Only humans and higher primates can laugh - other creatures inhabiting our planet do not have this ability. Although some studies confirm that ordinary gray rats can still emit laughter that is inaudible to the human ear, it is significantly different from human laughter. But only people can laugh out loud, control their laughter, and use it in the right situations. And they don’t learn this - this ability is inherent in us by nature. Small children make their first laugh long before they begin to walk and talk - for different children this event occurs between the ages of 4 months and six months.
What is laughter for?
Laughter is a way of social communication; people laugh extremely rarely when alone, and if this happens, it means there is a virtual source of social interaction. At the physiological level, it is similar to anxiety - if you take measurements of brain function during anxiety and laughter, it will be extremely difficult to distinguish them.
Laughter has the ability to influence people, that is, it gives us the ability to quietly manipulate a person’s emotional state. They say that laughter is contagious. This is manipulation - increasing the mood of others through your laughter. But we will not go into the complex physiological processes of laughter, but will go straight to its varieties.
Laughter and a person's attitude towards you
You can tell a lot by laughter - how a person treats you, what’s on his mind, what his character is. Let's start, perhaps, with the intonations of laughter.
1. If you hear loud peals of “ha-ha-ha,” then you don’t have to be afraid of this person and don’t expect a trick from him. Here is the very sincerity and honesty. At this moment the person is completely relaxed, able to smooth out any awkward situations, ready to embrace the whole world, his mood is so good. It is possible that this person remains like this forever.
2. If you suddenly hear a goblin’s malicious chuckle, which sounds something like this – “hee hee hee,” then stay on your guard. This is not the most pleasant guy in front of you, especially since he is clearly not telling you something, does not particularly hide his hostile attitude, or is burning from a feeling of burning hatred.
3. A dry chuckle “he-he-he” also does not indicate the most friendly attitude of the interlocutor. Moreover, the more “e”, the drier and more aggressive the person. Know that he is not going to have anything to do with you.
4. An alarmed “hoo-hoo-hoo” laugh can tell you that a person is scared, doesn’t know what to do in a given situation, feels completely helpless and unprotected.
5. When the letter “O” is clearly visible in laughter, and the laughter sounds like “ho-ho-ho,” this can only mean one thing - the person is surprised, shocked and categorically against your opinion.
By the way, if a person laughs for no reason, then, contrary to the saying, this is not a sign of a fool, but the result of a disruption of the endocrine system.
Laughter and character
Now let's try to figure out what can be said about a person's laughter about his character.
1. If a person is completely relaxed at the moment of laughter, does it with taste, throwing his head back and opening his mouth wide, then we can confidently say that he is an easy-going, non-offensive, open person who loves life and takes everything from it. The laughter of such people is especially contagious - as soon as they laugh, the whole company will laugh.
2. It’s a completely different story with people who help themselves with gestures, theatrically showing how funny they are. He may hit his palms on his knees or the table, or put his hand to his chest. Know that this person is simply attracting attention to himself, as he always strives to take a central place in any company. Outwardly, they give the impression of very cheerful, sociable people, but if you dig deeper, you will discover selfishness, stinginess and secrecy.
3. Muffled and suppressed laughter with tightly compressed lips indicates that a person is as collected, tense as possible and keeps his emotions under complete control. But this only speaks in his favor - he can definitely be trusted, he knows how to set goals for himself and achieve them, and is not prone to betrayal.
4. If a person, instead of laughing, only smiles wryly from the right corner of his mouth, then this can only indicate that the spirit of adventurism is strong in him. He is clearly cunning, yet still touchy, and often lacks a sense of humor. They are often lonely because they are lost in choosing a partner, choosing him for years.
5. If the left half of the mouth is involved in this process, then this speaks of something else. This person is sincere, honest and decent. If you turn to him for help, he will definitely not refuse you. Such people are usually loved by members of the opposite sex.
6. People who cover their mouths with their palms when laughing are distinguished by a good level of self-control, lack of self-confidence, and restraint in expressing feelings. Such people usually become good family men.
This is how you can tell by laughter what kind of person is in front of you, what his character is and his attitude towards you. Just for fun, observe the people you communicate with and compare your results with these observations.
Man is born to laugh. We humans can get angry like dogs, be affectionate like cats, get tired like horses, but we will always laugh and smile only like people. Nature, together with reason, has endowed us with an amazing gift - to loudly declare to the world that it is good for us to live in the world.
Types of laughter
Let's start by asking the question about the types of laughter. It has already been installed before. However, a quick review of existing theories of the comic does not give a very comforting picture. One inevitably asks oneself: is theory needed here at all? There were a lot of them. Is it worth adding one more to the numerous existing theories? The first and main drawback of all existing theories (especially German ones) is terrifying abstractionism, complete abstraction. Theories are created without reference to any actual reality.
They say, for example, that people's shortcomings are comical. It is quite obvious, however, that people's shortcomings may not be comical. It is also necessary to establish exactly which shortcomings and in what cases can be funny and in which they cannot.
For example, the definitions of the comic turned out to be too broad: non-comic phenomena also fit under them. The greatest philosophers have made this mistake. Thus, Schopenhauer argued that laughter occurs when we suddenly discover that the real objects of the world around us do not correspond to our concepts and ideas about them. Obviously, his imagination flashed to cases when such a discrepancy caused laughter. But he does not say that such a discrepancy may not be at all funny: when, for example, a scientist makes a discovery that completely changes his idea of the object being studied, when he sees that he was mistaken until now, then the discovery of this mistake (“inconsistency the world around us to our concepts") lies outside the realm of the comic.
The same abstraction was characteristic of many laughter classifications. However, here we can cite the most interesting attempt to enumerate the types of laughter, made not by philosophers or psychologists, but by the theorist and historian of Soviet film comedy R. Yurenev, who wrote this: “Laughter can be joyful and sad, kind and angry, smart and stupid, proud and sincere, condescending and ingratiating, contemptuous and frightened, insulting and encouraging, arrogant and timid, friendly and hostile, ironic and simple-hearted, sarcastic and naive, affectionate and rude, meaningful and unreasonable, triumphant and justifiable, shameless and embarrassed. You can also increase this list - cheerful, sad, nervous, hysterical, mocking, physiological, animal. Maybe even sad laughter!
