The Ethics of Laughing at Violence, Part 3: The Problem of Ambiguity

Humor is, at its core, a medium of representation.  But its indirect and ironic nature in which an intended meaning is often different from (and even opposed to) what is stated, makes humor different from most other representational modes.  When an individual laughs at a joke depicting violence, we might be inclined to say that that person is taking pleasure in violence, but often the opposite is true: violence may be presented, but the underlying meaning of the joke actually ridicules or undermines the very structures of violence that the joke represents. Consider the following joke by shock-comedian Sarah Silverman:

 “I was raped by a doctor, which is a bittersweet experience for a Jewish girl.”

This joke presents its audience with several objectionable ideas.  First, of course, is the blasé attitude that reduces the violence of rape to little more than a “bittersweet” experience.  Second is the stereotype of the gold digging Jewish American Princess who is eager to sleep with a doctor (or other wealthy individual) at any cost. 

Though the straightforward meaning of her language presents the sexual violence and ethnic stereotypes uncritically, it seems clear to me that Silverman is not actually endorsing these viewpoints.  Squeezing all of this material into a single sentence makes the content of this joke not simply objectionable, but hyperbolically objectionable.  In comically exaggerating these offensive elements, Silverman ridicules a society that adopts these attitudes while simultaneously performing the cultural work of bringing these often unspoken issues into the cultural discourse.

Indifferent attitudes toward sexual violence and ethnic stereotyping not only serve as Silverman’s object of ridicule, but also create the conditions that make this joke problematic.  While I engage in what I feel is perfectly ethical (even morally corrective) laughter at the joke’s indictment of sexism and bigotry, it is not hard to imagine an audience—even a large audience—who laughs sympathetically with these elements.  This audience laughs primarily out of relief that these ideas that society forces them to repress are released into the open.*  In other words, the necessary repression these violent and racist feelings—feelings that individuals may not even be willing to acknowledge that they possess—during the course of everyday life constitutes a psychological hardship that is temporarily alleviated when Silverman gives public voice to them, thereby producing a pleasurable response of laughter for the malicious and/or bigoted.

*I’m willing to acknowledge that there is an element of this relief in all of our laughter, but there is a distinction between the relief felt in an act of transgression itself (the act that breaks restrictive social imperatives) and the relief that specifically validates or cultivates latent racist or violent beliefs. In other words, I experience some relief—manifested as laughter—in the fact that Silverman boldly defies social standards governing what is speakable, but that has nothing to do with the more problematic act of taking pleasure specifically in bigotry or sexual violence, which results in an entirely different kind of laughter.

As we can see, there are two perfectly plausible responses to Silverman’s joke.  One (morally unproblematic) laughs at the absurdity of our culture’s commitment to violence and racial stereotypes, while the other (morally problematic) laughs with these elements, not only affirming them but taking pleasure in the fact that these socially repressed beliefs are given voice. 

This leads us to the ethical question at the heart of this post: should we be producing and laughing at humor that may be as likely to affirm its audience’s violent and bigoted fantasies (even unintentionally) as it is to challenge them? To me, this is the question at the heart of debates around racist and violent humor.  There is nearly unanimous agreement that telling willfully malicious, racist, or sexist jokes is wrong, but what about jokes in which there is no malintent on the part of the speaker, but members of the audience don’t laugh in the way he or she intended?  Should the comedian be denied the power to speak (and we the pleasure of laughter) simply because some members of the audience lack the intelligence (or are simply to racist, violent, &c.) to understand the object of ridicule?

Linguists and semioticians have long recognized that an individual speaker (or writer) lacks the power to control all of the meanings present in his or her language.  The inability to determine what aspects of racial humor the audience takes pleasure in led Dave Chappelle to walk away from a $50 million contract.  Chappelle’s abrupt flight to Africa amplified the discussion about the ethics of engaging in race-based humor that is often misinterpreted in a way that promotes rather than condemns racism, but it did little to settle the debate. 

Though considerably more space would be necessary to settle this debate conclusively, I will end by suggesting why comedians like Silverman and Chappelle should continue to engage in humor that ironically embraces violence and race-based stereotypes.  Despite the potentially negative social consequences of individuals laughing at these representations as endorsements of racism and sexual violence, I simply do not think that a bigoted failure to understand the intent of a joke gives an individual the authority to deprive both the speaker and more perceptive audience members of the pleasure of humor.  If anything, such shortsighted stupidity should deprive these individuals of this cultural authority.  Allowing those likely to misinterpret the meaning of a joke to influence the moral implications of telling it confers on these individuals an authority over social standards of speakability, which, it seems obvious to me, is an authority they have not earned. 

So let the great transgressive comedians continue to embrace violence and stereotypes in ironic ridicule; let those who don’t get the humor continue to be offended; and let those who misapprehend it continue to validate their thoughtless bigotry.  Just because we allow the pleasurable circumstances that reinforce these bigoted beliefs to persist doesn’t mean we have to accept the beliefs themselves.

