While discussing (through Bergson's book) how humor works in us, we had a couple of forays into related off-topics. The first was the question of laughter and delight. My contention was that the laughter of delight may be related, but is not the same thing as a reaction to something being funny. The second was the question of something not being funny or laughable. We considered this in a couple of ways, particularly by discussing Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat and the possibility of doing a rape joke (see a recent NYTimes article). (Note that there is a whole category of men raping men jokes, typically a version of prison-rape, that are a tried and true category of rape-joke.) I'm going to focus on this second case here and take up the question of delight later.
Key to why so much of Cohen's work isn't funny is his drawing the audience into being the willing manipulators and humiliators of his victims. Now it is clear that much of humor comes from the humiliation of others, the poking fun at their mis-steps, misfortunes, and peccadilloes. That we find pleasure in such things and that we find it funny is interesting in itself. It's surely partly power -- we take pleasure from winning. It's surely partly schadenfreude -- we take pleasure from other people losing. Both are part of our ability to have ambitions and goals, to want to accomplish anything. If we didn't get pleasure from accomplishments (winning broadly speaking), we wouldn't have ambitions at all.
Put this way, it makes clear that the funny is ethical. There is a spectrum of taking pleasure from winning along which we travel from wholesome pleasure in victory to corrosive mean-spiritedness. Similarly with schadenfreude. While I laugh at my kid (or myself) when his ice cream falls off the cone into his lap, we also have the bully who finds pleasure and humor in the deep humiliation of another while his is forced to lick the bottom of his boot. So, it's not that it isn't possible for a person to find the humiliation present in a movie like Borat funny. It's that finding such scenes funny amounts to having a mis-tuned sense of humor, at least according to the person who contends that it isn't funny. This possibility of mis-tuning points to a deep ethical dimension to humor which humor clearly relies upon. Without the explicit and implicit ethical conventions of human relation, most of Borat wouldn't have the possibility of being funny (or not funny). My contention is that much of this sort of movie isn't funny because the level of humiliation and mean-spirited manipulation is too high, including the humiliation, manipulation, and contempt for the audience itself.
Consider an example. In one scene Borat is in a rich person's house and he tries to get the wife to agree to help him wipe his ass as he pretends to be "so backward" as to not know how to use a toilet and so forth. I can imagine something like this as funny in retrospect between two sincerely engaged players -- a kind of looking back at the absurdity of the situation and the awkward collision of worlds and one person's ignorance of convention (our convention) and the other's uncertain attempts to educate that person. One might argue that this is exactly why the scene is funny. As viewers we have that distance and we can look at the absurdity of the situation and find it funny. That would work if both actors could reasonably be considered sincere actors, but they are not. She is sincerely engaged and he isn't. Indeed, he is adroitly manipulating the situation so as to, step by step, maximally humiliate her. The fact that he is this secret bully and has brought us in on his bullying is what makes it not funny.
Now, it is often clear that S.B.C. has a political agenda underlying his candid-camera humor (or he is simply utilizing his attuned understanding of convention to shoot political ducks in a pond). Such humor often has the explicit intention of humiliating the victim for political reasons, though that humiliation will frequently have nothing to do with politics explicitly, but rather with that individual's mis-steps. This is par for the course. We routinely go after those in power and laugh at their everyday mistakes. Consider the repeated showings of Gerald Ford tripping as he steps off the gangway onto the tarmac and the concurrent depictions on SNL. So, let's look at it this way. The scene with the ass-wiping wife is funny because she's a rich conservative lady. This presumably layers privilege and advantage on her such that Borat's humiliation of her is a) successful political pot-shoting of the knocking-the-successful-down-because-they-lord-it-over-us variety, that is, it is a version of schadenfreude and b) inoculated against the charge of stepping over the line because somehow she deserves this humiliation; she's implicitly guilty of some list of crimes and therefore her humiliation is punishment for those crimes and our witnessing that humiliation is our satisfaction. Now, consider what if she were a twelve--year-old girl on her way home from school? A homeless man whom Borat gets to wipe his ass for the $1.50 to buy a cup of coffee? A person with a colostomy on their way home from the hospital?
