The Languages of Humor: Verbal, Visual, and Physical Humor 9781350062290, 9781350062320, 9781350062306

Citation preview

The Languages of Humor

Bloomsbury Advances in Semiotics Semiotics has complemented linguistics by expanding its scope beyond the phoneme and the sentence to include texts and discourse, and their rhetorical, performative, and ideological functions. It has brought into focus the multimodality of human communication. Advances in Semiotics publishes original works in the field demonstrating robust scholarship, intellectual creativity, and clarity of exposition. These works apply semiotic approaches to linguistics and nonverbal productions, social institutions and discourses, embodied cognition and communication, and the new virtual realities that have been ushered in by the Internet. It also is inclusive of publications in relevant domains such as socio-semiotics, evolutionary semiotics, game theory, cultural and literary studies, human-computer interactions, and the challenging new dimensions of human networking afforded by social websites. Series Editor: Paul Bouissac is Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto (Victoria College), Canada. He is a world renowned figure in semiotics and a pioneer of circus studies. He runs the SemiotiX Bulletin [www.semioticon.com/semiotix] which has a global readership. Titles in the Series: A Buddhist Theory of Semiotics, Fabio Rambelli Computable Bodies, Josh Berson Critical Semiotics, Gary Genosko Introduction to Peircean Visual Semiotics, Tony Jappy Semiotics and Pragmatics of Stage Improvisation, Domenico Pietropaolo Semiotics of Drink and Drinking, Paul Manning Semiotics of Happiness, Ashley Frawley Semiotics of Religion, Robert Yelle The Language of War Monuments, David Machin and Gill Abousnnouga The Semiotics of Clowns and Clowning, Paul Bouissac The Semiotics of Che Guevara, Maria-Carolina Cambre The Semiotics of Emoji, by Marcel Danesi The Visual Language of Comics, Neil Cohn

The Languages of Humor Verbal, Visual, and Physical Humor Edited by Arie Sover

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2018 Paperback edition published 2020 Copyright © Arie Sover, 2018 Arie Sover has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xiii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image courtesy of Mary Evans/Everett Collection All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sover, Arie, editor. Title: The languages of humor: verbal, visual and physical humor / edited by Arie Sover. Description: London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. | Series: Bloomsbury advances in semiotics | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2018005062 (print) | LCCN 2018032798 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350062306 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781350062313 (ePub) | ISBN 9781350062290 (hardback: alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Wit and humor–History and criticism. Classification: LCC PN6147 (ebook) | LCC PN6147.L26 2 018 (print) | DDC 809.7–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018005062 ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-6229-0 PB: 978-1-3501-5526-8 ePDF: 978-1-3500-6230-6 eBook: 978-1-3500-6231-3 Series: Bloomsbury Advances in Semiotics Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

for Christie Davies A man with a big heart and an eternal smile 1941-2017

Contents List of Contributors Acknowledgments

ix xiii

Introduction  Arie Sover 1 Part 1  Verbal Humor   1   2   3   4

  5   6   7

Jokes and Insults: Language and Aggression  Christie Davies 15 How Jokes Work? Seven Humor Theorists in Search of a Joke: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on a Humorous Text  Arthur Asa Berger 36 God, Jokes, Parnusseh & Tsores: Jewish Humor  Joseph Dorinson 49 Holocaust Jokes on American and Israeli Situational Comedies: Signaling Positions of Memory Intimacy and Distance  Jeffrey Scott Demsky and Liat Steir-Livny 70 Intertextuality and Cultural Literacy in Contemporary Political Jokes  Villy Tsakona 86 Humor and Liminality: A Case Study of the Maltese Ġaħan  Mary Ann Cassar 105 Multifacet Pragmatics of Russian Post-Soviet Jokes  Nataliia Kravchenko and Tetiana Pasternak 120

Part 2  Visual Humor   8   9 10 11 12

Caricature as a Weapon in Class Struggle: Early Soviet Graphic Satire  Annie Gérin 139 The Interplay Between Visual and Verbal Language in “Famous Last Words” Cartoons  Carla Canestrari 159 Inside Jokes: Identifying Humorous Cartoon Captions Algorithmically  Dafna Shahaf, Eric Horvitz and Robert Mankoff 167 Caricature as Desacralization of the Image: The Charlie Hebdo Case  Ayelet Lilti 188 The Internet Political Meme as Remediation of the Political Cartoon  Khin-Wee Chen 202

viii Contents Part 3  Physical Humor 13 14 15 16 17

Slapstick Comedy: Under What Conditions Can Body Movements be Humorous?  Paul Bouissac 227 Slapstick in the American Cinema: From Circus Clowns to the First Cinema Comedians  Arie Sover 238 Slapstick Humor in Children’s Popular Literature  Evangeline E. Nwokah, Vanessa Lopez, and Erin Morrison 262 Shenanigans on Stage: Cultural Reappropriation of Classical Music through Slapstick  Terri Toles Patkin 280 Consequential Slapstick: Staging the Aristophanic Slapstick in Lysistrata  Vicky Manteli 300

Index

315

List of Contributors Arthur Asa Berger is professor emeritus of broadcast and electronic communication arts at San Francisco State University. His research interests focus on semiotics, media, popular culture, and humor, and he has published widely on these topics. His most recent book is Applied Discourse Analysis: Popular Culture, Media, and Everyday Life (2016). [email protected] Paul Bouissac is professor emeritus at the University of Toronto (French studies). He has published articles and books in ethnography, linguistics, and semiotics. He does research on gestures and circus performance. His latest publication is The Semiotics of Clowns and Clowning (2015). [email protected] Carla Canestrari is assistant professor of general psychology at the department of education, cultural heritage and tourism, University of Macerata (Italy). She collaborates with the research group EPhP (Experimental Phenomenology of Perception) (http://www.ephplab.eu), University of Verona (Italy), and she serves on the editorial board of RISU (Rivista Italiana di Studi sull’Umorismo) (www.risu.biz). Her main research topics focus on the linguistic, cognitive, and perceptual processes involved in the understanding of humorous and ironic texts, and on the pragmatic aspects of humorous communication. [email protected] Mary Ann Cassar is a senior lecturer at the department of philosophy in the University of Malta where she obtained her doctorate degree. Her research areas include philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and informal logic, with special interest in one of their interfaces namely the philosophy of laughter provocation. [email protected] Khin-Wee Chen is assistant professor of emerging media in Gulf University for Science and Technology, Kuwait, and former adjunct lecturer at University of Canterbury, New Zealand. His publications on humor include “The Singapore Mass Rapid Transport: Α case study of the efficacy of a democratised political humor landscape in a critical engagement in the public sphere” (2013), “Sarcasm Might be Entertaining But It Doesn’t Solve Our National Problems—What Happens When a Malaysian Politician Plays the Fool?” (2016) and “Towards a Discipline of Political Cartoon Studies: Mapping the Field in Satire and Politics—The Interplay of Heritage and Practice” (2017). [email protected] Christie Davies (1941–2017) was a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Reading, United Kingdom. The author of many articles and books on criminology, the sociology of morality, censorship, and humor. His main interest in humor research was

x List of Contributors ethnic humor. He is the author of Ethnic Humor around the world (1990), Jokes and their Relation to Society (1998), The Mirth of Nations (2002), and of Jokes and Targets (2011). Jeffrey Scott Demsky is a historian of American politics and culture. He is an associate professor at San Bernardino Valley College (United States). Demsky’s research agenda focuses on American Holocaust memory and representation. He has authored numerous journal and articles exploring this topic, most recently “Searching for Humor in Dehumanization: American Sitcoms, the Internet, and the Globalization of Holocaust Parodies.” He has also served as a manuscript referee for the International Journal of Press and Politics and is a historical consultant who helps secondary schools to design and implement their holocaust and genocide studies curriculum. [email protected] Joseph Dorinson is a professor in the history department at Long Island University. Dorinson has coedited a book, Jackie Robinson: Race, Sports and the American Dream (1999), and has written numerous articles on a variety of subjects spanning his beloved borough of Brooklyn, black heroes, sports, politics, humor, and ethnicity. During baseball’s first “Subway Series” since 1956, Dorinson appeared on television: CNN, Fox News, and New York One. He also was heard on the radio: NPR and WOR. His recent book, Kvetching and Shpritzing: Jewish Humor in American Popular Culture (2015). [email protected] Annie Gérin is professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) in its department of art history. Educated in Canada, Russia, and the United Kingdom, her research interests encompass the areas of Soviet art, public art, and contemporary art. She is especially concerned with art encountered by nonspecialized publics, outside the gallery space. Her recent publications include Devastation and Laughter: Satire, Power and Culture in Early Soviet Russia (2018). [email protected] Eric Horvitz is a technical fellow and director at Microsoft Research. He has pursued solutions to theoretical and practical challenges with machine learning and intelligence, with a focus on methods for enhancing human decisions. His contributions include advances in principles of automated reasoning and decision making under uncertainty. [email protected] Nataliia Kravchenko is full professor at the department of English philology and philosophy of language in the Kyiv National Linguistic University. Her main research areas are pragmatics and discourse analysis. She has four monographs, two textbooks, more than 80 publications on discourse analysis, formal pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, and linguistic semiotics. Her most recent books are Discourse and Discourse-Analysis: Concise Encyclopedia (2017) and Integrative method and Operative Techniques of Discourse-Analysis (2015). NKravchenko@outlook Ayelet Lilti resides in France and is a lecturer at the Elie Wiesel Institute in Paris. She received her doctorate degree in “History and Semiology of Text and Image”

List of Contributors

xi

from the University of Paris VII, in 2013. Her research focuses on images in society, and their relation to humor. Her most recent article is “On resemblance” (2016). [email protected] Vanessa Lopez is a former graduate student in communication disorders at Our Lady of the Lake University, San Antonio, Texas, and currently a licensed speech-language pathologist working in RGV Pediatric Therapy, McAllen, Texas. She has assisted in research projects involving children’s humorous cartoon appreciation and also toy play in children with autism. She is interested in humor in children’s literature and humorous storytelling in children with and without literacy delay. [email protected] Robert Mankoff, is an American cartoonist, editor, and author. After twenty years as the New Yorker cartoon editor, he now serves as the cartoon and humor editor of Esquire. A student of humor and creativity, Mankoff has devoted his life to discovering just what makes us laugh. [email protected] Vicky Manteli teaches classical Greek theater at the Hellenic Open University. Her research interests focus on humor and comedy, classical Greek comedy translation, the performance and the semiotics of classical and modern Greek theater and drama. Among her most recent publications are “Devising political humor: Highlights from a Greek devised comedy festival” (2016), “Shattered icons and fragmented narrative in a postmodern world of crisis: Herakles Mainomenos by the National Theatre of Greece at the Epidaurus Festival 2011” (2014), and her monograph on the Greek playwright Loula Anagnostaki (2014). [email protected] Erin Morrison is a graduate student in communication disorders at Our Lady of the Lake University, San Antonio, Texas. She has worked as a preschool teacher as well as an ABA therapist for children with autism. She obtained her undergraduate degree from Purdue University in Indiana where she assisted on two research projects focused on early speech and language development in infants and preschool children. [email protected] Evangeline E. Nwokah is professor in the Woolfolk School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Our Lady of the Lake University, San Antonio, Texas, and holds the Woolfolk Endowed Chair in child language. She is a licensed speechlanguage pathologist, and a trained therapeutic clown. Her expertise and research is in play, language, and humor. She is a member of the International Society for Humor Studies (ISHS), The Association for the Study of Play (TASP), and the American Humor Association (AHA). Her publications include studies on humorous narratives between siblings, humor in children with hearing loss, and on pediatric hospital clowning. [email protected] Tetiana Pasternak is associate professor at the department of English philology in National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine. Her research areas focus on sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis,

xii List of Contributors semiotics of humor. She has published on discourse and pragmatics. Her most recent book is Pragmatics of institutional discourse “job interview”: linguo-communicative perspective (2017). [email protected] Dafna Shahaf is an assistant professor in the school of computer science and engineering at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research is about making sense of massive amounts of data. She designs algorithms that help people understand the underlying structure of complex topics, connect the dots between pieces of information, and turn data into insight. [email protected] Arie Sover is professor at The Open University and Ashkelon Academic College, in Israel, at the communication and interdisciplinary departments. He focuses on psychology and sociology of humor, Jewish humor and humor theories. He has published articles and five books in humor research, (four of them in Hebrew). He is the founder and the first editor in chief of the Israeli Journal of Humor Research: An International Journal the founder and editor in chief of Humor Mekuvan: A Hebrew Scientific Journal of Humor Research, the founder and chair of the Israeli Society for Humor Studies. His forthcoming book, Jewish Humor (2018, in Chinese). [email protected] Liat Steir-Livny is an assistant professor in the department of culture at Sapir Academic College, and a tutor and course coordinator at the Open University of Israel. Her research focuses on the changing commemoration of the Holocaust in Israel. Her book, Two Faces in the Mirror (2009), analyzes the representation of Holocaust survivors in Israeli cinema. Let the Memorial Hill Remember (2014) focuses on the changing memory of the Holocaust in contemporary Israeli popular culture. Is It O.K to Laugh About It? (2017) analyzes Holocaust humor, satire, and parody in contemporary Israeli culture. [email protected] Terri Toles Patkin is professor of communication at Eastern Connecticut State University in Willimantic, Connecticut, United States. Her research focuses on freedom of expression, popular culture, and the intersection of interpersonal and mediated communication. An avid amateur violinist, she hopes to eventually incorporate comedic elements into performance intentionally. Patkin holds the B.A. from Arcadia University, and M.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University. [email protected] Villy Tsakona is assistant professor in sociolinguistics and discourse analysis in the Department of Education Sciences in Early Childhood at the Democritus University of Thrace, Greece. She published articles on the pragmatic, discourse, and sociolinguistic analysis of various humorous genres and she has worked on a postdoc research project on parliamentary discourse analysis. Her research interests also involve (critical) literacy theories and applications. Recently, she has coauthored The Narrative Construction of Identities in Critical Education (2012) with Argiris Archakis; The Dynamics of Interactional Humor (2018) with Jan Chovanec; and authored The Sociolinguistics of Humor: Theory, Functions and Teaching (2013, in Greek). [email protected]

Acknowledgments This book is published, thanks to the positive and professional approach of many people who contributed their best knowledge, each in his or her own unique field. First of all, I would like to thank the editor of the series, my friend Prof. Paul Bouissac, who offered me this special project. Many thanks to Gurdeep Mattu, the editor of Bloomsbury Academic for his professional skills and for his patience, which allowed me to adapt myself to the Bloomsbury style of working. I want to thank Mr. Andrew Wardell, the new editor of Bloomsbury Academic for his touch to improve the project. A lot of thanks to Helen Saunders, the editorial assistant, who was very helpful throughout; to Leeladevi Ulaganathan the project manager and all the Bloomsbury staff that escorted the project, thank you! Many thanks to the unknown reviewers who helped us improve the quality of this book; finally a lot of appreciation to the seventeen authors whose articles were chosen out of forty-one proposals and who contributed their best knowledge to make this book so special. Last but not least, special acknowledgment to Prof. Christie Davies, an outstanding scholar of humor research, who passed away before being able to see his article published in this book. But he departed in a special way, leaving us with a “beautiful star,” one of his best articles, as he told me.

