"Badly done, Emma"

Carmen Solis

After watching the movie Emma, I saw how a sudden awkwardness grew among the characters when Emma spoke to Miss Bates with hidden meanings in her sentence; this caused me laughter. On the contrary, when I was reading the text of Emma, I could not capture that moment. I even felt sorry for Emma at the end of the text because she could not express to Knightley that she was sorry for what she did. In both, the movie and the text, I could see what Mr. Freud, Mr. Hobbes, and Mr. Bergson wrote about, which was laughter. Each of these three writers has their own opinion, but in Emma they all contributed to what laughter is about. Emma thought that by saying mean words to Miss Bates would “pleased” her and make the others giggle, as Mr. Hobbes stated of what laughter is, which is “pleasing themselves.” Emma did not thought what she was about to say before speaking causing her to make to Miss Bates and the others characters feel uncomfortable. This occurred as a consequence of “a mind that always is thinking of what it has just done and never of what is doing,” as Bergson stated in An Essay on Comedy. She used wordplay, and witty talk against Miss Bates. Freud stated that there is a need of a “third-party” to be present to be able to tell a joke. Basically, there has to be a jokester, an audience, and the poor person who the joke is on. In Emma all of these three factors appear. Emma is the jokester who is peeking on Miss Bates; while, her friends listened without stopping her. The laughter of this scene is how awkward the moment turns out to be for Miss Bates. If we, the readers, were the ones performing this action we would not laugh. Emma feels“superiority” among Miss Bates because of her social status. So in a sense, Mr. Hobbes was right when he stated that “much laughter is at the defects of others,” in this case social status. There are comic effects all over the play. For instance when Mr. Churchill is courting Emma using cheesy lines or when the Eltons feel they are too “grow-ups” to be playing silly games. Somehow, all of the meanings of laughter that we have heard are drawn into the play of Emma.