Laughter's depth

About nine years ago, I wrote a column on the science of laughter. I had Dolphy on my mind when I wrote of the kind of laughter that “tossed our spirits as if in a trampoline swayed by the stroke of a genius comedian.” I grew up in the 60s and into the 70s allowed to watch only Dolphy’s films and programs as far as local films were concerned. Withholding judgment as to why my parents did not think any other was worthy of their children’s “braintime,” we just succumbed for as long as mom held the key to the TV (yes, there was a time TV sets had keys) and Dad drove the car to the movie house.

Scientists have found out that 80 percent of the time, we are not laughing because we find a joke funny. Most of the time a laugh is a “social” laugh, a mostly unconscious attempt to connect with another human being in a very fundamental way — with the movement of the lips and other facial muscles and short successive breaths. Deep within our brains which we share with other animals is the subcortex. This is the part beneath the “thinking” part of the brain called the cortex which is larger in humans relative to other creatures. The deeper the location of a brain part, the longer we have shared that brain part with other creatures. The brain part that controls your laughter in terms of the movement of parts of your body when you laugh as well as your emotional response, is located in your subcortex. What enables us to physiologically respond with and realize laughter is this ancient brain part.

However, the content of what makes humans laugh are of course very different. This is what makes a joke “click” or what we realize when we say we “get it.” This is the reason why Gravity, my dog, did not even smirk but I fell off my chair laughing when I found out that he has been eating chunks of my Unabridged Webster’s dictionary. (I told my friends that he was now literally filled with words and is ready to be published and my brother added that Gravity’s poop can now be called “Reader’s Digest.”) The difference is due to the “higher order” brain parts for language and judgment located in the cortex, a brain part absent or not developed in other animals like dogs. A famous published study in 1998 also revealed that when a specific 2 cm x 2 cm part of the cortex called the left superior frontal gyrus was electrically stimulated in an epileptic patient, it elicited laughter, followed by a statement of what she found funny- in that order. It was laughter first, then a statement of the cause for her laughter. Also, what she found funny turned out to be different each time. The cortex is a brain part that evolved much later.

The wells of laughter are cradled both in our most ancient and modern brain parts. That is what is remarkable about great comedians like Dolphy. They literally move our entire being. To be able to make us laugh, he would have had to blunt the power of real tragedy and sorrows that abound in real life with the sweep of a simple line or gesture on screen. It was escape but it had another side. It also recharged our emotional batteries so we could have more when we get back to our own complex lives. I remember my own Dad noting how well John Puruntong portrayed a regular Filipino father felt trying to make ends meet for his growing family. In one of the episodes, John said, “Bakit ang pera, bukas mo pa gagastusin, gabi pa lang naka sapatos na? (Why is it that money set to be paid tomorrow already wears shoes the night before?)”.

Thank you so much Dolphy, not only for making overlapping generations of Filipinos laugh but also for making us understand that we had to.

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