Introduction

This set of seventeen articles discusses the different, but complementary areas of humor. Each of the three genres—verbal, visual, and physical—is expressed in a different language: verbal humor told orally but also expressed in writing; visual humor expressed in graphic drawings; and physical humor, expressed in body language. Despite the difference in their means of expression, all three belong to the family of humor. Each has a rich history. Verbal humor is the consequence of ancient, thousands-of-years old, folk humor that developed in various communities around the world as a response, among others, to socioeconomic, cultural, and political circumstances of these societies. The history of physical humor can be found in the fairs that characterized folk festivals in Medieval Europe and even earlier in comedic theater of classical Greece and Rome. Physical humor was also an integral part in the Italian “Commedia dell’arte” performances (sixteenth century–eighteenth century), in the circus art from the end of the eighteenth century and in the silent film era (1895–1927). These three ancient humor genres, which are culture-based, still resist and flourish at the interpersonal exchange. Verbal humor such as jokes is told orally, printed in books or sent by email; graphic humor is transmitted through newspapers, magazines, books, and posters; physical comedy is encountered in popular forms of theater performances or via narrative performance in literature and eventually on film or television. All these modes have entered the New Media, through social networks in which they are generated, shared, and remixed. The book has a dual purpose: (a) to better understand the language of each genre based on the theoretical, historical, and practical aspects, in order to deepen and expand the border of theoretical knowledge in each of the three genres; (b) to create a toolbox that can be used by students from diverse disciplines—such as psychology, sociology, cultural studies, cinema, and theater—lecturers, researchers, and professionals concerned with each of these areas, so as to learn and apply the conclusions in their areas of interest. Combining articles about all three forms in one book is unique, and creates an opportunity to move from one genre to another and try to have a profound understanding of the language of humor and its roots, in an attempt to bringing together potentially competing perspectives within each area, and setting up the possibility of critical dialogue across them. What makes the book special is not only the combination of the three types together but also the wide range of disciplines by which they are examined: sociology, psychology, communication, philosophy, history, social science, linguistics, computer science, literature, theater, education, and culture

2

The Languages of Humor

studies. These disciplines that the authors come from provide a unique research approach to the three genres. The search for the common foundation of humor, or in other words, one allencompassing definition of humor is an old one, which continues to this day. Every discipline has researchers and definitions that suit their specific discipline. Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Hobbes, Descartes, Schopenhauer, Spencer, Bergson, Freud, Koestler, Raskin, and many others have searched for the original foundations of humor creation. However, answers so far are only partial. We do not intend to produce an overall definition for humor, which many scholars have tried and failed to achieve, but instead, we try from three different humorous expressions to get closer to their original foundations. The combination of the three genres, verbal, visual, and physical, in one book, is meant to create an internal dialogue between the findings deriving from the studies dealing with each of the three, enrich the knowledge in every one of them, and to create an inter-area dialogue between the findings, in order to find if possible their common denominator. The first part of the book deals mainly with canned jokes that have a final structure based on verbal humor, which are told orally or are found in books, magazines, scripts, or internet sites and are discerned by content such as “elephant jokes,” “Polish jokes,” “Jewish jokes,” “disaster jokes,” which encompass all aspects of life: family, politics, religion, sexuality, social tensions, and more.1 We do not refer to spontaneous verbal humor, which arise in conversation which have no previous and fixed structure and which sometimes is named “jokes.” Jokes tell the stories of the society that created or uses them. Sometimes they are borrowed from other places and undergo local adaptation. Jokes have many collectors, but have no known author. We cannot say when humans began to tell jokes. It is assumed that they were handed on by word of mouth over many years. The oldestknown collection of joke books is Philogelos (laughter Lover). The collection is written in Greek; it may have been written in the fourth century AD and attributed to Hierocles and Philagrios, about whom little is known. The collection contains 265 jokes categorized into subjects such as teachers and scholars, misers, wise guys and fools, cowards, envious people, fat people, and drunks. Some jokes target ethnic groups situated at three towns: Abdera, Kyme, and Sydon, located at the eastern part of Greece. Current editions of the Philogelos are compiled from various manuscripts. The earliest manuscript date from the tenth century, with the most complete version dating from the eleventh century.2 Printed jokes first appeared after the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century. The first joke anthologies were printed in Italy. Facetiae by Poggio Braccioloini, the first known printed anthology, was published in 1470.3 It is possible that some jokes originated in the classical era. Today many joke anthologies can be found in different languages. Even more can be found on internet websites, many of which are shared on social media and some of which undergo so many changes that one cannot identify their original. Jokes are a means of releasing pent-up stress, a means of expressing an opinion, and no less important, a means of producing laughter and enjoyment. Jokes are a unique genre of humor. The joke constitutes a kind of “humor pill,” with a final structure, ready to be used. All one needs to do is to take it out of the virtual

Introduction  3 “pills’ box” and tell it to someone else or to a group of people. One can transmit it from person to person, from one society to another (with certain adjustments), and it will generally retain its comical essence. In order to laugh at a joke, it must be based on a known cultural reference shared by the joke teller and listener. Jokes challenge the human brain. It forces it to think “outside the box.” Jokes challenge the brain’s cognitive ability in the sense that they constitute a cognitive exercise, much like a mathematical exercise that needs solving. Those who decode a joke will laugh and derive the pleasure accompanying the process. Not everyone exposed to a joke will laugh. Evaluating a joke as funny or not funny, or to what extent, depends on several factors such as: one’s personality traits, one’s culture, and one’s cognitive and intellectual abilities. The joke constitutes a means for social or political criticism. Jokes can be regarded as naïve or tendentious, as Freud stated. Jokes are the result of cultural development. Tendentious jokes convert physical aggression into humorous verbal aggression. A society that uses humor to express criticism is a developed society that knows how to respond nonviolently to social and political distress. In nondemocratic societies, jokes are “weapons” used by the weak citizen against ruling institutions. In these regimes, jokes are viewed as a threat, and therefore creators and tellers are persecuted by the authorities. This is how it was in Germany under Hitler’s regime, in the Soviet Union under Stalin, and the situation today in Iran and in other so-called democratic countries. One can learn about the role of political jokes in democratic societies in the article by Villy Tsakona, “Intertextuality and cultural literacy in contemporary political jokes.” From her article we learn that jokes being directly related to the sociopolitical community where they are created, and reflecting speakers’ perceptions and evaluations of that context, develop strong intertextual links with events, figures, and conditions that are well known in the community. In this context, her study aims at investigating how intertextuality works in contemporary political jokes concerning the current Greek debt crisis. Mary Ann Cassar, in her article “Humor and Liminality: A Case Study of the Maltese ‘Ġaħan’,” contends that jokes are essentially brief narratives with unexpected endings, usually identified by scholars of humor as an incongruity, the happy resolution of which provokes laughter. Through her study of a particular character in Maltese folklore, the much-loved wise fool Gahan, she reaffirms that jokes share many similarities with other forms of laughter provocation such as caricatures and slapstick. She argues that the ambiguous nature of the “incongruous” allows for the joke to be read in multiple ways; certainly, as a children’s tale intended to provoke laughter, but also as sociopolitical commentary, or as a tale of psychoanalytic depth. The joke is an effective cognitive tool for responding to difficult situations and mental trauma, for people searching for emotional balance. One can read about this in Joseph Dorinson’s article, “God, Jokes, Parnusseh & Tsores: Jewish Humor,” which frames Jewish jokes in a historical as well as psychological context. He argues that at different times, jokes and caricatures reflected a people on the margins of society bereft of power. Therefore, many of the earlier jokes served a critical function to preserve order in a disorderly world. Jeffrey Scott Demsky and Liat Steir-Livny, in their article “Holocaust Jokes on American and Israeli Situational Comedies: Signaling Positions of Memory Intimacy and Distance,” describe how the second and third generations of Holocaust survivors deal with their Holocaust trauma using humor as a defense

4

The Languages of Humor

mechanism. Their article develops around the idea that Holocaust sitcom jokes have nuanced social meaning, possessing the sway to reshape remembrances. The reaction to jokes is subjective. It depends on the personality of its teller and of the person who grasps it. The intention of the joke teller and the hearer’s interpretation will determine whether the joke is regarded as humorous or not. It can be considered as humorous by one person, whereas another may see it as meaningless or an aggressive expression devoid of humor. We learn about this in Christie Davies’s article “Jokes and insults: language and aggression,” which describes how jokes can be manipulated to appear either positive or negative in the eyes of the joke teller as well as in the ears of the hearer. He contends that jokes merely play with hostility for entertainment, much as a football match does. However, most jokes, even seemingly innocuous ones, can be rendered hostile by changing their tone, selecting an explosive context, and adding a gloss. This requires a skill with language. You can “tune” a joke to be benign or to be hostile. In contrast to the widespread theory, which originates from Freud’s doctrine, claiming that there are two types of humor, the one naïve and the other tendentious, Davies argues that tendentiousness, in jokes is a myth. Arthur Asa Berger contributes, in an original way, his own theory in his article, “How Jokes Work?,” proposing forty-five techniques of creating humor that encompass all genres of texts that produce mirthful laughter. In addition, he describes how scholars in different disciplines would analyze the same joke. Nataliia Kravchenko and Tetiana Pasternak in their article “The Languages of Humor-Multifacet pragmatics of Russian post-Soviet jokes,” contribute to further understanding of correlations between the popular joke scripts’ opposition and its validating pragmatic tools. In their study they introduce new point of view regarding triggers and intensifiers contributing to popular joke’s contiguity, situational and linguistic ambiguity, “foregrounding,” subjective entropy, and comprehensive intertextuality (considering the latter as contextualization with cultural and social stereogenres and common life situations). Their study based on the corpus of Russian post-Soviet jokes, distinguish three main genres of pragmatic presuppositions for evaluation of the multifacet joke absurdity: ontological, communicative-conventional, and axiological. The second part of the book refers mainly to caricatures. Caricature is a type of drawing, sometime accompanied by verbal text, that describe a person, situation, or object in an exaggerated fashion and in very few details. Aside from being means of entertainment and enjoyment, caricature is meant to pass on an idea or transmit a critical, social or political message. A caricature constitutes a cognitive and intellectual challenge. Those exposed to it must decode its meaning. Caricatures, unlike jokes, are dependent on the professional skills of their illustrators. There are those who see the origins of caricature in ancient times, in places such as Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Images drawn or sculptured grotesquely or from a humorous point of view have been discovered, such as animals undertaking human activities or even a physical mixture of man and beast, which was, among others, the basis for the creation of the image of the Greek mythological satyr. Similar drawings were found on jugs and walls.4 Because caricatures are critical, sometimes grossly, there are those who view them as a remnant of ancient rituals in which a doll represented a tribe’s

Introduction  5 enemy and tribesmen would damage it physically by spearing it or using spells. This was meant to harm the enemy itself.5 In the Middle Ages, and particularly after the invention of the printing press, drawings (not yet caricatures) began to emerge and replace the ancient rituals. The church employed such drawings to mock “heathen” Jews and others despised by it, by depicting their “negative” traits. Labor pains of modern caricatures are usually ascribed to Renaissance artists, including Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, who drew grotesque images that were an antithesis of the classical accepted rules of drawing at that time. They were not drawn to entertain but to explore the structure of human body and as such, unintentionally, Italian Renaissance artists discovered, a yet unnamed, form of drawing.6 At the end of the sixteenth, century, the Italian brothers Agostino and Annibale Caracci began to scribble a new type of pencil drawing with two central features, few details, and a humorous look. Thus, the Caracci brothers broke accepted conventions of drawing. Contents drawn in the new style were from everyday life. A short time later, other artists began to try their hands at this new style. During most of the seventeenth century, caricatures were the legacy of Italian artists. The person who gave this new form a name was Mosini, who called it caricatura. This name is taken from the Italian word caricare, which means exaggerated or loaded. In the eighteenth century the caricature became a legitimate art form and was seen as a means of socially meaningful communication. Despite the fact that caricature started in Italy, its position was established in England. The artist William Hogarth is considered the founder of English caricature. His caricatures presented the English society in a critical way. His drawings dealt with all aspects of life—fashion, theater, daily life, technological advances, and more.7 English caricature became a sought-after commodity. The public could see its flaws in a ridiculous and critical manner. English caricature developed and became more aggressive and critical toward ruling institutions. In the late eighteenth century, caricature became a weapon in the sociopolitical conflict in England and a most widespread form of social satire. This period is known as the “golden age” of caricature and signifies the birth of political caricature. Caricature was consumed by all people from all social statuses. As a result of their relatively low cost, caricatures were widely sought-after. There was mass distribution of caricatures in printed media—printed pages, newspapers, and magazines. Caricature art held a respectable place among other arts.8 In the nineteenth century political caricature was spread all over Europe and especially in France. In 1830 Charles Philipon, a caricaturist himself, founded in France the first humorous weekly, La Caricature. He recruited French caricaturists and painters, including the young and promising artist and sculptor Honoré Daumier, who would be considered the greatest caricaturist of his generation. Caricature became an integral part of nineteenth-century written press. Almost every newspaper published a daily caricature and it continues to our days. In order to be understood by the widest range of readers, caricature employs agreed codes according to which readers can understand the idea. Thus, for example, sea is drawn as wavy lines, a Jew is symbolized by a Star of David, a Frenchman by the Eifel Tower, and an American by the Statue of Liberty.

6

The Languages of Humor

There are two basic types of caricatures: serious caricature and humorous caricature. Serious caricature remains inextricably linked to ancient rituals and has no humor. Using graphic drawing, it represents rivals or enemies in a negative and aggressively rude light, for example as arrows piercing their bodies or rifles aimed at their heads. Humorous caricature is a more advanced and developed means of expression in the sense that it replaced the need for aggressive physical expression with more humorous, sophisticated, and refined criticism. A newspaper’s daily caricature will be forgotten quickly, and a new one dealing with another topic or figure will appear the following day. However, it turns out that caricature has had and continues to have great influence on formulating public opinion and even motivating an audience to take action. In the nineteenth century, anti-Semitic caricatures were published throughout Europe, which reflected and influenced public opinion toward Jews. This was seen in the increase of anti-Semitism, which resulted in physical confrontations and even pogroms. In the twentieth century during the period of the third Reich, caricature was part of the Nazi regime’s propaganda mechanism; Jews were presented as the enemy of mankind who had to be destroyed.9 On September 30, 2005, a series of twelve caricatures about the prophet Mohammed were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The prophet was drawn in a critical manner and in humorous and, to some, humiliating situations. These caricatures were quoted and distributed in many newspapers around the world. As a consequence, at the beginning of 2006, demonstrations and serious riots erupted among Muslims around the world. Hundreds of people were killed and injured. In August 2007, the journalist Anna Karbehusa from the newspaper El Pais reported that Mbutu Mondondo, born in the Belgian Congo and a resident of Belgium, made a claim to the Belgian courts to forbid the sale and publication of the Tintin in Congo comic book from 1931 by Herge Remy. Tintin the journalist is drawn apparently traveling in the Belgian Congo. In some village Tintin’s dog growls at the village chief, “Come on, you lazy lot.” Mbuto Mondondo’s claim was that the book was racist and was representative of the Belgian government’s humiliating attitude toward black Congolese citizens during the colonial period.10 These cases teach us that caricature, in contrast to jokes and slapstick, can influence social and cultural changes that, currently, cannot be predicted. Caricature, in addition to being critical, has an important secondary aim. She unites a virtual community made up of people who do not necessarily know one another, and who are exposed to her in newspapers or social networks. Those same members of the virtual community interpret similarly the message deriving from the caricature. Those community members have common social values expressed in decoding the caricature and by their reaction to it. In other words, on the one hand, caricatures serve the critical function, and on the other the social function of sharing and reinforcing social values. Unlike the jokes, caricatures can also be exploited to achieve other goals, such as propaganda serving a regime and spreading political, social, ideological, and racist ideas. In her article, “Caricature as a Weapon in Class Struggle: Soviet Graphic Satire 1917-1930,” Annie Gérin describes how caricatures were used for propaganda purposes. The overall goal of this text is to demonstrate the centrality of caricatures in early Soviet visual culture, and the complexity of the visual strategies deployed by

