Nor can we be satisfied with the reflection that in the violation of the rule on the part of a character so different from us we not only feel the security of our own impunity but also enjoy the savor of transgression by an intermediary. Since he is paying for us, we can allow ourselves the vicarious pleasure of a transgression that offends a rule we have secretly wanted to violate, but without risk. All these aspects are unquestionably at work in the comic, but if these were all then we would be unable to explain why this difference in universality exists between the two rival genres.
So the point does not (not only) lie in the transgression of the rule and in the inferior character of the comic hero. The point that interests me is, on the contrary, this: What is our awareness of the violated rule?
We can eliminate the first misunderstanding: that in the tragic the rule is universal, hence its violation involves us, while in the comic the rule is particular, local (limited to a given period, a specific culture). To be sure this would explain the loss of universality: An act of cannibalism would be tragic, a comic act would be a Chinese cannibal’s eating one of his fellows with chopsticks instead of knife and fork (and naturally it would be comic for us, but not for the Chinese, who would still find the act fairly tragic).
Actually, the violated rules of the tragic are not necessarily universal. Universal, they say, is the horror of incest; but Orestes’ obligation to kill his own mother would not be universal. And we may ask ourselves why today, in a period of great moral permissiveness, we should find the situation of a Madame Bovary tragic.
It would not be so in a polyandrous society, or even in New York; let the good lady indulge her extramarital whims without making such a fuss about it. This excessively repentant provincial woman should make us laugh today as much as the main character in Chekhov’s “The Death of a Civil Servant,” who, having sneezed on an important person sitting in front of him at the theater, then goes on repeating his apologies beyond all reasonable limits.
What is typical of the tragic, before, during, and after the enactment of the violation of the rule, is a long examination of the nature of the rule. In tragedy it is the chorus itself that offers us the depiction of the social “frames” in whose violation the tragic consists. The function of the chorus is precisely that of explaining to us at every step what the Law is: This is the only way we can understand its violation and its fatal consequences. And Madame Bovary is a work that, first of all, explains how adultery is to be condemned, or at least how severely the contemporaries of the protagonist condemned it. And The Blue Angel tells us, first and foremost, how a middle-aged professor should not run amok with a chorus girl; and Death in Venice tells us chiefly how a middle-aged professor should not fall in love with an adolescent boy.
The second step (not chronological, but logical) is then to tell how they couldn’t avoid doing wrong, and couldn’t help but be swept away. And precisely because the rule is reiterated (either as assertion in terms of ethical value, or as recognition of a social constriction).
The tragic justifies the violation (in terms of fate, passion, or whatever) but doesn’t eliminate the rule. This is why it is universal: It explains always why the tragic act must inspire pity and fear. Which amounts to saying that every tragic work is also a lesson in cultural anthropology, and allows us to identify with a rule that perhaps is not ours.
The tragic can describe the situation of a member of an anthropophagous community who rejects the cannibalistic ritual, but it will be tragic to the degree that the story convinces us of the majesty and weight of the duty of anthropophagy. A story that narrates the sufferings of a dyspeptic and vegetarian anthropophagist who doesn’t like human flesh, but fails to explain to us at length and convincingly how noble and proper anthropophagy is, will be only a comic story.
The confirmation of these theoretical proposals would lie in showing that comic works take the rule for granted, and don’t bother to restate it. And this, in fact, is what I believe and what I suggest investigating. Translated into terms of textual semiotics, the hypothesis could be formulated in this way: There exists a rhetorical device, which concerns the figures of thought, in which, given a social or intertextual “frame” or scenario already known to the audience, you display the variation without, however, making it explicit in discourse.
The fact that suppressing the violated norm is typical of figures of thought seems evident in irony. Which, as it consists of asserting the opposite (of what? of what is or what is believed socially), dies when the opposite of the opposite is made explicit. At most, the fact that the opposite is being asserted may be suggested by the inflection, but irony must not be commented on, there must be no assertion of “not-A,” bearing in mind that “instead-of-A” is the case. For the fact that instead-of-A is the case is something everyone must know, but no one must say.
What are the scenarios that the comic violates without having to repeat them? First of all, the common scenarios, the pragmatic rules of symbolic interaction that society takes for granted. The pie in the face makes us laugh because we normally assume that, at a party, pies are eaten and not thrown at other people.
Because we know that kissing a lady’s hand means lightly grazing it with the lips, a comic situation arises when someone seizes the hand and covers it greedily with wet, smacking kisses. (Or he may proceed from the hand to the wrist and then to the arm—a situation no longer comic and perhaps even tragic in an erotic relationship, an act of carnal violence.) Look at the conversational maxims of H. P. Grice. It is pointless to say that in everyday interaction we violate them constantly. Not so. We observe them, or else we accept them to give flavor, against the background of their unheeded existence, to conversational implicature, rhetorical figure, artistic license. Precisely because rules, even unconsciously, are accepted, their unmotivated violation becomes comic.
(1) Maxim of quantity: Make your contribution as informative as is required. Comic situation: “Excuse me, do you know what time it is?” “Yes.”
(2) Maxim of quality: (a) Do not say what you believe to be false. Comic situation: “My God, I beseech thee, give me some proof of thy nonexistence!” (b) Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. Comic situation: “I find Maritain’s thought unacceptable and irritating. Thank God I’ve never read any of his books!” (declaration by a university professor of mine, personal communication, February 1953).
(3) Maxim of relation: Be relevant. Comic situation: “Can you drive a motorboat?” “Why, you bet your life! I did my military service in Death Valley!”
(4) Maxim of manner. Avoid obscurity of expression and ambiguity. Be brief and avoid unnecessary prolixity. Be orderly. I don’t believe it necessary to suggest comic results of this violation. Often they are involuntary.
Naturally, I insist, this requisite is not sufficient. Conversational maxims can be violated with normal results (implicature), with tragic results (depiction of social maladjustment), with poetic results. Other requisites are necessary, and I refer the reader to other typologies of the comic effect. What I want to insist on here is that in the abovementioned instances comic effect is achieved (ceteris paribus) if the rule is not cited but assumed as implicit.
The same thing happens with the violation of intertextual scenarios. Years ago Mad magazine specialized in little cartoon scenes from “the movies we would like to see.” For example, outlaw bands in the West tying a girl to the train tracks in the prairie. Successive frames, in a Griffith-like sequence, the train approaching, girl weeping, the good guys riding to the rescue, progressive acceleration of the cross-cutting, and, at the end, the train crushing the girl. Variations: the sheriff who prepares for the final duel obeying all the rules of the Western, and in the end is shot by the villain; the swordsman who gains admittance to the castle where the bad guy is keeping the beauty prisoner, he swings across the splendid great hall on the chandelier and the drapery, engages in a fantastic duel with the villain, and at the end is run through. In all these cases, to enjoy the violation, the rule of the genre must be presupposed, and considered inviolable.
If this is true, and I believe it would be difficult to declare the hypothesis false, then the metaphysics of the comic should also change, including the Bakhtinian metaphysic or metaanthropology of carnivalization. The comic seems to belong to the people, liberating, subversive, because it gives license to violate the rule. But it gives such license precisely to those who have so absorbed the rule that they also presume it is inviolable. The rule violated by the comic is so acknowledged that there
