October 3, 2017 • 46 mins
Have you ever heard inappropriate laughter during a horror movie? For that matter, are you the guilty party? Join Robert and Christian as they explore our curious reactions to frightful cinema and how horror and comedy converge in the human mind.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind New York Comic Con Stranger Things. Yes,
it all comes together on October six, from seven pm
to eight thirty pm at Hudson Mercantile in Manhattan. If
you're in the area, join us for Stuff to Blow
Your Mind Live Stranger Science as we explore the exciting
science and tantalizing pseudo science underlying the hit Netflix show
(00:20):
Stranger Things. Stuff you missed in history class has a
show right after us in the same venue, so you
can really double down on your stuff. And hey, the
three of us would love to meet you. This is
the opportunity to do it. Learn more and buy your
tickets at New York Comic Con dot com. Slash n
y c C hyphen presents Welcome to Stuff to Blow
(00:46):
Your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome
to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert
Lamb and I'm Christian Seger, and hey, we've both just
saw the movie It in the movie theater. And this
is rare because you don't get to the movies as
much as I do. But we have both been able
(01:08):
to see a movie in the theater and experience it
pretty recently. Yeah, and I mean a lot of people
are checking it out. Yeah, it's it's become quite a hit.
So when I was at the movies watching this, there
was this woman in the theater who is in the
back a couple of rows from me, and she just
kept screaming every time Pennywise would show up, like this
howling scream, and this caused her. Then she would laugh
(01:31):
in response to her own screaming, and everyone else in
the theater then would laugh as well. So there's this
like weird moment where like everybody was laughing over this
movie of this just horrible depictions. Then I saw that
movie Mother a week later. Yeah, yeah, and that didn't
happen at all. No one laughed, No, there was no
(01:54):
nervous laughter, there was no screaming. It was just this unrelenting, traumatic,
uncomfortable horror playing out in front of you. And so
I'm wondering, is there some kind of metric of successful
horror here or is it just like different subgenres when
people feel like it's okay to laugh nervously versus they're
just enraptured with with what is so scary in front
(02:16):
of them. Well, yeah, and then of course these are
two very different films. I understand with with kind of
different target audiences, so when I very much account but yeah,
I I share some of your concerns about my my
fellow viewers. I mean, this is a reason I one
of the reasons I don't go to movie theaters that much,
because ultimately I would rather watch anything in my living room. Um,
(02:37):
it's only the whole timing aspect of of like a
film you're really excited about. It's going to get me
to go to the theater because otherwise I'm not crazy
about the theater. It's you know, it tends to be overpriced.
You gotta go if you if you're gonna if I
go in my and I go with my wife, then
I have we have to get a sitter. It's just
the whole whole pain and uh. And you know, life
(02:58):
moves so fast now at our age that it's like
a movie. Like when you're a kid, if you didn't
see Batman in the theater, it's like forever in the future.
It's like two months, yeah, and two months like that's
gone like that, like movie after movie, I'm like, oh,
that Marvel film seems kind of kind of cool. Maybe
I'll check that out. And then it's on, you know,
direct streaming. But of the many things that bother me
(03:21):
about the the movie theater going experience, there's certainly the
the audience reaction to not only scares, but to just
graphic violence in general. You're you're watching it, you're immersed.
Something scarier violent happens and someone responds with laughter. It
throws me out of the experience of watching the film.
But then I also have this weird moment where I'm like,
(03:43):
what are we as a species? Who? Where? What have
we done culturally so wrong? How do what is our
relationship with depictions of violence in our in our fiction
that that will that allows this to happen, That I'm
hearing somebody cackle while someone's being like bludgeoned to death
or something. Well, I have to admit, Robert, I'm probably
one of the people that would annoy you in that respect,
(04:04):
because during it there were points where I giggled gleefully.
But I think when I think back on it, it
was more out of the sheer excitement that as a
horror fan they were able to make a film that
was actually as dark and horrifying as the novel, And
I was so I thought I was going to be
disappointed going into it. And you know this, horror fans
(04:25):
were like junkies, were always on the lookout for the
next good story that's going to come out in the genre. Right.
We're just always hoping, will this be it? Will this
be the next cool thing? And more often than not,
we're disappointed. So I think when I was giggling, it
was more out of happiness that this thing wasn't failing
my expectations, you know. And I've been getting a lot
of questions about what you're talking about in relation to
(04:48):
the movie it because it's been so popular. A lot
of people are saying to me, because they know that
I write horror and that I'm a fan of horror,
what is it that you like about horror? What you know?
They say it to me as if like I'm a
damaged human being and they need me to explain you
know that I'm not, uh, And I guess for me,
I see storytelling as a way of learning through the
(05:10):
surrogate figures that are playing out in the story in
front of you, right, And this is essentially our method
for explaining to each other how the world works. So
cautionary tales like horror seem to me to be culture
designed to enhance our survival rate, and something like it
is a glimpse is something that's larger than us, because
obviously it's not a real clown running around and murdering people.
(05:33):
It's some kind of monstrous, cosmic entity. Yeah, so you've
got this whole idea that there's something beyond our understanding
and something that scares us by simply showing us that
we are just not as significant as we like to
think we are. And there's something oddly zen about that
that I like when you learn to be content with
(05:53):
your lack of significance and you just can accept that
you don't understand everything and you never will. And I
think there's room for laughter there as well. Yeah, I
would agree with with that. You know, I I write
horror as well, and I don't think of myself as
a as a horror writer per se. Like, I think
(06:14):
it's more a matter of exploring the reel through the unreal.
And if you were exploring something that is inherently dark
or inherently fantastic, inherently ridiculous or surreal, I mean that's
going to color your unreal method of exploring it. But yeah,
I think it's more about it's it's more about what
(06:35):
that that that endpoint, like, what are you trying to
explore about the real world? Right? So then let's back
up for a second here, because we're both practitioners and
fans of this, but there's something going on here with
the human experience when people are laughing at horror movies.
So let's try to unpack this and look at the history, biology,
(06:59):
and psychology of laughter. Yeah, because I think the main
issue here is that you can either say I'm the
only person in this theater who's sane and everyone else
is having an insane or a logical reaction to the horror.
That's one way to approach it. But the more likely
explanation is that what is happening here is normal, and
if we look at it, it'll reveal something about our
(07:20):
relationship to humor, our relationship to horror, and just the
human experience itself. All right, So let's let's start with
just laughter and humor in general. So studies have shown
that various apes, rats, dogs, birds, dolphins, they all do
something that resembles laughter. But of course everything is a
little bit more complicated with humans, and laughter itself is complicated.
(07:44):
You know what, when you hear it, it's that mix
of rhythmic vocalized, you know, involuntary actions. It begins with
a set of gestures, a crack in the facial features,
and then the emergence of sound, and that exact sound
is gonna gonna very tremendous. I mean, you've you've all
heard countless versions of laughter, you know, like the deep
(08:05):
resonating laughter of say Brian blessed Um, who played, of course,
of the character Vulcan and the flash Gordon, the tittering
laughter of say the character Knox Harrington, or David Thulis
played by David Threwis in The Big Lebowski, or you know,
any example of sardonic laughter or sexy laughter. I mean,
(08:26):
the list goes on and on. But when we we
belt out a hearty laugh, we we feel it throughout
the body. Uh, even the arm, leg, and trunk muscles,
fifteen facial muscles contract and we feel the unmistakable stimulation
of the zygomatic muscle, the main lifting mechanism of your
upper lip. Meanwhile, the epiglottis partially closes the laarnix, interfering
(08:49):
with respiratory system, making air and take ir regular you gasp.
In extreme situations, you even have your your tear ducks
kicking in and contributing tears um as well. Maybe your
your nose is running. It becomes this. We often forget that,
like a really true full body laugh. It's like being
gassed with something. In extreme situations, you pee your pants. Yeah,
(09:12):
it happens now. Of course, for you to laugh, you
need some sort of stimuli, and the most common stimuli is,
of course, humor. But humor itself is a tricky subject
to understand that we've been we've been banging our heads
against it for thousands of years. So I thought it
might be helpful to just go ahead and roll through
a few basic theories regarding a humor so that we
(09:33):
can move forward. And I think as we go we'll
find that in trying to um explain what humor is
and how we react to humor, we also get into
that area of horror. Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbs, they all
argued the superiority theory of humor, which states that we
simply find the misfortune of others amusing. Yeah, this is schadenfreud,
(09:55):
of the great German term for finding pleasure in somebody
else's misfortune. Yeah, and he view. You see someone trip
and you laugh, or you trip and someone laughs at you.
This seems like a perfectly solid explanation for everything that's occurring. Now. Meanwhile,
Sigmund Freud, he championed the champion the relief theory, which
states the comedy is a way for people to release
suppress thoughts and emotions safely. And this can include everything
(10:17):
from you know, cutting a slice of you know, confert
you know, controversial say social commentary, or are just a
simple fart joke. Now. Emmanuel Conta Flip favored the incongruity theory,
which suggests that humor blooms when people notice the disconnect
between their expectations and the actual payoff. I went in
(10:38):
to smell that flour on your lapel and it squirted water.
That was unexpected. That was hilarious. Now. One that one
of the more recent theories that that I find quite
attractive is the benign violation theory, and this holds that
humor arises when benign subject matter and violent or dangerous
subject matter overlapped, overlap and allow and the laugh itself
(11:00):
is a way to communicate to others that a previously
perceived threat is not a real danger. Now, none of
this is a subtled debate. You can argue for any
one of these, and maybe there's a little truth in
all of them, but especially for our purposes here, I
do really like the benign violation theory because it explains
humor and laughter in terms of communication. After all, we
(11:21):
are social organisms. I mean, we we banned together. That's
where we found our survival in a in a dangerous
world of limited resources. So it makes sense that allowed
vocal expression, not only a vocal expression, but a very
physical expression is we've described, would have some sort of
a communicative role. So when we drilled down even further,
(11:44):
we look to the work of a guy named Robert Provine.
