ABSTRACT
In great comedy, unconscious, hidden, and suppressed conflict is brought to light. Comedy begins with exploration of a social principle and ridicules those who place it beyond reason. Perhaps comedy is more highly prized in autocratic institutions because solemn expression of hierarchal disrelationships is an affront to those in power. Comic and tragic art offers formal dramatic expression of the problem of hierarchy. The comic victim—the clown who is being beaten—like the tragic victim, suffers indignity, torture, and death. Comic art is against art itself, as well as against other social institutions. The counterpart of the community scapegoat within the individual is mortification of the self. Community motives may serve as the matrix for a corresponding personal motive. Good citizens differ from criminals not because they have no hostility, but because they know how to express their hostility in ways considered benign by their community.
