HUMOR, SUBVERSIVE AND OTHERWISE

[a4a: This came my way awhile ago; apologies to Ulises for taking to long to tag it up!]

While reading the "authoritarian cathecism" I noticed a passing reference to the use of humour by authoritarians. [a4a: More accurately, I pointed out how authoritarians hate almost all types of humor, because it is seditious.] I had recently made a study of humour which might be useful for distinguishing subversive humour and authoritarian humour. Humour is useful for the revolutionary as a way of reducing the chances of him getting shot...Here is a sort of summary of the study:

Different types of humour are used for conveying different types of messages, require different activity from the reader and affect different parts of his psyche.

"PIE IN THE FACE" HUMOUR

This is the kind of humour which is applicable to anybody in any situation. A pie in the face of Joe Blow is just as funny (or not) as a pie in the face of Bill Clinton or Nietzsche. It is funny because it is a simple discontinuity in the behaviour expected of any human being. Therefore, understanding this type of joke requires very little knowledge and cultural background. It is usually obscene or "silly"; pants dropping, etc... a good rule of thumb is that it would be just as funny if any character played the part.

This kind of humour, while sometimes actually funny, appeals mostly to the ego of the audience. The silly clown onstage makes the rest of the audience seem smarter. This effect is readily observable in children who, laughing with joy, will say of the clown: "he´s so stupid."

Opposed to this is the kind of humour about a particular person or situation. It, of course, requires more culture from the listener and may be subversive as it points out discontinuities in concrete situations For example, humour may point out discontinuities in a speech that only seems coherent.

EXCLUSION HUMOUR

Ethnic jokes are usually of the "pie in the face" nature. However, they have an extra reason to appeal to the audience. Besides "massaging" their ego, it also pleases their sense of belonging; making fun of the "otherness" affirms a person's sense of identity. Needless to say, a person who needs to strike out at otherness is identity-starved and needs some kind of help. This kind of humour is used by the authoritarians to make their group stronger.

Exclusion humour is sometimes used positively. When, for example, an ethnic joke is told by a Jew to a Jew (or by a Jew´s friend, whatever), it is a positive affirmation of identity. By laughing at oneself, one takes himself less seriously and is therefore more free to be a true individual.

"SAD BUT TRUE" HUMOUR

This is an example of truly subversive humour. There are, in all societies (including those which boast of having "free speech"), certain truths known by everybody but that everybody keeps quiet about (e.g., the government is robbing us blind).

Humour goes around censorship and speaks the unspoken truth in a subtle fashion. This subtlety is the humorous element in the joke, but there is a subversive element in pointing out these truths that, in society, are not "polite" or "proper" conversation topics because they expose the lie we constantly live in.

A society of double morality like the one we live in is an unending source of this type of humour. To take a recent example, the fact that parents are at the same time giving their kids prozac and keeping them away from weed is an easy source for endless jokes, skits etc.

HUMOUR, THE SPEECH OF (S)HE WHO ADMITS HE IS NOT PERFECT

The true jester must learn to laugh at himself. While authoritarians won´t admit their imperfections, the jester will laugh about them, making them visible. The jester can then work with his imperfections.

HUMOUR AS A TOOL OF SUBVERSION

The jester wields no weapon an is therefore harder to kill. The jester will get the audience´s atention, not as a boring and "dangerous" political activist but as a nice guy.

Conformists are warned about those who speak directly against authority, but the jester is subtle, and conformist may agree with his message laughingly, without knowing they shed their conformism. Explaining how goverment, school, organized religion, cheats us can be an abstruse matter, but humour has a way of explaining things without making heads nod. Humour is the gun of he who hates gun. Humour is the speech of he who hates speeches that boast and wave flags of fake nations. Authority trembles under the gun of humour (read the final chapters of Eco´s "The Name of the Rose"), that is why a Colombian humourist and journalist was shot to death, humour is, in the end, the tool of the anarchist.

Ulysses
Bogota, Colombia, June 2000