Rush Three: Short Circuit

Mistaken identity has long been used to comedic effect. ("The Comedy Of Errors," "Twelfth Night," "The Parent Trap"). We can easily map this confusion of identities onto Freud's notion that wit occurs when two separate concepts are "short-circuited" or when two concepts are expressed as similar, as when a pun links different meanings via the sound of a word. In mistaken identity comedies we "short-circuit" all difference associated with an individual psyche to conflate two people on the basis of their appearance.

Freud goes on to differentiate between "good" witticisms made in this manner (those that evoke a similarity or contrast between the underlying concepts being evoked) and "bad" (witticism that do not grant us any insight other than a superficial similarity between the two concepts evoked). The ultimate scene of "The Great Dictator" by Charlie Chaplin clearly falls into the former category. In this scene, the Jewish barber is confused for the dictator of "Tomainia," entirely on the basis of his appearance. However, he exploits this confusion to give a speech espousing peace. The "short-circuit" here functions as a "good" one under Freud's taxonomy -- it highlights the absurdity of following the whims of one demagogue as the Tomainian (or German people had done), especially when said demagogue is fickle and can be replaced on the basis of appearance. Furthermore, the short circuit allows us to imagine that peace and war are equally viable possibilities depending on the whims of the man at the podium.