What’s So Funny?

I’ve recently learned through the magic of the internet that that staple of physical comedy in the modern era, the blow to the male groin, has reached its apotheosis in a YouTube favorite called Kicked in the Nuts.  If you have not watched this bit of entertainment, the segments feature a wiry man sporting a bright orange wig — reminiscent of Carrot Top or the McDonald’s clown — who sneaks up on unsuspecting victims and kicks them in the groin. 

The victims have included “Earl” from the show My Name is Earl, Seth MacFarlane, the creator of The Family Guy, and two small boys of perhaps eight years old.  The typical scenario is this:  the wigged assailant either waits concealed in view of the audience (behind a bush, for example) or he is off camera waiting for the right opportunity to deliver the kick to the unsuspecting victim.  Once the kick is delivered, the victims fall to the ground in what looks to be genuine discomfort while an audience laughs.  We are reminded now and again that “This is real!” as if a faked kick would not be as humorous. 

The pain from the blow, however, is soon allayed — along with some anger from the victim or, in the case of the boys, the victim’s father — by the attacker pointing to the hidden camera and saying, “Look, you’ve been kicked in the nuts!  You’re going to be on tv.”  The reprisals seem pretty lame, and the kicker has not, in my sampling anyway, kicked a biker or any other sort of badass who just might beat the guy to death with a length of pipe.  But in any case, the announcement that the victim will be on tv seems to be the perfect balm for the shock of the blow, the loss of breath and the vague nausea that comes with a collision between one’s testicles and a moving foot.   

This little real-life drama should resonate with anyone familiar with the several generations of Candid Camera — first made popular by Alan Font — where unsuspecting participants were absolved of their silliness and where the perpetrators of the gag were absolved of their deceit through the blessing of being on tv.  “You’ve been kicked in the nuts!”  is this generation’s “You’re on Candid Camera!”  The notion of being on tv or the internet or both makes everything right with the world.  Whether you’ve been filmed looking up a woman’s skirt as she changed a bulb atop a ladder or suffered a detonation in your scrotum, no matter, because, hey, you’re going to be on television! 

But I’m less interested in this desire or hunger for fame via the web, long used as I am to the coupling of victimhood’s charm and its display on any number of talk shows, the newspaper, and the Web.  What I’ve been trying to understand is why a blow to the groin, even to that of a child’s, from a softball, Frisbee, or an intentional foot, is funny to so many people.  I posed this question to a classroom full of college freshmen and nearly all of them agreed that the groin blow was funny but none could say why.  We pretty much agreed that a blow to the female groin did not result in the same hilarity, nor even the vice president of the United States shooting his friend in the face with a shot gun meant for quail.

Yes, it’s slapstick, which has a long history of making people laugh, but why is the groin blow funnier than Moe poking Curly in the eyes or any number of falls on ice or a wet floor?  We do seem to get some degree of satisfaction out of watching the sudden misfortune of a person, and I wonder if this taps into some latent desire to see my potential competitors for food made less competitive.  Following this logic, the kick to the groin might be seen as emasculating and rendering — ok, symbolically — impotent those same competitors.  But that sounds like graduate student drivel, no?  Perhaps you can’t decipher why the groin blow is funny without examining why other things make us laugh — the fart in the quiet room, “projectile vomit,” all things sexual.   I think you could get to the root of the humor in this way, but it would still be my contention that most people — not me — think that the groin blow tops all other reasons for laughing.   Can someone tell me why?  Perhaps I need to talk to a comedian.