From: Valuemetaphysics@aol.com
Date: Mon Aug 09 2004 - 16:06:23 BST
Part I.
David Buchanan 7/18/04 12:51:08 AM GMT Daylight Time:
"And then there's Laurel and Hardy. I'll just bite my tounge and say, that
doesn't work for me."
Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance. Vintage paperback
P. 219:
"And interestingly, comedy would vanish too. No one would understand the
jokes, since the difference between humour and no humour is pure Quality."
Mark Maxwell, The edge of Chaos.
Another example of the interplay between tragedy and comedy is the work of
Stan Laurel. Laurel was adept at producing work of impeccable timing, which
consistently produced dense sequences of laughter during audience observations.
Seen as art, displaying a DQ sweet spot, Laurel was able to create subtle
social interplay. The sweet spot is maintained with such consummate ease that
audience resonates in a tension between sympathetic response (tragedy) and laughter
(comedy).
The tension in Laurel's work is also provided by the relationship between two
individuals - himself and Oliver Hardy. There are myriad subtle contrasts
between them, balancing expectation and incongruity: Hardy is a scruffy deep
Southern aristocrat - simple unsophisticated Laurel outwits him. Beyond this, the
audience of the theatre resonates in a coherent relationship - time and self
disappear in laughter and a high quality social sweet spot is discovered and
maintained in the ritual of play and theatre.
Powerful social forces are at work in comedy and tragedy and the work of
masters such as Laurel and Hardy may provide insights into how they shape the
mirrors that reflect celebrity status. In China, for example, they were felt to
be reflections of China's social structure. The relationship between the
individual and the social order is a tension found in comedy.
The elusive timing that great comedians use may have a simple explanation in
the social and intellectual levels of the MOQ - good comedic timing is an art
of the Dynamic. In one observed audience response to a Laurel and Hardy
sequence in which a gouty foot is hit seven times within a short scene, the
following comment was made:
"Now this overdone or come tardy off…" said Hamlet, "cannot but make the
judicious grieve." These are the exact pitfalls avoided by Stan Laurel in this
action. The hitting of the gouty foot is never overdone; it is made on each
occasion to seem a natural accident. They are spaced by means of good editing so
that one is not expecting them and when they come, they are the result of purely
natural movement. Nor are the "come tardy off." They come when they should
come, and this is determined in the cutting room.
http://oaks.nvg.org/se6ra3.html
A Zen Study: On Levels of Laughter.
The fourth century Indian theatrical treatise of Bharata arranged the
spectrum of smiling through laughter from top and downwards. On this dramatic scale,
the highest form of showing mirth is sita.
Sita, a faint smile—serene, subtle, and refined.
Hasita, a smile which slightly reveals the tips of the teeth.
Vihasita, a broader smile accompanied by modest laughter.
Upahasita, a more pronounced laughter associated with a movement of the head,
shoulders, and arms.
Apahasita, loud laughter that brings tears to the eyes.
Atihasita, uproarious laughter accompanied by doubling over, slapping the
thighs, "rolling in the aisles," and the like.
Some think that the Buddha "laughs" in the exalted sense of sita. This view
prevailed among Buddhist scholastics, and has persisted throughout the Buddhist
world since.
However, some sutras (verses) seem to suggest that on such and such an
occasion the Buddha laughed.
A Dead Cat.
In the Zen tradition's literature, art, and religious practice one often
comes across the opposite of sita, namely, the fifth and sixth and supposedly
lowest and most vulgar [bodily enriched] levels of laughter, and these outlets of
mirth are offered both as authentic expressions of Buddhist enlightenment and
evidence of the authenticity of the enlightenment. This can be seen in the
light of that Zen humour moves toward inclusiveness and nonduality.
Some forms of humour in Zen, furthermore, may be seen as instances of the
"direct pointing'' and "sudden realisation" methods emphasised in Zen, . . .
Enlightenment may be likened here to "getting the point of a joke''—a sudden
insight breaking into consciousness (kenzsho) and a sudden release of the tensions
produced by ego, desire, attachment, and ignorance (called satori). Then one
experiences a sense of freedom.
Part II follows.
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