This list is interesting for its richness, its brightness and vitality. It was obtained not through abstract reflection, but through life observations.
If we consider one of the classifications of types of laughter proposed by Vladimir Propp in his book entirely devoted to the analysis of the problems of comedy and laughter, then we can note that there are 6 different types of laughter, defined mainly by psychological coloring. And above all, it is a mocking laugh.
It is this and only this type of laughter that is consistently associated with the sphere of the comic. It is enough, for example, to say that the entire vast area of satire is based on mocking laughter. This same type of laughter is most often found in life.
You can laugh mockingly at a person in almost all of his manifestations. The exception is the area of suffering, which was noted by Aristotle. A person’s appearance, his face, figure, movements may turn out to be funny; His judgments, in which he shows a lack of intelligence, may seem comical; A special area of ridicule is the character of a person, the area of his moral life, his aspirations, his desires and goals. A person’s speech can turn out to be funny as a manifestation of his qualities that were invisible while he was silent. In short, a person's physical, mental and moral life can become the object of derisive laughter in life.
Based on purely quantitative observations, it can be established that mocking laughter is extremely common, that it is the main type of human laughter, and that all other types are much less common. From the point of view of formal logic, one can purely speculatively come to the conclusion that there are two large areas of laughter or two kinds of them. One includes ridicule, the other does not contain this ridicule. This distribution is a classification based on the presence and absence of one characteristic. In this case, it will turn out to be correct not only formally, but also in essence. This distinction is also made in some aesthetics. Lessing writes in “Hamburg Drama”: “Laughing and ridiculing are far from the same thing.” It can, however, be established that there is no sharp, clear boundary, that there are, as it were, intermediate, transitional cases, and now we need to turn to them.
So, laughter is possible only when the shortcomings that are ridiculed do not take on the character of vices and do not cause disgust. It's all a matter of degree, then. It may turn out, for example, that the shortcomings are so insignificant that they cause us not to laugh, but to smile. Such a deficiency may be characteristic of a person whom we love and appreciate very much, for whom we feel sympathy. Against the general background of positive assessment and approval, a small flaw not only does not cause condemnation, but can even strengthen our feeling of love and sympathy. We readily forgive such people their shortcomings. This is the psychological basis of good laughter.
In contrast to the elements of sarcasm and malevolence inherent in mocking laughter, here we have gentle and harmless humor. The term “humor,” says Vuls, is indispensable when the author is on the side of the object of “laughter.” Humor is a certain state of mind in which, in our relationships with people, we discern a positive inner essence through the external manifestations of small shortcomings. This type of humor is born of a certain benevolent good nature.
An explanation of good laughter helps to understand and define its opposite - evil laughter. With good laughter, the small shortcomings of those we love only highlight their positive and attractive sides. If these shortcomings exist, we readily forgive them. With evil laughter, shortcomings, sometimes even imaginary, imaginary and invented, are exaggerated, inflated and thus provide food for evil, unkind feelings and ill will. This kind of laughter is usually laughed by people who do not believe in any noble impulses, who see everywhere only falsehood and hypocrisy, misanthropes who do not understand that behind the external manifestations of good deeds lie real good inner motives. They do not believe these motives. Noble people or people with heightened sensitivity, from their point of view, are fools or sentimental idealists, deserving only of ridicule. Unlike all other types of laughter considered, this one is neither directly nor indirectly related to comedy. Such laughter does not evoke sympathy. Such laughter is pseudo-tragic, sometimes tragicomic. Although this type of laughter is not generated by comedy, it in itself can turn out to be funny and can easily be ridiculed on the same grounds on which human shortcomings are generally ridiculed.
Psychologically, evil laughter is close to cynical laughter. Both types of laughter are generated by evil and spiteful feelings. But their essence is still deeply different. Evil laughter is associated with imaginary shortcomings of people, cynical laughter is caused by joy at someone else's misfortune.
All the laughter considered so far was directly or indirectly connected with some real or imaginary, large or small, shortcomings of those who caused laughter. But there are other types of laughter, which, speaking in philosophical language, are independent of any shortcomings of people, that is, they have nothing to do with them. These types of laughter are not caused by or related to comedy. They represent a problem of a psychological rather than an aesthetic order. They can become the subject of laughter or ridicule, but they themselves do not contain any ridicule. This is, first of all, a cheerful laughter, sometimes completely without reason, or arising for the most insignificant reasons, a life-affirming and cheerful laughter.
The first smile of a child pleases not only the mother, but also everyone around her. Having grown up, the child laughs joyfully at every bright and pleasant manifestation of life for him, be it a New Year tree, or a new toy, or splashes of rain that fall on him. There are people who retain this ability to laugh throughout their lives. People who are naturally cheerful and cheerful, kind, and prone to humor laugh with this kind of laughter.
It has long been noted that laughter increases vitality and vitality. At the dawn of human culture, laughter was an obligatory part of some rituals, hence the so-called ritual laughter.
In the opinion of modern people, deliberate, artificial laughter is false laughter and causes condemnation in us. But they didn’t always see it that way. Laughter was obligatory in some cases, just as crying was obligatory in other cases, whether the person was in grief or not.
Laughter was once credited with the ability not only to increase vitality, but also to awaken them. Laughter was credited with the ability to bring about life in the most literal sense of the word. This concerned both human life and the life of plant nature.
And the last type of laughter that V. Propp talks about in his book is riotous laughter.
So far we have talked about laughter as something uniform in intensity. Meanwhile, laughter has gradations from a weak smile to loud peals of uncontrollable laughter.
The presence of boundaries, some restraint and a sense of proportion, within which a phenomenon can be perceived as comic and the violation of which stops laughter, is one of the achievements of world culture and literature. But such restraint was not always appreciated and not everywhere.
