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It is precisely laughter that destroys the epic, and in general destroys any
hierarchical (distancing and valorized) distance. As a distanced image a
subject cannot be comical; to be made comical, it must be brought close.
Everything that makes us laugh is close at hand, all comical creativity works
in a zone of maximal proximity.
It is humor that enables us to see politicians for what they are--human beings,
with the same problems we all face, the same strange fixations, the same
desires. Humor strips away illusion and awe, brings politicians close and
prevents magnification by spectacle. It familiarizes political figures and, in
doing so, enables people to judge them more realistically. That is why
dictators, when they take power, kill the comedians.
In the United States, our egalitarian value system probably is at the
heart of our political comedy; we dislike and generally do not accept
authority as valid. But our humorists have been helped a great deal by some
of the people who occupy or have occupied positions of political prominence.
Consider former president Gerald Ford, who always seemed to be bumping
his head on airplanes and about whom it was said, "he can't chew gum and
walk at the same time." Ford is famous for saying "If Lincoln were alive
today, he'd be turning over in his grave."
His place, as a fool or klutz figure, has been taken by Vice-President
Dan Quayle, who has a genius for making errors (as in his famous fiasco at a
spelling bee, where he spelled potato incorrectly) and stupid statements and
has been turned by our comedians into a kind of national object of ridicule.
There is, in fact, a book of Quayle jokes and even a journal devoted to his
exploits (and to ridiculing him) the Quayle Quarterly.
Some typical Quayle jokes are:
Quayle thinks Roe versus Wade are two ways of crossing the Potomac
River in Washington.
Question: What were the two worst years Dan Quayle had?
Answer: The two years he spent in the fourth grade.
There are also a lot of generic insult jokes about his alleged stupidity:
All of these jokes deal with deficiencies and allude to Quayle's supposed lack
of intelligence. Most of these are not technically jokes--that is stories with
punch lines--but they are considered humorous remarks, funny insults and
classified as "non-serious" and thus, in the popular mind, at least, as jokes. I
will be using the term "joke" in the broadest sense of the term here--as
something humorous.
But after the first five-year plan, the Sahara will have to
import sand.
here
The Sahara joke pokes fun at the way Socialist five year plans always turn
out to be disasters and the Mafia joke is a revealing glimpse of what the
people really think of the Communist governments.
One of the classic Eastern European jokes involves a riddle.
Communism?
the
reverse.
This joke deals with the reality behind the five-year plans and glorious
statistics always announced by the East European governments. Without
America, and other Capitalist nations, the joke tells us, Eastern European
Communists countries would starve.
In 1974, Earl Butz, who was the Secretary of Agriculture, told a joke
that almost led to him being removed from office. When politicians tell
ethnic jokes, they court disaster and often end up being destroyed, politically.
Butz told a joke "off the record" to a number of reporters at a private
breakfast in New York. The joke involves a response to a statement by the
Pope Paul VI about world hunger. After the Pope's statement, the joke, which
is not very funny at all, goes as follows:
After the Pope's remarks, an Italian woman is overheard saying "He no playa the game, he no make-a the rules."
In 1984, President Ronald Reagan was preparing for his weekly radio
broadcast and, according to CBS, said the following, presumably while he
was testing his microphone:
He was just joking and probably never thought his words would be recorded,
but discovered that the rest of the world didn't consider this "joke" humorous
at all. The Polish News Agency PAP commented that Reagan had called the
Polish leadership "a bunch of no good lousy bums" a couple of years earlier,
while testing his microphone. The agency said that while Reagan didn't say
these words formally, he knew they would be spread by news agencies.
The Standard, a London paper called the joke "a serious
embarrassment and Le Monde suggested psychologists would have to decide
whether the statement was "an expression of a repressed desire or the
exorcism of a dreaded phantom."
