dumb people are too dumb to know it

In my comedy classes, we've been working a lot with the idea that the non-hero, the character, is funny because he lacks the skills to realize his goals and fraught with a grand misunderstanding of himself, is completely blind to his own preposterousness. Nothing can stop him. The moment the light comes on, the moment he achieves some kind of self-understanding, the character and his goals are no longer funny. This is why the end of comedies just stop being funny around the third act. The un-self-realized two-dimensional character that has us laughing learns something about himself and his goals shift, he becomes a self-realized human and not funny.

A student brought this article to my attention. It seems a psychologist at Cornell has come to the conclusion that humans find it "'intrinsically difficult to get a sense of what we don't know.' Whether an individual lacks competence in logical reasoning, emotional intelligence, humor ... the person still tends to rate his or her skills in that area as being above average." In other words, dumb people are so dumb they don't know how dumb they are. And, more than that, actually believe they're not dumb at all. 

So now it's been quasi-scientifically proven that what makes characters funny is their own lack of self-understanding. "Incompetence deprives people of the ability to recognize their own incompetence," causing a rollercoaster effect where they can't stop themselves. 


Which is why Basil Fawlty is the greatest comic character ever. Right up there with Lucy.