If we are now attracted by the presence of some kind of boundaries, then once we were attracted, on the contrary, by their absence, by complete surrender of ourselves to what is usually considered unacceptable and illicit and which causes loud laughter. This type of laughter is very easy to condemn and treat with arrogant contempt. In Western aesthetics, this type of laughter is classified as the most “base.” This is the laughter of squares, booths, the laughter of folk festivals and amusements.
These celebrations included mainly Maslenitsa among the Russians and carnival in Western Europe. These days they indulged in unbridled gluttony, drunkenness and the most varied types of fun. It was necessary to laugh, and they laughed a lot and uncontrollably.
The number of types of laughter could be increased. Thus, physiologists and doctors know hysterical laughter. Also a purely physiological phenomenon is laughter caused by tickling.
The fact that other types of laughter are possible is quite obvious. The types considered give a very rough idea.
Introduction
Types of laughter
Carnival and masquerade
Conclusion
References
Introduction
The problem of laughter and laughter culture still remains one of the least studied in philosophical and ethical thought. The paradox is that a vast layer of human life, representing an equal side of cultural dialogue, continues to exist on the periphery of ethical and philosophical research. Nevertheless, laughter appears to be one of the most fruitful aspects of the approach to penetrating the content and structure of spiritual culture aimed at realizing universal human values.
Aristotle already noted that laughter is one of the main characteristic features of the human soul. The multifaceted nature and little research of the world's laughter culture present an opportunity to explain the phenomenon of morality on the basis of new theories and methodological views, all the more valuable since the monological seriousness that reigns in most scientific research - with all its claims to the ultimate truth - is largely one-sided. A look at the moral history of mankind, made sub specie risus, allows us to understand it in all its integrity and diversity at the same time. Laughter, thus, helping to rethink the past, allows us to understand the present and find possible ways out of the moral crisis of our time.
RelevanceThe topic of research is determined, firstly, by the fact that the study of the phenomenon of laughter, which arose at the junction of various sections of human existence (primarily its spiritual and physical sides), opens up new opportunities for understanding the essence of man and society in the aspect of moral history. In the current state of Russian society, which is characterized by the absence of generally accepted positive value guidelines and moral relativism, the importance of dialogue with laughter culture is promising: while preserving the spiritual health of the nation in times of totalitarianism and reaction, laughter preserved the original human unfreedom of the individual. Understanding these ideals could not be more important and valuable right now.
TargetThis work is to study the philosophy of laughter. The following follows from the goal: tasks:
·Types of laughter;
· The role of laughter in different cultures;
· Carnival and masquerade as part of the culture of laughter;
When considering this topic, I used monographs and articles devoted to the general theory of laughter and its individual aspects, which made a significant contribution to the development of the problem (Aristotle, A. Bergson, Z. Freud, M.M. Bakhtin, D.S. Likhachev, etc. ). Works devoted to the problems of history and theory of culture (F. Nietzsche, O. Spengler, M.M. Bakhtin, A.F. Losev, D.S. Likhachev, S.S. Averintsev, etc.).
Methodswhich I used when writing the abstract: dialectical, analytical and information method of text processing using a PC.
laughter carnival masquerade culture
Types of laughter
The classifications proposed in most aesthetics and poetics are unacceptable to us. We proceed from the fact that comedy and laughter are not something abstract. The man laughs. The problem of comedy cannot be studied outside the psychology of laughter and the perception of the comic. Therefore, we begin by posing the question of types of laughter. One might ask oneself: Are certain forms of comedy associated with certain types of laughter? Therefore, we need to look and decide how many types of laughter can be established, which of them are more significant for our purposes, and which are less significant.
This question has already been raised in our literature. The most complete and most interesting attempt to enumerate the types of laughter was made not by philosophers or psychologists, but by the theorist and historian of Soviet film comedy R. Yurenev, who writes: “Laughter can be joyful and sad, kind and angry, smart and stupid, proud and sincere, condescending and ingratiating, contemptuous and frightened, insulting and encouraging, arrogant and timid, friendly and hostile, ironic and simple-hearted, sarcastic and naive, affectionate and rude, meaningful and unreasonable, triumphant and justifiable, shameless and embarrassed. : cheerful, sad, nervous, hysterical, mocking, physiological, animalistic, maybe even sad laughter! .
This list is interesting for its richness, its brightness and vitality. It was obtained not through abstract reflection, but through life observations. The author further develops his observations and shows that different types of laughter are associated with differences in human relationships, and they constitute one of the main subjects of comedy. I would like to especially emphasize that the author opens his study on Soviet film comedy with a question about the types of laughter. This question turned out to be very important for him. It seems just as important for our purposes. For Yurenev, the question of types of laughter is important because different types of laughter are inherent in different types of comedic intrigues. Something else is important for us. We need to decide whether certain types of laughter are associated with certain types of comedy or not.
Yurenev's list is very detailed, but at the same time it is still not entirely complete. Yurenev’s nomenclature does not contain the type of laughter that, according to our data, turned out to be the most important for understanding literary and artistic works, namely, mocking laughter. True, in fact this type of laughter is taken into account in the future, it’s just not on the list. Developing his idea that the types of laughter correspond to the types of human relationships, the author writes this: “Human relationships that arise during laughter, in connection with laughter, are different: people ridicule, ridicule, mock ...” Thus, ridicule is put in first place , and this observation is very valuable to us.
Lessing also said in “Hamburg Drama”: “Laughing and ridiculing are far from the same thing.” We'll start by looking at ridicule. We will not supplement or classify Yurenev’s list. Of all the possible types of laughter, we first choose only one, namely, mocking laughter. It is this and, as we will see, only this type of laughter that is consistently associated with the sphere of the comic. It is enough, for example, to point out that the entire vast area of satire is based on mocking laughter. This same type of laughter is most often found in life. If you look closely at Repin’s painting of the Cossacks composing a letter to the Turkish Sultan, you can see how great the variety of shades of laughter depicted by Repin is - from loud, rolling laughter to a malicious giggle and a barely noticeable thin smile. However, it is easy to see that all the Cossacks depicted by Repin laugh with one type of laughter, namely, mocking laughter.
