One of the strangest platitudes bandied about in creative circles is the notion that art exists to push boundaries. Most people will say this, or some variant of it, and never once stop to think critically about it because they have heard it all their lives. That’s unfortunate because it’s a sentiment that falls apart under the slightest scrutiny.
The most common art form I have heard it about is comedy. Common wisdom is that the betrayal of expectations is a major part of what makes things funny forces the comic to constantly dabble in subjects considered taboo or morally repugnant, pushing the boundaries of society and forcing us to reexamine our cultural norms to see if they still hold true. They have to do this, we are told, because surprise is essential to comedy. How can we laugh if we already know the punchline of the joke?
My response to this is to ask a very simple question: Must we subvert expectations in order to tell a joke?
In general I believe the answer is no. There are plenty of very funny jokes, stories and pratfalls that have gotten me to laugh more than once. If some kind of manipulation of expectations is inherent to comedy then that should not be the case, as knowing the punchline to a joke makes it impossible for said punchline to take me by surprise. My expectations cannot be subverted. Yet i still laugh when watching Duck Soup.
There are many reasons we laugh at a joke. We can find the skill it is delivered with delightful, as we do when watching the physical comedy of Buster Keaton or Red Skelton. We can laugh at the absurdity of a situation, as we might when watching the pratfalls in Home Alone. There is an entire genre of comedy that finds humor in the awkwardness of life, embodied in shows like The Office. We can, indeed, laugh because a joke surprises us. However none of these things are funny because they push boundaries alone. As we would say in college, they are funny because they are true.
When we laugh at skillful physical comedy we laugh because we see something we would have thought impossible carried out in reality. Yet when props, special effects or even animation, as in Looney Toons, push things beyond what is real we still laugh because of the absurdity. The contrast with reality becomes the joke.
You can string together a series of non sequiturs and no one will laugh. Surprise is only funny if the twist has some kind of truth beneath it. The way the twist comes together is important, of course, and it is the skill with which the twist is created and delivered that is the difficult part of comedy. So it’s not surprising that this skill aspect of comedy gets so much emphasis.
Now we could say that a comedian pushes boundaries by pushing their skills. I don’t disagree with that idea. However I don’t honestly believe that anyone who says comedy is about pushing boundaries means that. They are referring to some nebulous idea about bringing new concepts into the cultural discussion. It’s a very psychological, Jordan Peterson-esque idea. That’s not surprising given the laugh-a-minute natures of psychology and Jordan Peterson.
Now the above, my friends, could be construed as a joke. Since it was not a great one I will take a moment and do that thing comics are not supposed to do and explain the joke. It functions by contrasting the very serious, deliberately unemotional affect of psychologists in general and Jordan Peterson in particular with the idea of laugh-a-minute comedy. The contrast is stark and surprising and thus funny, if not particularly so.
This joke is more than just a piece of humor. It also says something about our culture and how we look at the field of psychology, both in general and one psychologist in particular. It is this power, the ability to entertain while also commenting on and, via the observer effect, shaping the way our culture functions that makes comedy so powerful.
All artforms have this power to some extent. This function is what pushes boundaries on those occasions where art comes up against some kind of social boundary. It’s not surprising that this is what grabs people’s attention when talking about the power of art. However to confuse it with the purpose of art is to make a dangerous mistake. It is to make the assumption that the purpose of all things is power.
The purpose of art is to immortalize what is true and lasting, to put the audience in touch with an experience beyond the confines of their normal life in one way or another. That is why a story like A Christmas Carol remains almost universally beloved even though it permeates or culture to an equally universal extent. It doesn’t have to seek out boundaries to push. In many ways it is a boundary in itself, a standard for stories about how those set in their ways can change for the better. It can do this because it is art that fulfills it’s purpose, rather than seeking to exert its power. Whether you are a comic or otherwise, that is an idea worth keeping in mind.