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.