Introduction  7 the artists who produced them. Two “Hybrid” articles move between two of the three genres: physical and verbal. Carla Canestrari, in her study “The Interplay Between Visual and Verbal Language in ‘Famous Last Words’ Cartoons,” shed light on the language used in a form of joke which has never been explored before, namely cartoons based on incorrect predictions. The research’s focus is on the popular Italian cartoon series le ultime parole famose [famous last words]. A corpus of ninety-five randomly selected examples was analyzed, in order to ascertain the interplay between the visual and verbal language and thus identify the humorous category to which this form of joke belongs. Dafna Shahaf, Eric Horvitz and Robert Mankoff, in their article “Inside Jokes: Identifying Humorous Cartoon Captions Algorithmically,” deal with a relatively new field in humor research, which is named “computational humor.” Their article, which is based on computer analysis, studies the influence of the language of cartoon captions on the perceived humorousness of these cartoons. Khin-Wee Chen studies the caricatures through a relatively new form of verbal and visual humor that occurs via the internet. His article, “The Internet Political Meme: A Remediation of the Political Cartoon,” demonstrates that the political internet meme is not a displacement of the political cartoon but a shift in the protocol by which they are produced and consumed. The shift includes the easier access amateur cartoonists now have to its production by using online tools. Ayelet Lilti, in her article “Caricature as Desacralization of the Image: The Charlie Hebdo Case,” focuses on the prophet Mohammed cartoons presented in the French magazine Charlie Hebdo. She asks, “What could be so sacred in an image?” and analyzes several caricatures published in Charlie Hebdo that have produced in 2015 violent responses and heated debate. She wants to decode the language of those cartoons and the various interoperations that can be drawn out of them. Despite the requests to publish the Mohammed cartoons in the book, the Charlie Hebdo publisher and the caricaturists refrained to authorize it. Such reaction raises serious questions about freedom of expression. Instead, the article includes links that can help the reader reach the cartoons. The third part of the book deals mainly with slapstick. The origin of the word slapstick is the Commedia dell’arte, a popular Italian theater from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. It refers to two thin slats of wood, which when struck lightly, produced a slapping sound. The tool was called a battacchio in Italian and slapstick in English. The tool enabled actors to hit one another time and again, without hurting anyone. Audiences laughed and enjoyed it greatly. Slapstick acquired a broader meaning referring to physical humor. It was adopted by playwrights such as Shakespeare, Molière and Goldoni. Later it was adopted by clowns in circus and music hall.11 As a result of the huge popularity of this style, it became one of the central motifs of silent film at the beginning of the twentieth century until sound was introduced to films in 1927. Even with the entry of sound films, it was still possible to see slapstick pieces in films like those of the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, and Monty Python. Today, reality slapstick pieces are very popular on the internet social networks. Slapstick has its own unique language. It is expressed physically. Slapstick deals firstly with people themselves, their physical characteristics, and personalities. Like jokes and caricatures, slapstick can take part in social and political criticism, as is widespread in satirical television programs. Slapstick does not require unusual

8

The Languages of Humor

cognitive and intellectual decoding like jokes or caricatures. Slapstick is probably the most loved and perhaps most widespread humorous form of expression. The reason for this might be that physical humor is the first we encounter after birth. Before babies learn how to talk, they know how to smile and laugh, actively encouraged by the parents who do anything to get them to smile or laugh. Humoristic communication between parents, family, close friends, and toddlers takes place mainly through physical humor. Toddlers’ humoristic communication with their surroundings is carried out in the same way. In his article “Slapstick Comedy: Under What Conditions Can Body Movements Be Humorous?,” Paul Bouissac refers to physical humor. He endeavors to probe the conditions that allow some body movements to generate humor. Among others, the chapter discusses the occurrence of spontaneous humorous body movements in everyday life, either by accident or design. Arie Sover, in his article “Slapstick in the American Cinema: From Circus Clowns to the First Cinema Comedians,” shows how expressions of humor, especially physical humor, can pass from one medium—the circus and theater stage—to another medium—film—without losing its comic essence. In his article, he examines the development of the art of slapstick in American comedic cinema and the origins from whence the comedians drew their knowledge and exceptional skills to develop their outstanding gags. About the deep roots of slapstick language, we can learn from Vicky Manteli, who shows how slapstick, which was invented 2,500 years previously in the theater, can transfer to contemporary theater. In her article, “Consequential Slapstick: Staging the Aristophanic Slapstick in Lysistrata,” she examines how Aristophanes’ fifth-century BC slapstick is performed on the modern stage, looking at Greek productions of the plays in the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries. Her intention is to explore how manifold textual signs of slapstick are revived on stage by modern contemporary Greek directors and see what aesthetic interpretations such stage offer. The article by Evangeline E. Nwokah, Vanessa Lopez, and Erin Morrison, “Slapstick Humor in Children’s Popular Literature,” deals with a rarely studied area. Although children’s literature has increasingly included slapstick comedy, there is limited research on slapstick in children’s literature and how it is created in writing rather than live or in film, television, or theater. That’s the reason why this article is included in the slapstick section in order, among other reasons, to see the possible relations between visual slapstick and written slapstick. The authors use an analysis of Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants twelve-novel series to show how verbal descriptions of slapstick and accompanying illustrations support literary humor that appeals to school-age children and, more specifically, boys. They apply Louise Peacock’s distinction between genres of slapstick humor as accidental, random, intentional, and real pain in addition to self-inflicted or other-inflicted. They also identify several other genres of slapstick that include scatological and gross bodily behaviors. One can learn about the importance of slapstick and its penetration to almost all aspects of our lives in the article by Terri Toles Patkin, “Shenanigans on Stage: Cultural Reappropriation of Classical Music through Slapstick,” which points to the fact that slapstick has even penetrated the “holy temple” of classical music. The research further illuminated slapstick and the significant place it holds in humor research. In conclusion, our relationship to humor and our recognition of its ability to affect us is what gives it its importance in both our daily lives and research. Many

Introduction  9 scholars continue to attempt decoding the language of humor, to try and find its additional potential influences that have yet to be identified. One can say that these three genres—verbal, visual, and physical humor—despite the different languages in which they are expressed, have similar functions that meet our needs. The books' articles reflects these functions: the defense mechanism—dealing with difficulties and traumas (see for example articles by Terri Toles Patkin; Joseph Dorinson; Jeffrey Scott Demsky and Liat Steir-Livny). The critical function—the need to express social or political criticism (see for example articles by Christie Davies; Annie Gérin; Khin-Wee Chen). The social function—the need to be part of a community that shares common values (see for example articles by Paul Bouissac; Arie Sover; Joseph Dorinson). The cognitive function—the need to train our brain and ameliorate our creativity (see for example articles by Carla Canestrari; Villy Tsakona; Christie Davies). These functions are accompanied by other values such as releasing tension, better physical and mental health, and greater sense of pleasure. The combination of the three genres in one book, and the wide range of disciplines by which they are examined—sociology, psychology, communication, philosophy, history, social science, linguistics, computer science, literature, theater, education and culture studies—seeks to decipher the internal dialogue between the findings derived from the studies dealing with each one of the three genres so as to enrich knowledge in all three areas. It creates an opportunity not only to decode the language of each type but also to move from one type to another and from one language to another in an attempt to find their common foundation for better understanding the language of humor. Focusing on each genre, one can say that great advances have been made in understanding the nature of verbal humor and, especially, jokes. This can be seen in the book’s articles that deal with researching jokes, whether it is in Mary Ann Cassar emphasizing the incongruity humor theory regarding jokes but also their sociopolitical critique facet, or Arthur Asa Berger’s proposal for forty-five techniques for creating humor. Christie Davies contends, contrary to the perception that the joke has a clear message, that a joke can be manipulated by the teller to such an extent that it sometimes appears positive and sometimes negative. Both possibilities can happen in the ears and perception of the hearer. If we need an approval for Davies’ claim, we can find it in the articles of Joseph Dorinson, Jeffrey Scott Demsky and Liat Steir-Livny, which shows how a negative event such as the Holocaust can be converted into jokes. A new approach by Nataliia Kravchenko and Tetiana Pasternak contribute to a further understanding of correlations between the popular joke scripts’ opposition and its validating pragmatic tools. They distinguish three main genres of pragmatic presuppositions for evaluation of the multifacet joke absurdity: ontological, communicative-conventional, and axiological. From Villy Tsakona’s article one can better understand the strong intertextual links between jokes and political events. Regarding visual humor, the second part of the book, we learn that its main task is to transmit social or political criticism (see Khin-Wee Chen’s article). Despite copious use of caricatures, their language has been less decoded in research than the language of jokes. Nevertheless, based on existing knowledge in humor research, one can say that incongruity theory among others, is also relevant to creating and understanding

10

The Languages of Humor

caricature (see Arthur Asa Berger and Mary Ann Cassar). Two hybrid articles, one of Carla Cansetrari and the other of Dafna Shahaf, Eric Horvitz and Robert Mankoff, move between visual humor and verbal humor, reflecting one of the book’s goals to try and find common ground between the three genres. Carla Canestrari makes another interesting attempt to decode the language of humor, when she analyzes the link between verbal and visual language in a large group of caricatures, in an attempt to identify the humorous category to which this form of joke belongs. Dafna Shahaf, Eric Horvitz and Robert Mankoff investigate whether it is possible to get to objective codes of humor using computers. Their answer is interesting, albeit partial at this stage. The reason for this is given in Christie Davies’s article maintaining that there is no objective humor as such, but that it depends on the people who create and grasp it. From this we learn that perhaps, in the nearest future, when computers constitute a human replacement, it will be possible to complete the computer-dependent research presented here. What can be learned from the studies in this book is that unlike jokes and slapstick, a caricature has the ability to have significant social influence. Jokes can be critical (see Villy Tascona’s article) but they do not make any changes to social behavior. Caricatures, in contrast, it appears, does sometimes. This we learn from Annie Gérin’s article on the use of caricature as propaganda during the Soviet era; and from Ayelet Lilti’s article, we learn about the dramatic influence that publication of the caricatures about the prophet Mohammed in Charlie Hebdo had, and the behavioral consequences it had on parts of the Muslim population. Regarding the language of physical humor, the third part of the book, we learn from Paul Bouissac’s article that even before slapstick became an art form expressed in the circus, theater, or cinema, it appears in our daily lives. In other words, it accompanies us and creates infinite humorous circumstances. A large part of the humor that surrounds us and which makes us laugh is based on slapstick. In contrast to jokes and caricatures, which are acquired genres, requiring cognitive and intellectual efforts, slapstick is part of us and often we are those who create it, whether on purpose or by chance, as well as those who laugh and enjoy it. Despite its unique physical language, there is also a similarity between slapstick and verbal jokes. Jokes can be told repeatedly, and remain funny (on condition we do not tell them to the same person at the same time more than once); slapstick may repeat the same comic action in different places and it makes one laugh over and over. When someone slips on a banana peel, it will always make some of those who see it laugh. When a cream cake hits someone in the face, this too will make many people laugh. This is the reason Arie Sover argues in his article that there is “comic transference” from one medium to another. He introduces examples of how many gags have been copied from vaudeville theater and the circus circle into the comedy of silent movies. Not only that, but complete sections (Entrées) were copied from the circus to the cinema and retained their comic essence. Further reinforcement of this type of comic transference can be found in Vicky Manteli’s article, which maintains that slapstick expressions in Aristophanes’ plays are staged today and still carry out the same work that they did, as if 2,500 years had not passed since they were first produced. We learn about another comic transference from one medium to another from the article of Evangeline E. Nwokah, Vanessa Lopez, and Erin Morrison,

Introduction  11 which shows us how slapstick has also penetrated children’s folk stories. We can learn about slapstick’s unusual penetration from Terri Toles Patkin’s article, in which she examines how slapstick is integrated into classical music. The attempt to deepen the knowledge of humor language will continue, it seems, for many years to come. We placed the three genres: verbal, visual, and physical humor together in one book, not just to expand the knowledge of the language of humor in each of them, but in an attempt to try and reach as far as possible the common origins of the three languages. I am happy we have taken a substantial step in that direction. Professor Arie Sover

Notes 1 See Attardo, Salvatore and Raskin, Victor (1991), “Script Theory Revise(it)ed: Joke Similarity Joke Representation Model.” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 4(3/4): 193–294; Oring, Elliott (2016), Joking Asside, 147–48, Colorado: University Press of Colorado. 2 See Baldwin, Barry (2011) [2001], The Philogelos, or Laughter Lover, New York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter. There is also an online translation of a selection of jokes from the Philogelos by Quinn, T. John, 2001. 45 Jokes from The Laughter Lover. 3 Bowen, Barbara C. (1988) (ed.), One Hundred Renaissance Jokes: An Anthology, Birmingham Alabama; Summa Publications INC. 4 Edward Lucie-Smith (1981), The Art of Caricature, 21–31, New York, NY: Cornell University Press. 5 Edward Lucie-Smith, The Art of Caricature. 6 Feaver, William (1981), Masters of Caricatures: From Hogarth and Gillray to Scarfe and Levine, 22–23, New York, NY: Knopf. 7 Sover, Arie (2009), Humor: The Pathway to Human Laughter [In Hebrew], 214–15, Jerusalem: Carmel. 8 The most popular English journal of caricature was Punch, founded in 1841 and closed in 2002 owing to a drop in readership. 9 Sover, Arie (2009), Humor: The Pathway to Human Laughter [In Hebrew], 221, ­Jerusalem: Carmel. 10 News item taken from the “Ha’aretz” newspaper, August 10, 2007, p. 14. 11 Richards, Jeffrey (2015), The Golden Age of Pantomime: Slapstick, Spectacle and ­Subversion in Victorian England, 35–55; 157–85, London: I. B.Tauris.

Part One

Verbal Humor

1

Jokes and Insults: Language and Aggression Christie Davies

Introduction Jokes and humorous insults are very different both socially and linguistically, even though they are sometimes placed together in anthologies sold to amuse the public, along with wit and anecdotes, two other categories that are intermediate between them. Jokes have no authors and circulate orally and anonymously, often being reworded in the process as a teller improves or at least changes the version he or she has heard. Jokes have a well understood structure, involving an unexpected switch between two divergent scripts by means of a punch line. The teller begins with a straightforward script but then a punch line switches it suddenly to a quite different script (Raskin 1985: 99–100). Jokes are about surprise and incongruity. All that a teller needs to know about a joke in order to reproduce it is the rough gist of the story and the punch line and he or she will creatively reconstruct it each time it is told. Jokes are context-free and as they circulate they change, even though their original inspiration may have come from a context-bound anecdote, witticism, or even insult. Jokes are not in and of themselves bearers of aggression nor are they tendentious; jokes can be intentionally used in an aggressive or hostile way, but this is done by manipulating factors external to the joke. These are tone, context, and comment, and it can also be done by inserting extraneous narrative material in the lead up to the punch line that is not necessary to the joke. The joke may even be used as a gloss on a serious message. Jokes often have a target but the target is a third party and is usually a group or a category such as orthopedic surgeons, blondes, Belgians, lawyers, carabinieri, mothers-in-law, Roman Catholics, or the men of Qasvin (Davies 2004, 2011). Jokes can be a way of playing with aggression in order to produce laughter but they are not a reliable way of expressing it because they are essentially ambiguous. Tendentiousness is a quality not of a joke but of a particular teller and telling for only people can have intentions, and it cannot be inferred from a text. Jokes are not serious nor can they be reduced to serious statements. They break the formal rules of serious discourse. The defining characteristic of a joke is that it is funny or at least is intended to be funny. Insults, by contrast, involve a direct exchange between two known individuals and only need one script. The insulter deliberately insults the insulted. Insults are by their

16

The Languages of Humor

nature aggressive, and serious insults may well lead to serious violence. Humorous insults, the ones that get into the anthologies discussed here, also tend, though in lesser measure, to be aggressive. However, they are not necessarily hostile, since an insult can occur as part of an accepted ritual exchange of insults or in the course of banter between friends (Abrahams 1962). Insults may or may not be funny, though it is the funny ones that are more likely to be remembered, noted down, and survive; hence their prominence in anthologies of insults. However, anthologized insults may have been handed down to posterity for other reasons, such as the speed with which they were delivered, the literary skill they display, or the fame of the protagonists and the importance of the context. Even when a verbal insult is not funny, it can be amusing, for amusing is a term that covers many forms of pleasurable arousal besides humor, some of which, such as triumph, produce laughter. The contrast between jokes and insults can be illustrated with a well-known shaggy dog story: A man went to the circus and sat in the front row. A clown came up close to him and asked loudly: “Are you the back end of an ass?” “Certainly not!” “Are you then the front end of an ass?” “No! No! No!” “Well then, you are no end of an ass.” The crowd roared with laughter. The man felt unbearably humiliated and he spent the next month thinking of an appropriate reply to the impudent clown. He bought another front seat ticket and again went to the circus. Everything happened as before. He stood up ready to demolish the clown, but the clown was too quick for him and he was once again “no end of an ass.” The man went home and brooded and then decided to go to the circus once more, but this time he decided to take his quick-witted brother with him who would be more than a match for the clown. The next evening the two of them sat in the front row tense with excitement. As soon as the clown asked, “Are you the front end of an ass?” the witty brother jumped up and shouted loud enough for everyone in the circus to hear “Fuck off, you ugly bastard!” (told to the author by the economist, Peter Barton, Emmanuel College Cambridge, Lent term 1962).

