Industrialized laughter represses fear by capitulating to power instead of escaping it

Evidence

The triumph over beauty is celebrated by humor—the Schadenfreude that every successful deprivation calls forth. There is laughter because there is nothing to laugh at. Laughter, whether conciliatory or terrible, always occurs when some fear passes. It indicates liberation either from physical danger or from the grip of logic. Conciliatory laughter is heard as the echo of an escape from power; the wrong kind overcomes fear by capitulating to the forces which are to be feared. It is the echo of power as something inescapable. Fun is a medicinal bath. The pleasure industry never fails to prescribe it. It makes laughter the instrument of the fraud practised on happiness. Moments of happiness are without laughter; only operettas and films portray sex to the accompaniment of resounding laughter. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 110

Categorization

• XREF: Reverse of Bergson’s theory of laughter as relief — Adorno’s joke-audience is a monad, echoing his monadology elsewhere and connecting to Benjamin. — connects to: Laughter disarms ideology because it dissolves fear and enables thought — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice: How to Communicate…, 413; Audience laughter at gratification signals repression, not mere immaturity — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 341; Fixed filmic smiles convert facial expression into terror and obedience (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Laughter disarms ideology because it dissolves fear and enables thought #contradicts (0.90) — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 413
• Amusement becomes an ideal that displaces the higher things it mimics #expands (0.78)
• Audience laughter at gratification signals repression, not mere immaturity #expands (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 341
• Fixed filmic smiles convert facial expression into terror and obedience #complicates (0.75)
• Low-probability high-consequence risks inflate fear and enable extreme policies #expands (0.75) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2115
• Mutual fear can amplify exogenously into runaway escalation via feedback loops. #expands (0.75) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 485
• Content-indifferent sensation erodes judgement and drives catastrophic degeneration. #expands (0.74) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 257
• Extreme battlefield noise can annihilate thought and reduce a person to helpless reflex #expands (0.72) — George Michelsen Foy, Zero Decibels, 424
• Fear adaptively prompts avoidance while anger mobilizes group response #complicates (0.72) — Walter G. Stephan, Oscar Ybarra, Kimberly Rios Morrison, Intergroup Threat Theory, 19
• Speech-like noise fools the brain and harms intelligibility more than its level suggests #expands (0.70) — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 2481