Humor: How to Identify

In my goofing off I noticed a bit of discussion today about whether this weekend’s SNL was funny or  offensive.  Haven’t seen the episode, and have other more important internet laziness calling my attentions, so I won’t.  [Why would I want to watch something that a number of very sensible people tell me is objectionable, anyway?  When I could be reading more back-issues of Dr. Boli?  Pretty easy decision for me.]

All the same, as parents of an eight-year-old boy, the SuperHusband and I have had many opportunities to reflect on what does and does not constitute humor.  A few thoughts, not very well edited because my goofing-off time is coming to an end, and I want to just get the ideas out there today.  But here for you to ponder however confusedly, while I go make dinner and clean the house:

Humor is based on comparison. The comparison can come in many forms, but it is always there.  In a pun, it the similarity in sound between two words or phrases, combined with an apropos meaning given the context of the joke. (Why is the baker cruel? Because he whips the cream and beats the eggs.)  In slapstick humor, it is a comparison between what should have happened (walked through the door unharmed) and what did happen (a bucket of water fell on my head).   In satire, the comparison is built by taking what we know to be true about a person, and applying it in an extreme (play Sarah Palin as if she’s even flightier-sounding than she really is) or out of context (Bob Dole runs a daycare).

–> In order to understand a joke, one must be able to recognize the comparison.  This is why, say, philosophy jokes have a very limited audience.  They may be hilarious, but few audiences have the knowledge required in order to catch the comparison on which they hinge.  Usually, though, even when the audience doesn’t ‘get’ a joke (that would be me, listening to my peers tell philosophy jokes), they are merely puzzled, not offended.

So what distinguishes between a joke that is truly offensive, and one that really was funny, but the audience had no sense of humor?

Sore topics aren’t funny when the joke is told by the guilty party to the offended party.  Even if they are otherwise fair game. Double standard? No.  It’s a violation of the comparison rule.  It isn’t a joke if it is really happening, or likely to happen.

This poses a real problem for the modern satirist, as the things we joke about now seem to come true dreadfully quickly.  To review real quickly as we develop our main point, a couple of examples of possibly funny versus not funny, based not on teller, but on the premise that it isn’t a comparison if it is the literal truth:

Possibly funny: The CIA is going to subject captured enemy combatants  to Wheelock’s Latin in order to get them talk.    Not funny: ‘Jokes’ about actually torturing people, that are based on real torturers committing their real crimes on their real victims.

Possibly funny: Jokes about other species engaging in suicide.  Not funny: Most jokes about humans engaging in suicide.  (This used to be possibly funny, because it wasn’t true.  But now that large segments of the population have decided that suicide is acceptable — it isn’t — there are very few suicide jokes left.  None come to mind.  On the other hand, you can now joke about judges who declare people must stay alive until their natural death, since that is, sadly, now parody.  Hopefully only temporarily.)

So, getting back to our main issue: if I tell my eight-year-old, “Don’t touch my chocolate or I’m selling you to the salt mines”, it’s humor.  He knows I would never, ever, sell him to the salt mines.   But if I say, “Or no dessert for you,” it is not humor.  He knows that missing out on dessert is a very real possibility, based on his parents’ past behavior.

–> For this reason, parents who do sell their children to the salt mines have fewer humor options than average.  Virtue has its rewards.  Which leads to the next point:

Humor Depends on the Teller’s Credentials In most circles, one can safely tell accountant jokes, because there is very little anti-accountant persecution.  It is generally assumed the joke is well-meant poking of fun.  (Even though, in fact, most accountant jokes fall flat.  Not because accountants aren’t a lively bunch, full of interesting fodder for the satirist, but because the general public is woefully ignorant of the true esprit of the accountant, and tends to rely on the same tired and shallow assumptions decade in and decade out.  But lame humor is not necessarily offensive.  We’ll chuckle politely for you, or at least kind of twitch the lip a little to acknowledge you spoke.)

In contrast, when a group of people is subject to discrimination, hate, condescension, or other meanness in the wider society, it becomes necessary for the joke-teller to prove beyond all doubt that no derision is meant by the joke.  If this criteria can’t be meant, the joke is probably going to be received as offensive.  (This is a shame, because it deprives many innocent people of perfectly good humor.  But it is the reality all the same — our sins affect others more than we realize.)  So, for example, among southerners, humor about the idiosyncrasies of southern life is quite funny.  Told by a southerner to others? Still funny.  But told by damn Yankees people not from the south, the same jokes can be received as offensive, for there is a certain amount of cultural history that can leave one wondering whether the joke is meant as true humor, or as a veiled insult.

–> SNL treaded on dangerous ground, because they are part of a group known as the “mainstream media”.  And the mainstream media is notorious for producing all kinds of garbage that is offensive to people with disabilities (and thus to anyone with the ability to detect nonsense).  Therefore, if SNL meant to be genuinely funny, it had to prove beyond all doubt that it was not engaging in the same obnoxious blather that its colleagues churn out so regularly.

This phenomenon leads to a general rule, that one can only make fun of oneself and one’s own group.  This rule is not, however, strictly accurate. Both for the reason that a) it is possible to insult oneself and that b) it is possible to be a person of goodwill and good sense towards others.  So, even southern accountants can tell offensive southern accountant jokes (but not on this blog, I hope), and even non-southern, non-accountants can tell enjoyable southern accountant jokes.  (Don’t expect to see a compendium of such jokes published any time soon, however.)

All that said, certain groups of people have experienced such shoddy treatment at the hands of others that their sense of humor has been injured.   As it is not especially difficult to identify shoddy treatment present or past, it behooves others to be mindful of the lingering pain, and politely go find some other topic for one’s jokes.  Humor is part of the healing process, but humor inflicted from without is generally not the healing type.

What is especially egregious about the SNL fiasco?  Chances are the SNL writers didn’t even realize they were dealing with an easily-offended audience –> which is to say, with a group of people who has consistently received ill-treatment at the hands of wider society.

On the one hand, it’s a bizarre problem, given that eugenics movement and the ensuing marginalization of people with disabilities has been around for nearly a century and half now — plenty of time for an SNL writer to develop an awareness of the problem.  (And even, perhaps, to care enough about it to write some good satire on the topic.)  On the other hand, it proves the point: the whole complaint is that people with disabilities are marginalized in our society.   To the point that SNL doesn’t even know you’re there.  Let alone that you are mighty touchy just now.

–> Good humor requires you to know your topic.  Because humor depends on the comparison, an inaccurate comparison makes for poor humor.  Listen to a four-year-old try to tell a riddle. Very painful.  Poor child doesn’t quite know what a pun is yet, and therefore just tries for any random silly words that come to mind.  (Four-year-olds, on the other hand, understand slapstick quite well.)  And this same knowledge that makes for good humor is also what keeps you from being offensive, because you will know that you are dealing with a potentially sore topic.  The SNL writers offended because they tread on ground they didn’t know.

The good news is, this is knowable ground.  There are so many directions SNL could have taken the Paterson joke that would have been genuinely funny.  Funny in a way that resonated with the subject audience, and brought reality to tlhe attention of the general public.   Which is what good humor does.