Shaggy dog stories in general are long repetitive accounts that can last for several minutes and create the expectation in the listener that there will be a punch line at the end that will give rise to mirth and compensate for the length of the story. However, by definition a shaggy dog story always ends in an inconsequential way leaving the listener utterly baffled (Brundvand 1963). The teller has deceived the audience into thinking they are listening to a joke and it feels like one, but of course it is not. There is no transforming punch line and so it is not a joke. In this particular case, the story ended with an utterly



Jokes and Insults: Language and Aggression

17

banal insult when a witty riposte had been expected. The end comes as a surprise but the surprise is a let-down, leading to a groan. Insults are not intrinsically funny and to end a joke with an insult in this way retrospectively nullifies the joke. Yet in another setting crude insults can amuse and they have found a place in numerous anthologies. Here the author has tried to outline what he sees as the essence of what makes a joke and what constitutes an insult and pushed each to its logical conclusion. But one should never fully trust binary categories, nor are our minds (unlike computers) forced to work in a binary way, which is the fallacy that underlies structuralism. There are items that are difficult to classify and seem to have some of the characteristics of a joke and some of an insult. It is possible to detach an insult from its original context so that it becomes free-standing and more like a joke while an anonymous joke can be pinned on a particular individual with the implication that it refers to something he or she really did or said. It then moves from the realm of legendary scripts to that of humorous slander. Likewise insults directed at a group as a piece of wit or invective can be modified so as to turn them into jokes. A skillful teller can place a joke within a carefully worded frame to render it part of a larger insult.

Anthologies of insults, the joy of insults There are many best-selling jokebooks and innumerable internet sites devoted to them. Their purpose is obvious. But there are also very many popular anthologies of insults. We cannot know directly what the appeal of reading collections of insults is, but we can infer a great deal from the titles that these books have been given. Among the best of them, each compiled by one of Britain’s leading gay humorists, are Acid Drops (Williams 1980), which is not a bag of sweeties but a set of tart retorts, and Scorn with Added Vitriol (Parris 1994) for those who like their acid stronger, while for readers who prefer a more basically corrosive humor there is Jon Winokur’s (1992) collection of “caustic quotations.” Ross and Kathryn Petras (1998) offer the world The Nastiest Things Ever Said. The wit of the insults being peddled is often advertised as “wicked” (Enright 2001; Leach 2000). Many collections explicitly offer their readers collections of “put-downs” (Kelly 1998; Price 2005; Rosenblum 1988) involving the direct verbal decking of one individual by another. Some even offer to teach their readers the techniques that will enable them to raise themselves up by putting down someone else (Hayduke 1993; McCann 2006; Safian 1964) and even how to do it in another language (Dear 2003; Epstein 2012; Lovric and Doxiadis Mardas 1998). Julian L’Estrange (2002) calls his comprehensive collection, The Big Book of National Insults, an “Esperanto of Enmity,” while Khushwant Singh (2000) has written A Big Book of Malice. There is no uncertainty about the nature of what is on offer. What is being marketed is overtly aggressive humor deliberately described as vitriolic, caustic, malicious, wicked, and vengeful, with put-downs and enmity guaranteed. It follows that verbal aggression in which triumphant winners give excluded losers a good verbal biffing in public is attractive to many readers in and of itself. In case the reader missed the point the cover of Did I really say that? (2014) shows a speaker on a platform being pelted by a grinning mob with eggs and vegetables and even a boot; his waistcoat is spattered with egg, and a carrot has lodged in his mouth. The compilers of the collections invite us to share in

18

The Languages of Humor

a laughter of scorn, derision, and rejection; their editors’ and publishers’ sales pitch is utterly different from that of those offering jokebooks to potential readers.

Sports insults: The least subtle form The point is best illustrated by looking at particular examples. Sports insults are the best place to start because they are the simplest, the ones where aggression is utterly central. They lack the skilled construction, sheer ingenuity, and subtle wit which lead us to admire as well as laugh at the insults of the intelligent. Indeed, these qualities may distract us away from the insultingness of the insult and in doing so dilute it. In the course of competitive sports matches verbal insults are often exchanged between players. The insults fit the context because sport is essentially about winning and losing, with glory for one side and humiliation for the other. When a match is being played between two sides that is not part of a competition, it is called a “friendly match”; that tells you exactly what other kinds of matches are like. These examples fit into superiority theories of humor in a way that jokes do not. The laughter they evoke is a laughter entirely of mockery and derision and yet they are clearly fascinating enough to have been lovingly cherished and recorded and even collected in anthologies for others to revel in long after the event. Cricket, the world’s most popular and widespread team sport after football, is particularly suited to direct insults between individuals because there are pauses between overs and another pause when a new batsman has just arrived at the wicket; this provides insult time. The batsman and close-in fielders stand in proximity and the bowler is only twenty-two yards (about twenty meters) away from the batsman when he is preparing to bowl. The insults take the form of “sledging”, a form of insult directed at the batsman to try to disturb his concentration and confidence as he prepares to face the next ball that comes whizzing or spinning down the pitch or to put him off his game altogether when he first arrives at the wicket. Sledging is an Australian term derived from the phrase “subtle as a sledge-hammer” (McCann 2006: 6; Portnoi 2010: 76) and so we should not be surprised that sledges are often very bluntly worded indeed. The wider public knows of these exchanges partly from cricketers’ reminiscences and partly from the use of microphones designed to pickup these insulting exchanges from a great distance (McCann 2006: 52, 63). Some sledges display wit and ingenuity but neither of these is necessary. Let us look at some of the cruder ones which are insult in its purest form: In one Test Match while the eye-glass wearing English batsmen Geoffrey Boycott who had just come in to bat was taking guard, the Australian captain, Bobby Simpson, shouted to Garth McKenzie, who was bowling, “Look at this four-eyed fucker. He can’t bat. Knock those fucking glasses off him straight away.” (Milsted 2004: 193; Portnoi 2010: 66) There are many insults of this kind. When the silver haired, bespectacled David Steele, turned out to bat for England against Australia in 1975, he was greeted successively by his antipodean opponents with “Who’s this then? Father Fucking



Jokes and Insults: Language and Aggression

19

Christmas?,” “Who the fuck is this—Groucho Marx?,” and “Steeley, you little shit.” (McCann 2006: 34)

It is notable that these insults along with the names of perpetrators and victims get published so that readers can enjoy them at a distance, both in space and time. What is their attraction for the readers? The appeal of the particular items cited above lies entirely in the verbal and there is no element of the surprise or the clever word play that characterizes most humor, yet they must amuse many people a great deal, for they are found in best-selling anthologies of sports insults. There is a good market for remembered insults. The content of the insults, apart from the obvious references to the game, reflects the culture of the utterers. Thus, Australian cricketing insults often take the form of deriding an opponent’s masculinity as in the following insults delivered by Merv Hughes, a bowler from the Australian state of Victoria: “Does your boyfriend know you are here?” (McCann 2006: 23). “I’ll bowl you a fucking piano, you Pommie poofter. Let’s see if you can play that” (Milsted 2004: 194; McCann 2006: 24). “You’re a faggot, a cock-sucker, a dirty little prick” (McCann 2006: 25).

In Australia insults of this kind are not limited to cricket but take place in Parliament. In the House of Representatives in 1975 Dr. R.T. Gun (Labour, A.L.P.) addressed Mr. J. W. Bourchier (Liberal) as follows: “Why don’t you shut up, you great poofter?” Whereupon Mr. Bourchier replied: “Come round here you little Wop and I will fix you up” (Wannan 1995: 288).

Australian culture is for historical reasons (Davies 1990: 263–70) aggressively masculine, as indeed is that of New Zealand. Perhaps for this reason publishers from these two antipodean countries have brought out collections (Anonymous 1997; Plowman 2003; Romanos 1994; Wannan 1995) of vivid macho insults of entirely local origin characterized by colloquialisms as an affirmation of a brash national identity. In particular, Australian men have a rich local vocabulary of insulting terms for gay men, such as pillow biters, fudge packers, and vegemite drillers. (Vegemite is a viscous, dark-brown spread made from yeast extract that Australians smear on bread to make sandwiches.) Insulting remarks about and put-downs directed against women are so common and so socially acceptable in Australia that a group of indignant Australian women have compiled a large collection of them, The Ernies Book (Burgmann and Andrews 2007), to show how terrible Australian men are. Significantly, Allen and Unwin, the publisher of The Ernies Book, has classified the work as “humor.” It will have two quite different amused audiences, those who laugh because they are shocked and see the book as shaming the macho Aussies quoted in the text and those who love and revel in such insults.

20

The Languages of Humor Women who claim they “love to watch sports” must be treated as spies until they demonstrate knowledge of the game and the ability to drink as much as the other sports-watchers. (“Mal the Bloke Column” in Daily Telegraph, quoted in Burgmann and Andrews 2007: 140) As most female mammals die when they are no longer fertile, human females seem to be outliving their usefulness by thirty or forty years. (Jamie Faulkner, Sydney Morning Herald quoted in Burgmann and Andrews 2007: 62)

All these insults began life as simple assertions of masculine superiority to make their Australian male readers laugh. The female editors of the collection have packed them all together to make them seem ludicrous. Finally, male readers from outside that lucky country laugh because the insults enable them to feel superior to the men of Australia. Or perhaps they are envious of these alpha doubles plus males, elite soldiers as well as sportsmen.

Insulting football songs and chants The structure of football insults is different because they are often provided by the crowd and typically they are sung or chanted in mockery of the supporters of the opposing team. Sometimes they even mention a particular star player’s weakness, such as George Best’s alcoholism. In the case of songs, the insults have to be fitted to a tune that the fans already know, possibly a pop song, a children’s song or a hymn. Would you like another Stella, Georgie Best? Would you like another Stella? Cos your face is turning yella Would you like another Stella, Georgie Best? [Bremner 2004: 133].

(Sung to the tune of “She’ll be Coming round the Mountain when she Comes” by Manchester City fans about the best player of their rival team Manchester United, George Best, a very hard drinking Ulsterman with liver trouble. Stella Artois is a strong beer.) You are a weegie. A smelly weegie. You’re only happy on giro day. Your mum’s out stealing. Your dad’s a dealer. Please don’t take my hubcaps away. (Sung to the tune of You are my Sunshine) (Bremner 2004: 94)

A weegie is a slang term for a Glaswegian, used in songs by fans of teams from other Scottish towns, such as Dundee, when playing against one of the Glasgow teams.



Jokes and Insults: Language and Aggression

21

Essentially the same song is sung in England about “scousers,” the slang term for a Liverpudlian, again labeling the citizens of Liverpool as members of the underclass. Giro day is the day when unemployment benefits are paid out by giro. Both Glasgow and Liverpool were once great Atlantic facing ports which have gone into decline to become rust belt by the sea. The song is a social class put-down, comparable to the song “The Wheels on Your House go round and Round,” which is a way of calling the other team’s fans trailer park trash. It is adapted from the children’s song “The Wheels on the Bus go Round and Round.” There are also many jokes about the Liverpool underclass: Man walks into a shop in Liverpool: Man: Can I have a pair of tights for my wife? Shop assistant: Certainly Sir, what size head are you? (In oral circulation)

But the joke is a very different phenomenon from the chants. It is not told as a direct put-down between groups but is available to anyone who knows the script and to those who have no interest in banal local rivalries. The humor of the joke lies in its sheer indirectness for the listener has to pause and reflect. The criminality of Liverpool is merely hinted at in a punch line which switches unexpectedly from being a story about family shopping to one about holding up a bank. Liverpool’s great rival as a football club is Manchester United. Each has experienced a past tragedy which is still commemorated. On February 6, 1958, twenty-three people associated with the Mancunian club, including several Manchester United players, died when a plane bringing them back from a match against Red Star, Belgrade, crashed at an airport in Munich. After that Liverpool fans took to spreading their arms out to imitate the shape of an airplane and made plane noises whenever Liverpool played against United. They chanted or sang: An M, a U, an N. An I, a C, an H There was an air disaster in 1958! They went to Red Star Belgrade and crashed the fucking plane And when they play in Europe, I hope they crash again! (It’s all a bit Pony and Trap, 2012)

Then in 1989 due to incompetent crowd control by the Yorkshire police ninety-six Liverpool supporters were crushed to death at the Hillsborough football stadium in Sheffield. Now the Manchester United fans chanted “Ninety-six, not enough! ninetysix not enough!” and sang: Who’s that choking on their vomit? Who’s that turning fucking blue? It’s a scouser and his mates Crushed behind the Hillsborough gates And they won’t be singing Munich anymore. (It’s all a bit Pony and Trap 2012)

22

The Languages of Humor

It is by no means the only time sick taunts and insults have been used in songs and chants by soccer fans or indeed employed as deliberately offensive graffiti. After the disaster at the Heysel stadium in May 1985 when thuggish Liverpool fans attacked the supporters of the Italian club Juventus resulting in thirty-nine deaths, a supporter of a rival Italian team wrote “Grazie (thank you) Liverpool” on a wall in Brescia in Italy (Davies 1990: 189). Each time these are chanted or sung one particular set of individuals is insulting in the strongest possible way the members of another such group who are present in the same ground. It is an utterly different phenomenon from the anonymous invention and telling of disaster jokes which will be discussed later. That people are fascinated by insults and relish them undermines psychoanalytic theses about humor. There is no concealment of the verbal aggression, no indirectness. They do not need to be unpacked. What you hear is what you get. Aggressive impulses are not repressed but consciously restrained so that they do not turn physical. An irritated batsman does not clout the sledger with his bat. A Glasgow football fan who takes a bread knife to a match lies outside the conventions. You can always choose to ignore an insult, unlike a blow with a cricket bat or a breadknife up the arse, which lead to tangible injuries. Those reveling in insulting humor are not repressed individuals but freethinking extravorts who enjoy aggressive humor far more than those whose aggressive impulses are repressed (Gollob and Levine 1973: 233–34) and also relish insults. It is pointless and unnecessary to invoke some sort of unconscious mind or to measure the expenditure of psychic energy in joules. The insults occur within a social frame where the restraints of daily life on verbal abuse do not apply and are made in the context of games whose players seek to win at all costs, not just to “play the game,” but to triumph over an opponent. Winning is the only thing. The laughing readers of the anthologies of sports insults know this.

Direct insults on stage Often insults are to be found in the exchanges between individuals in plays on the stage that are just as direct as sports insults, differing only in being more imaginative and having a wider vocabulary and use of imagery and metaphor. Let us consider some examples taken from a comprehensive collection of Shakespeare’s insults compiled by Hill and Öttchen (1995): Lysander to Hermia: “Get you gone, you dwarf. You minimus of hindering knotgrass made. You bead, you acorn” (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene 2 lines 328–320). Thersites to Patroclus (soon after accusing Patroclus of being Achilles’ catamite): “Thou idle immaterial skein of sleeve silk, thou green sarsenet flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal’s purse, thou? Ah, how the poor world is pestered with such water-flies, diminutives of nature!” (Troilus and Cressida, Act V, Scene 1, lines 29–33).



