To Be (Witty) or Not to Be (Witty)

 

"We've been here before."

"I recognize that tree."

For all my Gilmore Girl fans out there, Lorelai Gilmore is the epitome of wit. For anyone that has absolutely zero clue what a Gilmore girl is, the video above explains it all. In the middle of a verbal sparring match, Lorelai stumps her opponent with the sheer audacity of her wit. The opponent sits there in astonishment, trying to formulate what happened. In the end, he is nothing but a pit of confusion and bewilderment, and he may also be slightly nauseous. 

This is the power of wit.

In The Specator's 62nd issue, Joseph Addison explains how wit is not actually wit at all unless it is surprising. It must take the audience aback. They must think on it for a moment. Their mind will go through a process of, "Wait, what?" then "Did they just...?" and they will finally land on, "Oh, I get it!"

 Wittiness is not at all easy to comprehend. If it was, everyone would be considered witty, but that is not the case. Addison took Locke's ideas of wit and exemplfies them into his writing, further explaining what is wit and who can obtain wittiness.

Addison explains it like this, "In order therefore that the Resemblance in the Ideas be Wit, it is necessary that the Ideas should not lie too near one another in the Nature of things; for where the Likeness is obvious, it gives no Surprize. To compare one Man's Singing to that of another, or to represent the Whiteness of any Object by that of Milk and Snow, or the Variety of its Colours by those of the Rainbow, cannot be called Wit" (The Spectator, No. 62). 

By this, Addison simply means something that John Dryden also believed in. Wit should make a person think. Wit inspires intelligence, and for that reason, not everyone can be witty. 

Addison also goes on to further detail the difference between false wit and true wit. He says that true wit is a "Resemblance of Ideas" and false wit is a "Resemblance of Words". To help explain this, I am going to once again refer to the queen of wit (in my opinion) Lorelai Gilmore.

Gilmore Girls: Season 1, Episode 4

As you can see, in this graphic, Lorelai is being asked if she enjoys coffee. To which, she responds, "Only with my oxygen." I believe this to be an example of the modernized wit Addison places into words. The answer makes you stop and think. It is not straight-forward in the slightest. It displays this idea of associating coffee with the same importance as oxygen. 

In a real sense, the idea of coffee is not 

as important as the idea of oxygen, but that is where the wit comes into play. Addison explains that true wit draws similarities between two unlike things: coffee and oxygen. False wit would be akin to puns. You could simply think of false wit as the Dad Joke of wittiness. If you need a further example of false wit, please see the title of this page.

 Then there is mixed wit. I like to think of this version as the amphibious wit. It is half true and half false. 

The best example of mixed wit is the one Addison himself uses. Although he says that false wit typically exists in poems, he does lay a scenario in which mixed wit can be found when an author equates love to a fire. That could mean as both passion and a real fire, and that will often surprise the reader. This is mixed wit: "Its Foundations are laid partly in Falsehood and partly in Truth: Reason puts in her Claim for one Half of it, and Extravagance for the other" (The Spectator, No. 62). Simply put, as I said above, mixed wit is half true and half false. 

The modernized version of wit is quite different than what Addison details. It is often more humorous than literary, but there are many factors that still hold true. For me, it is easy to understand wit if I equate it to means of pop culture. Lorelai Gilmore is true wit. She often moves too quickly for people to understand her, but once they do, they think, "That was clever." False wit could perhaps be personified in the segments of Saturday Night Live. As for mixed wit, it is anything and nothing in between.