He's a neuroscientist and psychology professor at the University of
Maryland in Baltimore County, and he conducted laughter research for
this book that he wrote, and he observed real world
laughter in more than a thousand episodes in public places.
And Provine described his approach as trying to understand laughter
(12:07):
from the position of a visiting extraterrestrial. So essentially, what
would an alien make of the sounds and faces we're
making when we're laughing. So he first defined what a
laugh is, and he quantified it as a series of
short vowel like notes or syllables that are each seventy
(12:27):
five milliseconds long and are repeated at regular intervals about
two hundred and ten milliseconds apart. Now, there's no specific
vowel sound that defines laughter, but similar vowel sounds are
typically used for the notes of a given laugh. Right,
So we're not going uh oh e I, you know,
(12:48):
like you're not combining all the various different vowels. Is
usually the same one over and over again. So there's
usually a strong harmonic structure to laughter, with each being
a multip full of a low frequency. So when you
look at laughter's harmonic structure on a sound spectrogram, you
actually find that there are evenly space stacks of short
(13:10):
horizontal lines in the spectrum, and the notes and the
inter note intervals between them, those carry the actual information
that helps us identify a sound as laughter. So, for instance,
if you were to use like editing software and you
cut out the spaces between laugh notes, you would still
recognize it as laughter. But if you cut out the
(13:32):
notes themselves, it just sounds like a long, breathy sigh. Essentially,
all human laughter is a variation on this basic form,
and we typically start seeing it in babies around three
and a half to four months of age. And Provide
also found the following stats. He found that less than
(13:53):
twenty of the laughter incidents he cataloged were in response
to something that was actually funny. Instead, people more often
are giggling or chuckling at innocuous statements like, for instance,
I see your point and then somebody goes And what's
even more interesting is that the person who produced the
laugh provoking statement was forty six percent more likely to
(14:17):
be the one who chuckled themselves. So it's more likely
that people tell a joke and then they laugh at themselves,
then somebody else laughs at them. In only eight of
the one thousand, two hundred recorded episodes that Provine looked
at did they find that laughter interrupted what someone was saying.
Nine point nine percent of the time, laughter occurs in
(14:39):
these tidy, natural breaks. And this is weird because I
think I'm probably the point zero one percent of the population.
Then who laughs in ways that totally interrupted conversation? Anybody
who's listening to me on these podcasts will probably attest
to that. Also, I'm the most awkward person to go
to the movies with because I laugh a lot inappropriately.
I got dirty looks in the theater for laughing maniacally
(15:03):
at movies like American Psycho and Hannibal. Well, I mean
American Psycho. In Hannibal, you do have to admit that
they play with black comedy a little bit. That's what
I thought. Yeah, as I was watching them, I was like, oh,
this is supposed to be dark humor. I was laughing
in response to it, and people were looking at me
like I was a madman, Like you're laughing at this
(15:24):
naked man running down the hall with a chainsaw. But
that scene is legitimately hilarious because they're going to such
pains to hide as genitalia. Because and that made an
otherwise terrifying, otherwise terrifying scene, uh, comedic because they're because
of what they're clearly doing from a blocking standpoint, there's
a lot that's silly about that scene started on un Hannibal.
(15:46):
There's a lot selling that as well. Now as far
as laughter interrupting conversation, uh, and and even with yourself,
you know, I I tend not to interpret people's laughter
in conversation as an interruption. Maybe it's I kind of
think of it in the same way that you generally
wouldn't say that applause interrupts a performance, you know. Um
(16:10):
it just it seems like we if you're engaging with
the conversation with somebody and there's laughter happening on one
or both sides, that that is factoring into the communication, right,
unless it's just occurring with you know, in a state
of madness. Yeah, exactly, That's how I see it. So
for instance, I think the stats actually back this up too,
and this is why I tend to laugh the way
(16:32):
I do. But uh, probably more unconsciously than conscious. Indicates
that most people use laughter in the same way we
use verbal pauses. And what I mean by that is,
rather than quietly wait to respond while we're collecting our thoughts,
we're using the stilted laughter to hold our place in
the conversation. It's the same thing is when people use
(16:53):
like or you know, as verbal pauses in a in
a sentence that they're saying out loud so that they
can kind of compose themselves first. And as podcasters, we
have to admit not only do we do this like
every human who communicates in any language does, because this
is just a natural part of human communication. But boy,
do we get a lot of messages about it. I
(17:15):
don't know. I haven't really noticed any messages about it recently.
Maybe not recently. Yeah, maybe it's because we've been doing
the show for a long time. I remember when I
first came on Stuff to Blow your Mind, I got
a lot of notes about it. Well, there is an
exercise in sort of, you know, cutting down one's use
of those words. But also I think people that was
(17:35):
into this show and certain other shows like this realize
that it is, for the most part, an organic conversation. Yeah. Granted,
it's not the same as a full blown conversation. It's
kind of a performance conversation with notes on hand. It
would be a very weird conversation if you were having
if you were trying to talk to somebody and they
were referring to note cards the whole time. But we're
(17:57):
also were not scripted show. And if you have if
it's scripted, then yeah you can you can cut out
all of those likes and yeah, exactly, And I think
there's different expectations of what people think we might be
doing on this show, right, Like some people think that
everything is completely scripted and that we're just reading the
whole time to each other, and then other people think
(18:18):
that it's totally extemporaneous and we have all of these
facts in our head and it's just spouting them off
back and forth to each other. Really it's a mix
of the two. So provide back to his research. He
proved essentially that laughter is inherently social and it's a
tool of communication, and it's not always or often actually
in relation to something that's supposed to be funny. He
(18:40):
found that participants were actually thirty times more likely to
laugh in the presence of others than they were when
they were a quote, truly alone. What he meant by
this is not counting in response to TV shows or
other media. So when we're totally alone, apparently we seem
to hardly laugh at all. Yeah, I did it. Certainly
mag is up with my experience of watching comedies, Like
(19:02):
I really don't like watching comedies by myself, because there's
there's very little joy to be had trying to laugh
or or never inevitably setting there not laughing while something
humorous takes place. Yeah. I think maybe this is why
I surround myself with animals, because even if my wife
isn't home, I spend half my day talking to them
(19:23):
and laughing at them or like having like little interactions
with them. And they're just like, dude, we don't understand English.
You know, they understand laughter probably, but not necessarily whatever
I'm saying to them. You know, I just and weirdly
inherently communicative in that way. I think if I was
by myself and just laughing and talking to myself, it
would feel stranger to me. I mean, that's the ultimate
(19:46):
beauty of having any kind of pet around. Is it
gives us license to sit around and talk to ourselves. Oh? Absolutely, yeah. Yeah.
Uh So it's also worth noting, just broadly about this,
that social scientists have confirmed too that laugh tracks on
television show those actually do increase audience laughter, and not
only that, they increase people's rating of comedic materials. So
(20:08):
we have yet another social aspect that's going on here
with laughter. I really do not like the idea that
science is backing up the laugh track tracks. Yeah, it's true.
We have an entire brain Stuff video episode all about uh,
laugh tracks in the history of them that Joe actually
worked on and it's a it's really good. Oh cool.
We'll have to throw a link to that on a
(20:28):
landing page for this episode at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com. And we should consider getting a laugh
track for this, uh show. That's a great idea. Yeah,
I know the listeners would hate. Are there any podcasts
out there with laugh tracks? Surely there must be, Huh
that would be interesting. Cereal's got to have a laugh track, right, Okay.
So there's also an evolutionary theory that's related to the
(20:50):
whole laughter thing and it was proposed in two thousand
five and the Quarterly Review of Biology, and this was
by Matthew Gervas and his advisor David Sloan Wilson. Basically,
they looked at the research of this nineteen century French
physician named Guillaume Duchane. He was this guy this is
the electrocution of the fac Yes, so he would go
(21:12):
around and zap people's faces with this little electronic mischief box. Well,
he wouldn't just go around and do it. It was
like a psychopath. No, he wasn't just going up to
strangers and doing it. Sorry, Yeah, he was doing it
too too willing volunteers in a hospital, but he wanted
to see what would happen, and the volts evoked a
certain kind of smiling. Uh. And this is what Robert
(21:35):
was referring to earlier. This is where the zygomatic major
muscles get raised along the corners of our mouths. Right.
But he could never get the mischief box to reproduce
the kind of laugh or smile we get when we
actually find something truly funny. This laugh is way more complex,
and yeah, it uses the zygomatic major muscles, but it
(21:56):
also uses the obicularis oculi muscles, and those are the
muscles that are around our eyes that form crow's feet.
This is why you hear that phrase A real smile
is in your eyes. The first smile, the one that's
just with your mouth. That's just what we do to
be polite. I call it a dead smile. And it's
unfortunately what I usually end up producing when I'm asked
(22:18):
to smile for a camera. Right, So, like anytime I'm whatever,
like somebody wants to take a picture, I had the
hardest time genuinely smiling, and there's always like somebody on
the other end. It's just like, oh, why can't you
just smile? What is what are you doing? You know
that kind of thing, And it's because I'm conscious of
the dead smile. Look, yeah, I mean it's just a
classic griff and grim smile where someone just says, hey,
(22:39):
smile for the photo, take the picture. Whereas you know,
an actual professional photographer is going to try and get
a legitimate, you know, emotional response from you and they're
taking a picture. That's difficult. Your wife's a photographer. That
must be a huge part of the job, and I
can't imagine it's easy. No, it's it's always a challenge
because you're all ways dealing with a different person with it.
