An essay on the Big Bang Theory comedy show and the humor theoryIntroductionThe “Big Bang Theory” comedian TV series is based on the life of four so called “Geeks” and a typical downtown waitress girl. They are Leonard, Sheldon, Howard, Raj and Penny.
Leonard is an emotional scientist grown up in a purely technical culture family in which the mother talked about sex in pure annalistic way and scanned anyone’s brain for her research. The contrast between him and Sheldon is that, Sheldon is brought up in a very classical puritan family with plenty of emotional and spiritual life time but becomes a physicist totally cut off from normal human life. Howard, Jewish American, is an engineer in spaceship techniques. He is an extrovert and talks a lot with women thought this disturbs in most of the case. Raj, Indian new comer, is a doctor in astrology science. Unlike Howard, he is very introversive in front of attractive women thought it turns out that he can be also attractive to women when he can somehow manage to talk (with alcohol for example). At last, Penny, the representative of normal human life in this show, is a lovely, sensitive girl working in a restaurant. She is totally out of the geek’s world and has all kinds of envies and troubles as anyone else.
The social phenomenon of geek people is a new thing in our time and deserves a thorough study. As the economy composition evolved in the last fifty years, the USA economy depends more and more on brain working. Thus, the nerds in the universities increased significantly in these years. An interesting thing to be mentioned is that, some years before, the definition of “nerd” on Wikipedia is generally a negative description, however, in recent years, the definition has been changed and a sub description “nerd pride” appeared on its links. The business success of this series suggests that it is not only an ironic simply minded funny show, but also a well developed reflex of its spectators’ psychology structures.
Three dilemmasIn which is concerned of this comedy series, I can say that there are three principal psychological dilemmas. Two of them, I call them internal paradoxes of a so called geek, and the other I call it external paradox between geek and normal person.
The first one is the Leonard-Sheldon dilemma which refers to very spectator’s internal conflict between ego and sup ego. Leonard represents a real person, a real “nerd”. He has his desires and envies, he does what he thinks is right and he has also his limits of all kinds. Sheldon, in the contrast, is a much disciplined, self restricted person. Sometimes, he appears to be like a phantom by knocking other’s door in the midnight without stop only to say a phrase or to have a request. In one scene, four of them have a vote in order to decide whether to take plane or train. Thought the train is seven times slower, two timers more expensive, and three of them vote for plane while only Sheldon vote for train, the result is they will take train. The sup ego torture and obsess our mind in order to apply the “right” thing or the “right” way, regardless of how painful or how unrealistic it is. The scene of three votes vs. one vote and the one vote prevail is a parable of the relationship between sup ego and ego. As it is something constantly in our mind, no one can escape from his sup ego. So a resonance comes up in our mind when we are watching this show.
The second paradox is the Howard-Raj dilemma which refers to the extroversion, introversion and fear. Howard likes to talk to women in order to date them. So he is very outgoing and becomes really a master of languages. But thing goes even worse when he shows himself too much. Women don’t like him and feel disturbed. Raj is in the other extremity. He can talk to attractive women with the help of alcohol of psychological push. He can express himself. But as long as he once manages to do it, he is popular among women. The dilemma is, the constant need of self-protection or we call it “fear of hurt” and the need of self-exposing or we call it “fear of isolation” coexist in our mind. As a matter of fact, they are one fear, as the hurt here is exactly the fact that to be isolated. Howard needs to talk as he fears of being isolated and not being recognized. But this nightmare which makes him to do so always becomes true when he exaggerates on showing himself. The same nightmare makes Raj not to talk. In fact, these two personalities is one entity in our mind and refer to the same fear. Whereas, an interesting unsaying philosophy from this comedy is, we are not that bad, though we are afraid of being refused, we can be very popular; however, we are neither that good, and a risk of being refused is always there. In the show, they have played it like a “jojo”. Admit that Howard and Raj are on the same level of social attraction (sex, physic, behavior, culture, etc.). Howard is in fact mentally fragile (in the episode about his childhood) and talks a lot. Once he talks, he was swung into the nightmare of being considered as “untouchable”. This throws the spectator’s mind into their sub conscience of this nightmare. However, once getting into the nightmare, Raj shows up. Raj doesn’t talk but he has constantly a hope of being loved and admired which swing the spectator’s mind to the opposite of the nightmare. If we considered now Howard and Raj as one unique entity in our mind, it is some kind like: if I talk, I am beat into an “untouchable”, once I stop talking; they show me the honey hope and force me to talk. This mechanism make people’s mind working in a dynamic way, switching on and off between nightmare and hope, even though all these is sub conscience.
