ANCORA IMPARO
RICK RADER, MD ■ EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
On Gravity and the Queen's Dress
You can be sure that parents of children with disabilities don't think of hiding, preventing or concealing the "incongruities" that are part of human nature, part of the human condition. In fact, they welcome them. They are signs of life without limits.
DRESSED FOR SUCCESS: Queen Elizabeth returning to England from a 1959 royal tour; Weights sewn into the bottom hem prevented her dresses from flying above her knees. Assistants used circular lead curtain weights at a price of two dollars for a packet of four.
It's three o'clock in the morning and obviously I'm not asleep. It's not due to a sleep disorder or anything burning a hole in my soul; in fact, I had a great eight hours. I was exhausted from a string of late nights and fell asleep at 7 o'clock. So it's three o'clock in the morning and I'm wide awake. I opted to go channel surfing and found a channel with a marathon featuring the Three Stooges. I knew this is where I wanted to spend some time before I figured out a way to reconfigure my sleep-awake cycle. I am no stranger to the Three Stooges. It was one of my favorite TV shows growing up. I loved the antics of Moe, Larry and Curly. They were an American vaudeville and comedy team active from 1922 until 1970. They were best known for their 190 short subject films which have been airing regularly on television since 1958.
Michael Fleming in The Three Stooges: From Amalgamated Morons to American Icons wrote: "Their hallmark styles were physical farce and slapstick." What ten-year-old could resist the humor of seeing grown men slap each other across the face, hit each other over the head with a mallet, poke each other in the eye, or twist their noses? Any episode of the Three Stooges defined slapstick. They were the doyens of this brand of humor. Slapstick "is a form of humor that employs exaggerated physical activity that goes beyond the boundaries of normal physical comedy." The violence comes in two flavors; either it is intentional or it occurs by mishap. A classic is one person carrying a mop over their shoulder who turns around and smacks an innocent bystander in the face. Where one might consider that traumatic and begin to feel empathy for the victim, there is a reason why that can also appear to be hilarious.
The term arises from a device used in 16th-century Italian stage production consisting of two wooden sticks or slats. When stuck together, the impact produces a loud smacking noise. It was used to convey to the audience that someone was forcefully slapped. It wasn't just the Italians who saw the humor in smacking each other around. Shakespeare was fond of the effect and used it in many of his comedies, including his play, The Comedy of Errors. Slapstick relies on the "visual gag," or "sight gag." They convey humor visually, often without words. They often rely on a physical impossibility or an unexpected occurrence.
Humor leads to laughter, and the research is abundant that laughter is both a health mediator and health process initiator. There are three main theories of humor and each serves to explain what humor is and why we might think something is funny. There is the relief theory, the superiority theory, and the incongruity theory. While, no joke, each proponent of the three theories all think their theory covers the essence of humor the best, humor most probably has elements of all three.
The Three Stooges thrive in the third theory, "The Incongruous Juxtaposition Theory". And before you so cleverly think, "You're kidding me, right?"… think about it. M.P. Mulder offers in Humor Research: State of the Art that "the incongruity theory states that humor is perceived at the moment of realization of incongruity between a concept involved in a certain situation and the real objects thought to be in some relation to the concept." I translate that into "laughter is a response to seeing something that is not supposed to be happening." A prime example is seeing a sophisticated gentleman in a tuxedo wearing a top hat, and watching him get hit with a snowball. That's not what is supposed to happen to sophisticated gentlemen. In 2015, former President Obama nearly tripped walking down the staircase from Air Force One. He caught himself and laughed it off. When it was immediately certain that he was not hurt, the "sight gag" was repeated on every newscast. The President became the poster boy of "incongruity." Presidents aren't supposed to slip, slide or fall. Former President Trump had an intense fear of falling, not based on personal injury, but in the visual of "that ain't supposed to happen." Trump was seen holding on to arms around the world while negotiating stairs.
Even an innocent ketchup stain on a clean, pressed white shirt elicits a smirk. Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets, promoted the incongruity of humor with, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye." The black eye, a well-defined, circular sign around an eye has given many viewers a good laugh. The context is different if you're an emergency room doctor and it suggests potential ophthalmic, skull and brain injury. The British royals know a thing about incongruity and go to lengths to prevent it from happening to its members. Who could forget the scene from the 1954 movie, The Seven Year Itch, where Marilyn Monroe stood on a subway grate in New York City wearing a little white dress, and fought an upward breeze? The scene went on to become one of the most iconic moments in movie history. Despite its incongruity, no one thought it was a laughing matter, and most male viewers viewed it as a gift.
The thought of that scenario happening to Queen Elizabeth had kept the royal wardrobe custodians up at night for decades. Their biggest fear was having her Majesty exit the plane on a state visit and having a windy updraft lift her dress as she descended the jet staircase. Angela Kelly, the assistant responsible for the Queen's dresses, has revealed that weights sewn into the bottom hem of her dresses prevent the dress from flying above her knees. They use circular lead curtain weights at a price of two dollars for a packet of four. It is unclear if that appears as a line item on the Queen's reimbursement documents. Even picturing the 95-year-old monarch in a pose reminsescent of Marilyn's subway grate scene will guarantee a stay in the Tower of London for the offender.
Rising dresses aren't the only concern of the royals. Great lengths go towards ensuring that the Royals will never display ordinary human "incongruities." The Queen has specially-designed pins that guarantee her hats will never leave her head. She relies on hair nets. She also wears sticky pads in her shoes to insure they will never slip off and show that the stuff that happens to her subjects can also happen to her. The theory is, how can you have respect for a monarch who might lose a slipper? One wonders about the fate of the fairy tale Cinderella, if she insisted on wearing duct tape in her slippers. The Prince would have been out of luck since they didn't have closed circuit video surveillance cameras on royal staircases to track her down. Oh, the Queen also wears special leggings that prevent her from exhibiting any varicose veins (as if no 95-year-old woman has ever been prone to that indignation). You can be sure that parents of children with disabilities don't think of hiding, preventing or concealing the "incongruities" that are part of human nature, part of the human condition. In fact, they welcome them. They are signs of life without limits. Children with complex disabilities have an abundance of protocols that prevent them from being injured, ignored or invisible. Providing "interventions" that prevent them from being viewed as who they genuinely are have never been endorsed by the disability community. It's okay if they lose a shoe, pass some gas, wear a helmet, or rock their heads. There are other things on the "to-do list." Other things like being invited, being included, being respected, and being there.
I stayed with the Three Stooges for about two hours before I got up, showered, got dressed and went to work. All the while thinking, how do you poke someone in the eye without actually hurting them? It was enough for me that they knew how. •
ANCORA IMPARO
In his 87th year, the artist Michelangelo (1475 -1564) is believed to have said "Ancora imparo" (I am still learning). Hence, the name for my monthly observations and comments. – Rick Rader, MD, Editor-in-Chief, EP Magazine Director, Morton J. Kent Habilitation Center Orange Grove Center, Chattanooga, TN