Humour has long since been used as a way of avoiding direct responsibility, whether it be escaping from the normal world into the absurd or criticising social systems from within without fearing repercussion. By using humour we can reveal the hidden structures of the ordered world that we live in. Even the simplest jokes tear holes in our language or social structure, rendering them momentarily absurd. It is this shift between reality and unreality that creates humour, which enables us to escape from our role of responsibility in our normal ordered world. Through using humour we are able to address topics that may otherwise be deemed taboo, it opens up a wider discourse to important topics whilst not making direct challenges.
The most widely applicable theory on humour is that of incongruity, of experiencing something to be out of place. The incongruence of humour can be seen when our expectations are not met, instead we experience a jolting sensation as we struggle to understand the illogical. Our ordered world is briefly ruptured by an unexpected and irrational event which throws the order of our world momentarily into question. As Kant describes it in his Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, ‘Laughter is an affect arising from a strained expectation being suddenly reduced to nothing.’ (2008: 161). As the amusement is caused by the flux from our ordered world to the absurd it does not last long, as once we realise our understanding has been fooled we can look at the joke with an element of reflexivity, therefore incorporating it into our normal way of thinking.
In his book on medieval culture, Rabelais and his World, Mikhail Bakhtin discusses laughter’s relationship with the carnival. For him the carnival acts as a form of escapism from the ruling order, where social structures are inverted and rules disregarded. This overturning of hierarchy was usually joined by ridicule and absurd acts, ‘from the wearing of clothes turned inside out and trousers slipped over the head to the election of mock kings and popes’ (1984: 81). This relaxation of morality and rules causes people to act in bizarre ways and rejoice within the freedom and incongruous nature of the carnival. The carnival has a shared mentality with humour, both overthrow hegemonic social structures but both also ultimately have to return back to operating within the structure they temporally overthrow. Umberto Eco states that, ‘Carnival can exist only as authorised transgression… If the ancient, religious carnival was limited in time, the modern mass-carnival is limited in space: it is reserved for certain places, certain streets, or framed by the television screen. In this sense, comedy and carnival are not instances of real transgressions: on the contrary, they represent paramount examples of law reinforcement. They remind us of the existence of the rule.’ (Frames of Comic Freedom: in Carnival!: 1984: 6). In order for these events to be enjoyed as excess, they must be understood to be excess. There must be respect for the rules that are overthrown in order to gain enjoyment, otherwise too much is at stake and the humour is lost. This could explain why even some of the most oppressive governments have allowed humour to continue, as it restricts rebellion to small scale and controlled events. The carnival and humour therefore don’t act as liberation but instead as a momentary escape from the norm, which reasserts the norm through its absence, as Eco argues, one ‘...must feel the majesty of the forbidding norm...’ (Frames of Comic Freedom: in Carnival!: 1984: 6). In Eco’s opinion our enjoyment comes not from revolution but simply from the incongruence of the situation.
The idea of the carnival as a momentary release and nothing more can be seen to adhere to Freud’s theory on humour. In this theory pent up subconscious thought is released into our consciousness and the energy normally used for inhibition is released through laughter. In Freud’s Jokes and Their Relation to The Unconscious, he comments on how we gain pleasure through relieving suppressed hostile feelings as it allows us to ‘evade restrictions and open sources of pleasure that have become inaccessible.’ (1976: 145). Freud’s theory shows laughter to be an effective tool for relieving tensions that are created by society in a controlled manner. By inverting the rules of the society for a short period of time people are able to release tensions without damaging the rules themselves, in fact the rejection of rules shows us why we need the rules in the first place. Humour can therefore be seen as a form of escapism that is a way of coping within an oppressive society. The small ruptures of the order, or one large controlled rupture in the case of the carnival, are caused by ruptures of our consciousness with suppressed thought.
Henri Bergson takes this idea of incongruity, of two separate realities existing together, the real and the absurd, and makes his synopsis that humour comes from ‘something mechanical encrusted upon the living.’ (Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic: 1999:39). In this theory he not only posits the idea of two polar opposites, the living individual and the structured mechanical, as being articulated together, but also goes one step further and says that these polar opposites can in fact be reversible. Take for instance the piece Paralysed by Klara Liden, where she performs a dance on a Swedish commuter train. Liden herself can be viewed as the ‘mechanical encrusted upon the living’, her repetitious movements make her act very unlike how we would expect a human to act, especially given the context of the location. However it is this idea of context that enables us to reverse the situation, could we not also say that the social structures controlling how we should act are mechanical and don’t allow for Liden’s vitality? In humour the two simultaneously appearing realities, one real and one unreal, can be seen to occupy each others positions as long as they retain the internal contradiction of being opposing values. These opposing parts must not resolve themselves otherwise the contradiction wouldn’t be apparent and neither part would appear mechanical. As the mechanical is a production of contradiction we could therefore redefine Bergson’s statement by saying that the ‘mechanical’ isn’t one of two opposites but in fact the join between two ‘living’ versions of reality. It is this playful stretching of the two opposites that gives us humour, as it shows us the difference between our world and what our world could be, by presenting us with two versions of reality simultaneously. The greater these realities oppose each other the more obvious the join between them and so the more we notice the difference between our ordered world and that of the absurd (as well as, inversely, the absurd nature of our ordered world).