(23:03):
And some people are going to be natural laughers. They're
you know, they're gonna they're gonna naturally let that that
inner portion of themselves out. Other people are gonna be
more closed off and they're gonna give you that dead
smile and you've got to sort of all but carve
it out of their face. So Jervas and Wilson they
positive that two to four million years ago we human
(23:26):
beings evolved into having what they're referring to as do
shame laughter. This is when we actually find something funny.
But why did we do it well? The idea is
that it was a signal that everything was okay and
that our danger was low and our needs were met.
That lines up with the benign violation theory exactly. But
(23:46):
then sometime since then, the dead smile laughter emerged as
we became more cognitively developed. Now, the idea here is
that we learned to mimic the spontaneity of laughter so
that we can try to take advantage of its effects
and manipulate other people into thinking everything was okay when
(24:07):
it isn't. This is like the little finger form of laughing.
This is why your boss thinks that that every joke
they've ever told is hilarious. So true, so true. This
is absolutely that. Yeah, I immediately thought of bosses in
the past. Yes. Uh. But no matter how hard we try,
we usually can't get it right because of the whole
(24:28):
eyes thing. So there's another neuroscientist that backs us up.
His name's V. S. Rama Shandron. Oh yeah comes up
a lot, so he theorizes something similar. He says that
laughter evolved as a signal to both ourselves and others
that what may appear to be dangerous or threatening actually
is not so today, when we nervously laugh, it's because
(24:50):
we're signaling ourselves that whatever horrible thing that we've encountered
isn't really as horrible as it appears. So that maybe
what's going on when people are laughing when they're watching
horror movies. Right, so it jumps out, it's this crazy
clown with fangs. The lady screams, but then she laughs
because she's like, oh, it's just a movie. I'm okay.
(25:12):
So this maybe why psychologists actually classify humor as one
of our quote mature defense mechanisms. We invoke it to
guard ourselves against overwhelming anxiety. If we can laugh, for instance,
at traumatic events that are in our own lives, perhaps
then that we can endure them, and it diminishes our
suffering and attempts to convince us that we're going to
(25:34):
be able to make it through that trauma. But then
here's what the question becomes. Is laughter creating an expectation
that we're gonna be all right? Or is laughter only
possible when we actually believe things aren't as bad as
they seem. All Right, We're gonna take up quick break,
and when we come back, we will continue this exploration. Alright,
(25:58):
we're back. You know you were talking about the power
of laughter. And on a recent episode of Stuff to
Blay to Mind trailer Talk Our Our Friday, eleven am
Eastern Time Facebook live show, we had a trailer. We
featured the trailer for the Name of the Rose, and
one of the plot lines in that is this this
idea of what is humor and should humor be permitted?
(26:20):
Should humor being encouraged by the church, The idea being
that if you can, if you can laugh at anything,
you can laugh at the church, you can laugh at God.
And if in doing so, are you taking away some
of its power? Oh? Interesting, Well, it seems to me
that it would be inherently useful to the church if
the idea was to provide its followers with soulas that
(26:42):
everything's gonna be okay or that it's not going to
be okay, and then you're gonna continually need to pray
to God about it and it definitely shouldn't laugh. Yeah, well,
it's a whole This is a gets into the whole
theological deep end. Did Christ laugh? Is it okay to
laugh at certain things? Etcetera? And I'm not sure they're
any clear cut answers on that well, turning away from
(27:03):
laughter for a second before we converge back together and
try to figure out what's going on here when people
are laughing at horror movies. Let's talk about scares and fear. Remember,
anxiety and fear are a product, not a failure, of
being perceptive. Perceptive people are the ones who are most
often anxious. The most fearful among us are often those
(27:26):
who have the most imaginative intelligences. Yet most of us
respond to being frightened as if it's embarrassing, right, it's
this petty emotion we don't want other people to see.
As if the notion of being afraid is somehow indicative
of our insecurity about our control over our own lives. Well,
we have to remember that evolution favors false positives, not
(27:49):
false negatives, because if I mean the classic example is
if there's some sort of a large carnivore hunting you,
and you're you know, an ancient human, uh, prior to
any kind of advanced technology. Then if your fellow, you know,
cave person thog jumps out at you and you think
for a second he's a tiger, and you react accordingly
(28:10):
like that that's a positive survival benefit. Whereas if an
actual tiger jumps out at you and you're just like, oh,
it's tharg again, well then your bone exactly. Well, that's
related I think maybe to nervous laughter. It's been noted
in psychological experiments when subjects are placed under a high
degree of emotional stress, and this is specifically when they're
(28:32):
thinking about perceived harm not to themselves but to others. Now,
I've got a mortifying thought here that may be one
answer to why people are laughing in movie theaters. What
if the person laughing at horror has what's called pathological laughter.
This is actually when there's damage to a wide variety
of brain regions and it produces abnormal laughter. So, for instance,
(28:56):
like the most common cases of this are pseudo bulber palsy,
gelastic epilepsy, and then just psychiatric illness in general. They
found it in reported cases of multiple sclerosis als, in
cases where people have tumors or lesions in the limbic
system in the brain stem. So it's just this like odd, abnormal,
(29:16):
uncontrollable laughter. You know, I don't I don't want to
engage too much in judging strangers that I have no
real insight on. But when I saw Baby Driver recently,
there was somebody in the theater who was laughing almost
continuously through the film, not just the humorous moments and
the fun moments, but also just the moments of intense
(29:38):
violence that pop up here and there and then really
and and looking back, and I'm like, yeah, I could
I could see that individual's reactions being a product of
some sort of uh, you know, abnormal laughter scenario. Yeah.
I think sometimes my experience at the movie theater has
been that, at least especially in the last ten years,
(29:59):
it seems to be or that like it's this communal
experience where a lot of people feel like that kind
of like out loud reaction is allowed and part of
the experience, you know. I remember going to see one
of the paranormal Activity movies and there was this guy
behind us who was just like shouting at the screen
the whole time, like, Oh, no, don't go in there,
(30:19):
don't don't know, don't let that baby touch that dog, No,
don't do that. You know, you know, there's something kind
of magical about that experience, Like I haven't been in
a theater with that recently but when it's authentic, when
the individual is speaking to the movie theater, uh, kind
of organically and they're not showing off, they're not trying
to do some sort of a riffing thing and being
(30:40):
the life of the party, it is kind of it
is kind of magical because I feel I feel like, well,
they're they're more alive with this film than I am. Like,
I'm really into it, but maybe I'm sort of checking
out now and again and thinking, oh, what's that actors
been in recently? It's need how they shot this scene, strange,
how they adapted this from the novel. But this person
is living in it. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Maybe it's
(31:02):
just what kind of media consumers we are too that
might be part of it. Well, all right, let's try
to bring it all together back around what is going
on when that person in the theater is laughing? What
are they laughing at? Seems like there's no definitive answer
to this question yet. Not a lot of research has
been done on the neurological basis for nervous laughter, But
(31:25):
there are two popular theories that revolve around the idea
that laughter is inherently social, So laughter is sending messages
to people around us. Likewise, smiling and socially awkward situations
seems to demonstrate that you have nothing to do with
any external problem. Yeah, and this is again why I
favor the benign violation theory, because if it's not social,
(31:46):
then why is it disrupting my movie going experience? Yeah?
Absolutely so. The first type of message that could be
going on with nervous laughter seems to be an expression
of fearful submission. So we actually see this in MCA
acts when they feel threatened or dominated. Their laughter is
accompanied by evasive or submissive body movements, and this is
(32:09):
used to admit their fear and communicate their desire to
avoid conflict. This is actually first noted by primatologists Signey Pruschoft.
He was the first one who primarily studied Reesiss macaques
along these lines. He noticed that they also bared their
teeth in a smile during these social interactions. And this
(32:29):
wasn't a signal to begin a fight or anything, but
it was to dispel tension so that their aggressor would
become more friendly. The smile was a display of submission
to the more dominant member of their their group. Yeah,
that's interesting to think of viewer of a horror movie
reacting in a way where they're they're submitting. They're saying like, oh,
(32:51):
Jason vorhees right, please don't I submit? And then you realize, oh, wait,
I don't have to submit to Jason Vores because he's
pretend look, Pennywise, I'm laughing, don't meet me. We humans
seem to have adapted the smile to express approval, joy, compassion,
sometimes sympathy. But when we recognize a dangerous situation, we
(33:11):
may still smile at it. And this line of thought
about laughter trends toward evolutionary history. Now, the second idea
that's going on here is I mentioned this earlier, the
mature defense mechanism that represents our denial of fear. So
with this type of laughter, we're actually trying to convince
ourselves that everything's okay, and it's a signal that we
(33:33):
can endure whatever trauma is in front of us. So
humor seems to be a way to put our fears
into perspective. It allows us to strengthen our ability to
confront them. And then if you can laugh at something
like that, well that surely must show you've got some
courage or at least are you know, you might wish
for that courage because laughter seems to banish anxiety. I'm
(33:54):
thinking of the classic scene of like two gun slingers
standing each other down and there both the stone faced
and then one laughs are snickers, and it's like, that's
that's the the indicator, right, It's the same thing. That's
what's going on with these maccaques, basically, like, uh, it's
actually it's the opposite of what's going on with these maccaques,
where it's like, rather than showing that I'm submissive, it's
(34:17):
like I'm not afraid of this. I'm so not afraid
of this that I'm gonna laugh at how silly this
situation is. Yeah, and I think we've seen that in
various cinematic showdowns, like occasionally like that, the tension will
be so uh, you know, grim that somebody will break
it with about by saying making a kissy face or something. Right, Yeah, exactly.
