Ha! (11 page)

Humor is about emotion as much as surprise. When jokes go too far or use offensive language, we feel uncomfortable. That discomfort is why the crowd booed Gottfried's Aristocrats joke, and why Witherspoon chose not to say “fuck” on national television. But sometimes a little discomfort is a good thing. It's useful not just for solving insight problems and getting punch lines but also for turning our stress and negative emotions into something positive, like laughter.

This chapter explores why.

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Surprisingly, for much of our history humor has been quite unpopular. Plato outlawed humor in the
Republic
, claiming that it distracted people from more serious matters. He wasn't alone; the ancient Greeks,
as enlightened as they were, believed that laughter was dangerous because it leads to a loss of self-control. Thomas Hobbes was a bit more practical, claiming that humor is a necessary part of life, but only for people of inferior intellect. It gives them an opportunity to feel better about themselves, he claimed, especially when pointing out the imperfections of others.

Philosophers aren't the only ones antagonistic toward humor. The Bible is downright aggressive. On several occasions the Old Testament mentions God laughing, but almost always as a form of derision or scorn, such as in the Second Psalm:

He that sits in the heavens shall laugh

The Lord shall have them in derision

Then shall He speak unto them in His wrath

And vex them in His sore displeasure.

Not the kind of laughter anyone wants to hear. Throughout the Bible, when people laugh it's generally out of foolishness, such as when Abraham and Sarah laugh at the idea that they could conceive a son. Some researchers have gone so far as to count the number of times that God or his followers laughed, characterizing each instance as due to aggression, sadness, or joy. The winner by a landslide was aggression, at 45 percent. Laughter due to joy occurred only twice.

And for those who argue that the Old Testament is inherently darker than the newer version, consider this: there are several ongoing debates among religious scholars over whether Jesus laughed. Not as recorded in the Bible. In his entire life.

Why has humor been treated so harshly throughout history? One reason is that humor is inherently subversive. Some jokes are innocuous, with topics like chickens crossing roads and elephants hiding in cherry trees, but most humor isn't like that. It treats serious subjects with frivolity, and sometimes with rudeness and inconsideration too. Consider the following joke, which I heard many times during my childhood but is probably new to the current generation:

        
What does NASA stand for? Need another seven astronauts.

Most people won't get the punch line until I tell them that this joke was popular in 1986, following the explosion of the space shuttle
Challenger.
Seventy-three seconds after taking off from Cape Canaveral, an O-ring in the ship's rocket booster failed, causing a fuel leak and the breakup of the aircraft. All seven passengers perished, including the teacher Christa McAuliffe, who was riding along as part of NASA's “Teachers in Space” project.

This wasn't the only
Challenger
joke, either; there were quite a few. They didn't appear right away but, rather, a couple weeks following the incident. One study identified the latency period between this particular tragedy and the corresponding joke cycle at seventeen days. The death of Princess Diana had a shorter latency period. The World Trade Center disaster had a much longer one.

Our fascination with dark humor is shown by the immense variety of sick jokes, including
Challenger
jokes, AIDS jokes, and Chernobyl jokes—to name just a few. Whole generations of jokes have even outlived the tragedies that spawned them. When I was growing up, everybody had their favorite “no arms or legs” joke.
What do you call a kid with no arms and no legs nailed to the wall? Art. What do you call a kid with no arms and no legs floating in a pool? Bob.

What many readers may not realize is that there was once an entire generation threatened by this very affliction. Thalidomide, frequently prescribed by doctors in the 1950s and 1960s, had a terrible record of causing a wide range of birth defects. One of those defects was phocomelia, the congenital absence of limbs. Since the primary reason for thalidomide's use at the time was the treatment for morning sickness, thousands of children were affected. The survival rate of phocomelia was about 50 percent, so there probably were babies born without arms and legs, and their names could have been Art or Bob.

Some people claim that these jokes highlight the worst aspect of human behavior. AIDS jokes, they say, are nothing more than an excuse for homophobia. Thalidomide jokes make fun of the handicapped. One
reviewer even claimed that
Challenger
jokes encouraged young students to make fun of teachers. But others don't think these assertions are fair. They believe the truth is more complicated than that—and, not surprisingly, their argument has to do with the different ways our brains deal with conflict.

“I'll tell you one thing. [These jokes are] not a form of grieving,” says Christie Davies, British humor researcher and author of more than fifty books and articles on the topic. If there's one person who can explain the purpose of sick humor, it would be him. He has given presentations about the topic in over fifteen counties, appeared internationally on television and radio, and even testified before the Supreme Court. In short, when it comes to sick humor, Davies knows what he's talking about. And he's not easily offended.

“The second thing they aren't is callous. The explanation, I believe, is incongruity.” Davies's theory, and the one supported by most humor researchers, is that despite the cruel or insulting nature of sick jokes, the teller's intention doesn't have to be vile. In fact, to understand the true message in sick jokes, we have to explore the incongruous feelings behind them. When tragedy strikes, we may have many reactions. We may feel sadness, pity, even despair. We may also feel frustration over the manipulation of our emotions by news reporters, particularly on television. In short, we experience conflicting emotions. Some people argue that sick jokes elicit feelings of superiority, which perhaps also is true, but this contention doesn't explain why coming up with alternatives to the acronym AIDS is funny to some people but yelling “Ha, ha—you're sick!” in an oncology ward is funny to nobody at all. We laugh at jokes about groups or events only when such jokes bring about complex emotional reactions, because without those reactions we'd have no other way to respond.