Jokes and Insults: Language and Aggression

23

Prince Henry to Poins: “What a disgrace is it to me to remember thy name or to know thy face tomorrow” (King Henry IV, Part 2, Act II, Scene 2, lines 12–13). Kent to Oswald: “You cowardly rascal, nature disclaims in thee. A tailor made thee” (King Lear, Act II, Scene 2, line 55).

These insults are very blunt but are seen at a double distance. Even the groundlings of the Globe, the plebeian audience watching these plays in Shakespeare’s own time knew that they were merely watching fictitious characters speaking for effect. Hill and Öttchen (1995: 81, 136, 255) have gathered these and most of Shakespeare’s other insults together to form a modern anthology. Here the insults are highly concentrated because the rest of the text is missing but against that because the acting and the context are absent their full force is lost. Yet it remains clear exactly what these insults are, namely skillful, amusing invective but lacking any internal structure.

Sophisticated insults Those who are concerned with public affairs will in general demand a higher degree of sophistication from an insult than do “the flannelled fool at the wicket and the muddied oaf at the goals” (Kipling 1902). What changes is that other kinds of laughter are added to the merely scornful variety, so that we are now laughing in many different ways at one and the same time. We can see this in the best of the witty put-downs of politicians, lawyers, and clergymen that have been preserved for the enjoyment of posterity, often long after the details of the events that provoked them have faded from memory. The original circumstances have to be added as a footnote to the quoted insult to bring back the full force of the original put-down. In 1909 David Lloyd George, the British chancellor of the exchequer, introduced a budget in which he proposed to impose a new tax on rises in the value of land, which he called “unearned increment” because the recipient had done nothing to produce it. Lloyd George needed the money to pay for his proposed creation of Britain’s new welfare state. While putting forward his ideas in Parliament, he was interrupted by a member of the opposition, W. Joynson-Hicks, who demanded that the chancellor define what he meant by “unearned increment.” Lloyd George replied with alacrity: “On the spur of the moment I can think of no better example of an unearned increment than the hyphen in the honourable gentleman’s name” (Rogers 2012). Everyone laughed heartily at this direct personal insult for they all knew that the man who had been christened plain William Hicks had married an heiress, Grace Joynson, a rise in his fortunes marked by linking her name to his own by means of a hyphen. Lloyd George’s witty insult has many of the properties of a joke. Reverend Sydney Smith (1771–1845) to Thomas Babington Macaulay, a garrulous nonstop talker: “You know, when I am gone, you will be sorry that you never heard me speak” (McPhee 1982: 50).

24

The Languages of Humor

With insults of this quality it is no longer as important for the person insulted to be present to hear it. When the French president, the handsome Félix Faure, Félix le bel, Félix Oeil-Bleu, died suddenly on the February 16, 1899, his political enemy Georges Clémençeau quipped: “Qui se croyait César et qui mourait Pompée” (Lemonier and Dupouy 2003: 151) or in another version “Il a voulu vivre César et il est mort Pompée.” Faure had died from the stressful excitement induced by his being sucked off by his mistress, Marguerite Stein. Hence Clémençeau’s jibe “he who thought himself Caesar has died as Pompey,—a pun on—while being pumped.” All of these are clearly insults but their aggressiveness is not the main reason why they have been remembered. They have been recalled more than a century later because they are clever, pithy, and apposite. A political insult that lacks these qualities is soon forgotten. It must be emphasized that we are very distant from these famous put-downs. We were not there. We are reading them a century or more later. Wit lasts but aggression fades. We can illustrate the difference between the two classes of humor by examining the way a New Zealander has adapted a witty apocryphal anecdote to turn it into an aggressive insult. Shaw: I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend— if you have one. Churchill: Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second—if there is one. (O’Toole 2012)

The original is a succinct exchange between not just Shaw but any witty playwright, sometimes it is given as Noel Coward, and any master of riposte. It is an anecdote that has many of the qualities of a joke as is clear when you try to tell it. The New Zealand version is more direct: Shaw sent Churchill a card inviting him to the first night of his new play. “Bring a friend if you have one,” he quipped. Churchill wrote back forthwith, “You and your friend can go fuck yourself.” (Anonymous 1997)

With the witty insults, we have moved closer to the jokes end of the humorous spectrum than was the case with the truly crass insults of the sporting world. Nonetheless these more sophisticated insults which when uttered had a known victim present to receive them still fit into the philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ theory of humor and laughter in a way that jokes do not. It is necessary to read Hobbes with care. The key passage in his work reads: Men laugh at the infirmities of others by comparison of which their own abilities are set off and illustrated. .  .  . When a jest is broken upon ourselves, or friends of whose dishonour we participate, we never laugh thereat. . . . It is no wonder therefore, that men take it heinously to be laughed at or derided, that is, triumphed over. Laughter without offence must be at absurdities and infirmities abstracted from persons and where all the company may laugh together. (Hobbes 1999 [1650]: 54 see also Hobbes 1887[1651]: 34. Italics added)



Jokes and Insults: Language and Aggression

25

Hobbes is clearly writing about and objecting to the kind of laughter derived from delivering insulting put-downs in company and has exempted “absurdities and infirmities abstracted from persons,” that is to say jokes, from his censure. All the company may indeed laugh together at a joke because in a joke no particular individuals have been singled out to be the butt of the others’ merriment. Hobbes was drawing on his own experience. John Aubrey, Hobbes’ biographer, wrote that after the restoration of the monarchy in Britain in 1660 King Charles II made Hobbes welcome at his court because of the bald old philosopher’s wit and smart repartee. Aubrey (1949 [1680]: 153) wrote that the wits at court were wont to bait him but he feared none of them, and would make his part good. The King would call him the bear: “Here comes the bear to be baited!” ‘Repartees: He was marvellous happy and ready in his in his replies, and that without rancour (except provoked)—but now I speak of readiness in replies as to wit and drollery. (Italics in original. Spelling has been modernized)

Aubrey was writing about a time in Hobbes’s life a decade after he had published his comments on the nature of humor and laughter, but it is reasonable to assume that Hobbes had witnessed individuals being treated cavalierly in jest much earlier than this. The humor within male groups at the time seems to have taken the form of a game in which there were the put-downers and the put-down, a verbal war of all against all that constitutes a metaphor for what the authoritarian Hobbes feared most in political life. To hear of Hobbes being baited like a bear, a metaphor derived from one of the cruelest sports of the time in which dogs were set against a chained bear, and of his being at times provoked to rancor by the insulting raillery of the others tells us the exact nature of his experience of a particular kind of humor, the kind against which he was moved to protest in his writings. Much of the real world humor of our own times has taken the form of laughing at the stupidity and failures of other particular, often named, individuals, as in the award of Ig Nobel prizes for trivial or even pointless research (Abrahams 2002), the Golden Raspberry awards for the worst films, the Darwin awards for those whose foolishness results in their being removed from the gene pool by death (Northcutt 2001), collections of own goals, gaffes (Dampier and Walton 2009), stupid utterances (Ward 2003), and verbal clumsiness (Robins 2002) by public figures or reprints of devastating book or theater reviews (Parsons 1981). Given the degree to which writers and actors invest their very identities in their work the victims may well feel that in vitriolic reviews like these they have been aggressively subjected to an insulting put-down (Leach 2000: 125–75; Parsons 1981). As the leading actor Sir John Gielgud said of the wittily abusive theater reviews published by the critic Kenneth Tynan, “It’s wonderful if it isn’t you (Dundy 2001: 127).” There are many risible accounts of foolish ventures that ended in disaster (Pile 2012) and even humorous collections about losers in general (Wicks 1979). All of these support the thesis of Charles R. Gruner (2000) that the readers and spectators are enjoying a laugh of superiority at another’s downfall, laughing at those who lost the game. One is reminded of an extreme case, the song sung by British soldiers fighting in the First World War: “The bells of hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling for you but not for me.”

26

The Languages of Humor

However, superiority is not the same thing as aggression. All complex societies are stratified so that some occupy superior and others inferior positions. It lies at the very core of the social order. Sometimes it can involve direct coercion but the superiority is regarded as legitimate in many stable societies. Those who enjoy superiority humor are simply ordinary members of their society. Those rare people who object to superiority humor tend to be alienated intellectuals who dislike their own society but since their business in life is words they tend to direct their bile against matters verbal including verbal humor. Their “critical” approach to humor should be seen as what it is, ideology hidden in sophistry. They cannot affect the major social forces in society so they direct their aggression, an aggression far more intense that anything humor has to offer, against trivial uses of language to which they object. The key questions to be asked—one which are very difficult to answer—are “How much?” and “How aggressive?” To enter the spirit of the metaphor used by the compilers of insults, what is the nature of the acid used and what is its dilution? Is it vitriol or is it the weak and unstable carbonic acid? Is it real vitriol or vitriol diluted to an almost homeopathic extent by humor and by distance in space, time, and anonymity? If the latter is the case why is it of any interest? Why have writers like Koestler (1949: 56) been so obsessed with hunting for it?

Why are jokes different? It would be easy enough to treat jokes simply as lying at the opposite ultra-mild end of the spectrum of verbal aggression from the blunt humorous insults with which we began, with insults characterized by indirectness and sophistication or lacking a direct victim lying in-between. Such an arrangement makes sense but what is most striking about jokes is that they do not fit this pattern. No joke is in and of itself aggressive, hostile, or tendentious. Those who try to infer any of these qualities from the written text of a joke or from a set of jokes, as Freud (1960 [1905]) and others have sought to do, are profoundly mistaken. The study of the written texts of jokes and particularly of sets of jokes is central to humor research but serious scholars are well aware of what jokes on their own cannot tell us. Jokes are oral, pithy, have no authors, and are contextfree. They are numerous, varied, and multiply fast. For all these reasons, they are ideal subjects from which to build and test hypotheses about humor. But if you want to assess feeling or intention the texts of jokes on their own are an insufficient basis from which to infer them; aggression or intention can only be found in a particular telling and are a property not of the joke but of the teller and it should be stressed that jokes are an oral genre. The teller alone can have an intention, though it may well be utterly anodyne or impossible to discern. Jokes are not reducible to any kind of equivalent serious statement. Jokes are quite different from bona fide discourse or such serious forms of deceptive speech as lying or acting (Raskin 1985: 55). You can use a joke to make a serious point or to convey a serious feeling but this is not a property of the joke but a choice made by the teller. The same joke can be put to many uses. The most usual intention of a joke teller is simply to get the biggest possible laugh and to achieve this it helps to placate the audience. All this is well known, and yet



Jokes and Insults: Language and Aggression

27

people will persist in taking texts in isolation and directly inferring tendentiousness from them. An example can be found in the interesting research of Seth Kravitz (1977: 297), who was convinced that the ethnic jokes told by British comedians about Irish stupidity in the 1970s were intrinsically hostile and was puzzled as to why this did not come across when the jokes were told on stage. He concluded that the comedians avoided the problem by rotating the targets of the jokes that they were telling, so that there were no long strings of jokes about the Irish or indeed any other group. Rather, the Irish jokes would have been interspersed with jokes about mothers-in-law, the upper classes, doctors, Scotsmen, vicars, and of course many jokes whose target was almost impossible to specify. Yet the conclusion we should draw from what he observed is exactly the opposite. If the comedian had spent the entire evening telling jokes about stupid Irishmen, we would indeed suspect the teller of being hostile because it would be a very, very odd thing to do and the audience would find it monotonous. Comedians are in the business of making people laugh and not of pressing a particular point of view about a single group. In any particular telling hostility or aggressiveness, which are by no means the same thing, or their absence speaker’s tone and in his or her choice of detailed wording which will, of course, be shaped by the context in which the joke is told. The importance of context is best illustrated by means of examples. A good place to begin is in the work of Freud who devised the concept of a tendentiousness rooted in the unconscious mind and applied it in a misleading way, as we can see from his fondness for jokes about Jews not taking baths. Freud (1960 [1905]: 78) provides a classic example in his Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious. Two Jews meet outside a bath house. “How are things?” “Another year.”

Where this Jewish joke and the many other Jewish jokes about bathlessness cited by Freud (1960 [1905] 49, 53, 72), see also Oring (1997), are problematic is that, when seen in written form on the page, they are indistinguishable from what Freud (1960 [1905]: 111) calls “the brutal comic story told about Jews by outsiders,” which he claims are utterly different from Jewish jokes. Whether these bathlessness jokes are seen as aggressive or hostile depends entirely on external factors, such as who is telling them and to whom and the tone in which they are told. It is very easy to imagine Freud’s bathhouse jokes being part of the humorous repertoire of a supporter of Vienna’s virulently anti-Semitic Christian Social Party and its leader Karl Lueger, against whom the normally apolitical Freud made a point of voting. They would have been told in a scornful way and even as a gloss on a speech urging that the metaphorically as well as physically dirty Jews be thrown out of Vienna. By contrast if told by Freud to his intimate Jewish friends, the bathhouse jokes would lack these unpleasant qualities. Yet even then, if the Jews sharing his joke were all cultivated Viennese professional men the joke could be told in a negative way that deliberately distanced the members of the group from the uncouth recent Jewish immigrants, petty traders from Galicia, a

28

The Languages of Humor

desperately poor Polish province on the periphery of the Austrian empire. They were at this time moving to Vienna in large numbers. This point has been well made by Elliott Oring (1997), who discusses Freud and his bathhouse jokes in the context of Freud’s own Galician ancestry. It is sometimes said smugly and simplistically that if jokes about a group are told by members of that group then they are not aggressive but that they are aggressive if outsiders tell them (see Rasporich 2015: 217). Yet it is quite possible for joke tellers to feel admiration for a group to which they do not belong and even to treat it as a reference group to be emulated. Yet even there, there was complexity. While Freud was firm in his Jewish identity and would forcibly rebuff any gentile who tried to insult him (Jones 1964: 317–18), he liked, as we have seen, jokes about Jews who found baths aversive. For Freud his reference group was the cultured German class who awarded him the Goethe prize in 1930. He liked jokes about the uncultured Ostjuden because they were a group to which he did not belong. Discerning context and membership is very tricky indeed and it must be emphasized that any joke can be used in many diverse and indeed opposed ways. We do not live in a world of simple “Us” and “Them” identities. A very striking case of a set of jokes being used in a hostile way by the members of a group quite other than the ones who invented them is the mother-in-law joke, a joke told by men about the wife’s mother throughout Europe and the English-speaking world. The jokes are inevitably invented by men, and they are a mainstay of the repertoire of traditional male comedians. They are a product of the kinship order of a society in which the family for practical reasons tends to live in proximity to the wife’s mother and her relations. They are not about any particular mother-in-law but are about mothers-in-law in general and they do not express hostility to a particular person but reflect a point of strain in the social order. They are a traditional, almost ritual, form of joking (Davies 2012a). However, when they are used by women they take on a personal and hostile aspect. Jokes invented by men about the wife’s mother are now adapted to apply to the husband’s mother since the term mother-in-law in many languages covers both. There are many collections of mother-in-law jokes provided by men in print and on the internet in which many of the jokes are clearly about the wife’s mother but there are none explicitly about the husband’s mother; in the author’s experience this is true of those in oral circulation, and it is a very strong indication that they have not been invented by women. However, given that the term mother-in-law is ambiguous and covers both sets of women there are many jokes about the wife’s mother that can easily be switched by women to apply to their spouse’s mother. These jokes now appear on websites exclusively set up and subscribed to by angry daughters-in-law who use the jokes as a gloss on outbursts of posted hatred about their own particular mother-inlaw. The sites have titles such as Mother-in-law Hell; Mother-in-law or Monster-in-law; Mother-in-law Vent; I Hate My Mother-in-law; The Mothers-in-law We Love To Hate. The word “hate” in the title is not an exaggeration and the personal stories as distinct from the appropriated jokes that have been posted by these women amply bear this out. Harmless neutral jokes invented by men have been pressed into service to advance a rhetoric of loathing by one woman against another. There are no similar websites run by men. Men rarely deploy mother-in-law jokes in this way.