So there's actually an experiment that speaks to this in
(34:39):
which volunteers were asked to be head a mouse. They
were actually like human beings were asked to volunteer to
behead a mouse, and their faces were photographed while they
did it, and when they did, the photographs showed that
they had pained, uncomfortable smiles. This is like the creepiest
thing ever that all these people were smiling while they
(34:59):
were cutting the heads off these mice. I'm assuming these
were dead mice. I don't know, man, I don't know.
I'm going to go with that assumption. Now, the first
idea that we talked about, that one trended towards evolutionary history.
This line of thought is more accepted by psychologists and neuroscientists,
and actually Freud, for instance, was a big proponent of
this theory. So maybe though, here's here's another backup, and
(35:23):
this gets back to what you're talking about with forms
of humor. Maybe this kind of nervous laughter is an
expression of incongruous emotional reactions. For instance, when we feel
like we might be overwhelmed by our emotions, whether they're
positive or negative, we might express the opposite emotion to
have a dampening effect and kind of restore some kind
(35:46):
of emotional balance. It's interesting that reminds me of the
theory on the pinching of baby cheeks. What's that? This
is the idea that occasionally you will encounter something so cute.
It might be a baby and be a puppy, a
kitten so cute that you have to hurt it to
like restore balance. So the baby is so cute, you
(36:07):
just gotta pinch it. You've got to basically assault the
baby so that you you won't just completely explode. There
used to be a bit about this on that old
MTV sketch show The State. They had a whole bit
about this old lady who was who her grandson was
so cute that she had to try to crush his
face and the people in the store that she was
(36:29):
in We're trying desperately to prevent her from two inks,
and it turns into this whole farcical adventure. Yeah, I mean,
I've certainly felt the like the weird urge to bite
an infant for executeness or a puppy or a kitten
before it's it's a very strange situation. Yeah, maybe we
should return to that. That That is an interesting that's
(36:50):
uh an interesting like crossing of wires in the brain,
kind of similar to our episode on the Call of
the Void. Yeah, um yeah, we'll eat you up. We
love you so. Yeah. From The Wild Things all right,
we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back,
all right. So, um, I think at this point I
want to come back around to some of the theories
(37:10):
we mentioned earlier, uh, talking more expressly about humor, and say,
all right, how do they how do they line up
with horror? So, first of all, incongruity theory, which again
suggests that humor blooms when people notice the disconnect between
their expectations and the actual payoff. I can certainly see
where this could come into into play, especially with all
the misdirections and jump scares that one encounters in modern
(37:33):
horror movies and in haunted houses. That's a good point. Yeah,
horror films may actually be a phenomena of both incongruity
and transgression. So maybe we're laughing when there's this incongruous
event that goes against our expectations or veers from harmlessness
into actual potential dangerous territory. It also brings to mind
(37:56):
a Raskins somatic script based theory of humor, and this
ideas that humor involves the activation of two opposing scripts
such as sex no sex good bad, and humor comes
from the incongruity here of these two activated scripts. So
like danger, but not danger because I'm in a theater. Now,
as far as this superiority theory of humor goes, I
(38:17):
think there's certainly plenty of misfortune to take pleasure in
and most horror movies, either if you're kind of a
terrible person, or if the movie encourages you to take
pleasure in the mutilation and death of its characters, which
we especially see in so many nineteen eighties slasher films. Right,
you have like the bad Boy, the bad Girl, you know,
these various archetypical kids that the movie is basically saying, Look,
(38:41):
they deserve to be killed by Jason or whoever the
slasher is, and only a couple of characters are above
that treatment. Yes, slasher movies in particular use this kind
of old Testament punishment system as being an excuse for
why there's such horrible violence being enacted, and it's supposed
(39:02):
to encourage us to, you know, be okay with it. Yeah,
it's it's a very certainly a very sacrificial feel to it.
So the next time you watch a horror movie, ask yourself,
which of these characters are are okay? To die according
to the film, and which ones are not? Yeah, and like,
who am I made to identify with? Yeah? Right, in
(39:23):
some situations you're made to identify with Freddy Krueger or
Jason Vorhees rather than the like, sexually active kids that
they're slaughtering. Yeah, there was. There was a wonderful treatment
of this. Years ago. There's a Michael Caine film titled
A Shock to the System. I've never seen this. It's
quite good because he plays just a normal guy who
(39:45):
suddenly realizes that he can kill people, that he can
kill people in his life that he doesn't like that
inconvenience him, or that there's to whom there's some advantage,
you know, to murdering them, and and he starts killing
these people, and for most to the film, he's killing
people that we we see through his eyes and therefore think, yeah,
(40:05):
they should go. They're annoying, they're terrible, And we follow
that up to a point and then we realize, Okay,
I'm not cool with you killing anybody else anymore. Michael Caine,
huh this have you seen Harry Brown? I don't think
I have. It sounds very similar. It's another Michael Caine movie.
Harry Brown is like Michael Caine is a senior citizen
who lives in block housing, and uh, he essentially becomes
(40:28):
a vigilante. It just starts like murdering criminals in his neighborhood,
even though he's like this, this kind of daughtering old
senior citizen. Yeah, it all comes down to the question
is the character or the slasher murdering the wrong sort
of person? Yeah, alright, And then let's talk about relief theory.
The states that comedy again is a way for people
to release suppress thoughts and emotions safely. So for this
(40:51):
kind of gets into the similar territory. So you have
this cardboard cutout of a person. Let's say it's um,
I don't know. Let's say it's a bo us or
or something more mundane, like a rude driver. Like without
a lot of character investment, we're generally okay with the
idea of Jason or he's killing a rude driver or
(41:13):
or some other slasher person killing the bad boss. Whatever
the the you know, the crude cardboard cutout of a
human is. This is why the Hannibal Elector stuff is
so popular because in a lot of ways, he's like
an anti hero. People see him positively even though he's
the serial killer that eats people because he only well,
it tends to only eat people who are rude, right,
(41:35):
And yeah, I mean he eats the rude. It for
us denizens of the real world, Uh, it is um
it's it's quite wrong for us to eat rude people
just because they're rude. It's at least a little bit
icky to fantasize about eating rude people because they are rude.
But we can safely get that same sort of relief
(41:56):
by watching Hannibal elector do it instead. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
So all of this leads us to the connection between
horror and humor, and this seems to have become increasingly
popular in our fiction in the last few decades. Think
of how many like goofy horror movies there are now, right,
and the sort of silly combination of these. So I
(42:18):
found this actual quote from one of our favorites here
at Stuff to Blow Your Mind Stewart Gordon. He's the
maker of films like Reanimator from Beyond and Castle Freak. Uh.
And he tells the story about how Alfred Hitchcock referred
to Psycho as a comedy. Uh. And he said that
Hitchcock's point was that there's this very fine line between
(42:41):
getting someone to laugh and getting them to scream. And
so perhaps this is why many creators like Gordon himself
now are finding it best to just alternate between the
two rather than going with like a straight comedy or
straight horror film. They're introducing both in the same context.
But uh, why what's going on? They They're supposed to
(43:03):
be different, right, Horror oppresses us, comedy liberates us, Horror
turns the screws, comedy releases it. Comedy elates us. Horror
stimulates depression, paranoia, and dread. They're supposed to be opposites.
I don't know. After this episode and talking about all
these weird convergences between the two, it really feels like
(43:25):
we stand at an intersection of of horror street and
humor boulevard. I think so that the traffics flowing both ways. Well,
and if we bring it all the way back around
to it where we started talking about this, the trope
of the evil Clown plays with this whole relationship of
humor and horror, and it creates in itself this incongruous
(43:48):
object of laughter. Right, So it's no wonder that people
were laughing while we are watching this new movie. Yeah,
and you know, another factor that comes to mind is
is that you have an individuals that are watching the
film alone. Uh, and then you have individuals who are
watching it more socially, like I was there with somebody,
but we weren't really talking during the film. Other people
(44:11):
were having more of a like a social engagement with
the picture. And you, of course can get into a
lot of arguments about to what degree that's that's that's
sort of breaking the rules of going to a movie theater.
But still there's there does seem to sometimes be this
to this drastic difference between their social engagement with each
other during the film. Well, speaking of social engagement, Robert,
if people out there want to socially engage with us,
(44:34):
how can they do it? Oh? Well, they can head
on over to any number of our social media accounts.