Identification of the first and most important type of laughter for us leads to the need for further, more detailed study of this type. On what basis should subcategories be arranged? The material shows that the most appropriate technique is arrangement for reasons that cause laughter. Simply put, it is necessary to establish what people actually laugh at, what exactly seems funny to them. In short, the material can be systematized by objects of ridicule.
Here it turns out that you can laugh at a person in almost all of his manifestations. The exception is the area of suffering, which was noted by Aristotle. A person’s appearance, his face, figure, movements may turn out to be funny; His judgments, in which he shows a lack of intelligence, may seem comical; a special area of ridicule is the character of a person, the area of his moral life, his aspirations, his desires and goals. A person’s speech can turn out to be funny as a manifestation of his qualities that were invisible while he was silent. In short, a person's physical, mental and moral life can become the object of laughter in life.
In art we have exactly the same thing: humorous works of any genre show a person from those sides of him that are subject to ridicule in life. Sometimes it is enough to simply show a person as he is, imagine or depict him; but sometimes that's not enough. What's funny needs to be revealed, and for this there are certain techniques that need to be learned. These techniques are the same in life and in art. Sometimes a person himself involuntarily reveals the funny sides of his nature, his affairs, sometimes a scoffer does this deliberately. The mocker acts in exactly the same way in life and in art. There are special techniques to show the funny in a person’s appearance, thoughts or actions. Classification according to the objects of ridicule is at the same time a classification according to the artistic means by which laughter is caused. The figure of a person or his thoughts or his aspirations are ridiculed in different ways. In addition, there are means common to different objects of ridicule, such as parody. Thus, the means of ridicule are divided into more specific and more general. The need and possibility of such a classification in Soviet science had already been determined, although in fact it had not yet been carried out. “It is quite obvious,” writes Yu. Borev, “the legitimacy and necessity of classifying the artistic means of comedic processing of life material.”
The role of laughter in different cultures
There are two fundamentally different perspectives on laughter, stemming from two different cultures. This is an ancient and Christian tradition. In antiquity, comedy and the funny as a genre were respected. Moreover, the funny was rather built on ridicule of topical things or political events. For antiquity, laughter is a bright feeling. For Christianity it plays a completely opposite role.
Let's try to find the so-called "antithesis of laughter", that is, something opposite to it. Traditionally, I mean the culture in which we still live, based on Christian customs, contrasts laughter and crying, the comic and the tragic. St. John wrote in “The Ladder”: “If nothing is more in agreement with humility than crying, then without a doubt nothing is as opposed to it as laughter.” Crying is an expression of a bad state: melancholy, sadness, grief, suffering (even “tears of joy” as a sign are usually associated with internal disorder and therefore are no exception). Laughter, in my opinion, in a symbolic sense, carries more meanings than tears. Therefore, their opposition will remain at the level of external manifestations. At the same time, for Christianity it was obvious that one of the meanings of tears was cleansing (let’s take, for example, “The Parable of the Feast in the House of Simon the Pharisee,” which talks about a sinner who washed the feet of Christ with her tears, which helped her receive forgiveness), good , and laughter was associated with a devilish laugh, a demonic smile and was naturally equated with evil. Christianity called the devil “the Monkey of God.” This reduction technique makes the image of the devil not scary. The monkey denotes likeness, caricature, imitation - all this slightly reduces the image of the original, which, on the other hand, does not prevent the viewer from laughing at both the original and its caricature.
The antithesis of tears and laughter is born from religion, from reasonable external oppositions. In her, tears were higher than laughter. What led Christianity to such an understanding of laughter?
We know nothing about the era of the birth of laughter, not because we have forgotten about it, but because the age of laughter is equal to the age of the person himself: laughter appears together with thought and word, one is not at all younger than the other.
In primitive times, laughter was only ritual, for example, ridicule of death. Aristotle already connects laughter with evil, but not laughter itself, but that which transgresses the permitted “measure” of evil. For the Greeks, laughter did not have a sinful connotation (an image of Olympic fun). Myths represent the gods not crying, but laughing, since laughter “refers to the integral and invariably moving canvases ... of comprehensive energy.” Franciscanism continued the path of a benevolent attitude towards laughter, relying on moderate laughter, which “did not spill the soul, but opened the way to heaven.” Perhaps such a sharp change in the understanding of laughter occurs due to the fact that nowhere before has laughter been associated with death. Indeed, in Christianity, laughter is a sign of humanity (“man is a thinking animal, mortal and capable of laughing”). M. Gorky wrote: “...laughing means he is not cattle,” which once again confirms what has already been said.
God does not laugh - he is ideal, immortal. Man is, first of all, a mortal, sinful creature. Man is “between Christ (according to legend, he never laughed) and the animal.” The animal does not laugh yet, but the god-man already does. Man is drawn to animals by sensuality, and to heaven by the body. A person’s laughter is the laughter of hopelessness and evidence of its awareness. Man's task is to resist death. Laughing, he “deals with fear.” Thus, by degrading laughter, Christianity spiritualized it.
M. Gorky in “Song of the Storm Petrel” has an interesting phrase: “...He rushes around like a demon, a proud, black demon of the storm, and laughs and sobs... He laughs at the clouds, he sobs with joy!” This is one of those rare cases when laughter and tears are put on the same page. Something that laughs at storms and cries with joy is somewhat reminiscent of a person who laughs at death, showing his heroism, and cries at a wedding and at birth with happiness. On the other hand, “he who laughs at storms” is called none other than a “demon,” that is, something close to the devil in its essence. And this once again proves that Christianity very strictly connected the image of laughter with the devil, and tears with joy.
For archaic consciousness, a connection is established between laughter and goodness, morning, birth. And this comparison is not accidental, because in their figurative meanings, the words morning, birth, awakening mean good.
Having called laughter evil, Christianity accepts joy and a smile. For example, in the “Akathist to the Most Holy Theotokos” in Ikos, “Rejoice” is constantly repeated.
There is always a difference between a smile and a laugh. The first always comes as “softened, pacified, weakened, feminine laughter.” Laughter, on the contrary, is emphatically rebellious. And no matter how grounded and intelligent it is, it still sounds ruder than a soft smile. She is a sign of mystical joy, a sign of goodwill and respect. A smile is a sign of goodwill, a desire to be understood and understand another.