Jokes and Insults: Language and Aggression

29

What this demonstrates is the difference between the invention of jokes, which is a neutral, formal activity and the use to which jokes may be put which is very diverse. Aggression and intention, if they are present, are a property of the user, not of the joke. In this case the users are discontented daughters-in-law who deploy the men’s jokes not against mothers-in-law in general but as a means of insulting a particular individual, their own husband’s mother. A joke that the ignorant have judged to be evidence of misogyny, which it is not, has become a weapon in a fight between two particular females. The same point may be made in the opposite direction in regard to disaster jokes which have nothing in common with the mocking songs and chants of football fans that we saw earlier that made use of past disasters to insult their opponents, notably in relation to Munich and Hillsborough. The jokes about Hillsborough on the internet are utterly different Me & the missus like to do it in the Hillsborough position. That’s where I do her from behind, pressed against a fence till she becomes breathless. (Sickipedia n.d.) Although it was twenty-eight years ago, I’ll never forget how upset I was after watching the Hillsborough coverage on the evening news. I’d missed The Sweeny. (Sickipedia n.d.)

These jokes unlike the football chants are not aimed at anyone. They are not being used for any purpose other than to induce laughter. Disaster jokes have been shown quite definitively to be merely a product of the incongruity of television coverage of disasters (Oring 1992: 29–40). Such jokes were only called into existence in the early 1960s after television became a dominant media (Davies 2012b). This accounts for the absence of jokes about the Manchester United plane crash at Munich, even though it was incorporated in the football fans’ insults. The jokes are utterly different from the insults since they necessarily contain other scripts, respectively one about sex and one about viewing preferences which create a laughter of incongruity. The factor of distance and disengagement in disaster jokes as opposed to insults is particularly evident in the German and Spanish jokes told after the death of Princess Diana when the car in which she was a passenger hit in turn a concrete pillar and a stone wall in a Paris underpass. Was ist der Unterschied zwischen Diana und Honecker? Honecker hat die Mauer überlebt. (Diana-Witze die 3) What is the difference between Diana and Honecker? Honecker survived the wall.

Honecker was the last East German dictator of the regime responsible for the Berlin wall. He was never properly brought to justice after the wall came down and died of natural causes, in his or someone else’s bed in Chile. To whom should we pray for the soul of Diana? Nuestra Señora del Pilar (Our Lady of the Pillar). (In oral circulation in Spain)

30

The Languages of Humor

The Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to the apostle St James the Great on top of a pillar accompanied by angels while he was at prayer during his mission to Spain to convert the pagans. She told him that one day the faith of the Spaniards would be as strong and solid as a pillar. Neither joke makes much sense unless you know and appreciate the local context. The German and Spanish joke tellers had no connection with the controversies in Britain about Diana’s death, no reason deliberately to attack or insult her or her supporters. They were not using the joke in any way. They had no axe to grind. The worldwide media coverage of the crash had provided them with an opportunity to construct some very funny formal jokes in the by then well-established disaster-joke tradition and they seized the opportunity. Their jokes are utterly context-free and yet they do not differ in structure or funniness from those invented in Britain. An oral joke works best in inducing laughter for purely formal reasons, such as the skillful distraction of the listener to give extra surprise to a punch line. In its pure form, a joke contains nothing extraneous. Raskin (1985: 103) has summed this up in four maxims, “Give exactly as much information as is necessary for the joke.” “Say only what is compatible with the world of the joke.” “Say only what is relevant to the joke.” “Tell the joke efficiently.” However, a teller with a purpose, while accepting these methods, can work round them and provide a longer narrative which adds either aggressive or emollient items. Jokes are not fixed texts to be memorized. All the teller needs to know is the punch line and a rough idea of the story that precedes it. He or she then shapes the story for a particular telling, which will depend, along with other considerations, on the teller’s relationship with the audience and the teller’s intentions. One way of inferring whether or not a joke teller is being aggressive or even hostile is to check whether his or her wording differs markedly from what is the basic form of the joke in general circulation. Has something been changed or added that is not necessary to the working of the joke but which looks either like a serious comment that has been sneaked in or else an extraneous jab line directed at a particular person or group that does not truly belong in the joke? Let us consider two examples. The first is taken from a particular telling of a Jewish joke heard by the author in 1992 in an Edinburgh synagogue. It was told by an invited Protestant speaker of Scottish ancestry who was known to be very familiar with both Jewish and Scottish jokes. Mr. Cohen had as his neighbour a strongly committed Catholic who was consistently kind and helpful to him. Cohen felt he ought to buy him an appropriate present, so he went down to the local Catholic suppository, where they sold religious items. Going inside Cohen was amazed by what he saw. All around him hundreds of idols and graven images were stacked on shelves. There were the bones of long dead saints, miracle working relics set in silver and pieces of cloth that had been touched to the holy bones and picked up a hint of their magic, all were on sale. There were statues of martyrs, holograms of the Virgin Mary and framed pictures of a dozen popes, their fingers held up to bless. Cohen had no idea what to buy and he explained his situation to the man at the sales desk. “How about a solid silver crucifix?”



Jokes and Insults: Language and Aggression

31

the salesman said, taking one out of a drawer and giving it to Cohen. “It is only two thousand pounds.” “That’s pricey,” said Cohen. “How much would it be without the little acrobat?”

The core of this joke including the punch line is the well-known generic Jewish joke given below but a lot of aggressive material has been added by the particular narrator. An elderly Jewish man walks into a jewellery store to buy his wife a present. “How much is this?” he asks the clerk pointing to a sterling silver crucifix. “That’s six hundred dollars,” sir, replies the clerk. “Nice,” says the man. And without the acrobat?” (Novak and Waldoks 1981: 219)

The Scottish Protestant teller has inserted a good deal of new and irrelevant material insulting to Catholics. He has for instance turned the term “Catholic repository,” a place where holy religious images are sold, into “Catholic suppository,” a conical shaped capsule that delivers a medical drug when shoved up someone’s rectum. More centrally he has employed the phrase “idols and graven images” using distinctively biblical language; worshiping them is specifically forbidden in the Ten Commandments, which are revered by Jews and Christians alike. It is for this reason that there are no statues or images in a synagogue or in strictly Protestant churches, such as those run by Baptists or Methodists. Catholic churches are full of images and statues, but the priests strongly deny that these are graven images, and regard any argument to the contrary as an insulting suggestion made by Protestants in the heat of religious controversy. The reference to miracle-working relics is likewise a Protestant condemnation of a Catholic practice. The Protestant joke teller has hijacked the original Jewish joke and made it a vehicle for irrelevant negative references to Catholic beliefs and practices, though the references are ones that any Jewish audience would have appreciated. Indeed, the Edinburgh Jews fully understood these inserted put-downs and chuckled deeply. My second example comes from the ethnic jokebooks about stupid Poles compiled by the successful humor entrepreneur Larry Wilde. Wilde is a talented comedian whose many jokebooks became best-sellers, selling in their millions, particularly his many collections of jokes about stupid Poles. He did not, indeed could not, have invented the hundreds of Polish jokes that he published. By his own admission he had collected them both from oral sources and from earlier jokebooks and then reworded them for sale as he had every right to do. There is no copyright in a joke. In doing so he sometimes distorted the English spoken by the Polish Americans in the jokes in a brutal way that does not exist anywhere else. It is not to be found in any of the Polish jokes in oral circulation at the time when he compiled his books (Clements 1973) or in other published collections (such as (Novak 1977), (Zewbskewiecz, Kuligowski, and Krulka 1965)). The language in the jokes below is unique to Wilde. “What you doin’?” asked Ladislas. “I write letter to myself,” answered Sigismund. “What you tell yourself?” “How do I know?” snapped Sigismund. “I no get letter yet.” (Wilde, 1973: 120)

32

The Languages of Humor Dabrowski and Bijack met on the street. “Hey,” said Dabrowski, “why I no hear from you? How come you no call me on telephone?” “But you don’t have a telephone!” said Bijack. “I know,” said Dabrowski, “but you do.” (Wilde 1977: 152)

There is no basis for fastening this kind of broken English on Polish Americans. The first generation of Poles in America would have spoken faulty English, but there is no record of them speaking in the way used in the jokes, nor is the structure of the Polish language such as to make it likely that they would ever have done so. American vaudeville acts have always used distortions of English to produce stage Scotsmen, Irishmen, Italians, Frenchmen, Germans, or Jews, but these do have some link with the way people of those nationalities speak. There have never been vaudeville acts involving Poles. By Wilde’s time Polish Americans would all have spoken standard blue-collar American English. Stanley Kowalski, the Polish lead character in Tennessee Williams’ A Street Car named Desire (2000), speaks ordinary workingclass American. There were no set piece jokes about Polish stupidity in America until around 1960. The jokes were invented long after the great wave of Polish immigrants who had arrived before the First World War had ended, and the Poles had fully integrated into American society and its speech patterns. The jokes about them are social classbased jokes that are easily switched to other groups of stolid blue-collar workers or small farmers, such as the Portuguese in California or Italians in New Jersey, and by extension to the rude mechanicals of Texas A and M. What Wilde seems to have done is to take a form of speech connected with a social class well below the respectable and industrious blue-collar Poles, namely the illiterate American underclass, and artificially place it in the mouths of Polish Americans. No other tellers of Polish jokes have ever used Wilde’s strange formulation. The author has read file after file of these oral jokes written down by collectors and held in folklore archives, notably that in the University of California, Berkeley, and has never ever found a Wildean version. Jokes do not have authors, but Wilde is clearly the author of the inserted fragments of broken English that add a degree of brutality quite unnecessary to the working of the jokes; indeed, they make them difficult to tell because there the teller has no established pattern to fall back on. Even after interviewing Wilde, an expansive and likeable man, I have no sure idea as to whether or not he himself held hostile feelings toward the Poles, but I think it is reasonable to assume that he came from a community in which hostility to Poles was taken for granted and existed long before the Polish joke cycle started. Perhaps the most important factor in determining aggression or hostility in the telling of a joke is tone. The tone makes the music. Yet tone is the hardest aspect to pin down and describe. As joke tellers we all know how to change tone and we are also conscious of how tricky it is to fine tune it. As listeners we are dependent on an uncertain intuition and the experience feels very different in a small group, as opposed to something told on stage or in the media. Likewise, the feel of a joke is different in an audio or video recording from that which is experienced by a live audience. Tone is beyond language and beyond the scope of this article.



Jokes and Insults: Language and Aggression

33

Conclusion Jokes and humorous insults are both oral forms of communication, but they are often transmitted in written form, notably in printed or online anthologies. We experience the written version at a distance. Jokes are constructs designed to produce laughter. They do not in and of themselves convey aggression, but they can be used in an aggressive way by a particular teller who chooses the context in which these essentially free-floating items are told, the tone used to tell them and the frame in which they are placed. The joke itself is a neutral “verbal machine” whose formal properties are well known, but for any particular telling the teller can add material that renders a joke aggressive or emollient according to his or her choice. Jokes may well contain material that imitates insult and plays with aggression but any extra humor this induces arises from the breaking of conventions about the use of language in the same way as references to sex or scatology or even puns do. Jokes lack seriousness; they are fictions, tricks, play, performance. Humorous insults by contrast are modified seriousness or diluted aggression. In the pure case, there is a known person on the receiving end, someone who is put down and scorned. Context is once again crucial, for spoken humorous insults tend to occur within a permitted framework. When they are recorded, the reader or viewer is nonetheless still laughing at someone else’s downfall, albeit at a distance, and humorous insults exemplify the superiority theory of humor in a way that jokes do not. However, the very factors of surprise, incongruity, and cleverness that are absolutely central to jokes also characterize the more memorable insults; this greatly reduces their aggressive aspect and distracts attention away from it. Some humorous insults are mainly insult but in others the humor predominates. In some the scorn is vitriolic and in others, homeopathic.

References Abrahams, R. D. (1962), “Playing the dozens,” Journal of American Folklore, 75 (297): 209–20. Abrahams, M. (2002), Ignobel Prizes, London: BCA. Anonymous. (1997), The Ultimate Book of New Zealand Insults, Auckland, New Zealand: Hodder Moa Beckett. Aubrey, J. ([1680] 1949), Brief Lives, London: Secker and Warburg. Bremner, J. (2004), Shit Ground No Fans, London: Bantam. Brundvand, J. H. (1963), “A Classification for Shaggy Dog Stories,” Journal of American Folklore, 76 (299): 42–68. Burgmann, M., and Y. Andrews (2007), The Ernies Books, 1000 Terrible Things, Australian Men Have Said about Women, Crow’s Nest, NSW, Australia: Allen and Unwin. Clements, W. M. (1973), The Types of the Polish Joke, Folklore Forum, Bibliographic and Special Series 3. Dampier, P., and A. Walton (2009), Gaffers, the Wit and Wisdom of Football Managers, Brighton, UK: Book Guild.

34

The Languages of Humor

Davies, C. (1990), Ethnic Humor around the World, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Davies, C. (2004), The Mirth of Nations, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Davies, C. (2011), Jokes and Targets, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Davies, C. (2012a), “The English Mother-in-Law Joke and its Missing Relatives,” Israeli Journal of Humor: An International Journal, 1(2): 12–39. Davies, C. (2012b), “Jokes about Disasters: A Response to Tales Told on Television full of Hype and Fury,” in C. Hoffstadt and S. Höltgen (eds.), Sick Humor, 11–40, Bochum und Freiburg: Projekt Verlag. Dear, L. (2003), The Art of Offence around the World: A Phrasebook of Insults for the Irate Tourist, Boston: Lagoon. Diana-Witze die 3. http://www.remi.de/RH/Files/diana_3.htm (accessed May 31, 2017). Did I Really Say That? A Calamitous Collection of Gaffes (2014), Workington UK: Museum Selection. Dundy, E. (2001), Life Itself! London: Virago. Enright, D. (2001), The Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill, London: Michael O’Mara. Epstein, L. (2012), If You Can’t Say Anything Nice Say it in Yiddish, The Book of Yiddish Insults and Curses, London: Robson. Freud, S. ([1905] 1960), Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, London: Hogarth. Gollob, H. F., and J. Levine (1967), “Distraction as a Factor in the Enjoyment of Aggressive Humour,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5 (3): 386–72. Green, J. (2000), The Big Book of Being Rude, London: Cassell. Gruner, C. R. (2000), The Game of Humor, A Comprehensive Theory of Why We Laugh, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Hayduke, G. (1993), Make’em Pay, Ultimate Revenge Techniques from the Master Trickster, New York: Carol. Hill, W. F., and C. J. Öttchen (1995), Shakespeare’s Insults, London: Ebury. Hobbes, T. ([1651] 1887), Leviathan, London: George Routledge. Hobbes, T. ([1650] 1999), Human Nature and de Corpore Politico, Oxford: Oxford University Press. It’s all a Bit Pony and Trap (2012), http://itsallabitponyandtrap.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/ alan-davies-liverpool-death-threats.html (accessed May 28, 2017). Jones, E. (1964), The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Kelly, R. (1998), The Little Book of Great Put-Downs, Bath: Parragon. Kipling, R. (1902), “The Islanders,” in The Definitive Edition of Rudyard Kipling’s Verse, London: Hodder and Stoughton. Koestler, A. (1949), Insight and Outlook, London: Macmillan. Kravitz, S. (1977), “London Jokes and Ethnic Stereotypes,” Western Folklore, 36 (4): 275–301. L’Estrange, J. (2002), The Big Book of National Insults, London: Cassell. Leach, M. (2000), The Ultimate Insult, London: Michael O’Mara. Lemonier, M., and A. Dupouy (2003), Histoire(s) du Paris Libertin, Paris: La Musardine. Lovric, M., and N. Doxiadis Mardas (1998), How to Insult, Abuse and Insinuate in Classical Latin, London: Ebury. McPhee, N. (1982), The Complete Book of Insults, London: Guild/André Deutsch. Milsted, D. (2004), The Big Book of Sports Insults, London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson. Northcutt, W. (2001), The Darwin Awards, 180 Bizarre True Stories of How Dumb Humans Have Met their Maker, London: Orion. Oring, E. (1992), Jokes and Their Relations, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.



