walk! I'm going to set off the airport machines for the rest of my life, just so you could get a few chuckles!  

But I digress. Here's another banana peel scenario: As before, I'm distracted as I approach the banana peel. But I stop in the nick of time, and look down at the banana peel as though to tell it it's not going to outsmart me. In fact, to demonstrate my resistance to the banana peel's legendary wiles, I do a little dance around it, as though to mock it. Yes indeed, I'm feeling pretty good about myself. And then I fall flat on my face.

In truth, all of this plays better on film than in real life because in film we know, even if the scene is very realistic, that it's fake. We know that no one was hurt, which removes some of the "threat" from the surprise. After all, that person slipping could be us; there is always a component of identifying with the subject in a film. That's why, to me,  the America's Funniest Home Video clips that show people crashing on a skateboard or a bike, or stepping on a rake, or getting hit in the face with a baseball, are not funny, because these people probably really got hurt, at least a little. They're real people, and that could happen to me. Consequently, the protective screen of unreality that film provides does not exist.

Much of the time, like that banana peel, comic potential is unrealized. The banana peel just lies there, a joke untold. It takes deliberate effort to bring it out, but there are many ways to do it, such as, say, writing a brief essay about it.