The Core of Comedy Is Tragedy. Ask the Centipede.

In a TV studio, Zhao Benshan is already half out of his chair. Lu Yu has one more question. Someone has told her that the core of comedy is tragedy. Does he agree?

Zhao sits back down, not because he cares about the question, but because leaving now would look rude. “Nobody is comedy’s father,” he says. “Nobody can define it. But if you insist on a definition, I can’t stop you. Does my agreeing matter?”

Lu Yu asks what comedy is, then.

“Making people laugh. That’s it. Laughter is instinct. Don’t dig too deep. Dig deep enough and you can’t laugh anymore.”

Then he tells her about the monkey and the centipede. The monkey meets the centipede and asks: with all those legs, which one do you move first? The centipede thinks about it. After that, it cannot walk. It has forgotten how. It was never a question before. It was instinct. The question paralyzed it.

That story is the whole argument. The sentence “the core of comedy is tragedy” is a question asked by a monkey. It can be useful. It can also stop the centipede.

The sentence has power because it explains so much. Chaplin’s tramp is hungry, broke, kicked around. Zhou Xingchi’s characters are losers, extras, men who shout “I’m an actor” while nobody believes them. Fan Wei in Selling Crutches is swindled out of money and left with a limp. If you stand on the side of the person being laughed at, the story is not funny. It is cruel. It is a bad day that turns into a bad life.

But that does not mean tragedy is the core. It means tragedy is raw material. Comedy does not remove the pain. It changes the angle, the rhythm, the distance. On stage, Fan Wei’s humiliation is safe. The audience knows it is a sketch. The exaggeration, the timing, the fake sincerity, the way Zhao Benshan leans in with concern, these are the tools that turn a con into a joke. If the same thing happened to your uncle, you would not laugh. You would call the police, or sit in the kitchen and ask how he could be so stupid. The art is the distance. Without distance, comedy becomes a documentary about someone losing their money. Nobody laughs at that.

Chen Peisi says laughter comes from superiority. You see a man fall, you laugh, because his pain makes you feel taller. There is truth in this. A lot of comedy runs on mockery. The smug official, the pretentious artist, the fool who thinks he is clever. They fall, and we enjoy it. But superiority is not the only door. A baby laughs when you make a funny face. Friends laugh at a private joke that makes no sense to anyone else. You laugh at a pun because the language folds in a way you did not expect. You laugh after a scare, when the body realizes it is safe. These are not all mockery. They are release, surprise, connection, play. If every laugh is a small cruelty, then every meal is a small murder. The logic is there. It is also not enough to live by.

Zhao Benshan says the logic is fine, but you cannot dig. If you dig, Selling Crutches is a tragedy. Fan Wei loses money, gains a limp, and is made a fool of in front of the country. In real life, if it happened to your family, you would be angry. You would feel wronged. You would ask how someone could be so stupid. Lu Yu says her family is not that stupid. Zhao says: suppose. She admits it would be a tragedy. He says: see, it depends on whose side you are on. Someone is always the tragedy.

Comedy needs someone to be unlucky. If every character is happy, the audience is not. The laugh comes from a gap: between what a character knows and what we know, between what they want and what they get, between the dignity they claim and the body that betrays them. The gap is not always tragic. Sometimes it is silly. Sometimes it is absurd. Sometimes it is just a man in a stupid hat. But there is always a gap. A story with no gap is a commercial. A story with no gap is a greeting card.

The problem comes when the gap is filled with the wrong material. Many sketches now start funny and end sad. Zhao’s explanation is practical: if the audience has not laughed, how do you get off stage? You need to move them. You need a sense of completion. So you bring in the violin, the tears, the sick parent, the old photograph, the speech about love. The audience cries, and the performer can leave. It is not a tragicomedy. It is an exit strategy. It is emotional coercion with a laugh track.

Tragicomedy does not switch. It holds both at once. Chaplin eats a shoe. It is hunger, and it is a dance. Zhou Xingchi says, “I’ll support you,” and the line is funny because he has nothing, and it is brave because he says it anyway. The laugh and the ache are the same moment. You do not wait for the sad part. The sad part is already there, in the way he stands, in the way she looks away, in the pause before the next joke.

Zhao Benshan does not study theory, but he has one. He says every creator has a theory. It is experience. You do comedy long enough, you learn what works. The people who study theory may not create. They hear things, or they make things up, and they are always one layer away. Then he says something mean about Chen Peisi: since he came up with that theory, his work has not been as funny. Lu Yu laughs and says he is offending people. Zhao says he has already offended them. He is not afraid.

The mean joke has a point. Theory is a map. Creation is walking. A map is useful after the walk. If you stare at it while walking, you trip. The centipede thinks about which leg to move first and forgets how to walk. The comedian who thinks about superiority, incongruity, release, and the tragic core before every line will forget how to be funny. The best comedy is not stupid. It is just faster than theory. It sees the gap before it can name it.

The core is not tragedy. Not superiority. Not release. The core is people. People are fragile. They want things they cannot say. They lie to themselves. They get swindled. They fall in love with the wrong person. They try to be good and fail in a way that is almost funny. Life is not a genre. It is a mess of jokes and injuries. Art that shows only the jokes is fake. Art that shows only the injuries is heavy. The comedy that lasts lets you laugh at the mess without pretending the mess is not there.

Lu Yu asks if she is bad for liking to see people unlucky. Zhao says no. She is normal. She looks like an alien, but her core is Earthling. That is the answer. The audience is not cruel. The audience is human. We laugh because we recognize the gap. We have all been the centipede. We have all been asked a question that made us forget how to walk. For a moment, on stage, someone else is the fool. We are safe. We laugh. Then we go home and check whether our own legs still work.

The studio lights come up. Zhao Benshan stands and leaves before the next guest arrives. Lu Yu turns to the door. Chen Peisi is already there. The centipede is still walking. Nobody asks it which leg it moves first.