Laughter + non-human A thesis that Bergson emphasises at the beginning of this essay is that “the comic does not exist outside of what is actually human” (Bergson, 1921: 3). So the percipient is always a human being (at least as far as humanity knows). The position of the actor-creator of the comic (not humour), however, is not limited. Moreover, it is not limited to just verbal forms of humour. People might find funny comedy sketches, as well as clumsy cat videos, or even pictures of vegetables shaped like human reproductive organs. Since the actor of the comic cannot be specified, a closer examination of the action itself may be required to distinguish it from any other phenomenon.
Bergson looked at a person from an unexpected and unpopular perspective: not as a thinking creature, a biological object, but as a mechanism. This perspective has been existing in art: while drawing a human body, the artist starts with an armature.
His theory was criticised for being too focused on mechanical aspect of comic.
“Bergson’s critics have complained that his theory of humour is too restrictive, that his repetitive characterisation of the comedic as ‘something mechanical encrusted upon the living’ becomes laughable in its own terms, trying to fit a complex and spontaneous living phenomenon under the same rigid formula” (Herring, 2020).
However, in the field of digital media, this perspective can give a proper explanation to human fascination with certain types of mechanisms. Bergson writes about three comic elements in action: the jack-in-the-box, the dancing-jack and the snowball. He mentions them as illustrations to decipher the chain of actions that triggers laughter. Later I will use this approach and project the laughter mechanisms onto real mechanisms and compare them.