Consider a
problem that George Bush had when he was campaigning for the 1988
Presidential nomination.
learned that a recent Soviet military exercise had been carried out without any
mechanical breakdowns. He then said, thinking he was being amusing:
"Hey, when those mechanics who keep those tanks running run out of work
in the Soviet Union, send them to Detroit, because we could use that kind of
ability."
"I find St. Paul appealing, he said, "But I find Peale (Norman Vincent Peale,
a religious leader) appalling."
What matters to people is how they should live with other people. The great
questions of social life are "Who am I?" (to what group do I belong) and
"What should I do?" (Are there many or few prescriptions I am expected to
obey?)
boundaries separating them from others. Decisions are taken either for the
group as a whole (strong boundaries) or for individuals or families (weak
boundaries). Prescriptions are few or many indicating that the individual
internalizes a large or a small number of behavioral norms to which he or she
is bound. (1982, 7)
Drawing upon the work of Mary Douglas, with whom Wildavsky has
collaborated, he combines boundaries and prescriptions and comes us with
four political cultures:
1.
Fatalists:
Weak Boundaries,
Many Prescriptions
2.
3.
Hierarchical Elitists:
Strong Boundaries,
Many Prescriptions
4.
Egalitarians:
Strong Boundaries,
Few Prescriptions
Few Prescriptions
The
Egalitarians stress that people are equal in terms of their needs and
continually criticize both the elitists and the individualists for not doing
enough for the fatalists, who have more or less opted out of the economic
system and believe that luck is the determining factor in life.
(This
humor that justify their position and avoiding humor that attacks or questions
it.
Thus jokes, it could be argued, always have a political dimension to
them even though they may not deal with politics, per se. That is, the subject
may not be political but the value system or attitudes expressed in the joke
would, in principle, connect with or reinforce the beliefs of one of our four
political cultures and not do so for the other three political cultures. If a joke
deflates authority, it would be egalitarian; if it pokes fun at "lower elements"
it would be elitist; if it ridicules egalitarians (Marxists, socialists, social
workers, Communists, do-gooders, etc.), it would be elitist; and if it shows
that society is irrational and based on chance and luck, it would be fatalist.
People of all political persuasions might laugh at a joke because they
get (at the unconscious level, so the Freudians argue) a guilt-free expression
of aggression. Or they find an incongruity, as the incongruity theorists ague.
But the joke would most fully resonate, so the theory described goes, with
only one group of people--those whose political culture it supports or is
congruous with. And it would disturb another group of people, those who are
members of a political culture that is opposed to the political culture
supported by the joke.
All of this, of course, occurs at the unconscious level, for the most
part. People, as a rule, do not consciously put up filters through which they
"strain" jokes and humor--though in some cases, as in the case cultures that
honor and revere mothers-in-law, people do not find mother-in-law jokes
funny. That, at least was my experience a number of years ago when I
participated in a course on humor that had students from many countries. A
Japanese student told me "we don't find mother-in-law jokes funny." He also
didn't find any of the cartoons in an issue of The New Yorker I showed him
funny, which shows the degree to which culture and allusions shape our sense
of humor.
Some Catholic
Elitist Humor
In Russia, they tell ethnic jokes about a minority people in the far
north, the Chukchi people who are similar to Eskimos, that are analogous to
the Polish jokes told in America.
A Chukchi goes to a store to buy a television set. The clerk tells him that
color sets are available. "Fine," says the Chukchi, "I'll have a yellow one."
This joke ridicules the intelligence of the Chukchi man, who mistakes what
the clerk says and thinks "color" television applies to the color of the sets.
This joke and Polish jokes like it, which ridicule a group for being stupid, has
an elitist cast to it. The Chukchi are supposedly dumb and when we laugh at
them for being so, it is from a position "above" them, so to speak.
I might add the some theorists argue that all humor is based on
feelings of superiority, and Hobbes, one of the greatest political theorists,
argued in The Leviathan:
The passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from a
sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the
infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.
