The Humor Code (4 page)

Pete's ideas about tickling were recently boosted by, of all things, a tickle robot. Cognitive neuroscientists at University College London devised an apparatus in which subjects could control, via a joystick, a mechanical arm brushing a piece of foam over their other hand. When the arm corresponded to the joystick movements, participants didn't find the feeling all that ticklish, but the more the experimenters delayed or shifted the direction of the arm's movements from that of the joystick, the more ticklish folks rated the sensation.
¹⁰
These findings meshed with the idea that laughter occurs when tickling is a benign violation: adding a small delay or change in direction of the robotic arm added just enough of a violation to make it ticklish.

Almost as soon as Pete unveiled the benign violation theory, people began to challenge it, trying to come up with some zinger, gag, or “yo momma” joke that doesn't fit the theory. Although Pete is willing to engage in such rhetorical debates, he's weary of doing so. For one thing, humor theorists had been relying far too long on such “thought experiments,” trying to shoehorn as many jokes as possible into their theory of choice. But outside of philosophy, thought experiments
only get you so far. For another, says Pete, it's fine to criticize the theory, but you'd best offer up a better alternative. And Pete's confident that the benign violation theory outperforms incongruity, relief, superiority, and all other humor-theory contenders. To prove it, he and Caleb turned to science—hence the founding of HuRL. “Your intuition often leads you astray,” Pete said to me. “But within the lab, you can set theories against one another.”

In one HuRL experiment, a researcher approached subjects on campus and asked them to read a scenario inspired by a story about legendarily depraved Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. In the story, Keith's father tells his son to do whatever he wishes with his cremated remains—so when his father passed away, Keith decided to snort the ashes. Meanwhile, the researcher, who didn't know what the participants were reading, gauged their facial expressions as they perused the story. Then the subjects were asked about their reactions to the story: Did they find the story wrong, not wrong at all, a bit of both, or neither? As it turned out, those who found the tale of Keith and his obscene schnozz simultaneously “wrong” (a violation) and “not wrong” (benign) were three times more likely to smile or laugh than either those who deemed the story either completely okay or utterly unacceptable.
¹¹

Pete and Caleb became more confident. Pete came to believe the benign violation theory could even help people improve their schtick. As he puts it, folks could use his theory to make upsetting concepts more amusing by making them seem more benign. He calls this tactic the Sarah Silverman Strategy, after the comedian who gets away with jokes on abortion and AIDS because the way she tells them is so darn cute. On the flip side, he believes that pointing out what is wrong with our everyday interactions with soup chefs and “close talkers” can help make those experiences hilarious. Pete calls this technique the Seinfeld Strategy.

HuRL's research has started to gain traction. Pete and Caleb's first paper on the benign violation theory appeared in one of the top mainstream psychology journals. Meanwhile, some of Pete's fellow humor researchers are starting to take notice. “I absolutely consider it significant; it furthers the field,” Don Nilsen, co-founder of the
International Society for Humor Studies and co-author of the
Encyclopedia of 20th-Century American Humor
, told me. “I don't think there are any examples of humor that don't fit this.”

The benign violation theory has also been endorsed by a very different sort of humor expert: Ben Huh, CEO of the Cheezburger Network, the multimillion-dollar silly-picture web empire that includes sites such as “I Can Has Cheezburger?” and “FAIL Blog,” with whom Pete has shared his research. “I'm a guy who makes his living off of internet humor, and McGraw's model fits really well,” Huh told me over the phone. Lately he's been using the model to determine which content could be the next big meme. Take a post about a church funeral getting interrupted by a parishioner's “Stayin' Alive” ringtone. “The benign violation theory applies to that,” said Huh: it's clearly a violation for “Stayin' Alive” to come on during a memorial for someone who'd just died, but it's more benign—and therefore funnier—than if somebody purposely turned on the theme to
The Walking Dead
. All in all, says Huh, “He's just a lot more right than anyone else.”

But the theory doesn't impress everyone. The skeptics include Victor Raskin. In the world of humor scholarship, Raskin is a titan. Among other achievements, the Purdue University linguistics professor founded the journal
HUMOR
, edited the influential tome
The Primer of Humor Research
, and helped develop the general theory of verbal humor, one of the preeminent theories of how jokes and other funny texts work. He's also, I discovered, not one to mince words. “What McGraw has come up with is flawed and bullshit—what kind of a theory is that?” he told me in a thick Russian accent. To Raskin, the benign violation theory is at best a “very loose and vague metaphor,” not a functional formula like E=mc
²
. It doesn't help that among the tight-knit community of humor scholars, Pete's few years dabbling in the subject is akin to no time at all. “He is not a humor researcher,” grumbled Raskin. “He has no status.”

Status or not, I decided to reserve judgment on Pete's theory until I saw it in action. I wanted Pete to put his theory to the test. I asked him to accompany me to a Denver stand-up show so he could use his theory to critique the comedians.

He offered one better. “How about I get up on stage myself?”

“That,” I replied mischievously, “would be a very good idea.”

“Thank you very
much,” Pete says into the Squire's microphone, once he gets it reconnected and begins his act. “Being a professor is a good job. I get to think about interesting things. Sometimes I get my mind on something non-academic. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about nicknames.”

“First, a good nickname is mildly inappropriate,” he says. “An ex-girlfriend referred to me to her friends as ‘Pete the Professor.' Not inappropriate, and not good. Now, if she referred to me as ‘Pete the Penetrating PhD-Packing Professor'—mildly inappropriate, and thus a good nickname.”

