New scientific research tells us that where humour is concerned, there’s definitely a gender divide.

If you’ve ever cracked what you consider a surefire joke, only to have a member of the opposite sex stare back at you blankly, eyes rolling and shoulders shrugging, take comfort: It might not be a reflection on the quality of your material. It turns out that humour is a funny thing.

When it comes to comedy, new scientific research tells us there is a significant gender divide - the brains of men and women react quite differently when confronted with a punch line. This discovery may help to shed light on important differences between the sexes and how their brains work. It may also go a long way towards explaining why, to this very day, it remains difficult to find a female human who even begins to understand why her otherwise mild-mannered husband is prone to abruptly commencing thunderous recitations of whole passages from Monty Python movies.

It is thanks to a very serious study about comedy, published in the very serious-sounding Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that we now know gender differences in what researchers call “humour processing” to be scientific fact.

The study was conducted by a team of researchers (who must have had a good laugh over the fact that while other researchers down at the lab toiled nightly over a spleen, they were studying comedy) affiliated with the department of psychiatry and brain sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The researchers showed 70 black-and-white cartoons to ten women and ten men as each lay inside an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanner - a machine that is not, one must say, traditionally associated with good times and laughter. The MRI monitored brain activity as the test subjects looked at the comics and pressed one of two buttons to indicate whether they found the material funny.
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Twenty-eight years ago, an autobiographical account of Malaysian village life called The Kampung Boy sealed Lat’s reputation as an astute cartoonist in Asia. It’s been translated into French, Japanese and, most recently, Portuguese. Last year, The Kampung Boy made its American debut. Its sequel, Town Boy, about Lat’s teenage years, will follow suit next month - proof positive that humour transcends cultural and language barriers.Why do you think your books have travelled so far?
Lat: Firstly, I think it’s because people are always interested in learning about other people’s cultures. Secondly, some time ago, graphic novels were all about the bizarre and the mysterious. Maybe people got tired of that and wanted something normal.

To the untrained eye your cartoons haven’t changed much over the years. Have they?
Lat: I prefer simpler things now. I don’t go into too much detail. Once upon a time I would draw a table at a coffee shop and what’s under the table. Now, I’ll just draw somebody sitting down. You cn’t even tell if there’s a table or not.

Have you ever been afraid that the creative well will run dry?
Lat: It started to go dry in the 80’s. (Laughing) But I realise that if I don’t do the job, there will be lots of people who will call up the newspaper office and write letters to ask why I’m missing. It’s like when I was a kid. I always expected to see Mandrake and Dick Tracy in the papers so I know how that feels.

We hear The Simpsons creator Matt Groening is a fan.
Lat: When I was in LA working on The Kampung Boy, somebody told me that Matt Groening liked my cartoons. So I got in touch with him. He liked work even before he did The Simpsons.

Are there any cartoonists that you admire now?
Lat: I’m behind the times. Those whom I admire have stopped drawing. I like people from Punch magazine.

What about up-and-coming cartoonists in the region?
Lat: I don’t want to mention any names; I want it to be an even playing field. Even my decision to leave Kuala Lumpur and return to Ipoh ten years ago was because I wanted to leave the field.

Do cartoonists find inspiration in other cartoonists’ work?
Lat: Oh yes, definitely. [My mentor] Rejab Had was Mr Clean. He always told me not to offend. Today I think you have to rude to create humour. And I definitely don’t belong to that group.

Has the world become less funny?
Lat: No. I still take out a piece of drawing paper, sit down and proceed to draw until I finish.

People must expect you to be funny all the time.
Lat: Yes, but there are times when I produce something that isn’t good. Then again, sometimes I’ll produce something that made me laugh when I drew it, but the next day I’ll get a call from someone saying they didn’t understand it.

Will we be seeing something new from you soon?
Lat: I’ve got something in store that, God willing, you’ll see next year. Maybe I’ll call it Lat and Easy because the drawings are all simple.

By: Siti Rohani

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