Anthropology of Humor Analysis - Research Paper Example

? In looking around today’s world, sometimes it is difficult to see what there could be to laugh about. The economy is in the toilet, families are struggling to make ends meet, college students are wondering if there will be a use for their degree by the time they finally graduate. With all of the trial and strife plaguing people these days, it’s easy to think that no sense of humor could continue to survive. As the saying goes, what is there to laugh about? Yet what we see during these difficult times is a revival of humor rather than a failing of humor. The general mindset, though not in so many words, is “Hey, life is tough. I need a good laugh!” That’s because laughter has power. Humor is a force that can take life’s trials and cast them aside for a few moments. As such, when times are tough, people come to rely on humor more and more to add some color to their hum-drum world. The humor itself takes many different forms, and in that we can see its easy applicability. Between absurdity, hypothetical situations, religious humor, hate humor, and more, there is really no situation that cannot be touched by and enlivened with humor. True, there is some concern that perhaps humor can take Freedom of Speech to an inappropriate level, but the actual risk is minimal as we will see. Then, at the opposite end of the spectrum from Freedom of Speech is the refusal of some to indulge in humor. Unfortunately, there are those who feel that they must hold themselves back, or “self-censor,” in order to not damage their social standing with others. In such cases, it is debatable whether or not humor could improve the situation, but we will explore both sides of the argument. In essence, this paper will walk the gamut of humor, and will hopefully impart upon readers a more thorough understanding of humor and its uses. We begin with violence in humor. In American culture, violence permeates humor to an astounding extent. From one-liners to short-story-type jokes, many comedy bits have a violent tone to them. For example, there is the one-liner “The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but it’s still on the list.” Then there is the much longer CIA joke (“Angel Fire”): A few months ago, there was an opening with the CIA for an assassin. These highly classified positions are hard to fill, and there's a lot of testing and background checks involved before you can even be considered for the position. After sending some applicants through the background checks, training and testing, they narrowed the possible choices down to 2 men and a woman, but only one position was available. The day came for the final test to see which person would get the extremely secretive job. The CIA men administering the test took one of the men to a large metal door and handed him a gun. “We must know that you will follow your instructions no matter what the circumstances" they explained. "Inside this room, you will find your wife sitting in a chair. Take this gun and kill her." The man got a shocked look on his face and said, "You can't be serious! I could never shoot my own wife!" "Well", says the CIA man, "You're definitely not the right man for this job then." So they bring the second man to the same door and hand him a gun. "We must know that you will follow instructions no matter what the circumstances", they explained to the second man. "Inside you will find your wife sitting in a chair. Take this gun and kill her." The second man looked a bit shocked, but nevertheless took the gun and went in the room. All was quiet for about 5 minutes, then the door opened. The man came out of the room with tears in his eyes. "I tried to shoot her, but I just couldn't pull the trigger and shoot my wife. I guess I'm not the right man for the job." "No" the CIA man replied, "You don't have what it takes. Take your wife and go home." Now they're down to the woman left to test. Again they lead her to the same door to the same room and handed her the same gun. "We must be sure that you will follow instructions no matter what the circumstances, this is your final test. Inside you will find your husband sitting in a chair. Take this gun and kill him." The woman took the gun and opened the door. Before the door even closed all the way, the CIA men heard the gun start firing. One shot after another for 13 shots. They heard screaming, crashing, banging on the walls. This went on for several minutes, then all went quiet. The door opened slowly, and there stood the woman. She wiped the sweat from her brow and said "You guys didn't tell me the gun was loaded with blanks! I had to beat him to death with the chair!" In both of these examples, we immediately see the humor. In the one-liner, there is the dry humor of the individual claiming that they wish another individual no harm, while in the same breath threatening that other person with bodily harm. We can picture the lack of congruity between the words being spoken, and the affect of the person speaking. How easily can you imagine the dull eyes, flat mouth, and somber expression as the individual informs you that they will hurt you, though they don’t want to? The one-liner is a classic example of dry humor, which is typically humor expressed in a flat monotone. The second example, on the other hand, relies more on absurdity, which is characterized by being unrealistic or unreasonable. Obviously a CIA applicant beating her husband to death with a chair would not be a reasonable or rational outcome to the situation! As previously stated, in America we often see violence in humor. From slapstick like the Three Stooges to jokes like the ones just mentioned, violence in this form is acceptable. At that point, the question becomes why? Why is violence so acceptable in humor? And is it all violence, or a particular form of violence that is okay? While official studies have not been conducted on the matter, from thorough review of violent jokes, one can see a prevailing theme. That theme is this: violence is acceptable when it is hypothetical. As long as the violent situation is easily written off as being unrealistic, there