Jokes and Insults: Language and Aggression

35

Oring, E. (1997), The Jokes of Sigmund Freud, a Study in Humor and Jewish Identity, Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson. O’Toole, G. (2012), Here are Two Tickets for the Opening of My Play. Bring a Friend—If You Have One, http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/03/25/two-tickets-shaw/ (accessed May 28, 2017). Parris, M. (1994), Scorn with Added Vitriol, London: Hamish Hamilton. Parsons, N. (1981), Dipped in Vitriol, London: Pan. Petras, R., and K. Ross (1998), The Nastiest Things Ever Said, London: Michael O’Mara. Pile, S. (2012), The Not Terrible Good Book of Heroic Failures, London: Faber and Faber. Plowman, S. (2003), Ultimate Aussie Insults & Jokes, Rowville, Victoria, Australia: Summit. Portnoi, G. (2010), Why Are You So Fat, London: Simon and Schuster. Price, S. D. (2005), 1001 Insults, Put-Downs and Come-Backs, Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press. Raskin, V. (1985), Semantic Mechanisms of Humor, Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Rasporich, B. J. (2015), Made-in-Canada, Humor, Amsterdam: John Benjamin. Robins, S. (2002), The Ruling Asses, London, BCA. Rogers, R. (2012), Order! Order! A Parliamentary Miscellany, London: Robson. Romanos, J. (1994), I’m Absolutely Buggered, Auckland, New Zealand: Moa Beckett. Rosenbloom, J. (1988), Perfect Put-Downs and Instant Insults, New York: Sterling. Safian, L. A. (1964), 2000 Insults for All Occasions, New York: Pocket. Sickipedia (n.d.), http://www.sickipedia.net/joke/ua7oarqfg9to3 (accessed May 31, 2017). Singh, K. (2000), Khushwant Singh’s Big Book of Malice, New Delhi: Penguin. Wannan, B. (1995), Great Aussie Insults, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia: Penguin. Ward, L. (2003), Foolish Words, London: Robson. Wicks, B. (1979), Ben Wicks’ Book of Losers, Toronto: McClennan and Stewart. Wilde, L. (1973), The Official Polish Joke Book, New York: Pinnacle. Wilde, L. (1977), The Last Official Polish Joke Book, Los Angeles: Pinnacle. Williams, K. (1980), Acid Drops, London: J. M. Dent. Williams, T. (2000), A Street Car Named Desire and otherPlays, London, Penguin. Winokur, J. (1992), Friendly Advice, More Caustic Quotations, New York: Plume. Zewbskewiecz, E. D., J. Kuligowski, and J. Krulka (1965), It’s Fun to be a Polack, Glendale, CA: Collectors, 1965.

2

How Jokes Work? Seven Humor Theorists in Search of a Joke: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on a Humorous Text Arthur Asa Berger

Introduction We have come to realize that all disciplines have limitations. That explains why there is so much interest now in interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, pan disciplinary, or transdisciplinary approaches to topics. When we deal with the mysteries of creative texts, the limitations of single disciplinary approaches become quite apparent: Do we focus on the work of art (the text), the artist, the audience, the society in which the text is found, or the medium which is used to distribute it? Or, do we make our focus on some combination of these matters? I would like to suggest the advantages of a multidisciplinary approach to the arts and culture by taking a simple text, a joke, and showing how scholars from different disciplines might analyze it. According to social scientists, the average person laughs fifteen times in a typical day. How they found this figure is beyond me, but let’s assume it is correct. We also know that most of the time we laugh at things that happen in our everyday lives— mistakes people make, comic insults, witty comments, misunderstandings, revelations of ignorance or stupidity and that kind of thing, rather than jokes. Why people laugh has interested some of our greatest minds through history, and thinkers such as Aristotle, Kant, Hobbes, Darwin, Schopenhauer, Bergson, Freud, and countless others, have offered a variety of different answers to the question, and there is no general agreement on how to answer it. Let me say something now about some of the more important theories of humor, under which the ideas of a number of different theorists of humor can be subsumed.

Why we laugh? The superiority theory as represented by Aristotle and Hobbes, suggest that humor involves lowly types, people made ridiculous, or, as Hobbes put it in his classic



How Jokes Work?

37

statement, a “sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves; by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly” (Piddington 1963, 160). Aristotle wrote that comedy (and I tie humor and comedy together) is based on: An imitation of men who are worse than average; worse, however, not as regards any sort of fault, but only as regards one particular kind, the Ridiculous, which is a species of the Ugly. The Ridiculous may be defined as a mistake or deformity not productive of pain or harm to others; the mask, for instance, that excites laughter, is something ugly and distorted without causing pain. (McKeon 1941: 1459)

We laugh because we feel superior to those who we laugh at or the characters in comedic texts that elicit laughter. The most widely held theory of humor involves the notion of incongruity, which argues that there is a difference between what we expect and what we get in jokes, cartoons, plays, and other humorous works. Schopenhauer wrote: The cause of laughter in every case is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real objects which have been thought through it in some relation, and laughter itself is just the expression of this incongruity. (Piddington 1963: 171–72)

There are, I should add, countless variations on incongruity theory spelled out by scholars analyzing humor. But they all come down to the recognition that there is a surprise that was not expected in some text that generates laughter. The psychoanalytic theory of humor deals with the psyche and, as explained by Freud in his book Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, involves the unconscious, masked aggression and various intrapsychic economies that humor provides. As he wrote in his Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious: And here at last we can understand what it is that jokes achieve in the service of their purpose. They make possible the satisfaction of an instinct (whether lustful or hostile) in the face of an obstacle that stands in its way. (1963: 101)

I used to belong to an internet discussion group on humor and one day a well-known scholar wrote, “I defy anyone to show me an example of humor that is not based on aggression!” There is, I would suggest, an aggressive nature to that statement. Lastly, there are what might be called cognitive and semiotic theories, by people like Bateson Gregory, which deal with paradox and the way the mind processes information and finds meaning in texts. William F. Fry, Jr., a psychiatrist, argues in his book Sweet Madness: A Study of Humor that incongruity is not enough to deal with something as complicated as humor. He then explains his theory of how jokes work: During the unfolding of humor, one is suddenly confronted by an explicitimplicitly reversal when the punch line is delivered. The reversal helps distinguish

38

The Languages of Humor humor from play, dream, etc. Sudden reversals such as characterize the punch line moment in humor are disruptive and foreign to play, etc. . . . But the reversal also has the unique effect of forcing upon the humor participants an internal redefining of reality. Inescapably, the punch line combines communication and metacommunication. (1968: 153)

So, jokes are, from Fry’s perspective, very complicated and require us to comprehend both the communication and the metacommunication generated by the punch line. The problem with these theories is that while they tell us why people laugh, they cannot explain what it is that makes people laugh at a joke or a line in a play or something in any humorous text other than in very general terms and at a very high level of abstraction. In my writings on humor I’ve focused on what it is that makes us laugh, not why we laugh, in part because there doesn’t seem to be a good answer to that question that is useful in understanding how texts generate humor and laughter. I turn now to the object of my inquiry: how jokes work and the mechanisms in them that generate mirthful laughter.

How to be funny without telling jokes for people who tell jokes without being funny Jokes (or what some scholars call “canned jokes”), technically speaking, can be defined as

1. short narratives, 2. meant to amuse and generate mirthful laughter, 3. that end with a punch line. We can diagram jokes as follows. Each letter stands for a part of a typical joke which functions as the punch line. A→B→C→D ↓ E (mirthful laughter)

Marta Dynel offers a broader description of the joke. In her book, Humorous GardenPaths: A Pragmatic-Cognitive Study, she writes (2009: 10): To summarize, it is the safest to posit that, in terms of structuring, a canonical joke usually consists of a variously formulated setup (a story and/or a dialogue) and a punch line. The setup can be differently structured, thereby yielding various joke forms. The most crucial is the distinction between the main body of a joke and its punch line.

The setup would be A, B, and C in the above diagram. The punch line is D, which is meant to generate mirthful laughter.



How Jokes Work?

39

In the case of shaggy dog stories, the setups or narratives can be endlessly long, but, as a rule jokes are relatively short texts. Many people think the way to be funny, and gain the social benefits derived from being seen as amusing, is to tell jokes. I think this is a bad idea, for three reasons.

1. The joke may not be good. If you tell a joke that isn’t funny, you’ll mildly antagonize people who expect to be entertained and amused.

2. You may not tell jokes well. Even if you have a good joke, if you don’t tell it well, people won’t be amused.

3. Your listener(s) may have already heard the joke. This forces people to pretend to

be amused and fake their laughter, which can be quite unpleasant, or to interrupt and tell you they’ve already heard it, or to interrupt you and give the punch line, which you will find unpleasant. It’s best to ask people if they’ve heard the joke you are about to tell.

I make a distinction between a “canned” joke and conversational humor, which may have witty remarks, puns, and other kinds of humor in the conversation. Conversation humor differs from jokes, which have a specific structure and always have a punch line. A Spanish linguistics professor, Francisco Yus, discusses this difference in his book Humour and Relevance (2016: 322), citing the work of Salvatore Attardo: Attardo et al. (2011:225), differentiate conversational humor from narrative canned jokes. The latter are introduced by negotiating sequences such as Do you know the one about . . .? whereas the former is embedded into the very fabric of the conversation.

My analysis of jokes or what some scholars call “canned jokes” deals with jokes and not conversational humor, though my techniques of humor can be used to analyze conversational humor as well as jokes. Two questions suggest themselves now. First, how can you be funny without telling jokes? And second, what makes a joke funny? That is, how do jokes work? My answer to these questions is that we should use the techniques of humor found in jokes and other comic texts to create our own humor, based on our personalities, our comedic tendencies and sensibilities, and that sort of thing. I discuss the second question— what makes us laugh—below.

What makes us laugh: Forty-five ways to make people laugh A number of years ago I did a large content analysis project in which I looked for the comedic techniques found in humorous texts of all kinds—jokes, dramatic comedies,

40

The Languages of Humor

funny short stories, cartoons, novels and anything else I could find that was humorous. What I came up with were forty-five techniques that I believe inform all humorous works. These are, I argue, the building blocks of all humor. And I can show them at work in jokes, which, it turns out, are often rather complex texts that utilize a number of the forty-five techniques to generate laughter. I should point out that I make a distinction between why people laugh and what makes people laugh. They are different matters. Nobody knows why we laugh, though over the millennia, as I pointed out earlier, philosophers, psychologists, sages, theorists, or one kind or another have tried to answer this question. There are endless theories on why people laugh, but no general agreement on the matter, though I would say that incongruity theories tend to be dominant among humor scholars. I leave the “Why” theories to others. What I have done, instead, is to focus on what makes people laugh and this led me to discover some forty-five distinctive techniques of humor. They are listed below in two charts. One chart lists them according to whether the technique is based on identity, language, logic, or visual matters. I discovered these categories after I had found my forty-five techniques. I recognized that they could be fit into a classification system with four categories. The second chart enumerates the techniques and lists them alphabetically. Most people can understand what each of these techniques means. I should point out that in a number of cases, the reverse of a technique can be used—for example, exaggeration and its opposite understatement, or insult humor and its opposite victim humor. What I will do now is “tell” a joke and then analyze it from the perspective of a number of disciplines. The title of my joke is: “The Minister, The Priest, The Rabbi, and the Minister’s Wife” A minister returns unexpectedly early to his house and finds the strong smell of cigar smoke and his wife naked in bed. He looks out the window and sees a priest smoking a big cigar walking out of the door of his apartment house. In a jealous rage he pulls the refrigerator to the window and throws it on the priest, who is walking underneath it, killing him instantly. Then, smitten by remorse he jumps out the window and kills himself. The next instant, the minister, the priest, and a rabbi appear before an angel at the Pearly Gates. “What happened?” the angel asks the priest. “I was walking out of this house, after visiting a sick member of my congregation, and a refrigerator fell on me,” said the priest. “And you?” asks the angel to the minister. “I threw the refrigerator on the priest and then felt so bad I killed myself.” “And you?” asked the angel to the rabbi. “You’ve got me,” says the rabbi. “I was minding my own business, smoking a cigar in a refrigerator . . .”

The punch line, “I was minding my own business, smoking a cigar in a refrigerator” is meant to elicit mirthful laughter in those who hear the joke or read it. Let’s consider, now, how scholars from some different disciplines would interpret this joke. These analyses will all be brief and show what humor scholars with different disciplinary perspectives deal with when they analyze a joke or any text.



How Jokes Work?

41

The rhetorician For our purposes, the rhetorician will focus on the techniques used to generate the humor in this text. As I explained earlier, a number of years ago I made a content analysis of many different kinds of humorous texts and elicited from them forty-five different techniques which, I argue, are the engines or mechanisms that generate mirthful laughter from jokes and other humorous texts. My list of 45 techniques can be seen as rhetorical in nature. I dealt with these techniques in my books An Anatomy of Humor, Blind Men and Elephants and The Art of Comedy Writing. The last of these books deals with dramatic comedies from Roman times to the present. I list the techniques below. Table 2.1  Techniques of humor according to category see (Berger, 1995: 54–55) Language

Logic

Identity

Action

Allusion Bombast Definition Exaggeration Facetiousness Insults Infantilism Irony Misunderstanding Over literalness Puns/Wordplay Repartee Ridicule Sarcasm

Absurdity Accident Analogy Catalogue Coincidence Comparison Disappointment Ignorance Mistakes Repetition Reversal Rigidity Theme and Var. Satire

Before/After Burlesque Caricature Eccentricity Embarrassment Exposure Grotesque Imitation Impersonation Mimicry Parody Scale Stereotype Unmasking

Chase Slapstick Speed

Table 2.2  Techniques of humor numbered and in alphabetical order see (Berger, 1995: 54–55)   1. Absurdity   2. Accident   3. Allusion   4. Analogy   5. Before/After   6. Bombast   7. Burlesque   8. Caricature   9. Catalogue 10. Chase Scene 11. Coincidence 12. Comparison 13. Definition 14. Disappointment 15. Eccentricity

16. Embarrassment 17. Exaggeration 18. Exposure 19. Facetiousness 20. Grotesque 21. Ignorance 22. Imitation 23. Impersonation 24. Infantilism 25. Insults 26. Irony 27. Literalness 28. Mimicry 29. Mistakes 30. Misunderstanding

31. Parody 32. Puns 33. Repartee 34. Repetition 35. Reversal 36. Ridicule 37. Rigidity 38. Sarcasm 39. Satire 40. Scale, Size 41. Slapstick 42. Speed 43. Stereotypes 44. Theme/Variation 45. Unmasking

The Languages of Humor

42

My book, The Art of Comedy Writing, which discusses these techniques and uses them to analyze comedies by Plautus, William Shakespeare, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Eugene Ionesco was reviewed by a rhetorician and humor scholar as follows: For the work that I am presently doing involving humor in British, American, and Irish literature, Arthur Asa Berger has provided a very insightful and useful methodology for analyzing and creating humorous discourse in his The Art of Comedy Writing. For me, his model is as powerful as such other discourse models as “Script Model Grammar,” by Raskin and others, “Conversational Implicatures,” by Grice and others, “Conversational Analysis,” by Tannen and others, “Genre and Archetype Theory,” by Frye, White and others, “Signification Theory,” by Henry Lewis Gates and others, “Dialogic Theory,” by Bakhtin and others, various ethnographic and linguistic models by Schiffrin and others, or indeed any discourse model I have studied and/or used. Although Berger’s model is flawed in many ways, and although it is presented in a glib fashion, it is nevertheless a powerful and rigorous model. Its power comes from its detail (45 techniques or devices) and its rigor comes from how this detail is spelled out (15 “Language” devices, 14 “Logic” devices, 13 “Identity” devices, and 3 “Action” devices. (Nilsen 1999: 96–97)

Nilsen’s point is that my forty-five techniques, the object of friendly ridicule by some humor scholars, makes an important contribution to the study of humor. We often find a number of different techniques at work in a joke, though there is usually one technique that is dominant. The most important technique in the joke about the minister, priest, and rabbi, I would suggest, is one I call “Mistakes.” The minister sees the priest smoking a cigar and assumes he has been sleeping with his wife. There is also “Facetiousness.” In this joke we find that the rabbi has a rather latitudinarian perspective on his sexual liaison with the minister’s wife. In addition, there is the “repetition,” in which we are introduced to the minister, then the priest, and then the rabbi. The main techniques found in this joke are 29: mistakes  cigar smoke was from rabbi in refrigerator, not priest 19: facetiousness  I was minding my own business sitting in the refrigerator 33: exposure  minister’s wife is unfaithful 34: repetition  the minister, the priest, the rabbi and the angel

What we find, then, is that there are at least four different techniques operating in this joke to generate humor. One might be able to find other techniques at work in this joke, as well. I should add the I reserve “absurdity” for texts like those found in the Theater of the Absurd such as Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano.

