Well, you have to realize when you see that sort of slapstick that it's sheer fantasy...same as those Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns...only from a different sort of angle. I enjoyed the 3 stooges when I was a kid, but I knew perfectly well that they were faking it with the fingerbending and head whacking and all that. It's like a Punch and Judy puppet show...obviously not real.

The reason people laugh at that sort of thing (when it's in the form of slapstick humor) is that they feel a sense of relief that it isn't really happening...specially to them.

Charlie Chaplin did a lot of that too. Remember the scene in the cabin with the mad trapper?