Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for
self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than
anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness
and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only
for a few seconds.
(Viktor E. Frankl: Man’s Search for Meaning. 1946)
Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), a Holocaust survivor, Viennese psychiatrist, neurologist and founder of logotherapy, endured, transformed and even transcended his own incomprehensible and indescribable suffering in the concentration camps. When asked how he managed to do this, he cited a kind of “spiritual power of defiance” that enabled him to maintain the meaningfulness of his existence and thus the hope of continuing to live. For Frankl, in addition to his creative activities - reading books he had secretly smuggled in or drawing - this was his absolute dedication to what he saw as the meaningful task of being able to continue his work as a psychiatrist in an uncertain future. As a psychotherapist, he enabled his patients to develop a mental attitude towards themselves in order to believe in and fulfill the unique meaning of existence. This alone determines whether one can survive a situation of maximum suffering. In addition to maintaining one's own dignity in undignified circumstances, he also cited “the weapon of humor in the fight for survival”. For example, he and a fellow concentration camp inmate agreed to tell each other a joke or a funny story at least once a day, if possible with a reference to the present, but above all directed towards the future. Even if this only led to a cheerful smile.
Even before the First World War, in 1913, in other words even before the silent films of Chaplin and Keaton, Karl Valentin made the film “The New Desk”. It shows one of his sketches, in which agonizing slapstick mingles gleefully with the viewer's naked sympathy. It tells the bizarre dilemma of a professor standing in front of his brand new standing desk, which he obviously doesn't want to stand at. He wants to sit. On his old, faithful, albeit wobbly chair, which he has always sat on in order to be able to study as comfortably as possible. However, the long-serving seat and the elegant new desk simply don't fit together as an ensemble. The sheer idiocy right at the beginning foreshadows what is to follow: The obviously stubborn scholar with no practical skills whatsoever begins to unceremoniously shorten the high legs of his desk so that he can sit in front of it. The viewer is then mercilessly tormented and tickled as he watches both pieces of furniture gradually and desperately being sliced off. Until the chair finally only stands on its bare stumps - without wobbling, of course - and the desk is finally at a reasonable height, but wobbles and tilts so much that the totally exhausted Studiosus has to clutch it to keep it standing in front of him and prevent it from tipping over.
In the meantime, I can hardly stand such brilliant films, perhaps because they take failure to the extreme in a curious way and make it unbearably funny. Although I deeply admire these comedians because they turn failure into a tragic performance with absolute perfection. They show us the absurdity of our human existence in order to dissolve it in a roar of laughter. Only those who can still laugh at themselves when their own tragedy has become devastating may succeed in doing so.
Author: Titus David Hamdorf, Berlin, Germany (2023)
Translated by DeepL-Pro
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