In humour of this kind it can be said that we laugh twice, once at the original amusement and then again as we fit the joke back into our world. In the work of Liden, one could say that the first laugh is one at the absurdity of the dancing, whereas the second laugh is one at the absurdity of the system which makes the dancing ridiculous in the first place. According to Mary Douglas, humour ‘...affords opportunity for realising that an accepted pattern has no necessity. Its excitement lies in the suggestion that any particular ordering of experience may be arbituary and subjective.’ (Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology: 1993: 96). It is this second laugh that can be seen to bring our normal order into question, which gives it the potential to be subversive, as one has to take into account why the first laugh was funny in the first place. The laugh at the object or person is followed by a laugh at the system that brought us the joke. If this system is deemed to be illogical then we laugh at the counter intuitive way that we made sense by using the system in the first instance. In the case of Paralysed the second laugh lacks this subversive edge and seeks instead to reinforce our views about the social structure which gave us the laugh. In this instance the escape from our ordered world brings us back to it by way of confirming our beliefs. This outcome is caused by one of the two opposing realities dominating the other, as Alenka Zupancic states in her book The Odd One In, ‘it often happens that comic scenes are most literally constructed upon “the principle of elastic” or “the principle of the spring,” that is to say, of a possible stretching and testing of its limit (the latter being precisely the point when, after some resistance, one of the two elements pulls the other over to its side).’ (2008: 123). This ‘pulling of the other’ is achieved when the humour is re-established into the ordered state of the world, through the momentary escapism caused by the humour we are able to look at the situation in a much more distanced way, when we put this back into our normal way of thinking we can moralise the situation in a more impartial way. It is the escapism and lack of morality in our first laugh, the uncontrolled immediate response, that allows us to examine what it is we found funny and reassert our stance on the situation.
In the case of the Guerilla Girls’ 1989 poster, The Advantages Of Being A Woman Artist, we find ourselves forced to remoralise the situation after viewing it from a humourous standpoint. Whereas Liden’s work pushes social structures in order to enforce them, the Guerrilla Girls’ work breaks down the structure and shows a way to rebuild it. Their use of humour and avoidance of direct conflict enable them to achieve their goals in a much more complete way, the impartiality that humour affords them allows not only a criticism of the social hegemony but also a path to rebuilding it. As Anne Demo writes, ‘the comic frame...engenders a form of social criticism that seeks to correct the inadequacies of the present social order through demystification rather than revolution’. (The Guerrilla Girls’ Comic Politics of Subversion: in Visual Rhetoric: 2008: 242). In Liden’s work it can be said that the reality of our ordered world encompasses that of the absurd, in the Guerrilla Girls’ work it is the unreality that pulls our normal reality over to its side, this causes us to change our way of thinking as what we thought to be normal and ordered is made to look absurd. The escapism within this work acts more than just a momentary glimpse into another possible world, it exposes our real world to be just as absurd as Liden’s creation and so therefore we have to redefine which version of reality is the one we want.
By using humour to convey their message the Guerrilla Girls avoid any direct arguments and demands. Humour instead gives us distance from a situation that as Burke states ‘...is neither wholly euphemistic, nor wholly debunking- hence it provides the charitable attitude toward people that is required for purposes of persuasion and cooperation.’ (Kenneth Burke: On Symbols and Society: 1989: 261). By rejecting straightforward demands in favour of humour the Guerrilla Girls force the audience to address the situation with an open mind rather than alienating them. The active involvement that humour causes makes the audience connect with the work. This voluntary attachment increases the personal investment the spectator has with the work, they can apply the humour to the world they know, and so heightens the works persuasive power. As humour is present at the join between two realities we are therefore given the choice between which reality to call absurd. By having the free will to laugh at either reality and come to a conclusion ourselves we don’t face the same resentment found by making straight demands.
Humour, far from being pure escapism, is a useful tool to help us understand the world we live in. By showing us situations that break the order of our reality, humour is able to take us away from it temporally and look back at it from a distance. The incongruence of humour makes us momentarily ignore our usual judgement, as Bergson phrases it, we suffer an ...’anaesthesia of the heart.’ (1999:4). Our normal prejudices are made to look absurd as our world is turned upside down for a moment, by rejecting what we already know we are able to make new judgements based solely on the situation at hand. This brief lack of responsibility and authority that humour allows us puts us in a situation of impartiality from where we can moralise the situation. When we put the incongruous situation back into our ordered reality we are able to re-establish our moral standpoint. In most cases humour stretches the boundaries of social structures in order to re-affirm them. However some humour offers more than just relief escapism, humour can show us that the world we believe to make sense is actually absurd. When we try to fit this humour back into our order we realised it doesn’t make sense and so change our moral stance on the situation. This subversive humour can be used as a tool of persuasion as it allows people to see the situation in a new light. Through the mode of escape, humour is able to show our world to us for what it is, highlighting the absurd nature of things we take for granted.
Written by Phil Thompson
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