Were on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram. Uh, We're we have
a group. Even you go to Facebook, you look up
the stuff to Blew your Mind discussion module. You have
to ask to join, but you'll probably get in and
then you can you can interact not only with us,
(44:55):
but you can interact with with other like minded listeners
to the show. Yeah, so I'd like to ask you, listeners,
let us know what you think about this whole thing
with people laughing at horror movies, whether it's in the
theater or not. Do you think the theories that we
presented are you know, potentially valid or is there something
else going on here that we missed? And how does
(45:15):
your experience with a horror movie and a haunted house
or haunted attraction. How do those differ? Because from my
own point point of view, I don't really laugh while
watching a horror movie generally, but I certainly laugh after
being scared at a haunted house. Like there's for me,
there's an experiential difference between the cinematic scare and the
(45:36):
real world pretends scare. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And one last
way you can get in touch with us about this
is the old fashioned way. That's on email at blow
the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more
(45:57):
on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how
stuff works dot com. The Big f
Stuff to Blow Your Mind New York Comic Con Stranger Things. Yes,
it all comes together on October six, from seven pm
to eight thirty pm at Hudson Mercantile in Manhattan. If
you're in the area, join us for Stuff to Blow
Your Mind Live Stranger Science as we explore the exciting
science and tantalizing pseudo science underlying the hit Netflix show
(00:20):
Stranger Things. Stuff you missed in history class has a
show right after us in the same venue, so you
can really double down on your stuff. And hey, the
three of us would love to meet you. This is
the opportunity to do it. Learn more and buy your
tickets at New York Comic Con dot com. Slash n
y c C hyphen presents Welcome to Stuff to Blow
(00:46):
Your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome
to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert
Lamb and I'm Christian Seger, and hey, we've both just
saw the movie It in the movie theater. And this
is rare because you don't get to the movies as
much as I do. But we have both been able
(01:08):
to see a movie in the theater and experience it
pretty recently. Yeah, and I mean a lot of people
are checking it out. Yeah, it's it's become quite a hit.
So when I was at the movies watching this, there
was this woman in the theater who is in the
back a couple of rows from me, and she just
kept screaming every time Pennywise would show up, like this
howling scream, and this caused her. Then she would laugh
(01:31):
in response to her own screaming, and everyone else in
the theater then would laugh as well. So there's this
like weird moment where like everybody was laughing over this
movie of this just horrible depictions. Then I saw that
movie Mother a week later. Yeah, yeah, and that didn't
happen at all. No one laughed, No, there was no
(01:54):
nervous laughter, there was no screaming. It was just this unrelenting, traumatic,
uncomfortable horror playing out in front of you. And so
I'm wondering, is there some kind of metric of successful
horror here or is it just like different subgenres when
people feel like it's okay to laugh nervously versus they're
just enraptured with with what is so scary in front
(02:16):
of them. Well, yeah, and then of course these are
two very different films. I understand with with kind of
different target audiences, so when I very much account but yeah,
I I share some of your concerns about my my
fellow viewers. I mean, this is a reason I one
of the reasons I don't go to movie theaters that much,
because ultimately I would rather watch anything in my living room. Um,
(02:37):
it's only the whole timing aspect of of like a
film you're really excited about. It's going to get me
to go to the theater because otherwise I'm not crazy
about the theater. It's you know, it tends to be overpriced.
You gotta go if you if you're gonna if I
go in my and I go with my wife, then
I have we have to get a sitter. It's just
the whole whole pain and uh. And you know, life
(02:58):
moves so fast now at our age that it's like
a movie. Like when you're a kid, if you didn't
see Batman in the theater, it's like forever in the future.
It's like two months, yeah, and two months like that's
gone like that, like movie after movie, I'm like, oh,
that Marvel film seems kind of kind of cool. Maybe
I'll check that out. And then it's on, you know,
direct streaming. But of the many things that bother me
(03:21):
about the the movie theater going experience, there's certainly the
the audience reaction to not only scares, but to just
graphic violence in general. You're you're watching it, you're immersed.
Something scarier violent happens and someone responds with laughter. It
throws me out of the experience of watching the film.
But then I also have this weird moment where I'm like,
(03:43):
what are we as a species? Who? Where? What have
we done culturally so wrong? How do what is our
relationship with depictions of violence in our in our fiction
that that will that allows this to happen, That I'm
hearing somebody cackle while someone's being like bludgeoned to death
or something. Well, I have to admit, Robert, I'm probably
one of the people that would annoy you in that respect,
(04:04):
because during it there were points where I giggled gleefully.
But I think when I think back on it, it
was more out of the sheer excitement that as a
horror fan they were able to make a film that
was actually as dark and horrifying as the novel, And
I was so I thought I was going to be
disappointed going into it. And you know this, horror fans
(04:25):
were like junkies, were always on the lookout for the
next good story that's going to come out in the genre. Right.
We're just always hoping, will this be it? Will this
be the next cool thing? And more often than not,
we're disappointed. So I think when I was giggling, it
was more out of happiness that this thing wasn't failing
my expectations, you know. And I've been getting a lot
of questions about what you're talking about in relation to
(04:48):
the movie it because it's been so popular. A lot
of people are saying to me, because they know that
I write horror and that I'm a fan of horror,
what is it that you like about horror? What you know?
They say it to me as if like I'm a
damaged human being and they need me to explain you
know that I'm not, uh, And I guess for me,
I see storytelling as a way of learning through the
(05:10):
surrogate figures that are playing out in the story in
front of you, right, And this is essentially our method
for explaining to each other how the world works. So
cautionary tales like horror seem to me to be culture
designed to enhance our survival rate, and something like it
is a glimpse is something that's larger than us, because
obviously it's not a real clown running around and murdering people.
(05:33):
It's some kind of monstrous, cosmic entity. Yeah, so you've
got this whole idea that there's something beyond our understanding
and something that scares us by simply showing us that
we are just not as significant as we like to
think we are. And there's something oddly zen about that
that I like when you learn to be content with
(05:53):
your lack of significance and you just can accept that
you don't understand everything and you never will. And I
think there's room for laughter there as well. Yeah, I
would agree with with that. You know, I I write
horror as well, and I don't think of myself as
a as a horror writer per se. Like, I think
(06:14):
it's more a matter of exploring the reel through the unreal.
And if you were exploring something that is inherently dark
or inherently fantastic, inherently ridiculous or surreal, I mean that's
going to color your unreal method of exploring it. But yeah,
I think it's more about it's it's more about what
(06:35):
that that that endpoint, like, what are you trying to
explore about the real world? Right? So then let's back
up for a second here, because we're both practitioners and
fans of this, but there's something going on here with
the human experience when people are laughing at horror movies.
So let's try to unpack this and look at the history, biology,
(06:59):
and psychology of laughter. Yeah, because I think the main
issue here is that you can either say I'm the
only person in this theater who's sane and everyone else
is having an insane or a logical reaction to the horror.
That's one way to approach it. But the more likely
explanation is that what is happening here is normal, and
if we look at it, it'll reveal something about our
(07:20):
relationship to humor, our relationship to horror, and just the
human experience itself. All right, So let's let's start with
just laughter and humor in general. So studies have shown
that various apes, rats, dogs, birds, dolphins, they all do
something that resembles laughter. But of course everything is a
little bit more complicated with humans, and laughter itself is complicated.
(07:44):
You know what, when you hear it, it's that mix
of rhythmic vocalized, you know, involuntary actions. It begins with
a set of gestures, a crack in the facial features,
and then the emergence of sound, and that exact sound
is gonna gonna very tremendous. I mean, you've you've all
heard countless versions of laughter, you know, like the deep
(08:05):
resonating laughter of say Brian blessed Um, who played, of course,
of the character Vulcan and the flash Gordon, the tittering
laughter of say the character Knox Harrington, or David Thulis
played by David Threwis in The Big Lebowski, or you know,
any example of sardonic laughter or sexy laughter. I mean,
(08:26):
the list goes on and on. But when we we
belt out a hearty laugh, we we feel it throughout
the body. Uh, even the arm, leg, and trunk muscles,
fifteen facial muscles contract and we feel the unmistakable stimulation
of the zygomatic muscle, the main lifting mechanism of your
upper lip. Meanwhile, the epiglottis partially closes the laarnix, interfering
(08:49):
with respiratory system, making air and take ir regular you gasp.
In extreme situations, you even have your your tear ducks
kicking in and contributing tears um as well. Maybe your
your nose is running. It becomes this. We often forget that,
like a really true full body laugh. It's like being
gassed with something. In extreme situations, you pee your pants. Yeah,
(09:12):
it happens now. Of course, for you to laugh, you
need some sort of stimuli, and the most common stimuli is,
of course, humor. But humor itself is a tricky subject
to understand that we've been we've been banging our heads
against it for thousands of years. So I thought it
might be helpful to just go ahead and roll through
a few basic theories regarding a humor so that we
(09:33):
can move forward. And I think as we go we'll
find that in trying to um explain what humor is
and how we react to humor, we also get into
that area of horror. Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbs, they all
argued the superiority theory of humor, which states that we
simply find the misfortune of others amusing. Yeah, this is schadenfreud,
(09:55):
of the great German term for finding pleasure in somebody
else's misfortune. Yeah, and he view. You see someone trip
and you laugh, or you trip and someone laughs at you.
This seems like a perfectly solid explanation for everything that's occurring. Now. Meanwhile,
Sigmund Freud, he championed the champion the relief theory, which
states the comedy is a way for people to release
suppress thoughts and emotions safely. And this can include everything
(10:17):
from you know, cutting a slice of you know, confert
you know, controversial say social commentary, or are just a
simple fart joke. Now. Emmanuel Conta Flip favored the incongruity theory,
which suggests that humor blooms when people notice the disconnect
between their expectations and the actual payoff. I went in
(10:38):
to smell that flour on your lapel and it squirted water.
That was unexpected. That was hilarious. Now. One that one
of the more recent theories that that I find quite
attractive is the benign violation theory, and this holds that
humor arises when benign subject matter and violent or dangerous
subject matter overlapped, overlap and allow and the laugh itself
(11:00):
is a way to communicate to others that a previously
perceived threat is not a real danger. Now, none of
this is a subtled debate. You can argue for any
one of these, and maybe there's a little truth in
all of them, but especially for our purposes here, I
do really like the benign violation theory because it explains
humor and laughter in terms of communication. After all, we
(11:21):
are social organisms. I mean, we we banned together. That's
where we found our survival in a in a dangerous
world of limited resources. So it makes sense that allowed
vocal expression, not only a vocal expression, but a very
physical expression is we've described, would have some sort of
a communicative role. So when we drilled down even further,
(11:44):
we look to the work of a guy named Robert Provine.