Now, if we were to have a scene depicting these three examples in which all the participants were actors fulfilling a role, might we not manage to strain a laugh? Maybe, though I expect that laughing at such a scene would really be meta-laughing, that is, laughing at the fact of the scene itself being so far from good taste and laughing at that juxtaposition itself. This is, however, very different from the contents of the scene causing the laughter. However, try rolling in the circumstance of each victim being a sincere participant and the ass just being an Ass and playing them. It crosses the line both in the act itself of humiliating someone and (if watched as a film) roping audience into being the bully himself. So, it's not funny.
-Dylan Casey
This is really the same reason I have issues with the use of pranks in many situations. First I would never pull a prank on someone that I would consider too much if it were pulled on me. That is given for many situations, but that is really only the first cut.
Those who do not like me, or those for whom I do not care are off limits when it comes to pranks. As for a prank on strangers, it is incredibly important that any resultant humiliation they might experience be outweighed by the revelation that it was all done in jest. (there always has to be a reveal). As they are strangers, the default is to set the bar very low.
Great show to everyone.
I agree with Dylan’s point about the ethical dimension of humor. I don’t agree that that’s all or most of what’s going on with SBC.
I think there’s something exciting about the conflict between a joke and real life. Abbot & Costello’s “Who’s On First” might be entertaining, but were you to hear that kind of exchange happening between two real people who don’t understand each other, that would something remarkable. Since that’s impossibly rare, having only “the straight man” be the one not in on the joke is the closest real option.
As in the Borat video I posted a couple of days ago (I was actually going to post the scene Dylan refers to here but couldn’t find it on youtube; I think describing it as actually trying to get the woman to wipe his butt is a mischaracterization), the jokes are not particularly cruel, basically amounting to the embarrassment of having to deal with an apparent idiot, and I think the audience is in fact being invited to identify with the dupe, not with the comedian, which is not how cruel humor works. Certainly this is not how all of his humor works, though, as he’s often trying to expose antisemitism or homophobia or something like that.
“his presumably layers privilege and advantage on her such that Borat’s humiliation of her is a) successful political pot-shoting of the knocking-the-successful-down-because-they-lord-it-over-us variety, that is, it is a version of schadenfreude and b) inoculated against the charge of stepping over the line because somehow she deserves this humiliation”
But in certain ways she DESERVES the humiliation. This sounds like a harsh statement, but let me qualify it: she does not deserve humiliation because she is rich. She deserves humiliation because of how chauvinistic she is. Now, I’m not using that term in the normal sense. She is not sexist towards Borat. But she clearly has a feeling of innate superiority over him. This is made clear when Borat goes to the washroom and she starts to say things along the lines of “I think he’s a nice man and it wouldn’t take long to ‘Americanize’ him.” Like so many conservatives, she wants foreigners to assimilate into American culture because American culture is “better.” I mean, how ignorant does she have to be to actually believe that former communist countries don’t have indoor plumbing? SBC uses Borat to expose her feelings of superiority–a feeling that I’m sure many ignorant rich American have simply because they are rich.
I’ll say it again, SBC’s goal isn’t to simply humiliate the privileged. It’s to expose the rigidity and prejudice of the dominate culture. I mean, think about this: when Borat approaches the young gangster kids, I at first thought (based on, unfortunately, prejudice) they would act aggressively towards him because of his lameness and clothing. But they, in fact, were probably the warmest towards Borat out of everybody (including the evangelical christians). The next scene is a great contrast that I think proves my point: Borat tries to dress and talk like a hip-hopper while checking into fancy hotel. Within 30 seconds he gets kicked out by the prickish hotel clerk. The contrast is completely against expectation. I expect the impoverished, uneducated people to be dismissive towards Borat, but in fact it is the well-off, educated people who are least accepting of his goofiness.
Maybe the best way to combat rigid people is to mock their rigidity.
I’ve been thinking about this for a few days – the podcast, and Noah’s post above helped me clarify something that I’ve been struggling with for a while. My favourite definition of humour is the following, from Mel Brooks – it’s not just insightful, but hilarious in a ‘Hah-hah only serious’ sort of way:
“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.”
I think this is brilliant because it reminds me that the value of ‘performance hate’ generally, and attack humour specifically, is positional – the appreciation of a joke is almost entirely a function of the identity of the target, and my cultural and political identification with that target. This makes sense – an attack joke is the weaponization of humour, and the most important criteria when evaluating a weapon is “Who’s holding it? Who’s it pointed at?”
