Summary
In this chapter, I attempted to reveal how deeply embedded sex is in our lifestyle and culture, and to argue that it should give us pause when we think sex is removed from our day-to-day activities and even our loftiest of cultural practices. For example, our aesthetic sense is undoubtedly affected by our attractions, and our sexual attractions are particularly potent ones when artists apply paint to canvas (or create work in any other medium). Even food and its consumption—the example I chose because I felt, at least initially, that it is immune to the powers of sex—are in reality often influenced by sexual issues. Finally, the analysis in this chapter may offer a glimpse into the sometimes alien and disconnected reality of an asexual person as he or she resides on Planet Sex.
CHAPTER 12
(A)sexuality and Humor
My aunt told me a joke or, as she called it, “a little story.” A man is at the dentist with an impacted wisdom tooth. Needing oral surgery, the man is advised by the dentist that a Novocain injection is necessary. Unfortunately, for some reason, the injection does not seem to numb the man’s mouth. So, the dentist advises another injection of Novocain. This second attempt at numbing the man’s mouth also does not seem to work. Somewhat perplexed, the dentist next advises that a general anesthetic will be necessary to put the man under. However, even this approach is not effective, as the man remains awake and alert. A bit desperate now, the dentist reaches into the back of the medicine cabinet, and pulls out a bottle of blue pills.
The man asks, “So, what’s that?”
“Viagra,” the dentist answers.
The man exclaims, “Viagra! But why?”
“Well,” the dentist replies, “because you’re going to need something to hold on to when I pull that damn tooth!”
The content of humor is often sexual in nature. Why? It may partly have to do with our tendency to experience tension in relation to sexual matters, and this tension may serve as a readably accessible psychic “fuel” for driving the mechanics of laughter and humor. The philosopher/poet Herbert Spencer (1860) and the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1960), along with more recent theorists (Zillmann & Bryant, 1980), have championed variations on “tension relief” models of humor, partly to help explain the sex/humor association, although these models can be applied to other tension-related content in humor too.
Sexual tension can come in two forms. First, there is what might be called a “natural” kind of sexual tension, as human sexual response is associated with a buildup of both physical arousal (e.g., vaginal lubrication, erections) and psychic arousal (feeling “turned on”). Yet even catching a glimpse of a hot-bodied passerby has the ability to arouse some titillating psychic tension. Thus sex is naturally associated with tension, both when actually engaging in it and when we are briefly reminded of it. Some sexual tension, however, is often more neurotic in nature. This is the kind of tension to which Freud and others largely referred. Neurotic sexual tension is created by most cultures in their tendency to limit and control sexual expression. Parents, teachers, lawmakers, police, and others are the primary agents of this control, as they act as socializers and enforcers of the rules and regulations of sex. In short, people have bottled-up neurotic sexual tension because they can’t always do what they want sexually. This is a fact of civilized life, at least if you believe Freud and similarly minded scholars. Moreover, even the most sexually liberated among us cannot entirely escape these repressive clutches of the agents of civilized society, and thus even the most sexually liberated people still retain some residual neurotic sexual tension. Some people, though, have more pent-up neurotic sexual tension than others, perhaps because of their sensitive dispositions or perhaps because of a particularly rigid and repressive childhood.
This tension or “psychic energy”—natural or neurotic in origin—may be diverted and used as the fuel that helps drive laughter and humor. When the best comedians, amateur and professional alike, tell a joke or an amusing story, they provide rich detail and aptly time their punch lines, because these devices aid in building and releasing tension for full comic effect. Sex is an easy subject matter through which comedians ply their trade. This is in part because the tension necessary for full comic effect is already there; it just needs the right details and some good timing to harness and release it in the right way.
Laughter is pleasurable for most people, and part of the pleasure has to do with a release of tension. The release of tension, whichever way it is achieved, is pleasurable. Interestingly, the physical mechanisms of tension relief involved with laughter are similar to that of an orgasm—spasmodic muscle contractions (myotonia). Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that energy created in one domain—sexuality—may be harnessed and effectively released through another—laughter/humor—with similar physical mechanisms. Or at least that is the theory behind tension-reduction models of humor. Indeed, some theorists have speculated that one of the adaptive functions of laughter in humans, the only species that laughs,[43] is that it allows for the release of all kinds of psychic tension, which may be unhealthy if pent up too long. If we weren’t able to laugh, so the theory goes, we would all eventually explode, at least psychically.[44]
A corollary of this type of tension-release theory of humor, at least of the classical Freudian version, is that once we laugh and tension is released, we should not only feel relieved but also have less of a need to release this energy in other ways, because the tension is, presumably, gone. Thus, a “catharsis” should occur, a temporary reduction of pent-up psychic energy and, importantly, a decreased tendency to engage in the tension-causing behavior. For example, if sex caused our tension, which has now been released in the form of a sexual joke, we should have a decreased need to have sex or a sexual outlet.
Is there modern scientific support for this tension-reduction model of humor, given that it is associated with some relatively ancient and oft-criticized theorists, such as Freud? There is, at least for some basic elements of the theory. Several relatively modern theorists of humor argue that some kind of tension is often important for and can enhance humor, particularly in humorous situations that evoke the act of laughter or other overtly mirthful reactions. For example, in a study by psychologists Dolf Zillmann and Jennings Bryant (1980), the authors found that when tension is high, people laugh and express more mirth. More specific to sexuality, though, there is also evidence that people who report a high degree of sexual desire (sexual tension) seem to enjoy sexual humor more than those who report lower sexual desire (Prerost, 1995).
But is there evidence that sexual tension can be unconsciously channeled into sexual humor, or what might be construed as “humor-like” behavior? The evidence here is indirect. Two studies in the 1980s suggested that sexual titillation makes men susceptible to creating inadvertent sexual puns or double entendres (Motley & Camden, 1985). In both of these studies, men thought they were in a fairly mundane “language and dialect” research experiment. This was a guise to hide the true goal of the studies: the investigation of Freudian humor-like behavior. In the first study, the researchers found that men more likely to complete sentences with sexual charged-meanings if they had a sexy female experimenter conduct the study than men who had a male (and thus presumably not so sexy) experimenter. For example, in the presence of a sexy female experimenter, men often completed the sentence “The lid won’t stay on regardless of how much I” with the words screw it. This phrase has, of course, more sexual meaning than other ways of completing this sentence (e.g., tighten it, turn it). In a second, related study, the men who had the most “repressed” sexual personalities were the most likely to be susceptible to these types of inadvertent sexual puns. Presumably, the erotic tension created by the sexy female experimenter was unconsciously channeled into a subtle form of sexual expression and hence partially released in the form of these sexual puns and double entendres.
43
Some animals may have a form of rudimentary laughter (e.g., “proto-laughter” of chimps), or at least show some of the evolutionary physical precursors to laughter, such as excited and rhythmic physical behaviors (e.g., tail-wagging in dogs) (Eastman, 1936). There may also be some precursors of the often “rule-bending” element of humor in the play fighting of animals (Gervais & Wilson, 2005; see also later in this chapter).
44
It is popularly believed and has often been stated—in the Bible, in the popular media, and so on—that laughter is “good medicine.” The implication of this widespread belief is that it must have evolved because of its physical health benefits. However, some theorists suggest that laughter’s direct health benefits are minimal, or at least not yet sufficiently demonstrated. Instead, humor evolved because it had “social” benefits, easing social tension and allowing for smooth navigation among our fellow humans (Provine, 2000), and any health benefits are indirect and work through these social benefits (e.g., social support).