He's a neuroscientist and psychology professor at the University of
Maryland in Baltimore County, and he conducted laughter research for
this book that he wrote, and he observed real world
laughter in more than a thousand episodes in public places.
And Provine described his approach as trying to understand laughter
(12:07):
from the position of a visiting extraterrestrial. So essentially, what
would an alien make of the sounds and faces we're
making when we're laughing. So he first defined what a
laugh is, and he quantified it as a series of
short vowel like notes or syllables that are each seventy
(12:27):
five milliseconds long and are repeated at regular intervals about
two hundred and ten milliseconds apart. Now, there's no specific
vowel sound that defines laughter, but similar vowel sounds are
typically used for the notes of a given laugh. Right,
So we're not going uh oh e I, you know,
(12:48):
like you're not combining all the various different vowels. Is
usually the same one over and over again. So there's
usually a strong harmonic structure to laughter, with each being
a multip full of a low frequency. So when you
look at laughter's harmonic structure on a sound spectrogram, you
actually find that there are evenly space stacks of short
(13:10):
horizontal lines in the spectrum, and the notes and the
inter note intervals between them, those carry the actual information
that helps us identify a sound as laughter. So, for instance,
if you were to use like editing software and you
cut out the spaces between laugh notes, you would still
recognize it as laughter. But if you cut out the
(13:32):
notes themselves, it just sounds like a long, breathy sigh. Essentially,
all human laughter is a variation on this basic form,
and we typically start seeing it in babies around three
and a half to four months of age. And Provide
also found the following stats. He found that less than
(13:53):
twenty of the laughter incidents he cataloged were in response
to something that was actually funny. Instead, people more often
are giggling or chuckling at innocuous statements like, for instance,
I see your point and then somebody goes And what's
even more interesting is that the person who produced the
laugh provoking statement was forty six percent more likely to
(14:17):
be the one who chuckled themselves. So it's more likely
that people tell a joke and then they laugh at themselves,
then somebody else laughs at them. In only eight of
the one thousand, two hundred recorded episodes that Provine looked
at did they find that laughter interrupted what someone was saying.
Nine point nine percent of the time, laughter occurs in
(14:39):
these tidy, natural breaks. And this is weird because I
think I'm probably the point zero one percent of the population.
Then who laughs in ways that totally interrupted conversation? Anybody
who's listening to me on these podcasts will probably attest
to that. Also, I'm the most awkward person to go
to the movies with because I laugh a lot inappropriately.
I got dirty looks in the theater for laughing maniacally
(15:03):
at movies like American Psycho and Hannibal. Well, I mean
American Psycho. In Hannibal, you do have to admit that
they play with black comedy a little bit. That's what
I thought. Yeah, as I was watching them, I was like, oh,
this is supposed to be dark humor. I was laughing
in response to it, and people were looking at me
like I was a madman, Like you're laughing at this
(15:24):
naked man running down the hall with a chainsaw. But
that scene is legitimately hilarious because they're going to such
pains to hide as genitalia. Because and that made an
otherwise terrifying, otherwise terrifying scene, uh, comedic because they're because
of what they're clearly doing from a blocking standpoint, there's
a lot that's silly about that scene started on un Hannibal.
(15:46):
There's a lot selling that as well. Now as far
as laughter interrupting conversation, uh, and and even with yourself,
you know, I I tend not to interpret people's laughter
in conversation as an interruption. Maybe it's I kind of
think of it in the same way that you generally
wouldn't say that applause interrupts a performance, you know. Um
(16:10):
it just it seems like we if you're engaging with
the conversation with somebody and there's laughter happening on one
or both sides, that that is factoring into the communication, right,
unless it's just occurring with you know, in a state
of madness. Yeah, exactly, That's how I see it. So
for instance, I think the stats actually back this up too,
and this is why I tend to laugh the way
(16:32):
I do. But uh, probably more unconsciously than conscious. Indicates
that most people use laughter in the same way we
use verbal pauses. And what I mean by that is,
rather than quietly wait to respond while we're collecting our thoughts,
we're using the stilted laughter to hold our place in
the conversation. It's the same thing is when people use
(16:53):
like or you know, as verbal pauses in a in
a sentence that they're saying out loud so that they
can kind of compose themselves first. And as podcasters, we
have to admit not only do we do this like
every human who communicates in any language does, because this
is just a natural part of human communication. But boy,
do we get a lot of messages about it. I
(17:15):
don't know. I haven't really noticed any messages about it recently.
Maybe not recently. Yeah, maybe it's because we've been doing
the show for a long time. I remember when I
first came on Stuff to Blow your Mind, I got
a lot of notes about it. Well, there is an
exercise in sort of, you know, cutting down one's use
of those words. But also I think people that was
(17:35):
into this show and certain other shows like this realize
that it is, for the most part, an organic conversation. Yeah. Granted,
it's not the same as a full blown conversation. It's
kind of a performance conversation with notes on hand. It
would be a very weird conversation if you were having
if you were trying to talk to somebody and they
were referring to note cards the whole time. But we're
(17:57):
also were not scripted show. And if you have if
it's scripted, then yeah you can you can cut out
all of those likes and yeah, exactly, And I think
there's different expectations of what people think we might be
doing on this show, right, Like some people think that
everything is completely scripted and that we're just reading the
whole time to each other, and then other people think
(18:18):
that it's totally extemporaneous and we have all of these
facts in our head and it's just spouting them off
back and forth to each other. Really it's a mix
of the two. So provide back to his research. He
proved essentially that laughter is inherently social and it's a
tool of communication, and it's not always or often actually
in relation to something that's supposed to be funny. He
(18:40):
found that participants were actually thirty times more likely to
laugh in the presence of others than they were when
they were a quote, truly alone. What he meant by
this is not counting in response to TV shows or
other media. So when we're totally alone, apparently we seem
to hardly laugh at all. Yeah, I did it. Certainly
mag is up with my experience of watching comedies, Like
(19:02):
I really don't like watching comedies by myself, because there's
there's very little joy to be had trying to laugh
or or never inevitably setting there not laughing while something
humorous takes place. Yeah. I think maybe this is why
I surround myself with animals, because even if my wife
isn't home, I spend half my day talking to them
(19:23):
and laughing at them or like having like little interactions
with them. And they're just like, dude, we don't understand English.
You know, they understand laughter probably, but not necessarily whatever
I'm saying to them. You know, I just and weirdly
inherently communicative in that way. I think if I was
by myself and just laughing and talking to myself, it
would feel stranger to me. I mean, that's the ultimate
(19:46):
beauty of having any kind of pet around. Is it
gives us license to sit around and talk to ourselves. Oh? Absolutely, yeah. Yeah.
Uh So it's also worth noting, just broadly about this,
that social scientists have confirmed too that laugh tracks on
television show those actually do increase audience laughter, and not
only that, they increase people's rating of comedic materials. So
(20:08):
we have yet another social aspect that's going on here
with laughter. I really do not like the idea that
science is backing up the laugh track tracks. Yeah, it's true.
We have an entire brain Stuff video episode all about uh,
laugh tracks in the history of them that Joe actually
worked on and it's a it's really good. Oh cool.
We'll have to throw a link to that on a
(20:28):
landing page for this episode at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com. And we should consider getting a laugh
track for this, uh show. That's a great idea. Yeah,
I know the listeners would hate. Are there any podcasts
out there with laugh tracks? Surely there must be, Huh
that would be interesting. Cereal's got to have a laugh track, right, Okay.
So there's also an evolutionary theory that's related to the
(20:50):
whole laughter thing and it was proposed in two thousand
five and the Quarterly Review of Biology, and this was
by Matthew Gervas and his advisor David Sloan Wilson. Basically,
they looked at the research of this nineteen century French
physician named Guillaume Duchane. He was this guy this is
the electrocution of the fac Yes, so he would go
(21:12):
around and zap people's faces with this little electronic mischief box. Well,
he wouldn't just go around and do it. It was
like a psychopath. No, he wasn't just going up to
strangers and doing it. Sorry, Yeah, he was doing it
too too willing volunteers in a hospital, but he wanted
to see what would happen, and the volts evoked a
certain kind of smiling. Uh. And this is what Robert
(21:35):
was referring to earlier. This is where the zygomatic major
muscles get raised along the corners of our mouths. Right.
But he could never get the mischief box to reproduce
the kind of laugh or smile we get when we
actually find something truly funny. This laugh is way more complex,
and yeah, it uses the zygomatic major muscles, but it
(21:56):
also uses the obicularis oculi muscles, and those are the
muscles that are around our eyes that form crow's feet.
This is why you hear that phrase A real smile
is in your eyes. The first smile, the one that's
just with your mouth. That's just what we do to
be polite. I call it a dead smile. And it's
unfortunately what I usually end up producing when I'm asked
(22:18):
to smile for a camera. Right, So, like anytime I'm whatever,
like somebody wants to take a picture, I had the
hardest time genuinely smiling, and there's always like somebody on
the other end. It's just like, oh, why can't you
just smile? What is what are you doing? You know
that kind of thing, And it's because I'm conscious of
the dead smile. Look, yeah, I mean it's just a
classic griff and grim smile where someone just says, hey,
(22:39):
smile for the photo, take the picture. Whereas you know,
an actual professional photographer is going to try and get
a legitimate, you know, emotional response from you and they're
taking a picture. That's difficult. Your wife's a photographer. That
must be a huge part of the job, and I
can't imagine it's easy. No, it's it's always a challenge
because you're all ways dealing with a different person with it.
