{"id":3113,"date":"2015-06-01T08:00:49","date_gmt":"2015-06-01T15:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=3113"},"modified":"2015-05-31T19:51:05","modified_gmt":"2015-06-01T02:51:05","slug":"le-rire-mecanique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/le-rire-mecanique\/","title":{"rendered":"Le rire m\u00e9canique"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you want to write comedies, or include humor in your writing, you might want to know about “Le rire m\u00e9canique.” The phrase translates as “mechanical laughter.”<\/p>\n

I first came across this phrase in the June 2015 issue of The Writer magazine, in an article<\/a> by Alicia Anistead.<\/p>\n

Anistead wrote about the French philosopher Henri Bergson and his theory that “whenever real life is suddenly interrupted by a mechanistic imposition, like the banana peel, it is disruptive and triggers laughter.” Bergson called this “le rire m\u00e9canique.”<\/p>\n

Bergson developed a theory of how laughter is provoked and described the process of laughter (in particular portrayals by comics and clowns) as “the caricature of the mechanism nature of humans (habits, automatic acts, etc.).” Wikipedia<\/a><\/p>\n

Anistead ends her article with a quote by Harvard professor Bob Scanlan, “It [le rire m\u00e9canique] pounces on you and catches you unexpectedly. That’s why the pratfall is so perfect. Why that makes us laugh? Nobody knows. But Bergson thinks it’s the interruption of things, a subversion of life as it’s proceeding on its own.”<\/p>\n

\"Lily<\/a>Marlene’s musings:<\/strong> I just finished watching Episode 11, Season 1 of Grace and Frankie<\/em> on Netlix. Now you know my secret vice . . . (not a secret anymore!). The dialogue in the final scene between Jane Fonda’s character (Grace) and Lily Tomlin’s character (Frankie) was hilarious, brilliant and as in le rire m\u00e9canique . . . completely unexpected. As my belly laughing turned to snorting, I thought about what made this comedic scene so successful. It was the unexpected.\u00a0 If you have seen it. . . let me know. Did you like it? I don’t want to go into detail because I don’t want to spoil the surprise for people who haven’t seen it. I’ll just say Frankie’s revelation still has me in stitches.<\/p>\n

Your turn. . .<\/strong> think about Abbott and Costello, the Three Stooges, I Love Lucy, Carol Burnett, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, Lily Tomlin . . . the pratfalls, the unexpected vignettes. . . le rire m\u00e9canique. Write a scene that includes a comedic aspect. Just write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you want to write comedies, or include humor in your writing, you might want to know about “Le rire m\u00e9canique.” The phrase translates as “mechanical laughter.” I first came across this phrase in the June 2015 issue of The Writer magazine, in an article by Alicia Anistead. Anistead wrote about the French philosopher Henri […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[126],"tags":[695,696],"class_list":["post-3113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-write-2","tag-le-rire-mecanique","tag-lily-tomlin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-Od","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3113"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3118,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3113\/revisions\/3118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}