is no problem. Using the previous examples, one can quickly conclude that the likelihood of a CIA applicant beating her husband to death with a chair is just ridiculous. Violence in humor becomes unacceptable when the line between realistic and unrealistic becomes a little more blurred. For instance, most people would find it unacceptable if someone were to say, “Man, if only Hitler were biased against stupid people, the world would be a better place!” Though the jibe against stupid people is generally humorous, introducing a person who actually existed and committed genocide against very real people in to a joke is rather insensitive. The specific nature of the joke makes it highly inappropriate in a number of situations, and anyone who told it would run the risk of insulting numerous members of their audience (particularly anyone who is or knows someone who is Jewish). Overall, the purpose of humor is to lighten a mood. Therefore, choosing a heavy-minded topic should be seen as being counter-productive. From violence in humor, we move easily in to hate in humor. At first thought, hate and violence in humor may seem to be interchangeable. In reality, they serve two entirely different functions. Violence tends to be a very general aspect of humor. The violence does not have a specific purpose outside of creating a punch line. Often with violence, another genre of punch line could be substituted in without reducing the quality of the joke. With hate in humor, there actually is a purpose: to make the “other” sound absurd. Humor creates an avenue for one person or group to outline what they hate about another person, group, or idea without calling attention to themselves in a way that would label them as being prejudiced. Hate in humor points out the aspects of the “other” that makes it ridiculous, pointless, or downright problematic. Slight exaggeration is sometimes used in order to drive a point home, but essentially the humor sticks to the facts. A great example is described in Peace Kills: Facists do bad things just to be bad. “I’m the baddest dude in Baghdad,” Saddam Hussein was saying, “the baddest cat in the Middle East. I’m way bad.” This was way stupid. But fascists are stupid. Consider Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. He didn’t have any. How stupid does that make Saddam? All he had to do was say to UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, “Look where you want. Look beneath the couch cushions. Look under my bed. Look in the special spider hole I’m keeping for emergencies.” And Saddam Hussein could have gone on dictatoring away until Donald Rumsfield is elected head of the World Council of Churches” (O’Rourke 15). In this example, we can clearly see that there are reasons for hating Saddam Hussein, none of which have to do with him being Middle Eastern. In this way, a person could express their distaste for Hussein without fear of being accused of just having a bias against Middle Easterners. There are other examples to be found. Sometimes, it’s not quite so easy to see the hate that lies behind the humor, such as when the speaker uses sarcastic humor. When one thinks of hate, the tendency is to imagine words dripping with venom, possibly coming from a mouth that is surrounded by foam. What we typically see, however, is much more understated than that. P.J. O’Rourke gives us an excellent example: I watched a confident grey-haired man push toward the trailer gate. He had wire-rimmed glasses on the end of his nose and a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. He dove for a box, his glasses flying, the cigarette embers burning various gutra headdresses and dishdashah skirts. He disappeared for the better part of a minute. Then he came out on the other side of the throng, box under one arm and glasses somehow back on his face (but minus the cigarette). The grey-haired man looked around and delivered an open-handed whack to someone who, I guess, had indulged in a late hit (O’Rourke 146). The image that O’Rourke creates of an old man flinging himself in to a fray, glasses flying off his face is a vivid one. One read through this paragraph can give us a giggle, thinking of an old man, glasses going one way , beard going another, but that is not the full story. A deeper analysis of the author’s writing really shows his disdain for the group of people he is watching. The book continues to describe more havoc of people clamoring for boxes, and the pointlessness of it all. These people who are making such fools of themselves are not even doing it for a cause that is apparent. The author writes that there were more than enough boxes of food on the trailer for everyone who was there, so why all the buffeting each other about? By writing out his description of the individuals and events that he saw in this way, the writer was able to convey his hated of the things he saw in a way that said his hatred was specific to precisely what he saw as opposed to being a typical attitude that he has toward people of that ethnicity. Frankly, humor is often used as a means to say what we really think in a way that allows us to not take full responsibility for our words or the emotion behind them. Through all of my reading and research, in no other area of humor have I seen this more clearly than in religious humor. Marvin Koller writes that with religion, “Historical events, personages, and values are weighed in the balance and found to be guides to the conduct of human affairs and to appropriate personal behaviors” (Koller 177). With the way that religion is usually portrayed, particularly the way the very nature of religion is to be absorbed in to all aspects of an individual’s life (and therefore made very personal to them), it is hard to see where humor fits in. After all, believing that a man came to Earth and allowed himself to be tortured and killed for the eternal salvation of your soul is not really a laughing matter. So, where exactly do we find humor in religion? Generally speaking, in the reading that I have done, humor in religion has taken the form of defending one’s own religion against others. The others can be other