Egalitarian Humor
President Reagan and Nancy go to a restaurant for lunch. The waiter asks
Nancy Reagan for her order first. "I'll have grilled salmon and a cup of
coffee," she says. "What about the vegetable?" asks the waiter. "He'll have
the same thing."
This joke alludes to Reagan's age and supposed lack of vitality--he used to
fall asleep at Cabinet meetings and was famous for taking naps and not
putting in much of a day at the White House.
Individualist Humor
Jokes appealing to competitive individualists would poke fun at
elitists, egalitarians or fatalists or would support the values of the
individualists at the expense of others.
cabin." "Well," says the other man, "why put on sneakers? You can't outrun
a bear." "That's true," says the man, "but all I need to do is outrun you."
A Washington hot dog vendor comes home one evening with more than a
thousand dollars. "How did you earn that much money?" asks his wife.
"Selling hot dogs for a hundred times their regular price," says the vendor.
"Who'd be crazy enough to pay that much money?" responds his wife. "Lots
of people," says the vendor. They all work at the Pentagon."
Fatalist Humor
Fatalist humor would involve jokes that show how important luck or
chance is in the scheme of things, or which ridicule elites, individualists and
egalitarians by showing that they are foolish or have their status due to
connections, accidents of birth and things like that.
A social worker sees a bum and tries to convince him to go to work. "Why
should I work?" asks the bum. "To make some money," replies the social
worker. "What will I do with the money?" asks the bum. "You will become
independent and when you make enough money, you won't have to work any
more." "But I don't work now," said the bum.
Here the person at the bottom of the ladder triumphs. What sense does it
make going to work so you can have leisure time when you already have
leisure time, as a bum? Of course you don't have money and can't buy things
and have a luxurious leisure time, but the joke avoids these matters by
focusing strictly on the matter of free time.
This suggests that there is a connection between the Jewish joke and political
jokes and Benton offers a number of Jewish jokes and political jokes that
show how strong the relationship is.
He offers one political joke that is a modification of one from the
ghettos.
He also points out that in Radio Erevan jokes, the questions are traditionally
asked with a Jewish accent and answered with an Armenian one.
His conclusion is that the political joke has the same function that the
Jewish joke had--it helps relieve people of tension and helps keep them
stable. It cushions the blows and creates "sweet illusions of revenge," but its
impact is only as long as the laugh it produces. More than jokes--namely
organized opposition--are needed to deal with political problems and
dictatorial states.
I would agree, but I think political humor (especially jokes, which
spread like wildfire) does play a role in mobilizing public sentiment and, by
diminishing those in power and making them subject of laughter, facilitates
resistance and even political revolution.
The regimes in Eastern Europe, which seemed so strong, turned out
to be hollow vessels that were knocked over with incredible ease. I would
argue that the humor in Eastern Europe helped set the stage for the
revolutions that followed, once it was clear that Russia had changed and that
the regimes in Eastern Europe would not be kept in place by Russian tanks
and soldiers.
Humor may not seem to have much political impact, but I would
argue that it is often a subversive force of considerable significance. It is
used as a means of resistance by those living under authoritarian regimes and,
at the same time, unites people against the governing power structure and
gives them a common sense of identity. It also destroys their sense of
obligation to the regime that is controlling them, so that when an opportunity
comes to overthrow the regime, there will be a common desire to do so.
Politicians in democratic societies sometimes tell jokes that cause
them great problems; they cannot seem to resist the temptation to become
standup comedians, for some reason. Or politicians become (as in the case
of Quayle) the subject of comedians jokes in the talk shows, which is
generally an indicator that they are at or near the end of their careers. Finally,
let me make a distinction between political humor, which is humor that deals
with politicians and parties and ideological matters and humor that appeals
most directly to one of the four dominant political cultures in America. In
certain respects, then, we can argue that all humor has a political dimension
to it.
References:
Dundes, Alan.
Powell, Chris and George E.C. Paton, eds., Humour in Society: Resistance
and Control. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988.
Wildavsky, Aaron.