Some readers may be concerned that viewing sick humor as the result of conflicting emotions is dangerous, because it means that laughing at these jokes isn't cruel but, rather, simply a means of addressing our feelings. It may even seem like an open invitation to tease the sick, dead, or handicapped. But it's not.

The best evidence that sick humor doesn't have to be perceived as offensive comes from a study of jokes that seemingly made fun of the very people it used as subjects. Conducted by the psychologists Herbert Lefcourt and Rod Martin, it involved thirty disabled persons who were asked to view a series of cartoons about people with disabilities. For example, one cartoon showed an elevated gallows. On one side was a set of stairs leading up to the noose, and on the other was a wheelchair ramp next to a handicap placard. Another cartoon showed a cliff with a sign reading “Suicide leap.” Next to the ledge was a wheelchair ramp and a handicap sign.

The experimenters didn't want the subjects to know that the purpose of the study was to assess their sense of humor, so they showed the cartoons casually while preparing the room for interviews that were to follow. After surreptitiously noting the subjects' reactions, they administered a series of questionnaires and surveys about their feelings regarding being disabled.

Lefcourt and Martin found that the subjects who laughed most at the jokes were also the ones who were better adjusted to their condition. Compared to other subjects, they exhibited higher levels of vitality, more self-control, and better self-concepts. In short, those who viewed their disabilities in the healthiest manner found the jokes funniest.

These results aren't surprising in light of other research showing that bereaved widows and widowers who are able to laugh about their loss are observed to be happier, better equipped to deal with stress, and more socially adapted. Women who use humor as a coping mechanism after undergoing surgery for breast cancer also demonstrate reduced postsurgical distress.

Further evidence that sick jokes don't have to be offensive in order to be funny comes from manipulation of sick jokes themselves. These jokes vary in a number of ways, not just in their targets but also in their degree of cruelty and fit—and by manipulating each of these factors, researchers can determine whether using vulnerable targets makes jokes too offensive to be appreciated (e.g.,
How do you prevent a dead baby from exploding in a microwave? Poke holes in it with a coat hanger
).

Just such experiments have been conducted—for example, by Thomas Herzog of Grand Valley State University in Michigan—and from them we see two interesting things. First, cruelty doesn't improve funniness. Jokes perceived as most vile (e.g., those involving dead babies) are usually seen as least funny. But so are jokes rated especially low for cruelty, many of which aren't emotionally engaging at all. So, cruelty doesn't make the jokes funnier, it only provides a means for introducing emotional conflict. Too little edginess—too little emotional conflict over whether a joke is appropriate or not—and the punch line fails. Too much edginess, and there's no conflict because the inappropriateness is clear from the start.

Second, we see that the biggest predictor of humorousness is fit. That's defined by how well the punch line leads to both incongruity and resolution (much like the
resolving
stage discussed in
Chapter 2
). In other words, the more effectively the punch line leads to a surprising ending, the funnier it is. It's not enough that we be shocked or surprised. Our humor must bring us someplace new, emotionally as well as cognitively.

Part of the reason why there are so many kinds of sick jokes is that our minds are confronted with mixed emotions in so many ways. For example, we feel sorry for people with handicaps, but we also want to empower them and treat them as they should be treated—like everyone else. And though we grieve the victims of natural disasters, we may simultaneously feel manipulated by the media for telling us how to feel. Television, in particular, can be both an overwhelming source of information and a major source of conflict, primarily because it's so immediate. What do we do when a disaster strikes? We turn on the TV.

“The television will try to convince you on the spot of the emotional impact of the situation, and the rhetoric is all about the immediate,” says Davies. “But you can't feel through the television what people are feeling at the scene right away. What you're seeing on the screen is sanitized, but the guy describing it is saying how awful it is. You're looking on the screen and part of you is recognizing that this is absurd.”

It turns out that immediacy is a big issue when it comes to humor. As noted earlier, it took seventeen days for
Challenger
jokes to hit campuses and playgrounds. That comes to about two and a half days of grieving per lost person. By that calculation, more than seven thousand days—or nineteen years—should pass before anybody laughs about the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Though I suspect we can't trust such a simple formula, it might not be so far off. The movie
Flight 93
—which wasn't even a comedy but a dramatic re-creation—didn't hit theaters until almost five years after the tragedy. And though the satirical periodical
The Onion
did joke recently that Americans should honor 9/11 by not masturbating on its anniversary, such humor is rare and typically respectful of the victims.

Still, many jokes did appear right after 9/11—not within mainstream media but on the Internet. These were also some of the most jingoistic and violent. Consider, for example, the Photoshopped picture of the Statue of Liberty holding a decapitated head of Osama bin Laden. Or the picture of a 747 being flown into the heart of Mecca with the caption “Don't get mad—get even.” It's hard to mistake the emotional messages these pictures were meant to convey.

But the really important aspect of these 9/11 jokes is that they reveal our true feelings about the incident. There's anger, of course, but also frustration and occasionally irreverence. One cartoon that comes to mind portrays several Teletubbies jumping from the burning Twin Towers, with the caption “Oh no!” Another depicts a mouse cursor hovering over the World Trade Center, next to a computer message window asking “Are you sure you want to delete both towers?” These jokes didn't make fun of terrorists. They made fun of the grieving process itself. And, as noted, they appeared right away, while television stations were still canceling award shows and Lorne Michaels was struggling with how to host a live comedy show. They weren't sympathetic or sentimental; they were the opposite of that.

In short, they reflected what people wanted to say: “Don't tell me how I'm supposed to feel. I can recognize a tragedy when I see one without being reminded about it by around-the-clock news coverage.”