to remind us that the common enemies of all humans are frailty and sickness and death, and that beside these terrible threats petty divisions like difference in religion should be set aside. This is an ancient form of humor. This paper examines a form of this third type of humor, one of the oldest forms of humor that probably exists: Slapstick.
Humor is almost always at someone's expense. The most harmless kinds of humor are those jokes that come at our own expense: If the only person made to look foolish by a joke is the person telling it, then it has indeed done little if any harm, and this is true of most slapstick humor. It is the Three Stooges who end up with pie on their faces (although by the end of one of their movies it is probably everyone who has pie on their faces, everyone who is reduced to the most basic human condition of someone stumbling around blind until he or she can clear their obstructed vision), and so we laugh both at and with them. We laugh in sympathy at their misfortune, but with the constant understanding that the next time we might have to laugh at ourselves.
Slapstick is an inclusive form of humor because it reminds us in undeniable terms that we can all find ourselves slipping or falling or suddenly without a vital piece of clothing in public, and so our laughter is gentler than it would otherwise be. Laughter based on slapstick is always potentially laughter at ourselves, and so we take care not to laugh too loud or too hard, lest we find ourselves too loudly laughed at in our own turn. Slapstick is based on the fact that humans can never be as dignified as we like because we each inhabit bodies that tend to betray us at the most vulnerable times. This is as true of the reader as it is of Curly or Moe or Larry or Chevy Chase or Steve Martin and so laughter at slapstick antics is never that of the superior being over the subordinate. Slapstick is humor indulged in by those who recognize th...