The Ethics of Laughing at Violence, Part 2: Laughter as Validation

A primary critique of laughter at humorous representations of violence (and racism, sexism, &c.) is that it involves taking pleasure in the subject of the joke.  The idea that violence done to another could somehow lead to the pleasure of laughter has led to an outcry against such humorous representations.  This fact seems quite understandable.  If we believe that these jokes perpetuate an inclination (involuntary or otherwise) to take pleasure in others’ suffering, we should seek to limit the spread of this anti-social sentiment in our culture as much as possible.  But does the perpetuation of violent jokes create such a sentiment?  Consider the following joke that seems absolutely certain to offend:

What has 8 hairy legs and makes women scream?
Gang rape.*

*As you may notice, my past few posts contain a selection of jokes involving rape and sexual violence.  This is not simply to maintain consistency of theme.  I have tried to work with jokes likely to elicit the strongest negative response.  In other words, I am seeking to engage with the most offensive (or potentially offensive) jokes possible.  Because the violence of these jokes is intensified by misogyny and sex, I think they work best for my purpose.

Structurally (and unlike many examples of violent, racist, and sexist humor) this is at least a competently constructed joke.*  The opening question, “What has 8 hairy legs and makes women scream?,” sets up an initial expectation by strongly suggesting the most obvious answer: a spider.  However, that seemingly specific question also contains enough ambiguity to allow for other possible answers, including the invocation of gang rape that closes the joke.  This shift in the expected logic of the joke constitutes the humorous reversal or moment of comic surprise that should be recognizable from more traditional (i.e. less objectionable) jokes.  One additional (and especially troubling) reversal in the joke is that the opening question suggests a child’s riddle—the kind of thing you might read on a popsicle stick—that is reversed with the taboo (and decidedly adult) punchline.  This juxtaposition of childhood innocence and sexual violence is, for me, the most deeply troubling emotional component of the joke.

*As will become clear below, I am not approving of the joke’s content, just its form.  Like all jokes, violent jokes work by creating an unexpected incongruity.  But there are varying degrees of artfulness in that creation.  Consider this deplorably racist joke (told by soldiers in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket):

How do you keep five black guys from raping a white girl?

Throw them a basketball.

The structure of this joke is identical to most shock humor; it works by invoking an incongruity between what is acceptable to say and what is actually said.  In this case, the joke simply expresses racist stereotypes in a social context in which such speech is socially prohibited.  These types of social transgressions are not only easy to construct, they don’t really function in the way that most jokes do, by creating an initial expectation and then reversing it. In fact, the feeble “basketball” joke doesn’t even fulfill the structural or definitional criteria for a joke proposed by cognitive linguists like Victor Raskin, Salvatore Attardo, and Rachel Giora.  My point is that the “8 hairy legs” joke does satisfy those criteria (albeit disturbingly).  In terms of form, the joke is no different than other non-controversial jokes, thereby making it a useful example for our analysis.

In assessing the ethics of what it would mean to laugh at this joke, the most pertinent question becomes: what exactly are we laughing at?   Are we laughing at (and thereby taking pleasure in) the comic reversal (the form), or are we laughing at the sexual violence of gang rape (the content)? 

It has to be a little bit of both.  The phrase “gang rape” isn’t funny on its own.  It is the fact that it reverses an expected context that gives this sequence the status of a joke.  In this way the “8 hairy legs” joke is no different than this, more benign one (cited by both Raskin and Giora):

“Is the doctor at home?” the patient asked in his bronchial whisper. 

“No.” the doctor’s young and pretty wife answered in reply.  “Come right in.”

Both jokes use an opening scenario to establish an expected resolution, only to undermine or reverse that expectation by exploiting an unseen ambiguity in that initial context for comic effect.  Whether the reversal invokes cuckoldry or gang rape, to laugh at this shift in meaning is, to some extent, to take pleasure in the unexpected shift in meaning common to joke structures.

But jokes are surely more than just their form; the content has to play a role in the humor as well, and this is where taking pleasure in such a joke becomes morally problematic.  The linguistic codes we use carry a certain emotive force, and this force is, to a large extent, necessary for the general maintenance of our moral order.  The concept of gang rape carries with it an overwhelmingly negative response, and needs to do so to maintain social vigilance against violence towards women.  The moment in which we, as a culture, can reference gang rape with emotional neutrality is the moment in which our vigilance against such violence has sunk to dangerously low levels.  Any inclination one might have to laugh at the form of the “8 hairy legs” has to be counterbalanced by revulsion at the violent punchline that achieves the comic reversal.  In this way, the appropriately ethical response to this joke is one of cognitive dissonance in which an inclination to take comic pleasure of the joke’s form is offset (if not undermined completely) by disgust at the revelation of its appalling content.

In this way, the ethics of laughter is a complex topic that demands a complex answer.  The form of a joke is always morally neutral, but in the case of violent humor, the content within that form carries profound moral weight.  There is nothing unethical about taking pleasure in a joke’s formal reversal, but taking pleasure in violence or the suffering of others is always deeply problematic (and should be).  As a result, the only appropriately moral response must amount, at the very least, to a repudiation of any impulse to laugh at an instance of violence.

Whether or not we are always laughing at the violence depicted in violent humor is another question.  I’ll tackle that one in my next post.