Madness and insanity, especially crazy laughter, have logic and an internal story. "There is nothing funnier than misery," says Samuel Beckett in 'Endgame.' Laughter has a role in protecting our sanity, but it is also a way to go crazy. From nervous and manic laughter to art's use of black humor. It presents insanity as sane in a whimsical, irrational world. That crazy laughter, which is actually the cry or spasm of pain of the victim, is what Joaquin Phoenix so well conveys in the role of the Joker.
Art uses the grotesque and absurd to make us laugh. It is a coping mechanism for an unbearable life. It shows that, in the madness of reality, insanity is the only sanity. An artist, free from the demand for sanity, can call madness insane and apparent sanity mad. That's more than a psychologist in Tel Aviv can do.
