After a recent round table in which writers and journalists dealt with the impostor syndrome, the Book Fair and ABC Cultural, which has just celebrated thirty years of existence, organized another meeting in which the third party was changed. Now the proposal was to discuss ‘The philosophy of laughter (or humor)’ with two participants with different and opposing profiles, which ensured –as it happened– an intense and enriching controversy between Diego S. Garrocho (Madrid, 1984) and Edu Galán (Oviedo, 1980). Garrocho is a professor and researcher in the area of Ethics and Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Autonomous University of Madrid and author, among other titles, of ‘Aristotle. An ethics of the passions.
For his part, Galán is a writer and screenwriter, but perhaps he is especially known as co-founder, along with the Argentine illustrator Darío Adanti, of the satirical magazine ‘Mongolia’. Both collaborate in various media and, as Laura Revuelta, editor-in-chief of ABC Cultural and moderator of the table, pointed out, they are one of “the most suggestive new voices.”
Diego S. Garrocho began his speech by assuring that he was going to talk seriously about humor and recalled the assessments of some philosophers such as Plato, who ruled that “it is inadmissible to present men dominated by laughter.” An idea that he has fermented over time, because “pessimism has great prestige.”
Garrocho also stated that humor is “an element that cannot be controlled, like love.” Edu Galán then launched a question into the air: “What is love?”, which was truffled with humor in the meeting.
For Diego Garrocho, both in one and in another there are components that remain through the centuries, and thus he gave as an example that today the comedies of Aristophanes, playwright of classical Greece, continue to arouse laughter. This point is the one that aroused the most controversy, because for Edu Galán humor is “a cultural and class product”, nor “is it the same thing that makes us laugh before and now”, opposing “the defense of the universal, I seems metaphysical”, and defending that, in reality, “humour did not exist until the invention of cinema, since it must be massive. If it’s not popular, it’s not humor. “Jokes have an expiration date,” he added.
On the other hand, Diego S. Garrocho, who pointed out that perhaps they were not so much in disagreement, although “disagreement is not bad”, brought up Nietzsche’s reflection: “Only man suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter” . He also stated that, in this sense, “comedians have a tragic background.”
For Galán, however, this supposed background “has a lot of imposture”, since “comedians do what the public wants. Today victimhood is fashionable and saying that they have a very bad time, that they have suffered traumas ». Although, he clarified that concern for the public is very generous on his part ».
In the final stretch, the considerations of Diego S. Garrocho and Edu Galán provoked some intervention from the public, returning to the subject of love by pointing out that “no one would fall in love if they had not heard of love”. Diego S. Garrocho closed the animated act affirming that to a great extent «love and humor are like the amusement park of life. They allow us to break the norm.”
Enrique Jardiel Poncela said that “trying to define humor is like trying to go through a butterfly, using a telegraph pole as a pin.” Be that as it may, without a doubt, reflecting on humor in these dark times, full of questions and uncertainties, is perhaps more necessary than ever.
