During lockdown we feared for many couples. But we were blind. It’s during the unlocking, during the thaw, that the real dangers emerged. Witness this phone call: “I’ve found my mother-in-law again, she’s driving me crazy, what can I do to get out of this???”

My first advice: destabilize her. Without violence, without aggression, without benevolence or empathy. Just destabilize her. To do this: create an unexpected distance from what could have happened “normally”.

Laughter, Agent of Disruption

It so happens that at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s I was able to write a thesis on laughter, nonsense and the absurd in cinematic comedians, in slapstick (which you’ll find on the about page).

Each theory of laughter is based on an idea of disruption:

• Historically the ancient Greeks, Hobbes, Bain, see in laughter a disruption between advantage and weakness: someone falls on a banana peel. This is called the “degradation theories” (the kicks in the rear of American slapstick: Chaplin, Keaton, Mack Sennett, etc.).
• Then come the theories of contrast (Schopenhauer, Kant): laughter comes from the contrast between what is expected and what occurs. Generally between something very dignified that becomes ridiculous. The grand duchess who slips on the banana peel again, or the bourgeois who gets kicked in the rear by the tramp, the vagabond.
• Finally the more modern theories (this is not an exhaustive list) of Freud or Bergson. I’m particularly attached to Freud’s theory which explains that laughter is born from energy planned for something that ultimately doesn’t resolve itself: not knowing what to do with it, it becomes laughter. I see this person walking then suddenly slipping on a banana peel. The energy I had set aside to follow their normal movement (think of the mirror neurons theory), I can no longer spend it normally, it redirects itself into laughter.

Everywhere a gap, a disruption, an energy that no longer knows where to go, and that must be used for something else, hence the destabilization.

On the Use of the Absurd and Nonsense

To create this disruption, the absurd is an effective means. We’ll call absurd¹ anything that conflicts with meaning, that is, where meaning is truncated, fooled, missing, or even absent. We’ll speak of idiotic absurd: defect of reasoning, or savage: in conflict with reasoning. Nonsense is a derived form of the absurd: we speak either of nonsense that has its own meaning but has no meaning in context, we’ll say out-of-context nonsense, or of nonsense that pretends to have meaning but truly has no meaning (we won’t speak of nonsense that has no meaning and doesn’t try to make you believe it has one).

A few examples from cinematic comedians, then we’ll tackle our mother-in-law, and finally the organization.

• “Idiotic” absurd: “Hardy, late for his wedding, receives a phone call from his future father-in-law. Aware of his fault, he asks Laurel to answer that he left ten minutes ago. Laurel complies and announces without embarrassment, with iron logic or phenomenal stupidity (we really don’t know): ‘Mr Hardy is beside me, he told me to tell you that we had just left ten minutes ago.’”

• “Savage” absurd: Groucho is the boss of a hotel where Harpo and Chico have just entered. As all three were about to shake hands, they launch into a sort of farandole… the beginning of a brawl breaks out, but it turns into mutual congratulation, when a sudden honk from Harpo sends everyone fleeing. The latter takes advantage of this to eat the buttons of a bellhop’s jacket, hook his leg to the bellhop’s arm, and he begins, when registering in the register, to play darts with the pens. Finally, he turns to the mail which he methodically tears up before starting to eat and drink ink, stamp pad, flowers, telephone, etc.

• Out-of-context nonsense: Les Nuls in “la cité de la peur,” a frantic chase through the streets of Cannes. Suddenly an anodyne scene in a grocery store in Vera Cruz. The chase in Cannes resumes. This moment in Vera Cruz has meaning in itself, but it has none in the film.

• Nonsense that simulates meaning but has none, a trompe-sens: This is the hardest to describe. In A day at the race by the Marx Brothers, Harpo is a fake patient. Groucho takes his pulse. He pronounces the phrase: “Either this man is dead, or my watch has stopped.” It’s nonsense. We know that Harpo is not dead. We imagine a link between the pulse and the watch. The phrase could almost make sense, it traps us, we fall into the void.