But despite all that has been said above, a smile is as meaningful as any other sign of feeling. For example, in M. Gorky’s work “Mother” I found six different types of use of the word smile (and I don’t think that smile exhausts itself with these six types, these are just six that were revealed to me). The first is exactly the one I was talking about: a smile expressing mystical joy and respect. “A contented, quiet smile appeared on her lips, although tears were still trembling in the wrinkles of her cheeks. An ambivalent sense of pride in her son wavered within her...” Or an attempt to use a smile to gain the favor of the interlocutor: “He asked affectionately, with a clear smile in his eyes...”. Here the smile is directed not at oneself, as in the first, but at the interlocutor: she expects frankness and openness from him. A smile takes on a different meaning when a person “smiles guiltily.” What does he expect from this smile? Forgiveness? Or is it just a smile of repentance. Returning to the Christian theme, a smile cleanses a person, just like tears. At the same time, a smile can mean the complete opposite - forgiveness of an insult (“Then she smiled with a quiet, forgiving smile”). In addition, the use of a smile as a symbol of daydreaming is quite common: “God willing! - she thought. And she smiled..." or "...and everyone dreamily, with smiles on their faces, talked for a long time about the French, English and Swedes as their friends, about people close to their hearts..." In the second quote, dreaminess and a smile bring people, seemingly distant, closer ( French, English, Swedes), make them “friends close to the heart.” In the first quote, the smile is also directed outward, but it does not expect anything from the other, but only allows you to hope, believe, and most importantly, dream. a smile can carry hatred, malice and contempt: “They will smile and hang themselves, and then they will smile again.” Such a smile does not characterize a person from the best side.
The most important difference between a smile and laughter is that laughter is, first of all, sounds. Even the definition from the dictionary confirms this: “Laughter is abrupt characteristic sounds expressing the fullness of pleasure, joy, fun or other feelings, accompanied by short and strong exhalation movements.” If the laughter is silent, then this is some kind of anomaly, which must be specified separately: “silent laughter.” A smile, unlike laughter, is quiet and inaudible; it is never loud or flashy. A smile appears before laughter. It is possible that laughter is a kind of external, violent manifestation of an internal smile.
Carnival and masquerade
By masquerade we understand a special type of culture, genetically connected with folk carnival culture, in particular, the laughter culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, largely oriented towards it (and such a fundamental orientation towards carnival culture constitutes the most important immanent quality of masquerade culture), but at the same time ontologically and typologically opposing (and opposing itself to) carnival.
It is quite obvious that the concepts of “masquerade” and “carnival” are used solely as some rather conventional models, to which the culture of the corresponding era is in no way reduced.
The flourishing of carnival culture and the achievement of its apogee simultaneously meant the decomposition of carnival in the second half of the 16th century and the emergence in its depths of a new type of culture - masquerade. In literature, this is due not least to the fact that “the author’s analyzing consciousness, no matter how it is based on folk culture, is ontologically and fundamentally different from the collective consciousness, which goes back to the mythological and has not lost connection with the idea of human connection underlying carnival culture with natural rhythms about the unity and indissolubility of man and nature."
Having emerged in the depths of carnival culture, the elements of masquerade over the course of subsequent eras developed into an integral system, finding diverse, but typologically related manifestations in the artistic text. Apparently, the final formation of masquerade into a single type of culture and the emergence of masquerade literature can be attributed to the first decades of our century, which, of course, does not indicate the possibility of identifying masquerade literature with the literature of modernism.
The main topoi that determine the originality and unity of masquerade culture are the semantic fields of the mask and the holiday; The game turns out to be a kind of “mediator” that ensures the interaction of these two topoi. “It is at the intersection of these vectors that masquerade culture arises; they are also present in carnival, but there they have a different value hierarchy, are filled with different content and have a different structure.”
Elements of masquerade culture are contained, hidden and mature within the carnival itself. Moreover, the germs of these elements, the origins of the masquerade attitude towards the world are already contained in the mythological consciousness, in which the carnival worldview originates. Of course, the elements of carnival and masquerade culture, or more precisely, the elements that will subsequently become part of the carnival and masquerade culture, are not in antagonistic contradiction in myth, but complement and shade each other; in both cultures they are present, but they perform different functions there, occupy a different place in relation to each other, enter into different connections and are filled with different ideological content.
Elements of masquerade culture are basically just slightly modified, “mutated” components of carnival, and this transformation of carnival into masquerade could only occur as a result of the emergence of certain conditions associated with changes in public consciousness as a result of the emergence of a new sociocultural situation. Such changes occurred in Europe at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. One of the manifestations and symptoms of the crisis of public consciousness was, as usually happens in periods of crisis, an active search for new artistic forms, especially noticeable against the backdrop of the leisurely evolution of art in the 13th-16th centuries.
Indeed, in the second half of the 16th and early 17th centuries, such a radical renewal of artistic thinking took place in literally all spheres of art, which perhaps no other era has seen. The comedy dell appeared and quickly spread arte, a comedy of masks, which, being the crowning achievement of the development of carnival culture, at the same time marked a shift in emphasis within this culture: the mask from a secondary, auxiliary attribute, as it was in carnival, turns into the basis of a new culture.
The mask, which in carnival was primarily a means of acquiring a new image and a new essence, expressing the fundamentally important idea of renewal and birth for carnival culture, in masquerade becomes a tool and a way of hiding the true face and true essence, a means of deception.
If in carnival the mask was primarily a means of acquiring a new image and a new essence, expressing the idea of renewal and birth, which is fundamentally important for carnival culture, then in masquerade it becomes a means of deception, a tool and a way of hiding the true face and true essence, concealment, oblivion: carnival the mask brings birth, the masquerade mask brings death. It is no coincidence that the lush, decorative, entertaining, festive masks worn by carnival participants are so different from the black half mask that hides the eyes at a masquerade ball.
