Humour: My Sixth Sense by Walt Disney

[Squidy]

From Films and Filming Vol. 7 No. 5, February 1961:

Humour: My Sixth Sense
By WALT DISNEY

Few people have made more people laugh - and sometimes cry - than Walt Disney. But Disney himself is not certain what the qualities are that create the humorous. He tries in this article to analyse the serious business of funny business.

   The unfunny thing about humour is that you can't think about it very long without becoming serious. And maybe you can't be ponderous very long about human affairs and behaviour without getting the giggles.

   If this seems inconsistent, it is only because the sober and the silly sides of our human struggle for survival and perfection lie so close together.

   Laughter is a frown turned upside down. Any sharp and unexpected twist from the normal gives us a sense of relief or superiority. It makes us glad we aren't on the spot some poor unfortunate has gotten himself into by his stupidity.

   I'm presumed to know a lot about humour as an international sixth sense - because I've been dealing it out in one form or another for over a quarter of a century. But a lot of things about laughing matters still elude definition in words. Every writer, performer and producer of comedy in the entertainment arts ruefully knows that the essence of fun cannot be bottled and released like some genii at a magic word.

   True, there are certain formulas for provoking hilarity. Gagsters and jokesmiths practice and sometimes belabour many of them. And the capacity of audiences to enjoy them seems boundless. But the humorous impulse and most of its finest works are emotional and intuitive, rather than rational - truly based on a sixth sense.

   What I've learned about the nature of fun has come largely from the adventures of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Pluto, Goofy and other members of our cartoon family and how their antics have been received by audiences. They have been our test cases.

Animal Jokers

   More recently the live animals in our True-Life Adventure films have added much to our lore of laughter. For the need to clown seems to permeate all nature.

   One such display of the comic spirit in the animal kingdom that comes to mind was the riotous dance of relief indulged by the female elk and their calves when they reached the end of a hard and hazardous migratory trek in The Olympic Elk. Audiences have always chuckled at that mad gyration in the snow - and at the contrast with the lordly males who scorn such undignified behaviour. I am convinced after seeing many such incidents that the animals themselves, as well as human audiences, recognise this as primitive fun.

   They support the belief that comicality is a basic principle of universal life when it reaches the self-conscious level. Humour and its opposite are like the complementary elements of good and evil. Like the balance of hero and the villain in the dramatic arts. The expression "comedy relief" in theatrical entertainment has its roots deep in serious needs. Without the relish and the practice of humour in all its various shades and degrees, we would become very woeful; spiritless creatures. Fun and having fun is vital; makes life with its inevitable burdens tolerable. Often I think it may be the closest of all human bonds.

   Efforts to pin down the exact nature of jibe and jest have challenged pundits, professional fools, antic clowns, studious gagmen, comedians of every kind and medium. Often the result is a big headache.

   The man who could capture the sprite of laughter and win her lasting favour, would become one of the richest and certainly the most envied of humans, so highly treasured are her gifts.

   However, humour does have an operable technique. There are a certain number of more or less reliable clues. Of course, if they all worked out every time, we would understand more about human nature than any wise man thus far has comprehended.

   This we do know, however: drollery is a matter both of the spirit and the flesh. It can make the soul soar with delight as well as roll the body "in the aisles," as the expression is. It can reveal the noblest and the basest levels of the one who laughs, and what he laughs at.

   Laughter has lately assumed a new importance in human relations. With the growth and speed of mass entertainment, like the movies and television, and the increased facilities of communication, humour has become an article of international merchandise. It is one of America's most important exports. But when we assume that the making of fun in communicable ways has a common appeal to every race, we must qualify it sharply.

Racial Goodhumour

   Humour has many modes, many shades. It reflects racial and regional cultures. What may cause a Latin to howl with glee may leave a Nordic colder than his frigid zone. There are latitudes and longitudes of laughter.

   Only basic comedy, expressible in simple terms, can meet the requirements of a common denominator. This has to be visual, generally, needing few if any words. Pantomime is its medium, action its mode.

   If it deals with human beings, it must draw on the common characteristics of humanity itself, well beyond any specialised traits of race and culture and habit.

   One of the prime examples of this is our live-action production, Pollyanna. It carries incidents which create laughter and those incidents will be easily recognised by any race in the world because they concern a child, a 12-year-old girl. All children everywhere, have certain characteristics which are common to them, no matter what their country of origin. Children in Scandinavia or Spain, Africa or South America, Western hemisphere or Eastern, find laughter in much the same things, and, correspondingly, adults everywhere recognise the common denominator of laughter - a child.

   Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and all their cronies of our cartoon world are creations out of that "sixth sense" through which so much humour is universally understood.

   I cite Mickey because he has been for over 26 years my guineapig - if he'll pardon the expression - in this serious business of amusing people on the screen. And Donald - well, I know him pretty well too, although he sometimes gets out of hand and turns on us in outraged dignity. Comedians are often very touchy that way.

   One thing must be borne in mind in employing humour as an international language.

   It may be robust, candid, hectic, burlesque - even violent, if the subject permits - but never vulgar in taste or treatment. The nearest you can come to that is to apply slapstick to elemental human relationships of anger, greed, vanity, pompous arrogance and commonly experienced domestic incident.

   Some delvers into comedy tell us that man laughs most derisively at the follies of his neighbours. This, they contend, is the cackle of a mean emotion, unworthy of civilised people. I have not found it so.

   From my long observation of moviegoers, I am sure that the great mass of Americans, at least, are laughing most heartily at their own foibles when they seem to be howling loudest at the mistakes of others.

   To me, that seems wonderful. It commands a high respect for the power and the value of humour. The laughter of common appreciation has much compassion in it.

Laughing at Ourselves

   If farce, slapstick and travesty jibe at our follies and seem sometimes rather heartless, there are other kinds of merriment less caustic, more gentle but equally potent.

   Human misfortune, no matter how ridiculous it may seem, cannot be shown in excessive degree in the name of amusement. For there cannot be laughter at genuine misery, except by the most cruel of men - and the most savage of races.

   The study of wildlife in our nature pictures has indicated a vital purpose in basic humour, especially the kind of fun which deals with the mockery of imperfection.

   The instinct for comedy, I have come to believe, operating in the animal kingdom as in human nature, is part of the mechanism for survival. By its very nature, derision of faulty behaviour sets up standards of approved conduct. Whoever obeys them lives longest and most comfortably.

   In politics, in public affairs, we long ago learned that the wrongdoer, the misfit, the malfeasant, can be curbed with the lash of laughter better than any other weapon. There we see it operating as a potent means of social and democratic survival.

   Lightly though we may regard it, laughter is a priceless coin in human traffic and international exchange.

   I think it is not extravagant to say, finally, that people - even nations - leave characteristic impressions and are judged by what they laugh at and with - and what they do not laugh at.