(23:03):
And some people are going to be natural laughers. They're
you know, they're gonna they're gonna naturally let that that
inner portion of themselves out. Other people are gonna be
more closed off and they're gonna give you that dead
smile and you've got to sort of all but carve
it out of their face. So Jervas and Wilson they
positive that two to four million years ago we human
(23:26):
beings evolved into having what they're referring to as do
shame laughter. This is when we actually find something funny.
But why did we do it well? The idea is
that it was a signal that everything was okay and
that our danger was low and our needs were met.
That lines up with the benign violation theory exactly. But
(23:46):
then sometime since then, the dead smile laughter emerged as
we became more cognitively developed. Now, the idea here is
that we learned to mimic the spontaneity of laughter so
that we can try to take advantage of its effects
and manipulate other people into thinking everything was okay when
(24:07):
it isn't. This is like the little finger form of laughing.
This is why your boss thinks that that every joke
they've ever told is hilarious. So true, so true. This
is absolutely that. Yeah, I immediately thought of bosses in
the past. Yes. Uh. But no matter how hard we try,
we usually can't get it right because of the whole
(24:28):
eyes thing. So there's another neuroscientist that backs us up.
His name's V. S. Rama Shandron. Oh yeah comes up
a lot, so he theorizes something similar. He says that
laughter evolved as a signal to both ourselves and others
that what may appear to be dangerous or threatening actually
is not so today, when we nervously laugh, it's because
(24:50):
we're signaling ourselves that whatever horrible thing that we've encountered
isn't really as horrible as it appears. So that maybe
what's going on when people are laughing when they're watching
horror movies. Right, so it jumps out, it's this crazy
clown with fangs. The lady screams, but then she laughs
because she's like, oh, it's just a movie. I'm okay.
(25:12):
So this maybe why psychologists actually classify humor as one
of our quote mature defense mechanisms. We invoke it to
guard ourselves against overwhelming anxiety. If we can laugh, for instance,
at traumatic events that are in our own lives, perhaps
then that we can endure them, and it diminishes our
suffering and attempts to convince us that we're going to
(25:34):
be able to make it through that trauma. But then
here's what the question becomes. Is laughter creating an expectation
that we're gonna be all right? Or is laughter only
possible when we actually believe things aren't as bad as
they seem. All Right, We're gonna take up quick break,
and when we come back, we will continue this exploration. Alright,
(25:58):
we're back. You know you were talking about the power
of laughter. And on a recent episode of Stuff to
Blay to Mind trailer Talk Our Our Friday, eleven am
Eastern Time Facebook live show, we had a trailer. We
featured the trailer for the Name of the Rose, and
one of the plot lines in that is this this
idea of what is humor and should humor be permitted?
(26:20):
Should humor being encouraged by the church, The idea being
that if you can, if you can laugh at anything,
you can laugh at the church, you can laugh at God.
And if in doing so, are you taking away some
of its power? Oh? Interesting, Well, it seems to me
that it would be inherently useful to the church if
the idea was to provide its followers with soulas that
(26:42):
everything's gonna be okay or that it's not going to
be okay, and then you're gonna continually need to pray
to God about it and it definitely shouldn't laugh. Yeah, well,
it's a whole This is a gets into the whole
theological deep end. Did Christ laugh? Is it okay to
laugh at certain things? Etcetera? And I'm not sure they're
any clear cut answers on that well, turning away from
(27:03):
laughter for a second before we converge back together and
try to figure out what's going on here when people
are laughing at horror movies. Let's talk about scares and fear. Remember,
anxiety and fear are a product, not a failure, of
being perceptive. Perceptive people are the ones who are most
often anxious. The most fearful among us are often those
(27:26):
who have the most imaginative intelligences. Yet most of us
respond to being frightened as if it's embarrassing, right, it's
this petty emotion we don't want other people to see.
As if the notion of being afraid is somehow indicative
of our insecurity about our control over our own lives. Well,
we have to remember that evolution favors false positives, not
(27:49):
false negatives, because if I mean the classic example is
if there's some sort of a large carnivore hunting you,
and you're you know, an ancient human, uh, prior to
any kind of advanced technology. Then if your fellow, you know,
cave person thog jumps out at you and you think
for a second he's a tiger, and you react accordingly
(28:10):
like that that's a positive survival benefit. Whereas if an
actual tiger jumps out at you and you're just like, oh,
it's tharg again, well then your bone exactly. Well, that's
related I think maybe to nervous laughter. It's been noted
in psychological experiments when subjects are placed under a high
degree of emotional stress, and this is specifically when they're
(28:32):
thinking about perceived harm not to themselves but to others. Now,
I've got a mortifying thought here that may be one
answer to why people are laughing in movie theaters. What
if the person laughing at horror has what's called pathological laughter.
This is actually when there's damage to a wide variety
of brain regions and it produces abnormal laughter. So, for instance,
(28:56):
like the most common cases of this are pseudo bulber palsy,
gelastic epilepsy, and then just psychiatric illness in general. They
found it in reported cases of multiple sclerosis als, in
cases where people have tumors or lesions in the limbic
system in the brain stem. So it's just this like odd, abnormal,
(29:16):
uncontrollable laughter. You know, I don't I don't want to
engage too much in judging strangers that I have no
real insight on. But when I saw Baby Driver recently,
there was somebody in the theater who was laughing almost
continuously through the film, not just the humorous moments and
the fun moments, but also just the moments of intense
(29:38):
violence that pop up here and there and then really
and and looking back, and I'm like, yeah, I could
I could see that individual's reactions being a product of
some sort of uh, you know, abnormal laughter scenario. Yeah.
I think sometimes my experience at the movie theater has
been that, at least especially in the last ten years,
(29:59):
it seems to be or that like it's this communal
experience where a lot of people feel like that kind
of like out loud reaction is allowed and part of
the experience, you know. I remember going to see one
of the paranormal Activity movies and there was this guy
behind us who was just like shouting at the screen
the whole time, like, Oh, no, don't go in there,
(30:19):
don't don't know, don't let that baby touch that dog, No,
don't do that. You know, you know, there's something kind
of magical about that experience, Like I haven't been in
a theater with that recently but when it's authentic, when
the individual is speaking to the movie theater, uh, kind
of organically and they're not showing off, they're not trying
to do some sort of a riffing thing and being
(30:40):
the life of the party, it is kind of it
is kind of magical because I feel I feel like, well,
they're they're more alive with this film than I am. Like,
I'm really into it, but maybe I'm sort of checking
out now and again and thinking, oh, what's that actors
been in recently? It's need how they shot this scene, strange,
how they adapted this from the novel. But this person
is living in it. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Maybe it's
(31:02):
just what kind of media consumers we are too that
might be part of it. Well, all right, let's try
to bring it all together back around what is going
on when that person in the theater is laughing? What
are they laughing at? Seems like there's no definitive answer
to this question yet. Not a lot of research has
been done on the neurological basis for nervous laughter, But
(31:25):
there are two popular theories that revolve around the idea
that laughter is inherently social, So laughter is sending messages
to people around us. Likewise, smiling and socially awkward situations
seems to demonstrate that you have nothing to do with
any external problem. Yeah, and this is again why I
favor the benign violation theory, because if it's not social,
(31:46):
then why is it disrupting my movie going experience? Yeah?
Absolutely so. The first type of message that could be
going on with nervous laughter seems to be an expression
of fearful submission. So we actually see this in MCA
acts when they feel threatened or dominated. Their laughter is
accompanied by evasive or submissive body movements, and this is
(32:09):
used to admit their fear and communicate their desire to
avoid conflict. This is actually first noted by primatologists Signey Pruschoft.
He was the first one who primarily studied Reesiss macaques
along these lines. He noticed that they also bared their
teeth in a smile during these social interactions. And this
(32:29):
wasn't a signal to begin a fight or anything, but
it was to dispel tension so that their aggressor would
become more friendly. The smile was a display of submission
to the more dominant member of their their group. Yeah,
that's interesting to think of viewer of a horror movie
reacting in a way where they're they're submitting. They're saying like, oh,
(32:51):
Jason vorhees right, please don't I submit? And then you realize, oh, wait,
I don't have to submit to Jason Vores because he's
pretend look, Pennywise, I'm laughing, don't meet me. We humans
seem to have adapted the smile to express approval, joy, compassion,
sometimes sympathy. But when we recognize a dangerous situation, we
(33:11):
may still smile at it. And this line of thought
about laughter trends toward evolutionary history. Now, the second idea
that's going on here is I mentioned this earlier, the
mature defense mechanism that represents our denial of fear. So
with this type of laughter, we're actually trying to convince
ourselves that everything's okay, and it's a signal that we
(33:33):
can endure whatever trauma is in front of us. So
humor seems to be a way to put our fears
into perspective. It allows us to strengthen our ability to
confront them. And then if you can laugh at something
like that, well that surely must show you've got some
courage or at least are you know, you might wish
for that courage because laughter seems to banish anxiety. I'm
(33:54):
thinking of the classic scene of like two gun slingers
standing each other down and there both the stone faced
and then one laughs are snickers, and it's like, that's
that's the the indicator, right, It's the same thing. That's
what's going on with these maccaques, basically, like, uh, it's
actually it's the opposite of what's going on with these maccaques,
where it's like, rather than showing that I'm submissive, it's
(34:17):
like I'm not afraid of this. I'm so not afraid
of this that I'm gonna laugh at how silly this
situation is. Yeah, and I think we've seen that in
various cinematic showdowns, like occasionally like that, the tension will
be so uh, you know, grim that somebody will break
it with about by saying making a kissy face or something. Right, Yeah, exactly.