Note, however, that the distinction between a carnival and a masquerade mask is quite arbitrary and makes sense only as part of a more general opposition; after all, the acquisition of a new essence, achieved in a carnival with the help of a mask, changing clothes, presupposes, or in any case does not exclude, the concealment of one’s own face, just as changing one’s face in masquerade culture can also have the goal of acquiring a new one.
In masquerade culture, the mask has incomparably greater significance than in carnival culture, where it was only one of the attributes of the holiday: there is a change in priorities, a change in paradigm, a restructuring of the entire value hierarchy of various components and attributes of culture, due to changes in worldview and attitude towards the world that have occurred at the turn of the Renaissance and Modern times.
“Considering the evolution of the concept of “the world as theatre,” R. Schamber highlights an important aspect of the connection between the idea of the “death of God” and the change in man’s self-image, which predetermined not only the active appeal of artists of the century to the topos of the mask, but also changes in the nature of the mask in the culture of modern times.”
It is significant that in the 18th century masquerade was perceived as another form of carnival; at the same time, the leading feature - and the main function - of the masquerade turns out to be the acquisition of freedom, which is fundamentally important for the carnival. The masquerade ball becomes a privileged moment when for a moment one enjoys an intoxicating feeling of freedom, a moment when, as an exception, thanks to anonymity, one can only be oneself.
At the same time, the fundamental difference in the functions and functioning of the topos of the mask in carnival and masquerade cultures is already evident here. Carnival freedom did not in the slightest degree imply any restrictions, while the freedom gained at a masquerade ball is perceived as conventional, conditional, temporary, short-lived - and thereby ephemeral.
Carnival perceives itself as a phenomenon not limited by any time frame, that is, eternal, going beyond the ordinary concept of homogeneous time. The point is not only that the carnival is characterized by a fundamentally different, cyclical temporary organization associated with natural and mythical rhythms, but also that the carnival holiday is a holiday that will never end - at least, this is how the carnival participants perceive it . While the carnival is taking place, there is no other life for anyone except the carnival one. There is nowhere to escape from it, because the carnival knows no spatial boundaries. During the carnival, you can only live according to its laws, that is, according to the laws of carnival freedom. “Carnival has a universal character, it is a special state of the whole world, its revival and renewal, to which everyone is involved. This is the carnival in its idea, in its essence, which was clearly felt by all its participants.”
Of course, all participants in the carnival are well aware that someday - and they even know exactly when - the end of the carnival will come, and the holiday will be replaced by weekdays, and holiday time will be replaced by ordinary linear time. But this knowledge remains outside, outside, outside the framework of the carnival itself, it does not belong to the carnival and does not influence its sense of self. Thus, having fairly clearly defined boundaries both in time and space, the carnival does not think about the existence of these boundaries, it feels and perceives itself as devoid of boundaries. In other words, carnival has boundaries, but carnival has no boundaries.
The holiday is perceived by both the carnival itself and its participants not as an exception of a temporary, transitory nature, but as a new, and the only possible, eternal, absolute norm. In contrast to the carnival, the masquerade clearly - and constantly - is aware of itself as something temporary, transitory and therefore not entirely “real”; Moreover, this feeling of ephemerality and inauthenticity turns out to be the source and subject of continuous reflection, changing the very nature of festivity and, ultimately, transforming carnival into masquerade. The century can be considered as a kind of borderline era, when the inertia of the previous perception and functioning of the topos is preserved (although in this case, it makes sense to talk about a group of topoi, including the topoi of theater, theatricality, entertainment, play, laughter, comic, that is, almost all the main topoi of masquerade culture and at the same time begins to realize itself determined by the new paradigm and, in turn, this new a paradigm that defines, shapes, expresses the transformation of the topos of the mask.
The obvious attraction of 20th century literature to the mask became quite natural, or, in any case, quite understandable against the backdrop of the paradigm shift in European culture that occurred at the beginning of our century. The active appeal of artists belonging to different national and cultural traditions, professing different aesthetic or political views, working in different genres to themes one way or another related to masquerade, reincarnation, pretense, deception, to the motif of the mask seems to be one of the most important features of twentieth-century literature .
Already in works that are traditionally - and with a great degree of unanimity - considered as fundamental for all literature of the century, marking the emergence of a new style (or new styles) and the transformation of the entire artistic discourse, the mask is present at the level of theme, at the level of the structure of the image, motif, method organization of the work - and is not just present, but constitutes the most important element of poetics. Of course, the innovations of Kafka, Joyce, Proust are not limited to the transformation of a character into a type of mask, but, nevertheless, the appeal to the topos of a mask by the luminaries of modernism is both very significant and has found an obvious continuation and development in the work of writers who are guided by this literary tradition (traditions ), but also in all the literature of the century.
Throughout the entire century, the topos of the mask has been constantly and very actively present in the discourse of fiction, being actualized in a wide variety of manifestations, appearing quite clearly or receding into the background, but remaining extremely significant and indicative. We are talking not only about the theme of a mask, masquerade, and not even only about the special structure of the image, in particular, the modernist image, but also about the fundamentally important themes and problems for the literature of our century of a person’s non-identity with himself, the search for his true “I”, authenticity, and about mystification as a form and method of organizing a work, to the development of which the 20th century contributed a lot of new things.
In one form or another, at the level of thematic and problematic, image structure and plot organization of the work, motive and concept, A. Gide and A. Camus, R. Gary and B. Vian, L. - F. Celine and J. turn to the mask. - P. Sartre, S. Bellow and V. Nabokov, W. Wolf and O. Huxley, A. Murdoch and D. Fowles, M. Frisch and F. Dürrenmatt, R. Musil and G. Meyrink E. Canetti and G. Broch, H. - L. Borges and J. Cortazar, A. Posse and G. García Márquez, E. Hemingway and C. Vonnegut, T. Mann and G. Hesse, K. Abe and M. Pavic, L. Pirandello and I. Calvino; Even this cursory enumeration of the writers of the 20th century, in whose work the topos of the mask (and the inextricably linked topos of the game) occupies a fundamentally important place, does not in the least pretend to be complete, speaks of the importance of the concept of the mask for the literary process in our century. The options for addressing the mask in the literature of recent decades are especially sophisticated and varied.