If I go up to someone and make a target-appropriate racial hate joke, and there’s no audience except the target, the interpretation of my action is straightforward – I’m engaged in basic aggression and intimidation. It’s an ordinary primate status display, and no language paraphrase is necessary – I’m just making the verbal equivalent of a throat-slashing gesture. Indeed, I hesitate to use the word ‘joke’ at all if there’s no third party involved – there’s no ‘performance hate’ without an audience to perform for.
However, if there’s someone else present, the hate joke becomes more functionally complex. The original components are still present – I’m still expressing aggression, confidence and a willingness to escalate, but my effects on the third party are the critical issue. Now, I’d argue that I’m sort of drawing a metaphorical chalk circle around myself, labeling the inside of that circle ‘Us’, and inviting the third party to step inside. In paraphrase, I’m saying, “Hey, third party. I’m offering you a place with Us, on the strong team. React properly (laugh at the target), and We will prevail over Them, and you’ll be safe. React improperly (with silence, or by rebuking me), and you’ll get what the target has coming to him too. Choose carefully.”
We’re hardwired to side with the powerful over the weak, and hate humour indicates the speaker’s confidence and willingness to break implicit rules about public behavior. Since we’re also programmed to conflate confidence with ability, we’re ready to conclude that the confidence of the attacker reveals that he’s on the Winning Side. This is especially the case if retribution from the victim seems to be a remote prospect. It’s not surprising that we don’t understand why we find these jokes funny in some circumstances and not others – we’re built to respond appropriately and automatically to ingroup status displays, and reason has to come along afterwords and try to come up with a plausible-sounding story for why we behaved as we did. I’d expect that behavior to be incoherent.
When I laugh at a joke by Cohen, or John Stewart, or (to a much lesser extent) Bill Maher, I think I’m laughing because the joke is delivered by One Of Us, and is directed at Them. When one of Us deliver an attack joke, I laugh, because the humour reminds me that We are smart, strong and popular. We’re smart, because we came up with such insightful humour, and we’re strong (and popular, which is the same thing), because we can deliver the joke publicly with no fear of violent reprisal. I laugh at the joke in relief, and also in pleasure – my secret certainty that We are righteous and They are wicked is confirmed again!
The important principle here is that were I to suddenly become a Republican, I would laugh in delight at Rush Limbaugh or Dennis Miller or whoever. The previous joke, delivered by the same person and in the same way would be hate speech, not humour, and I would see no contradiction.
Anyway, the topic has me thinking, and thank you for that. I love the podcast; please keep doing what you’re doing (to the extent that doing what you’re doing is what you want to be doing!)
I agree that Sasha Baron Cohen is not funny and relies on vulgarity and humiliation.
However, there are very many people, particularly outside of the United States and the Republic of Kazakhstan, who do find him funny. I think that the main reason is that it humiliates Americans, and makes them look foolish to the rest of the world. This has been a staple of humour outside of the United States, it is almost a right of passage for Australian and New Zealand comics. A comedian/journalist travels around the United States and asks uneducated people questions about his/her own country. Only the foolish and ignorant comments, which are aired and allow people in the small country to feel superior. Perhaps a Kazakh comedian could do the same to Australians and English people.
SBC is similar – he is an Englishman going to the United States to demonstrate that yanks are dumb, and clever English people can laugh at them, despite the obvious advantages that yanks have.
In the US his antics are considered not funny is because people in the US are the targets, and seeks to humiliate all American vicariously through his targets.
This is in contrast to the candid camera antics – which to not seek to humiliate, but to pursue the absurd. The difference is that we do not lose sympathy for the victims, but we identify with them because we may be caught in one of the pranks, and the victims often appreciate the absurdity of the prank.
Perhaps one can contrast the reactions of the victims: in the candid camera pranks, they often are left laughing when the prank is revealed, I have not heard of one of the victims trying to stop their scene being aired (I assume that it is an editorial decision to gain the consent of the victims), whereas there was a court case brought by two of SBC’s victims who unsuccessfully tried to have themselves edited out of the film. They were left in, which indicates a certain cruelty. This is certainly an ethical question.