So there's actually an experiment that speaks to this in
(34:39):
which volunteers were asked to be head a mouse. They
were actually like human beings were asked to volunteer to
behead a mouse, and their faces were photographed while they
did it, and when they did, the photographs showed that
they had pained, uncomfortable smiles. This is like the creepiest
thing ever that all these people were smiling while they
(34:59):
were cutting the heads off these mice. I'm assuming these
were dead mice. I don't know, man, I don't know.
I'm going to go with that assumption. Now, the first
idea that we talked about, that one trended towards evolutionary history.
This line of thought is more accepted by psychologists and neuroscientists,
and actually Freud, for instance, was a big proponent of
this theory. So maybe though, here's here's another backup, and
(35:23):
this gets back to what you're talking about with forms
of humor. Maybe this kind of nervous laughter is an
expression of incongruous emotional reactions. For instance, when we feel
like we might be overwhelmed by our emotions, whether they're
positive or negative, we might express the opposite emotion to
have a dampening effect and kind of restore some kind
(35:46):
of emotional balance. It's interesting that reminds me of the
theory on the pinching of baby cheeks. What's that? This
is the idea that occasionally you will encounter something so cute.
It might be a baby and be a puppy, a
kitten so cute that you have to hurt it to
like restore balance. So the baby is so cute, you
(36:07):
just gotta pinch it. You've got to basically assault the
baby so that you you won't just completely explode. There
used to be a bit about this on that old
MTV sketch show The State. They had a whole bit
about this old lady who was who her grandson was
so cute that she had to try to crush his
face and the people in the store that she was
(36:29):
in We're trying desperately to prevent her from two inks,
and it turns into this whole farcical adventure. Yeah, I mean,
I've certainly felt the like the weird urge to bite
an infant for executeness or a puppy or a kitten
before it's it's a very strange situation. Yeah, maybe we
should return to that. That That is an interesting that's
(36:50):
uh an interesting like crossing of wires in the brain,
kind of similar to our episode on the Call of
the Void. Yeah, um yeah, we'll eat you up. We
love you so. Yeah. From The Wild Things all right,
we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back,
all right. So, um, I think at this point I
want to come back around to some of the theories
(37:10):
we mentioned earlier, uh, talking more expressly about humor, and say,
all right, how do they how do they line up
with horror? So, first of all, incongruity theory, which again
suggests that humor blooms when people notice the disconnect between
their expectations and the actual payoff. I can certainly see
where this could come into into play, especially with all
the misdirections and jump scares that one encounters in modern
(37:33):
horror movies and in haunted houses. That's a good point. Yeah,
horror films may actually be a phenomena of both incongruity
and transgression. So maybe we're laughing when there's this incongruous
event that goes against our expectations or veers from harmlessness
into actual potential dangerous territory. It also brings to mind
(37:56):
a Raskins somatic script based theory of humor, and this
ideas that humor involves the activation of two opposing scripts
such as sex no sex good bad, and humor comes
from the incongruity here of these two activated scripts. So
like danger, but not danger because I'm in a theater. Now,
as far as this superiority theory of humor goes, I
(38:17):
think there's certainly plenty of misfortune to take pleasure in
and most horror movies, either if you're kind of a
terrible person, or if the movie encourages you to take
pleasure in the mutilation and death of its characters, which
we especially see in so many nineteen eighties slasher films. Right,
you have like the bad Boy, the bad Girl, you know,
these various archetypical kids that the movie is basically saying, Look,
(38:41):
they deserve to be killed by Jason or whoever the
slasher is, and only a couple of characters are above
that treatment. Yes, slasher movies in particular use this kind
of old Testament punishment system as being an excuse for
why there's such horrible violence being enacted, and it's supposed
(39:02):
to encourage us to, you know, be okay with it. Yeah,
it's it's a very certainly a very sacrificial feel to it.
So the next time you watch a horror movie, ask yourself,
which of these characters are are okay? To die according
to the film, and which ones are not? Yeah, and like,
who am I made to identify with? Yeah? Right, in
(39:23):
some situations you're made to identify with Freddy Krueger or
Jason Vorhees rather than the like, sexually active kids that
they're slaughtering. Yeah, there was. There was a wonderful treatment
of this. Years ago. There's a Michael Caine film titled
A Shock to the System. I've never seen this. It's
quite good because he plays just a normal guy who
(39:45):
suddenly realizes that he can kill people, that he can
kill people in his life that he doesn't like that
inconvenience him, or that there's to whom there's some advantage,
you know, to murdering them, and and he starts killing
these people, and for most to the film, he's killing
people that we we see through his eyes and therefore think, yeah,
(40:05):
they should go. They're annoying, they're terrible, And we follow
that up to a point and then we realize, Okay,
I'm not cool with you killing anybody else anymore. Michael Caine,
huh this have you seen Harry Brown? I don't think
I have. It sounds very similar. It's another Michael Caine movie.
Harry Brown is like Michael Caine is a senior citizen
who lives in block housing, and uh, he essentially becomes
(40:28):
a vigilante. It just starts like murdering criminals in his neighborhood,
even though he's like this, this kind of daughtering old
senior citizen. Yeah, it all comes down to the question
is the character or the slasher murdering the wrong sort
of person? Yeah, alright, And then let's talk about relief theory.
The states that comedy again is a way for people
to release suppress thoughts and emotions safely. So for this
(40:51):
kind of gets into the similar territory. So you have
this cardboard cutout of a person. Let's say it's um,
I don't know. Let's say it's a bo us or
or something more mundane, like a rude driver. Like without
a lot of character investment, we're generally okay with the
idea of Jason or he's killing a rude driver or
(41:13):
or some other slasher person killing the bad boss. Whatever
the the you know, the crude cardboard cutout of a
human is. This is why the Hannibal Elector stuff is
so popular because in a lot of ways, he's like
an anti hero. People see him positively even though he's
the serial killer that eats people because he only well,
it tends to only eat people who are rude, right,
(41:35):
And yeah, I mean he eats the rude. It for
us denizens of the real world, Uh, it is um
it's it's quite wrong for us to eat rude people
just because they're rude. It's at least a little bit
icky to fantasize about eating rude people because they are rude.
But we can safely get that same sort of relief
(41:56):
by watching Hannibal elector do it instead. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
So all of this leads us to the connection between
horror and humor, and this seems to have become increasingly
popular in our fiction in the last few decades. Think
of how many like goofy horror movies there are now, right,
and the sort of silly combination of these. So I
(42:18):
found this actual quote from one of our favorites here
at Stuff to Blow Your Mind Stewart Gordon. He's the
maker of films like Reanimator from Beyond and Castle Freak. Uh.
And he tells the story about how Alfred Hitchcock referred
to Psycho as a comedy. Uh. And he said that
Hitchcock's point was that there's this very fine line between
(42:41):
getting someone to laugh and getting them to scream. And
so perhaps this is why many creators like Gordon himself
now are finding it best to just alternate between the
two rather than going with like a straight comedy or
straight horror film. They're introducing both in the same context.
But uh, why what's going on? They They're supposed to
(43:03):
be different, right, Horror oppresses us, comedy liberates us, Horror
turns the screws, comedy releases it. Comedy elates us. Horror
stimulates depression, paranoia, and dread. They're supposed to be opposites.
I don't know. After this episode and talking about all
these weird convergences between the two, it really feels like
(43:25):
we stand at an intersection of of horror street and
humor boulevard. I think so that the traffics flowing both ways. Well,
and if we bring it all the way back around
to it where we started talking about this, the trope
of the evil Clown plays with this whole relationship of
humor and horror, and it creates in itself this incongruous
(43:48):
object of laughter. Right, So it's no wonder that people
were laughing while we are watching this new movie. Yeah,
and you know, another factor that comes to mind is
is that you have an individuals that are watching the
film alone. Uh, and then you have individuals who are
watching it more socially, like I was there with somebody,
but we weren't really talking during the film. Other people
(44:11):
were having more of a like a social engagement with
the picture. And you, of course can get into a
lot of arguments about to what degree that's that's that's
sort of breaking the rules of going to a movie theater.
But still there's there does seem to sometimes be this
to this drastic difference between their social engagement with each
other during the film. Well, speaking of social engagement, Robert,
if people out there want to socially engage with us,
(44:34):
how can they do it? Oh? Well, they can head
on over to any number of our social media accounts.
Were on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram. Uh, We're we have
a group. Even you go to Facebook, you look up
the stuff to Blew your Mind discussion module. You have
to ask to join, but you'll probably get in and
then you can you can interact not only with us,
(44:55):
but you can interact with with other like minded listeners
to the show. Yeah, so I'd like to ask you, listeners,
let us know what you think about this whole thing
with people laughing at horror movies, whether it's in the
theater or not. Do you think the theories that we
presented are you know, potentially valid or is there something
else going on here that we missed? And how does
(45:15):
your experience with a horror movie and a haunted house
or haunted attraction. How do those differ? Because from my
own point point of view, I don't really laugh while
watching a horror movie generally, but I certainly laugh after
being scared at a haunted house. Like there's for me,
there's an experiential difference between the cinematic scare and the
(45:36):
real world pretends scare. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And one last
way you can get in touch with us about this
is the old fashioned way. That's on email at blow
the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more
(45:57):
on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how
stuff works dot com. The Big f
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.