Unpacking the Suitcase

I Dismiss You Thusly

Welcome to Unpacking the Suitcase, a blog that answers the age-old question, “Why is that so funny?”  Have you ever been perplexed by your own laughter?  Have you ever desired to understand the inner workings of your favorite joke?  Have you ever wondered why your spouse or sibling or best friend chortles heartily at a gag that leaves you utterly cold?   Well, ignorant reader, your bafflement is at an end.  Simply send your burning comedy questions to Comedy Suitcase and I shall douse your confusion with a refreshing spritz of clarity.

Before we begin, allow me to proactively address the critics among you.  Those slack-jawed comedy Luddites who believe an increased understanding of humor can only lead to an exponential loss of laughter.  E.B. White famously expressed this point of view in his preface to the 1941 edition of A Subtreasury of American Humor. According to Mr. White, “Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.”

If I were a member of today’s urban youth culture, I might retort thusly: “Oh hell no!” Or, if this were a text message: “OHN!”  

Fortunately for you, ignorant reader, I am not a street urchin.  I am that “pure scientific mind” Mr. White so glibly dismisses.  As such, I must point out that the above quote, while displaying a thin veneer of wit, does not stand up to academic scrutiny.  It is true that humor, like Mr. White’s frog, cannot be truly understood without dissecting it.  It is also true that this dissection results in a dead frog.  My objection lies in Mr. White’s implication that a dead frog is somehow less amusing than a live frog. 

A child of five could tell you that animals fall into three categories: Funny When They Are Alive, Funny When They Are Injured and Funny When They Are Dead*.  Monkeys, for example, belong in the first category due to their uncanny ability to mimic human behavior such as drinking beer or wearing sombreros.  Dogs rank high on the second list thanks to the ever-popular “cone of shame”.  I ask you, who among us has not chuckled at the sight of Fido struggling against his repressive Elizabethan collar as he vainly attempts to lick his own nether regions like some pitiful canine Tantalus?  

This brings us to our final category.  Ever since the days of Moses, when God pelted the Egyptians with a steady barrage of amphibious water balloons, frogs have been the archetypal funny dead animal.  There are few things more comical than the flattened silhouette of a frog – limbs splayed, tiny webbed toes spread wide in a final high five of death.   A dead frog is an onomatopoeia, it looks like the last sound it made— splat!  Compare this to the comic value of a living frog.  What is the funniest thing a frog does in life?  Croak.  I think you see my point.

Shortly after writing his preface for The Subtreasury of American Humor, E.B. White left comedy to write Charlotte’s Web, the twisted story of a death obsessed pig and his strangely Oedipal relationship with a pregnant spider.   Some pig, indeed.  Despite this obvious cry for help, many still cling to White’s “dead frog” theory, dismissing men of science such as myself as nothing more than party poopers.

In fact, E.B. is not the only famous author with pretentious first initials who equates dissection with futility.  J.R.R. Tolkein writes, “He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”  I will not waste my time refuting this quote.  Instead I will embrace it in a defiant act of empowerment.  I invite you, ignorant reader, to do the same.  Don your oversized clown shoes and join me as I step off “the path of wisdom” into the cold and lonely world of comic theory.

Watch out for frogs.

In all seriousness,
Doctor Preston Seltzer
Comedy Suitcase Humorous Studies Department

*Some scholars will suggest a fourth category, Animals That Are Funny In The Fleeting Moment Between Life and Death.  For example, when a dragonfly strikes the windshield of a speeding locomotive and, just before it expires, realizes its fate and pulls a deadpan Buster Keaton face at the conductor.  While humorous in theory, verification of this tiny near death experience requires a jeweler’s loupe— something conductors rarely carry upon their person— thus relegating this category to nothing more than conjecture and hearsay.