Scholarly Cutups Meet to Dissect Humor

Question: What do you call a group of unassuming researchers engaged in the study of humor?

Answer: Jest folks.

Think that was funny? Or not? You probably don’t know it, but there are people who devote hours to figuring out what tickles your ribs and why.

This week, a gaggle of these gigglers is gathering in Oakland for the 18th International Humor Conference, where the study of humor is no joke.

“It is as difficult as anything else. In some ways, it’s more difficult because the information you’re dealing with is so much more uncertain,” said Christie Davies, a sociology professor from the University of Reading in England.

After all, he said, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is just as much an artistic triumph as “Hamlet,” and even that blood-soaked classic has its funny bits, such as when Hamlet’s prospective father-in-law, Polonius, says “My, Lord I shall be brief”--and then goes on for 20 minutes.

Some may scoff at the idea of studying humor. “It is sort of the general knee-jerk reaction,” said conference organizer Martin Lampert, “that somehow by doing it you’re destroying it.”

But he who laughs first might be sobered by the scholarly output of the conference, which is being held in conjunction with the 11th Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies and runs Tuesday through Saturday at Holy Names College, where Lampert chairs the social sciences department.

Among the papers scheduled for delivery: “Beckett’s ‘Godot’ Humorously Revisited,” and “Biting Humor: What’s So Funny About Count Dracula?”

There are joke telling contests, stand-up comedy sessions and seminars on the medicinal value of humor--including one led by a hospital clown. And there’s an entire session devoted to President Clinton jokes.

Davies delivered a few samples of these, but about the only thing remotely repeatable was his citation of Rudyard Kipling’s classic line: “And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.”

Davies, a Welshman, will be featured in a discussion of “Jokes About the Death of Diana, Princess of Wales,” a prolific and definitively unprintable genre.

For posterity, Davies--”You want another clean joke from me? Oh dear, let me think”--did offer this trouble-free cross-cultural quip:

An American in England dashes onto a train and finds himself in a compartment with “an old-fashioned, uptight Englishman reading the Times. And the American says cheerfully, ‘Hello, there. My name’s Jennings.’ The Englishman lowers his paper very slightly and says, ‘Mine’s not.’ ”

“That is in a sense a classic Anglo American gag where the American is sort of cheerful and friendly and the Englishman’s very reserved,” Davies said.

The conferences began in Davies’ home country in 1976, put together by the society’s forerunner, the World Humor and Irony Membership. Today, the society’s members are mostly professors, although managers, counselors, nurses and journalists join in the fun.

Humor, in short, is worth studying because “it’s a large chunk of people’s lives,” Davies says. “If you say how much time do people spend on comedy compared with how much time they spend reading their Bibles--do you follow me?”