But Pete trips over the words “Pete the Penetrating PhD-Packing Professor” and doesn't get a laugh. Nor do folks chuckle at the other funny names he tries out: Terry the Dingleberry. Thomas the Vomit Comet.

He throws out a line about “a well-endowed African American gentleman,” hoping to get some snickers, but it's too pedestrian for a crowd used to hearing about late-term abortions and the joys of meth. He does get a few laughs when he says that most good nicknames involve alliteration and then pauses to explain the meaning of “alliteration”—although it's possible folks were just laughing at the professor's presumption.

People turn away and get lost in small talk. By the time Pete gets to the end of his four-minute routine—with a zinger about a 35-year-old virgin nicknamed Clumpy Chicken—he's lost much of the audience.

“Thanks. Have a good night,” Pete says, then leaves the stage amid polite applause. He's replaced by the open mike's MC, who's eager to punch the crowd back up. He has the perfect target.

“I thought you were going to talk about your humor theory!” the comic calls after the professor. “He has this theory, see . . . well, who cares. Obviously, it's WRONG!”

The crowd's back, laughing uproariously. But the MC's not finished.

“All you black people, that's a sweater vest he's wearing, not a bulletproof vest.”

He waits a beat. “So go ahead and shoot him.”

Standing at the
bar after his act, Pete considers his performance. “You can't just get up there and expect to kill.”

But why didn't he kill? He spends the night mulling it over. “I clearly underestimated the audience and the challenges in creating sufficient violations,” he tells me later. “This means the Seinfeld Strategy would have needed to be multiplied severalfold.” Of course, trying to outdo the other comedians in Squire-appropriate violations wouldn't have been a good move, either. Once word got out about the professor who spouts one-liners about slavery and crack cocaine, Pete might have had to start looking for another job.

Pete's stand-up attempt gives the usually confident professor pause. It's clear, he tells me once the article comes out, that he has a ways to go before he understands the vagaries of comedy—and HuRL alone won't take him the rest of the way. There's a big, comical world out there, he says, and if he wants to figure out what really makes things funny, he's got to venture beyond the confines of his lab.

But he can't do it alone. Just as his scholarship needs to be vetted by his academic colleagues, he needs an objective observer, someone willing to call him out if his conclusions don't pass muster.

Someone, in other words, like me.

I'm in. The adventure sounds like a blast, plus it may help me figure out why I am such a screwed-up, hopelessly lighthearted reporter. It will be like
Eat, Pray, Love
, but with awkward guy hugs and dick jokes.

Still, I offer a condition. At the end of the journey, Pete has to again try his hand at stand-up. But this time, at a slightly bigger stage than the Squire: The Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal, the biggest comedy event in the world. Comics work for years to earn a shot there, and a single routine can make or break a comedy career. If Pete thinks that he's going to crack the humor code, he has to get up at the festival—and win one for science.

It's a half hour to show time, and Louis C.K. looks miserable. The comic is slumped alone in a chair in the dingy greenroom of Denver's Paramount Theatre, the toll of weeks on the road apparent on his face. Clearly, all he wants to do is eat his ham sandwich and get ready for his show. But instead he has to contend with the likes of us—an overexcited professor and a nervous journalist who've just barged in to ask him to deconstruct what he does on stage.

It's a wonder we got back here at all. C.K., with his stand-up specials and hit FX series
Louie
, is one of the biggest names in the stand-up business. Every one of the 1,800 or so seats for the show tonight at the Paramount Theatre—one of the largest and swankiest venues for comedy in the region—has long been sold out.

It makes sense to start our search for the secrets of humor by talking to comedians like C.K. In many ways, stand-up is the perfect petri dish for figuring out why we find things funny. It's comedy boiled down to basics—just a comedian and an audience, no backstory, no sets, no editors or producers or censors, a place where you either score a laugh or you don't. Stand-up is one of the country's most prominent cultural inventions. Thanks to
The Tonight Show
and
Seinfeld
, the work of American comedians now influences comedy all over the world. Plus, judging from his performance at the Squire, Pete could use a few tips.

So, what turned Louis C.K. into
Louis C.K.
? How does someone
be
funny? Is it an innate talent, something you're born with or that
arises from the right conglomeration of instincts and personality traits? Or is it something that develops over time, either through absorbing the right rules or personal trial and error? And what about other variables to consider, such as childhood baggage and the quirks of various comedy clubs? How do they all influence someone's ability to be hilarious?

We're here hoping that C.K. can provide us with some answers. Heck, maybe the king of stand-up will be so taken with our endeavor that he'll show us the secrets to being funny. Our quest will be over as soon as it's begun.

Knowing that he has only a few minutes, Pete launches into the benign violation theory, but he only gets halfway through before C.K. cuts him off. “I don't think it's that simple,” he grumbles. “There are thousands of kinds of jokes. I just don't believe that there's one explanation.”

His research dismissed, his theory shot down, Pete casts about for something to talk about. “So I was actually chatting with some of your fans in the lobby, and I asked them what questions I should ask you . . .” he begins.

My stomach drops. When an older woman who had made one too many trips to the Paramount's bar heard we were interviewing C.K., she shrieked out a question. But surely there is no way Pete would ask it.

I'm wrong.

“So one woman wanted to know how big your penis is.”