The topos of the mask in its most diverse manifestations is actively exploited not only by “high” and “real” literature, but also by entertainment, mass, and pulp literature; It is no coincidence that it appeared as an integral cultural phenomenon in the 20th century; it is enough to mention the detective genre, which is impossible outside of this topos, or the significance that the motive of exposure plays in the genres of mass culture, dating back to the picaresque, gallant-heroic and adventurous novel (for example, “soap operas”).
A comparison of masquerade and carnival cultures as two types of culture should help to come closer to creating a unified picture of changes in social consciousness that gives rise to the art of modern times, and to make predictions regarding the trends in the development of modern art.
Conclusion
Laughter is an eternal companion of human existence. His secret is inextricably linked with the secret of personality, its inner, deep essence. The multifaceted nature and lack of research into the world's laughter culture, thus, presents an opportunity to explain the phenomenon of spirituality and morality from new points of view, all the more valuable since the dogmatic seriousness that reigns in many scientific studies, with all its claims to the ultimate truth, is largely one-sided . A look at the moral history of mankind, taken “under the sign of laughter,” allows us to understand it in all its integrity and diversity at the same time.
There is no doubt that laughter is an important and full participant in cultural dialogue. Its role is definitely high: in the era of universal dictatorship, when the truth was deliberately distorted and “corrected” in the spirit of ideological guidelines, only the culture of laughter could present the uncensored “unofficial truth” of the people. Thus, even sometimes departing from historical fact, laughter shows the essentially real spiritual situation of the era, its moral foundations, unsmoothed by officialdom and cleared of it by laughter.
Laughter, penetrating into all spheres of human life, is an interdisciplinary unifying phenomenon, acquiring a universal ideological character, which makes it one of the valuable evidence of the moral history of mankind.
For ancient archaic culture, the ethics and aesthetics of laughter are combined in a single sensory-plastic image of the body. Homeric “unspeakable laughter”, Dionysian orgy and ancient Attic comedy, ancient Russian festive culture, “carnival” creativity of N.V. Gogol and, partly, Soviet unofficial folklore express this bodily ontological principle in vivid, life-like images; here laughter is an expression of the claims of the human personality to uniqueness and divinity; harmony of the physical and spiritual, taken precisely in the earthly, bodily aspect; desire for moral purification. Bodily laughter affirms precisely universal human life values - the ancient meanings of moral revival, unity, optimism, fullness of life, love for the native land, humanism, freedom and justice, opposing unviable ideological dogmas and postulates.
To understand the rational type of laughter, its regulatory function is important, showing the relationship between what is and what should be, which becomes valuable in the current era of crisis of norms and moral principles.
References
1.A.L. Grinstein Carnival and masquerade: two types of culture // #"justify">2. Averintsev S.S. The fate of the European cultural tradition in the era of transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages // From the history of culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. - M.: "Science", 2002. - p.61.
.Bakhtin M.M. The work of Francois Rabelais and the folk culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. - M. "Art", 1996. - p.54.
.Borev Y. Satire. - Sat., "Theory of Literature". M., "Science", 1964.
.See Shendrick A.I. Theory of culture. - M.: UNITY-DANA, Unity, 2002. - p.231.
.Yurenev R. Mechanics of the funny. - "The Art of Cinema", 1964, No. 1
.Yastrebitskaya A.L. Holidays and celebrations in medieval Europe in the light of modern research: themes, issues, approaches to study: (Review of materials from the conference in Paderborn, 1989) // Social. and humane. science. Otech. and abroad lit. Ser.5. Story. - M.: "INION", 1995. - N 2. - p. 33.
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It was pointed out above that the classifications proposed in most aesthetics and poetics are unacceptable for us and that we should look for new and more reliable ways of systematization. We proceed from the fact that comedy and laughter are not something abstract. The man laughs. The problem of comedy cannot be studied outside the psychology of laughter and the perception of the comic. Therefore, we begin by posing the question of types of laughter. One might ask oneself: Are certain forms of comedy associated with certain types of laughter? Therefore, we need to look and decide how many types of laughter can be established, which of them are more significant for our purposes and which are less.
This question has already been raised in our literature. The most complete and most interesting attempt to enumerate the types of laughter was made not by philosophers or psychologists, but by the theorist and historian of Soviet film comedy R. Yurenev, who writes: “Laughter can be joyful and sad, kind and angry, smart and stupid, proud and sincere, condescending and ingratiating, contemptuous and frightened, insulting and encouraging, arrogant and timid, friendly and hostile, ironic and simple-hearted, sarcastic and naive, affectionate and rude, meaningful and unreasonable, triumphant and justifiable, shameless and embarrassed. You can also increase this list: cheerful, sad, nervous, hysterical, mocking, physiological, animal. Maybe even sad laughter! (Yurenev, 19646, 8).
This list is interesting for its richness, its brightness and vitality. It was obtained not through abstract reflection, but through life observations. The author further develops his observations and shows that different types of laughter are associated with differences in human relationships, and they constitute one of the main subjects of comedy. I would like to especially emphasize that the author opens his study on Soviet film comedy with a question about the types of laughter. This question turned out to be very important for him. It seems just as important for our purposes. For Yurenev, the question of types of laughter is important because different types of laughter are inherent in different types of comedic intrigues. Something else is important for us. We need to decide whether certain types of laughter are associated with certain types of comedy or not. Yurenev's list is very detailed, but at the same time it is still not entirely complete. Yurenev’s nomenclature does not contain the type of laughter that, according to our data, turned out to be the most important for understanding literary and artistic works, namely, mocking laughter. True, in fact this type of laughter is taken into account in the future, it’s just not on the list. Developing his idea that the types of laughter correspond to the types of human relationships, the author writes this: “Human relationships that arise during laughter, in connection with laughter, are different: people ridicule, ridicule, mock ...” Thus, ridicule is staged comes first, and this observation is very valuable to us.
