The Humorous Chesterton

"I believe firmly in the value of all vulgar notions, especially vulgar jokes. When once you have got hold of a vulgar joke, you may be certain that you have got hold of a subtle and spiritual idea. The men who made the joke saw something deep which they could not express except by something sully and emphatic. They saw something delicate which they could only express by something indelicate." - G.K. Chesterton

I have always liked this quote. I'm not sure I could tell you all the reasons why. It's very twisty.

But G.K. and I had something in common. We both overanalyze everything.

G wrote this in his short story "Cockneys and their Jokes." He's responding the charge of not being a Cockney humorist. What is a humorist? Honestly, I'm not sure G explained it, though he took great pains to explain that, while he agreed he probably wasn't a humorist, he was most definitely Cockney, jerkface. Anyway, a humorist is someone who is skillful in the use of humor, whether it be written, spoken, or acted.

See, Chesterton knew that most people really don't understand humor. What makes one person laugh may not even crack a smile on someone else. Apparently a friend of Chesterton named Mr. Beerbohm put the things that made people laugh into three categories: "jokes about bodily humiliation, jokes about things alien, such as foreigners, and jokes about bad cheese." 

That, in itself, is hilarious. 

But G wanted to delve deeper into why we laugh at certain things. We don't laugh at someone's true misfortune. But we do laugh when a bird suddenly doodoos on someone's head. We don't laugh at leaves falling. That's what they do. But leaves falling and sticking to someone's forehead is funny. Or at least amusing. 

So what exactly is G saying above? It's not enough to be haha funny. You also have to be a little bit vulgar. 

So what does he mean by vulgar? Not obscene, as the word is used today. To be vulgar means to be unrefined or common. If you aren't willing to get your feet a little dirty, you'll never understand true humor. 

A good joke, G.K. would say, is one that deals with the Dual Nature of Man. As he says, it "refer[s] to the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy." We laugh at something because it works against the reality of how things are supposed to work. 

It goes deeper than that, though. Sometimes, we can't explain something higher without using more common language. In fact, in order to explain some things, we need to first (or at some point) explain their opposite. It's impossible to fully understand light without having some notion of dark. We understand hate because it is an absence of love. 

I don't know why I keep trying to explain this. G-diddy said it best:

"As a matter of fact, it will be generally found that the popular joke is not true to the letter, but is true to the spirit. The vulgar joke is generally in the oddest way the truth and yet not the fact. For instance, it is not in the least true that mothers-in-law are as a class oppressive and intolerable; most of them are both devoted and useful. All the mothers-in-law I have ever had were admirable. Yet the legend of the comic papers is profoundly true. It draws attention to the fact that it is much harder to be a nice mother-in-law than to be nice in any other conceivable relation of life. The caricatures have drawn the worst mother-in-law a monster, by way of expressing the fact that the best mother-in-law is a problem."

I've said it before. I'll keep saying it. 

I will take truth from whomever and wherever I find it. 

There are some amazing messages to be found in R-rated films. I can find Truth in an Eminem song. 

And those may be exceptions to the rule. I'm not going to tell you to consume all of the truly awful stuff just for one nugget of Truth. Some stuff out there is truly not worth the film or paper on which it is printed. 

But do recognize that not all vulgarity is necessarily bad. Sometimes it can be necessary to be a little vulgar in order to find a pearl. 

But I don't know. What do you think?

(There will be a follow-up post about this as soon as I get around to writing it.)