JERRY: I think Superman probably has a very good sense of humor.
GEORGE: I never heard him say anything really funny.
JERRY: But it's common sense. He's got super strength, super speed; I'm sure he's got super humor.
GEORGE: Either you're born with a sense of humor or you're not. It's not going to change even if you go from the red sun of Krypton all the way to the yellow sun of the Earth.
JERRY: Why? Why would that one area of his mind not be affected by the yellow sun of Earth?
GEORGE: I don't know, but he ain't funny.
There’s quite a bit of humor in superhero comics (and some of it is even intentional), but here Seinfeld offers us one astute observation: superheroes are never funny. They don’t laugh, and they don’t try to make us laugh. Supervillians on the other hand, they laugh all the time (and often uncontrollably). This structure of laughter extends outside of comic books to pretty much all manifestations of the hero/villain relationship to, for example, cartoon villains (Skeletor, Dr. Claw), villains in James Bond films, &c. Even the villainous characters in Super Mario Brothers (Bowser, Wario) laugh, while Mario and Luigi do not (at least so far as I can tell).
I want to explore why, in these types of narratives, the voice of evil laughs while the voice of good does not.* I want to propose two primary reasons (the first here and the second in a subsequent post).
*To anyone out looking for a counterexample that disproves my theory, I have no doubt that someone could furnish some example of a laughing superhero (and there are plenty of dour villains out there). I am simply proposing that the paradigm of the hero/villain narrative involves a laughing villain in conflict with a serious (super)hero. When I imagine hero vs. villain as a narrative genre, this is really all I can think of.
The most obvious explanation for why (super)villains laugh is a perception of superiority. Their villainous activity is typically driven by a malicious narcissism. Villians so like feeling superior to others that it becomes an essential part of their character. Feelings of superiority given them pleasure, and they express this pleasure through laughter. *
*The fact that villains often laugh during the very moments when they are causing pain might suggest to some that their laughter is even more sinister than I am suggesting, that causing suffering in others—rather than feeling superior to them—is the source of the pleasure that gets expressed through laughter. This sort of sadistic laughter merely proves my point, however, as being in the position to inflict pain or even death is the supreme affirmation of superiority—in this case, superiority expressed as control. As a result, it is likely to produce the greatest amounts of pleasure that are, in turn, expressed as laughter.
The idea that human beings laugh from a perception of superiority is the oldest theory of humor. It was proposed in its earliest versions by both Plato and Aristotle and expressed in its most famous form by Thomas Hobbes—an expert on the human pursuit of superiority—in his declaration that “Laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.” Hobbes’s observation corresponds with the way villains laugh in hero/villain narratives: The Joker proposes a scheme to kill Batman and laughs with pleasure at his fantasy; Batman beats the joker up while interrogating him and the Joker’s laugh affirms that Batman is too weak to hurt him. In Hobbes’s terms, the joker is feeling “sudden glory” in the perception of his “sudden conception of eminency” over the perceived “infirmity” of Batman. Again, this sudden glory validates the villain’s narcissism, producing feelings of intense pleasure that are expressed as laughter.
But my superiority scenario is complicated by one thing: though he always defeats the villain—thereby earning him the metaphorical “last laugh”—the hero never laughs. The Green Goblin laughs maniacally as he attacks Spiderman, but Spiderman does not take the same pleasure when he proves his ultimate superiority at the end of the fight. If laughter is the pleasure of superiority, then why does the superhero fail to express his (or her) pleasure in this way at the moment of ultimate victory at the end of the narrative?*
*Sure, the hero’s laughter is only “ultimate” in the sense that it produces narrative closure. A supervillian is rarely defeated completely, thereby leaving the door open for him (or her…or it) to reemerge in subsequent installments of the serial narrative. But still, the hero defeats the villain in the final battle of every narrative and still does not express any pleasure through laughter.
This complication has a fairly simply answer: As we have said, the (super)villain laughs because his vicious narcissism is validated pleasurably by a perception of superiority. Unlike the villain, the (super)hero does not pursue victory out of narcissism; he typically follows an emotionless moral logic. In opposition to the purely self-interested villain, the hero stands for “the good” without any concern for the self. The hero is superior but takes no pleasure in that fact, and, as a result, he is never moved to laughter.
As the foregoing analysis suggests, the structure of superhero narratives offers a pretty severe indictment of laughter. It is not only the fact that evil (as embodied in the villain) laughs and good (as embodied in the hero) does not. The most cutting reproach lies in the motivation behind that laughter. In a superhero narrative, the only psychological state that produces laughter is narcissism, which is also the psychological state the produces villainy. In other words, laugher and evil do not simply coexist in the same types of characters; they share a common cause. An inclination towards laughter always represents a corresponding inclination towards evil. Conversely, the hero’s moral virtue requires self-renunciation in favor of the common good, but successfully defending the interests of the masses apparently fails to produce an equivalent pleasure. Superheroes purport to leave us with a better world, but in the world of their narratives eradicating evil must necessarily eliminate the joy of laughter (and a laughless world seems mighty villainous to me).
I’ll pick up on the second primary cause/meaning of villainous laughter in my next post.