How to Use This with Your Mother-in-Law’s Traps

Let’s imagine you’re putting your child’s shoes on. Children grow, feet are tight. You talk about the size of their shoes. The cantankerous mother-in-law corrects you: “we say shoe size when it comes to shoe measurements, dear.” A few responses I suggest:

• Idiotic absurd: “Don’t we say size for the left foot and shoe size for the right foot?”
• Savage absurd: Take the shoes and throw them to the back of the garden with a big laugh. Shout: “first one to catch the shoe size.” Go get the shoe. Resume normal life.
• Out-of-context nonsense: “Yes I know I said that last time to my hairdresser.”
• Trompe-sens nonsense: “I hope the size of the other foot is the same shoe size as this one.”

Naturally everything is in the tone used, the body language. It’s very important to want to laugh about it, to not take anything seriously. The mother-in-law won’t be fooled that you’re playing, to avoid redirecting this disrupted energy (which we’ll discuss again) toward aggression, you must propose playful playground. So to be done with gaiety.

The Benefits of Disruption

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible” said Frank Zappa (absurd expert). This disruption, for cinematic comedians it serves to trigger laughter. For us? It diverts the topic (of the mother-in-law) and proposes an energy that doesn’t know how to satisfy itself. I’ve noted in the personal exchanges I mention that it translated into a motor for reflection. This energy serves to question. The surprise serves to question what is happening? What is being played? It places the actors in a meta position: what do I want? What am I doing? Why am I doing it? No one is fooled in the game with this mother-in-law, it lifts the veil, the illusion disappears. We can play, but no one can say they don’t know it, we can no longer pretend. More true, more real questions are asked.

The Absurd and Nonsense, Agents of Change in the System

Naturally this game of the absurd, of nonsense, of laughter, I suggest you play it in organizations (not in organized crime, but in companies, in your professional environments). And this for the same reasons. This new energy that appears in the system and that isn’t usually present, what does it become? Same thing, it reveals the games of deception or the situations. It brings back to the real questions. It makes illusions and pretenses disappear.

A few examples:

• “I want us to deliver this product as quickly as possible!” Trompe-sens response: “Okay we’ll put it into service this afternoon!”, when everyone knows it’s not ready. This disruption, this perspective, leads to questioning and probably to generating the right dialogue: “as quickly as possible” means as soon as this feature is completed? As soon as what?
• “How to transform the entire structure into an agile company as quickly as possible?” “Why not use the power of coercion?” (idiotic absurd: by definition an agile organization tends toward self-organization, autonomy. Coercion is the opposite direction). This raises the question: do we want to pretend? Do we want to simulate a behavior? Probably not, so what do we really want?
• “Can we estimate the workload related to this work, the deadline?” Let’s do savage absurd. In some cases I’ve already suggested to some people to use a large transparent jar (for candies) filled with papers. At this question the person draws a paper at random from the jar and announces the answer “3 days!”. This is to highlight the absurdity of estimates, we push the logic to the end². If no one wants real dialogue, we play the game.
• “This team is useless.” “Yes, I’ve never known how to make beef bourguignon either (out-of-context nonsense).” This out-of-context reply has the merit of probably creating perplexity in your interlocutor by indicating that your sentence as such has no more meaning than theirs. What do they mean by “useless”? Let’s address the real question, the real subject, in any case let’s not remain on the surface.

Once again: everything is in the tone used, the body language. It’s very important to want to laugh about it, to not take anything seriously. No one will be fooled that you’re playing, to avoid redirecting this disrupted energy toward aggression, you must propose a playful playground. So to be done with gaiety. In any case to be handled with great care. Most important: you do this wanting the good of the organization, and not to truly mock it.

To respond on the spot requires training, to have the right attitude requires training, to have training you must try regularly.

Thanks to the Marx Brothers, to WC Fields, to the Monty Python, to Chaplin, Keaton, and all the others.