The third paradox is Penny in the show. She represents the life that everyone has and at the same time the nerds lack. She represents a beautiful perfect life but at the same time there are lots of imperfections in it. She represents a normal girl who is not very rational in regard of the geek way of thinking but at the same time she lives a rational life while her neighbors are living in their “metaphysic” world. Her role is essential in the show as she connects the geeks’ world with the real world and makes the show accessible not only to the real nerds but also those who are not. One thing to be clarified is that, there is not a line between the nerds and the others thought the stereotype exists. In the show, there are also the “cool” physicist like a super star and the university department manager not very different from a Wal-Mart department manager. As a matter of fact, the America has the largest post doctoral educated population and also a well developed scientist network, thought the mass population remains ignore of the real science world like any other place in the world, we cannot say that there is a spicy called nerd and another called non-nerd. As a matter of fact, those who are totally nerd and those who are totally non-nerd are both rare among the Americans that I’ve met (as I have parts of my family there). One thing very remarkable of the show is its long phrase with scientific terms and expressions like “Schrodinger’s cat referring to love story”. Some say, the mass population never understands what they are talking about. But in my opinion, a large percent of the spectators do get references from the language of this show. We cannot under-estimate other’s intelligence and most of people in our modern society are in the mid way of the pure science (pure science does not exist) and the pure flesh and blood, just like “Schrodinger’s cat referring to love story”. Then, concerning Penny, thought most of the time, she does not really understand the meaning of the terms said by Sheldon, but she can get the outline, just like most of student on a high school biology class. So, the world of the nerds is she in or is she out. In reality, no one is completely in or out, everyone is just in the mid way, and this position strategy makes the show successful.
Why are we laughing?There is a lot of theory about humor. But I try to imagine another hypothesis.
I think that laughter is an outlet of our internal energy. As what makes us dream, we have to have an outlet of this energy which is constricted and oppressed by our conscience. As a matter of fact, human brain tries to work in a rational way and think only what it believes to be “logic”, so the incongruity is not allowed is common reasoning. One thing to be mentioned is that, an expert is very good on resolving a problem with all the knowledge, but the innovative idea comes always from someone who’s on the edge of the doctrine (he’s not in, he’s not totally out). So an expert’s conscience makes “him” think in a congruous way, if the “him” does not do so, he’s in confusion. However, Freud said that, our conscience takes effort to rein. During a sleep, our conscience gets rest, and finally, all can be freed from their jail of mind.
One thing very interesting from Freud is that, the sup ego maintains the jail, and torture the ego without mercy. So while we are sleeping, our sub conscience attacks the law made by the sup ego. In the show, Sheldon, the “sup ego”, gets always the silent complaints from the others, whereas, they do not like him, but they dared not to say it loud and proud. That’s our sup ego.
So, why are we laughing then? When the show secretly open our mind and represents our personality with details, all those oppressed are carried out secretly from their jail set by the conscience. Meanwhile the internal energy gets its outlet and fulfills the movement of laughing. For example of the incongruity, when we see something irrational, in reality, it’s some sub conscience in our mind. But our conscience says that, there is only one rational way, some thinking cannot even be notified by ourselves and get killed by the conscience. That’s also why sometimes too disciplinarily taught people are lack of imagination and the breaking ideas come up always after work. But what’s the nature of this sub conscience? The modern neural-science says, they are the discharge of micro-electricity in our neural system. These discharges are very complex and numerous and our neural system is very sophisticated and maintain a good performance of decision making (what is called conscience). This system maintenance neutralizes some “undesirable” discharge and works only in a congruous way. But the discharges get always their mysterious energy from our body in a complex biological way. So once they have the chance, for example sleep, the energy gets its outlet.
In the same way, while we are awake, this energy of millions of millions of discharges is banded in the jail of our mind. But when we see some ridiculous thing, some of these discharges get their congruous outlet (confirmed by our sight one of the congruous information source who receives this incongruity from the outside world), as naturally our mind believe always what we see. So these long-time-oppressed discharges finally got the exit and enable an ensemble of movement of energy release: laughing.
If we see someone very unlucky, for example the self-confident Sheldon was bullied by someone else, and we find it funny to see his unluckiness thought it is not a noble cause. As a matter of fact, our education and culture teach us to love people, and to do things in a noble way. But animal ways of thinking are always stocked in our memories (the memories that we do not even notice). They are condemned and put into jail forever, but once they get the chance, they come out in a different way and release a part of the internal energy. This explains also why crude people are often lack of humor. Because their mind doesn’t have to condemn such a crude thing, and there won’t be any release of internal energy while someone shows the unlucky scene.
ConclusionSo, according to this hypothesis, the three dilemmas of the “Big Bang Theory” show carry out secretly the thinking behind our mind and make reference to all these possible memories which could eventually enable a outlet of internal energy. This mechanism has finally makes us laugh and be happy.
Besides, the commercial success of the show observes also an American demography change in education and occupation during these last twenty years.
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