religions, or may simply refer to all individuals outside of the speaker’s religion. In religions that are somewhat connected, such as Protestants and Catholics, there is more of a tendency for humor to be antagonistic toward the other religion, though throughout religions there are examples to be found of one attacking or putting down another in some way. Koller again provides a terrific example (Koller 191): …there is the story of a person who died and was admitted to heaven. The new arrival was escorted down a long corridor that connected numerous side-rooms or large assembly halls. Each one seemed to be filled with people who were singing, praying, resting, eating, or otherwise enjoying themselves. The guide identified each group’s room such as the halls for the Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists. When the guide and the new arrival came to the last room, the guide cautioned the persons to speak in whispers. “Why so?” asked the individual. “Well,” replied the guide, “this room contains……..(insert the name of whatever religious group one wants to use as the butt of the joke.) They think they are the only ones up here!” The other use of humor in religion is to allow a person an opportunity to pump up their own religion, give it some positive advertising. Simply talking about religion can often create an air of tension because it can be such a touchy subject. People are resistant to others pushing a new religion on them, no matter how good the “pitch” may be, and so often do not even consider that maybe another person only wants to brag about some aspect of their religion—with no intention of attempting to convert the person they’re speaking to. With humor, individuals are given the opportunity to provide positive ideas and examples of their religion without being pushy or risk appearing like recruiters for their faith. According to Ted Cohen, the Jewish community is particularly adept at this kind of positive advertising in religion. In his book, Cohen cites a Jewish joke (Cohen 65-66): A young man applied to study with a Talmudic scholar. The scholar rejects him, saying, “Before you can study Talmud, you must know Jewish logic.” “But I already know logic,” protests the student, “Aristotelian syllogisms, truth-functional logic, predicate logic, set theory, everything,” “That’s not Jewish logic,” replied the scholar, but the student persists, and so the scholar offers to give him a test to determine whether he is prepared. “Here is the question,” says the scholar. “Two men go down a chimney. One has a dirty face, one has a clean face. Which one washes?” “That’s easy,” says the student, “the one with the dirty face.” “Wrong,” says the scholar. “The one with the clean face looks at the other one, sees a dirty face, and thinks his must also be dirty, and so the one with the clean face washes.” “I see,” says the student. “It is a little more complicated than I thought, but I can do this. Please test me again.” “All right,” sighs the scholar. “Here is the question. Two men go down a chimney. One has a dirty face, one has a clean face. Which one washes?” In surprise the student answers, “Just as you said, the one with the clean face washes.” “Wrong,” says the scholar. “The one with the dirty face observes his compani9on looking at him and making ready to wash his face. ‘Ah ha,’ he thinks. ‘He must see a dirty face, and it’s mine.’ And so the one with the dirty face washes.” “It is even more complicated than I yet realized,” says the student, “but now I do understand. Please test me once more.” “Just once more,” says the scholar. “Here is the question. Two men go down a chimney. One has a dirty face, one has a clean face. Which one washes?” “Now I know the answer,” says the student. “The one with the dirty face washes, just as I thought in the beginning, but for a different reason.” “Wrong,” says the scholar. “If two men go down a chimney, how can only one have a dirty face? Go and study. When you know Jewish logic, come back.” The underlying message of the joke in this example is that Jewish logic is superior somehow to other known logics. The student, though he claims to be knowledgeable in many forms of philosophy and logic, is unable to keep up with Jewish logic, and is told to continue to study. A person of the Jewish faith could theoretically tell a joke like this one as a means to talk up their religion, but such jokes are obviously not limited to Jews. A non-Jew could also tell such a joke out of admiration for the qualities of some Jews. So, we can see that religion in humor can be used in the same way that religion itself can be used: for good or for evil. One can either speak positively about their own religion or of one that they respect or admire, or they could use humor to attack another religion or lack of religion. With all of the ways that humor can be used, there arises the fear that humor will be misused. Personally, I believe that with anything that can be used there is a risk of it eventually being misused. When it comes to humor, how are we to handle such misuse? When we see or hear a person using humor as a means to repeatedly attack and belittle another group, idea, or person, are we to just stand by? Do we have no choice but to listen to the verbal abuse, or at the very least not stop the abusive person from speaking? The question here boils down to one regarding Freedom of Speech. In an article on Freedom of Speech, specifically discussing the effects of restricting speech on the scientific community, J. E. Seiber writes, “Although science is productive when there is free debate about perspectives, it is also harmed when opposing perspectives of reviewers result in limited communication of scientific ideas and results” (Seiber 24). The basic premise of his statement can also be applied to freedom of speech. When all individuals are given the opportunity to speak freely, there is a resulting mecca of knowledge and ideas. However, when a few take that freedom to extreme lengths and begin to use their freedom to trample on others, suddenly the mecca doesn’t seem quite so vibrant. In my opinion, people often vastly overestimate the power of