‘We’ve become more adept at concealing bigotry. We still need to learn to laugh wisely’ |
AS THE CURRENT INTERNATIONAL FURORE over cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed has made clear, while humour is usually regarded as a social glue it can also be a potently destructive force.
Reactions to the images are a reminder that at the core of all humour is the question of who we are laughing at and why. This question is not often answered explicitly – to do so is generally to undo the joke – but in order to understand any offence that is incurred it is a vital process.
The ethics behind our laughter (or lack of it) are the subject of a timely new collection of essays, Beyond a Joke: The Limits of Humour. Co-editors Sharon Lockyer and Michael Pickering explain why they are happy to run the risk of being labelled ‘po-faced academics’. Questions by Charlie Peverett.
The subject of Beyond a Joke is about as topical as you could imagine at the moment. Is the row over the Danish cartoons an inevitable culmination of recent tensions?
Nothing is inevitable, but there does seem to have been a relentless drift towards the row over the cartoons, arising out of the two sides opposed in the row sticking rigidly to their own prejudices and values. This need not be the case. There is nothing fundamentally incompatible between principles of free speech and principles of religious belief, but negotiation between them does require tolerance and discretion, modesty and self-reflexivity. These qualities have been absent on both sides. It is true that the cartoons were attempting to point to the terrorist exploitation of Islam; it was not their intention to impugn or offend Muslims in general. But they were insensitive – how many cartoons do you see in mainstream Western media making fun of, or openly mocking, the Crucifixion?
Greater ethical consideration of all forms of cultural representation is needed, and in Beyond a Joke we’re pointing to this need as far as humour and comedy are concerned, since both of these can easily descend into ridicule and mockery.
To paraphrase your introduction, you suggest that the analysis of humour is a dirty job, but someone has to do it. What drew you to this subject?
Humour is one of the most central features of our everyday lives. A good sense of humour is a positive quality to have, and if we can inject humour into our conversations, presentations, text messages and emails, then all well and good. It makes the wheels of life go round more smoothly.
Although there have been many studies of humour, very few have looked at what happens when humour fails. Why is humour sometimes found offensive, what social functions does offensive humour have, and how can we negotiate the ethical limits of humour? These are the sort of questions raised by humour failure, and particularly the vexed question of offensiveness and comic malice. The recent intense media coverage and public debate instigated by ‘offensive’ jokes told by politicians, and TV programmes and stand-up comedians being criticised as ‘going too far’, got us interested in the subject. No one else seemed to be talking about the ethics of humour, so that’s why we decided to have a go at it ourselves.
Is the trend for mock-documentary and reality TV (where participants’ lives are ‘comedified’ as well as commodified) just a postmodern step away from old-fashioned comedy of bigotry?
Leading people into voluntary self-mockery is certainly one aspect of ‘mockumentaries’ and reality TV. It is one that hasn’t received much coverage or led to much discussion, and we certainly want to rectify that.
‘Comedification’, to use the inelegant neologism, can be a form of exploitation, and the exploitation can hide under the ironic guises of postmodernism. This is not necessarily an advance on the old-fashioned comedy of bigotry. It is a common tendency to think better of the present than the past. Looking at old comedies can easily bring a smug smile to our faces, but if bigotry is simply an extension and rigidifying of prejudice, it certainly hasn’t disappeared from mainstream media comedy. We’ve simply become more adept at concealing it – or failing to recognise it. The difference to which you point doesn’t signal any definite step forward. We still need to learn to laugh wisely.
Your interviews with Shazia Mirza and Omid Djalili seem to offer glimpses of a more humane style of comedy. In which arenas is this kind of approach having the most success?
Shazia Mirza and Omid Djalili are two stand-up comedians who are helping to move British comedy forward in innovative and progressive ways. Although they have different ethnic minority perspectives and religious faiths, they are both pushing the boundaries of the comedy landscape by joking about acts of terrorism, Orientalist stereotypes and living as members of ethnic minorities born and brought up in Britain. The comedy circuit can be regarded as being at the forefront of this innovative comedy – television seems to be lagging behind in this sense.
Other ‘humane styles of comedy’ include comedians joking about their own disabilities or illnesses. Here we’re thinking of Andre Vincent, Francesca Martinez, Steve Day, Jaik Campbell and Abnormally Funny People. Again, it seems to be the live comedy circuit that is at the forefront of this trend. Omid and Shazia point us towards more humane forms of comedy because, as members of ethnic minorities, they are sensitive to issues of stereotyping, comic ridicule, offensiveness in humour, and hostility dressed up as a hilarious joke.
After all the academic analysis, do you still enjoy comedy as fully as before?
Depends whose it is, but then it always did. Some people think that as soon as you start analysing a joke, you lose the ability to appreciate the humour in the joke. It’s as if cultural analysis becomes a threat to your sense of humour, which is ridiculous. Writing seriously about the limits of humour does run the risk of falling foul of the stereotype of po-faced academics sitting glumly at their ivory tower keyboards, but we’ve been happy to run this risk.
We remain big fans of Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, and much of Peter Cook. Our ‘classic’ sitcom favourites include Fawlty Towers and Only Fools and Horses, and also more contemporary comedy programmes such as Tittybangbang, Peep Show and Green Wing. Our contemporary stand-up favourites include Bill Bailey, Eddie Izzard and Jenny Eclair.
We’re pleased to report that our sense of humour is functioning as well as it ever has.
Beyond a Joke: The Limits of Humour, edited by Sharon Lockyer and Michael Pickering is published by Palgrave MacMillan. |