Lessing also said in “Hamburg Drama”: “Laughing and ridiculing are far from the same thing.” We'll start by looking at ridicule. We will not supplement or classify Yurenev’s list. Of all the possible types of laughter, we first choose only one, namely, mocking laughter. It is this and, as we will see, only this type of laughter that is consistently associated with the sphere of the comic. It is enough, for example, to point out that the entire vast area of satire is based on mocking laughter. This same type of laughter is most often found in life. If you look closely at Repin’s painting of the Cossacks composing a letter to the Turkish Sultan, you can see how great the variety of shades of laughter depicted by Repin is - from loud, rolling laughter to a malicious giggle and a barely noticeable thin smile. However, it is easy to see that all the Cossacks depicted by Repin laugh with the same type of laughter, namely, mocking laughter.
Identification of the first and most important type of laughter for us leads to the need for further, more detailed study of this type. On what basis should subcategories be arranged? The material shows that the most appropriate technique is arrangement for reasons that cause laughter. Simply put, it is necessary to establish what people actually laugh at, what exactly seems funny to them. In short, the material can be systematized by objects of ridicule. Here it turns out that you can laugh at a person in almost all of his manifestations. The exception is the area of suffering, which was noted by Aristotle. A person’s appearance, his face, figure, movements may turn out to be funny; His judgments, in which he shows a lack of intelligence, may seem comical; a special area of ridicule is the character of a person, the area of his moral life, his aspirations, his desires and goals. A person’s speech can turn out to be funny as a manifestation of his qualities that were invisible while he was silent. In short, a person's physical, mental and moral life can become the object of laughter in life.
In art we have exactly the same thing: humorous works of any genre show a person from those sides of him that are subject to ridicule in life. Sometimes it is enough to simply show a person as he is, imagine or depict him; but sometimes that's not enough. What's funny needs to be revealed, and for this there are certain techniques that need to be learned. These techniques are the same in life and in art. Sometimes a person himself involuntarily reveals the funny sides of his nature, his affairs, sometimes a scoffer does this deliberately. The mocker acts in exactly the same way in life and in art. There are special techniques to show the funny in a person’s appearance, thoughts or actions. Classification according to the objects of ridicule is at the same time a classification according to the artistic means by which laughter is caused. The figure of a person or his thoughts or his aspirations are ridiculed in different ways. In addition, there are means common to different objects of ridicule, such as parody. Thus, the means of ridicule are divided into more specific and more general. The need and possibility of such a classification in Soviet science had already been determined, although in fact it had not yet been carried out. “It is quite obvious,” writes Yu. Borev, “the legitimacy and necessity of classifying artistic means and media processing of life material” (Borev, 1957, 317).
Have you not noticed how those who surround us laugh, how you laugh, how all people laugh?! But laughter, and the way we laugh, can tell a lot about a person. There are dozens of different types of laughter. There is laughter through tears, and sinister laughter, cheerful, sad, mysterious, infectious or quiet, covering the mouth or with an open mouth, etc. etc., countless numbers. And each type of laughter reflects one or another state of a person’s soul, one or another emotion, because a person does not always laugh when he is happy. Laughter also reflects our attitude towards ourselves, our self-esteem, and how we see ourselves and society as a whole. Let's figure it out and analyze how we laugh, and what types of laughter characterize whom.
The man laughs and touches his face or head with his hand. This tendency is typical of dreamy and romantic people, dreamers who often do not see reality and live only in dreams. Such people should be more realistic and pragmatic, otherwise their fantasies could destroy them.
Loud laughter, with open mouth. This type of laughter is typical of temperamental and active, but, unfortunately, selfish people. It wouldn’t hurt for them to slow down a little and be more restrained and moderate, because not everyone is like them. Also, good advice for those with this type of laughter is to learn to listen and hear someone other than yourself.
Restrained laughter. Usually he talks about the reliability, calmness and balance of a person. If a person can hold back laughter, then other emotions, for example, aggression. However, they are pedants, and the pedantry of such a person can often inspire melancholy in those around him.
The man laughs openly, leaning back slightly. Usually such people are frivolous, both in their relationships with loved ones and in life in general. They can be fun to be with, but they are not serious about important matters. If you have this type of laugh, think about it a little.
When laughing, he covers his mouth with his hand. Usually such people are timid and sensitive. They are not very confident in themselves, and this is their problem. Those with this type of laughter better work on their self-esteem and confidence in what they do.
Laughter with narrowed eyes. Such people usually have an extraordinary mind, are balanced and self-confident. But, unfortunately, they are sometimes more persistent than necessary, so sometimes it’s worth restraining yourself and calming down your ambitions.
Laughter with a wrinkled nose. This kind of laughter is typical for emotional but capricious people. Usually they are where they feel good and comfortable, “where the breeze blows, that’s where they keep their socks,” that’s what they say about them. They are subject to mood swings, and often these swings do not play into their hands. Those with such a laugh should think about this trait of theirs.
When laughing, he touches his lips with his little finger. Such a person likes to be the center of attention, and, on the one hand, this is not bad, but on the other, such a person lacks self-criticism, and for him there is only one truth - his own. And this is not entirely good. Maybe you should change this in yourself, those who have such laughter?!
Laughter with a tilt of the head. When a person laughs and tilts his head slightly, or even hides it, it means that this person is, first of all, conscientious and kind-hearted. Such people are accustomed to adapting to the situation and to the people around them. They always control their feelings and actions, sometimes even too much. If you have this type of laughter, don't be afraid to be more open in communication and even sometimes spontaneous.
A grin with the right corner of the lips raised. Usually the owners of such an expression on their lips are deceitful and prone to harshness. You never learn the truth from such people, and behind their cute expression you don’t know what to expect.
A grin with the left corner of the lips raised. They are the opposite of the previous type of people: they are decent and you can rely on them. They are honest with others, but often suffer themselves because of their honesty.
These are roughly the types of laughter people use. But this is not all, there are many more. However, only one thing is clear: each laugh is individual and carries with it one or another trait of a person’s character and personality. But still, physiognomy is not an exact science, and there are exceptions to everything. Just observe how we laugh, what type of laughter we unconsciously use, and what qualities we have. And if you don’t like something, you can always fix it. The main thing would be desire.