the Freedom of Speech. Somehow the idea has formed that freedom to speak includes freedom to only hear what you want to hear. The reality of the matter is that, in America at least, we have the freedom to say what we want to say. Within a few reasonable guidelines (like not intentionally lying about another individual to hurt them financially), we are allowed to say what we wish, when we wish, to whom we wish. By the same token, so is everyone else. We cannot realistically expect to be allowed to speak freely ourselves, and be the only ones with such freedom. No, everybody in this country is entitled to the same rights. When problems arise from a person or group using their right to free speech in an overly aggressive manner, we have the freedom to speak in a manner that defends ourselves. That is our freedom, and no more. If we do not want to hear what others are saying about us or things that are important to us, it is our responsibility to get away from the situation in which we would hear those offensive things. We cannot expect others to make our lives the way we want them to be, even in regards to matters of what we listen to. It is important to realize that there is no Freedom to Only Hear What We Agree With. Along the same lines of personal responsibility falls the idea of self-censorship. In cases of self-censorship, people find themselves choosing to not indulge in something they would like to—such as humor—because they feel that to do so would damage their social standing in some way. Primarily we see this phenomenon in women, because in so many cultures there is a belief that it is unseemly for a woman to behave in the same manner as a man. That is to say, it would not be appropriate for her in various cultures to speak publicly, engage in slapstick humor, or verbally spar with another individual. Mahadev Apte wrote, “In public domains women seem generally not to engage in: verbal duels, ritual insults, practical jokes and pranks, all of which reflect the competitive spirit, and the aggressive and hostile quality, of men’s humor” (Apte 69). Though the reasons behind this absence of women’s participation in humor vary from culture to culture, generally there is the idea that if a woman behaves the same way as a man, she must not be quite womanly. Such a woman would have a difficult time forming a romantic relationship or partnership with a man after being labeled thus. Being kept out of humor in this way seems to have created an antagonistic attitude in women toward men. In such cultures where women were barred from public displays of humor, Apte noted that once the women were with only other women, their humorous sides came out in full force. Apte wrote that in social gatherings of only women, those women would engage in humor freely: “Common topics for humor development in such gatherings include men’s physical appearance, their social behavior, their idiosyncracies, their sexuality, their status-seeking activities, and their religious rites. These characteristics are generally presented in an exaggerated and mocking fashion” (Apte 76). The fear that Apte described in the men who knew their women had such gatherings seems to be proof to the saying, “Hell hath no fury like a women scorned!” Such examples refer to women who are intentionally kept out of the public arena of humor for one reason or another. In these cases, the self-censorship is chosen by the women for themselves, but more out of lack of option than out of a genuine desire to not participate. There is another form of self-censorship, and that is what we often see in American culture. When a woman is afraid to engage in public humor, afraid that she will somehow embarrass herself, she will often choose to remain quiet rather than participate in a public discussion. There is no strict cultural rule saying that a woman cannot participate, but they often do not regardless. When they do, “women ‘consistently began and ended with apologies: for speaking, for the content of their speech, for speaking too long,’ and so forth” (Apte 75). A final, less obvious, form of self-censorship is that which prompts people to follow the lead of the other people around them. For instance, when you are watching a funny movie and you hear the other people in the audience laugh. According to a study by G. Neil Martin and Colin D. Gray, both men and women are more likely to laugh out loud when they hear others laughing (Martin, Gray 226). Where this tendency comes from is our desire to have a favorable image in the eyes of those around us. As cultural creatures, we all want to be liked and accepted by other members of our culture, even when those other members are complete strangers. To sum up, we see that humor is a multi-faceted tool that can be implemented in a variety of situations for a variety of reasons. We can use humor to express our hatred of something (or someone) else, or our respect for our religion or one we are familiar with. We can use humor to attack others or defend ourselves. We can accept humor as a part of our right to free speech, or we can refuse to engage in it as a means to protect our self-image. Throughout it all, humor in and of itself is neither good nor evil. Rather, humor is what we make of it. Resources: Apte, Mahadev. Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985. 69, 75, 76. Print. Cohen, Ted. Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. 65-66. Print. Koller, M. Humor and Society: Exploration of the Sociology of Humor. Houston: Cap & Gown Press, Inc, 1988. 177, 191. Print. Martin, Gray, G. Neil, Colin D. "The Effects of Audience Laughter on Men's and Women's Responses to Humor." Journal of Social Psychology. 136.2 (1996): 221-231. Print. O'Rourke, P.J. Peace Kills: Kuwait and Iraq. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2004. 146. Print. O'Rourke, P.J. Peace Kills: Why Americans Hate Foreign Policy. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2004. 15. Print. Seiber, J. E. "Freedom of Speech." EBSCOhost 24.3 (2008): 24. Web. 30 Apr 2011. "Slightly Violent Jokes." Angel Fire. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Apr 2011. . Read More