Moreover, as the complexity of life increases, its strains
and repressions are multiplied, with the result that any giving way
to an impulse contains a slight element of the mischievous or
ridiculous; whence, for this reason too, the pleasant is also the
comical. In fact, most of the pleasures of highly complex and reflective
persons are tinged with laughter.
We expect art to accomplish three great results--reconciliation,
revelation, and sympathy. So far we have shown how comic art may
accomplish the first; we have yet to prove how it may accomplish the
rest. In his book _Le Rire_, Bergson has expressed the view that
comedy is explicitly falsifying and unsympathetic. As to the former
charge, we can, I think, convince ourselves of the opposite if we
examine certain of the more obvious methods of comedy, particularly
those which might seem at first sight to lend support to his contention.
One of the most common of these is exaggeration. The simplest example
is caricature, where certain features of an object are purposely
exaggerated. The effect is, of course, comical, because we expect the
normal and duly-proportioned. What a manifest falsification, one might
assert! Yet just the opposite is the actual result. For every good
caricaturist selects for exaggeration prominent and characteristic
traits, through which by the very emphasis that is placed upon them,
the nature of the individual is better understood. Another favorite
method is abstraction.
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