Semiotic analysis One of the important techniques semioticians use when they deal with narrative texts is to consider their paradigmatic structure—the set of oppositions found in them (some would say read into them) that give them meaning. The other approach, which focuses on the syntagmatic or linear structure in texts, is based on the work of Vladimir Propp,



How Jokes Work?

43

and makes use of his “functions” to analyze any narrative text. As Alan Dundes writes in his “Introduction to the Second Edition” of Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale: Following Lévi-Strauss (1964: 312) this linear sequential structural analysis we might term “syntagmatic” structural analysis, borrowing from the notion of syntax in the study of language (c.f. Greimas 1966a: 404). The other type of structural analysis in folklore seeks to describe the pattern (usually based on an a priori binary principle of opposition) which allegedly underlies the folkloric text. (Propp 1968: xi)

Another theorist whose ideas are useful is Ferdinand de Saussure, one of the founding fathers of semiotics. Concepts have meaning, Saussure argued, due to their relationships with other concepts; nothing has meaning in itself. And the most important relationship between concepts is that of opposition. Thus, a paradigmatic analysis of this joke would yield the following set of oppositions: Normal Marital fidelity The minister Anger

Deviant Marital infidelity The rabbi Facetiousness

Listeners to the joke don’t necessarily bring this set of oppositions to mind, but they must somehow recognize them if the joke is to make any sense and the punch line is to be effective.

The communication theorist In this analysis I deal with Jakobson’s Roman model, which involves a sender, a receiver, a contact (or medium), a code, and a message—in this case, a joke. His model is found below. Context Message Sender-----------------------------------------------------------------Receiver Contact (Medium) Code

The Jakobson Model of Communication Jakobson offered his model in an essay titled “Linguistics and Poetics.” Language must be investigated in all the variety of its functions. . . . An outline of these functions demands a concise survey of the constitutive factors in any speech event, in any act of verbal communication. The ADDRESSER sends a MESSAGE to the ADDRESSEE. To be operative, the message requires a CONTEXT . . . seizable

44

The Languages of Humor by the addressee, and either verbal or capable of being verbalized; a CODE fully, or at least partially common to the addresser and addressee (or in other words to the encoder and decoder of the message); and finally, a CONTACT, a physical channel and psychological connection between the addresser and addressee, enabling both of them to enter and stay in communication. (Jakobson in Lodge 1988: 34–35)

According to some communications theorists, a message has information to the extent that it has some kind of a surprise. This means that all jokes, since they have punch lines (that are surprises), contain information. In this joke, the information conveyed by the punch line is that the minister’s wife was unfaithful and was having sexual relations with a rabbi. A joke, from Jakobson’s perspective, can be seen as a message (the narrative) sent by a sender to an addressee (or a number of them) using a code (language) and a contact, usually speech. This particular message, to be a joke, must end with a punch line. We must also consider the matter of avoiding aberrant decoding, a situation in which a person does not interpret a message the way the sender wants the message to be interpreted. For a joke to work, the receiver or addressee must understand the message and have the same assumptions and basic knowledge that the sender has. Thus, when the angel asks “What happened?” all of the characters—the minister, the priest and the rabbi—must understand the question and interpret it correctly.

The psychological and psychoanalytic theorist From the psychological and psychoanalytic perspective, it is the sexual relations between the minister’s wife and the rabbi that are of paramount importance. The heroes (or victims) of this little story are the minister’s wife, the minister, a priest, and a rabbi. The impulsivity of the minister leads to the death of three people: the priest, who is crushed beneath the refrigerator, the minister, who feels guilty about killing the priest and jumps out the window and kills himself, and the rabbi, who was “innocently” sitting in the refrigerator smoking a cigar. We now know that humor of all kinds has intrinsic therapeutic value, which may explain why so many people feel the need to experience humor on a daily basis. Freud’s book on humor, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, in addition to offering a psychoanalytic approach to humor, has many wonderful Jewish jokes in it. In recent years, in addition to the tradition priest, minister, and rabbi, many jokes that deal with religious figures now include imams. All of these jokes have a way of normalizing these religious figures and making them less imposing and less threatening. That is one of the functions of humor and it dates back to the Middle Ages, as we find in the writings of Bakhtin. At the unconscious level, we may take a modest degree of pleasure in the story about the rabbi having sexual relations with a woman.

The sociological analyst We might ask “What are the functions of this joke for the teller and the listener?” Many sociologists use functional analysis to make sense of human behavior. Functionalists



How Jokes Work?

45

are concerned about whether some behavior maintains an institution in which it is found (is functional), causes problems for the institution in which it is found (is dysfunctional), or plays no role in the institution (nonfunctional). The functions are recognized (manifest functions) or not recognized (latent functions). Let me suggest some functions related to humor. Telling a joke has a number of functions: doing so helps build a sense of togetherness and helps integrate the joke teller and the listeners into a group (those listening to the joke). The manifest or overt function of telling the joke is to amuse others, to be looked upon favorably as someone who has a sense of humor, who is amusing and entertaining. The latent function may be to help listeners deal with unconscious sexual anxieties and with worries about the dangers involved in having sexual relations with partners with whom we shouldn’t have sex. The joke also shows human fallibility at many different levels and helps release us from the burdens of a very strict morality. Laughter is a means toward liberation.

The philosopher of humor Philosophers have generally concerned themselves with the nature of humor in general, its ontological status, and that kind of thing. Henri Bergson argued that humor involves “the mechanical encrusted on the living” and suggested that this manifest itself in many ways, one of which was through comic types. As he explained, “Any arrangement of acts and events is comic which gives us, in a single combination, the illusion of life and the distinct impression of a mechanical arrangement.” By this he meant people who are fixated, rigid, inflexible, such as misers, misanthropes, and the likes. Wherever you have a type, he wrote, you have humor. The minister in this joke represent a comic type; a person with an overly strong sense of morality who is willing to kill someone who has violated his moral beliefs. The rabbi is also a comic type—a person with no sense of responsibility, as reflected in his facetious answer to the angel. There is an element of irony to Bergson’s ideas. For him, comedy is full of types who in their single-mindedness are rendered humorous. But Bergson’s theory is also singleminded, since for him everything comic ends up involving “the mechanical encrusted on the living.” One problem with philosophical approaches to humor is that they are abstract and general and cannot be applied very well to texts. They don’t deal with the specific mechanisms in humorous texts that generate humor.

The political scientist The political scientist Wildavsky Aaron has suggested, in a number of essays and books, that there are four political cultures found in democratic societies. These political cultures are formed due to the number of the rules and prescriptions groups place on their members (few or many) and the strength or weakness of the boundaries that exist in groups (weak or strong). The chart below shows these relationships. He called these four political cultures “Hierarchical Elitists” (sometimes just “Elitists”), “Egalitarians,” “Competitive Individualists” (sometimes just “Individualists”), and “Fatalists.”

The Languages of Humor

46 Political culture

Group boundaries

Number and kinds of rules

Hierarchical elitist Egalitarian Individualist Fatalist

Strong Strong Weak Weak

Numerous Few Few Many

We end up with four political cultures. Mary Douglas, a British social-anthropologist who developed this kind of analysis, called the four groups “lifestyles.” People sometimes change political cultures and are not locked into a given group for life, though fatalists generally find it difficult to escape from their position. I argue, pushing things to extremes perhaps, that a given joke, based on the values it supports or attacks, should appeal primarily to one of these political cultures of lifestyles (or people moving toward a given political culture), since it reinforces their beliefs. Conversely, it should not appeal to the other three lifestyles since it attacks their values and generates cognitive dissonance. In this context, the joke would be seen as essentially an egalitarian one, since it presents marital infidelity in a relatively benign or comedic manner. Group boundaries for egalitarians may be strong but there are few rules to hamper the egalitarian’s behavior. The joke, we might say, “normalizes” infidelity, and, by doing so, appeals to egalitarian values, which stress the things that people have in common rather than those that divide them—one of which is being susceptible to romantic intrigues. An elitist joke would have made the clergy objects of ridicule and suggested that infidelity is a grave matter. A fatalist joke would have suggested that the wife and rabbi being caught was a matter of bad luck. And a competitive individualist joke might involve jokes about seeing who could be more unfaithful in a marriage. We must also remember that humor can be used to control people (especially in small groups) or to resist control. The joke might be seen as a means of resisting the power of the elites and the moral strictures dominant in a society. As social-anthropologist Mary Douglas points out in her chapter “Jokes” in her book Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology (1975a.): a joke is a play upon form. It brings into relation disparate elements in such a way that one accepted pattern is challenged by the appearance of another which in some way was hidden in the first. I confess that I find Freud’s definition of the joke highly satisfactory. The joke is an image of the relaxation of conscious control in favor of the subconscious. In the rest of this chapter I shall be assuming that any recognizable joke falls into this joke pattern which needs two elements, the juxtaposition of a control against that which is controlled, this juxtaposition being such that the latter triumphs. The joke merely affords opportunity for realizing that an accepted pattern has no necessity. Its excitement lies in the suggestion that any particular ordering of experience may be arbitrary and subjective. It is frivolous in that it produces no real alternative, only an exhilarating sense of freedom from form in general. Jokes, for Douglas, can be seen as being subversive and attacking, in various ways, the given order. The jokes can be made about governments, politicians, institutions, individuals, and so on. The “freedom from form” Douglas writes about can also be interpreted as implicitly suggesting freedom from a given political order. And humor, in general, and jokes in particular, may have much more impact on the political order



How Jokes Work?

47

than Douglas thinks they have. Jokes may not “produce” a real alternative, but in attacking a political order, they may be quite powerful and have an impact.

A feminist perspective Finally, let me offer a feminist perspective on this joke. It assumes a phallocentric world—one in which normalcy involves men wanting to have sex with as many women as possible, even if doing so means a married woman will be unfaithful to her husband and a married man unfaithful to his wife. Remember that the punch line is based on a question the angel asks the clergymen, “What happened?” The minister’s wife does not get to answer this question. She is, like many women in comedic joke texts of all kinds, of secondary importance. All we know of her is that she is seen lying naked in bed. Although it is her behavior that generates the crazed behavior by her husband, the minister, she says nothing. Her role is a quintessential feminine one in texts of all kinds—to say nothing and lie naked in bed.

Conclusion This brings us to the end of our exercise. I have tried to suggest how each perspective, discipline, theory, or methodology (or whatever) might make sense of the joke about the minister, his wife, the priest and the rabbi. Each perspective examines the joke in different ways, and while a joke may not be completely illuminated by a given perspective, each does offer important insights which, when put together with other ones, does a good job of explaining and interpreting the joke in a relatively complete and interesting manner. What we find is that jokes are much more complicated texts than we might imagine and work in many different ways. There are many books available for those interested in studying humor. There are 478 books that deal with analyzing humor and 3,300 that deal with humor and society listed on Amazon.com. Below I suggest some recent books that are of interest to the humor scholar: Oring, Elliott (2016), Joking Asides: The Theory, Analysis and Aesthetics of Humor, Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press. Ruiz-Gurillo, Leonor (Ed.) (2016), Metapragmatics of Humor: Current Research Trends, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Weems, Scott (2014), Ha! The Science of When We Laugh and Why, New York: Basic Books.

References Berger, Arthur Asa (1995), Blind Men and Elephants: Perspectives on Humor, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Berger, Arthur Asa. (1997), The Art of Comedy Writing, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

48

The Languages of Humor

Douglas, Mary. (1975a), Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Dynel, Marta. (2009), Humorous Garden Paths: A Cognitive-Pragmatic Study, Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Freud, Sigmund (1963), Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, New York: : W.W. Norton. Fry, Jr. William F. (1968), Sweet Madness: A Study of Humor, Palo Alto, CA: Pacific Books. Greimas, A (1966), Sémantique Structurale, Paris: Larousse. Jakobson, Roman (1988), “Linguistics and Poetics,” in D. Lodge (ed.), Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, New York: Longman. Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1964), Mythologies: Le Cru et le Cuit, Paris: Plon. McKeon, R. (Ed.). (1941). The basic works of Aristotle. New York: Random. McKeon, Richard, ed. (1964), The Basic Works of Aristotle, New York, NY: Random House. Nilsen, Don L. F. (1999), “Review of The Art of Comedy Writing in Humor,” International Journal of Humor Research, 12 (1): 96–97. Piddington, R. (1963). The psychology of humor. New York, NY, USA: Gamut Press. Propp, Vladimir (1968) (2nd ed.), Morphology of the Folktale. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Yus, Francisco (2016), Humor and Relevance, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

3

God, Jokes, Parnusseh & Tsores: Jewish Humor Joseph Dorinson

Introduction My passion for Jewish humor started in shule, an after-school program for the study of language, history, and culture framed by Yiddish or mame loshen (mother tongue). My teacher, Rifka Weiner, presented me with Nathan Ausubel’s transformative book, A Treasury of Jewish Folklore as a graduation gift. A frequent entertainer at our Shul 36 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, actor/stand-up comedian Hirsh (Harry) Gendel would regale children and their parents with Yiddish jokes. I vividly recall one shortly after the rebirth of Israel in 1948, which reflected the difficult transition from British protectorate to independent nation-state. Although the joke loses something in translation, here it comes in English (Gendel, H. (no date) Guide): A distraught man, perhaps a Holocaust survivor, lays down on a railroad track in Tel-Aviv. His bizarre behavior draws a crowd that urges him to rise. He remains prone for a long time. Suddenly, he takes out a sandwich. Curious spectators ask, “What are you doing there? “I am committing suicide” he replies. “Then, why are you eating that sandwich?” the crowd wants to know. “Because, he explains, “by the time a train comes to Tel Aviv, you can die from hunger.”

Dying from hunger but laughing at the predicament is the subject of a new film, “The Last Laugh.” Directed by Ferne Pearlstein, and featuring Sarah Silverman, Mel Brooks, Judy Gold, and Gilbert Gottfried, it was released on March 3, 2017. The film pushes the comic envelope beyond prior constraints. It deals with a tabooed subject, Holocaust humor, and cogently argues that this brand of humor sustained the lives of people living in unprecedented horror. Such a major reversal in form arrived too late to prevent a traumatic personal experience. Fifteen years ago, in a futile attempt to share jokes derived from and focused on the Holocaust, a singularly Jewish experience— Donald Trump’s observations to the contrary notwithstanding—I “bombed” while

50

The Languages of Humor

performing comedy at Block and Hexter, a summer haven, now defunct, for senior citizenry, primarily Jewish. Greeted with stunned silence punctuated by several loud groans—krechtzn if you will, I learned a painful lesson, to wit, know your audience before you jest. I failed to recognize that most of the attendees were survivors of this catastrophic experience. True, the audience was elderly as befitting the then rubric: Elder Hostel. So was I: both older and hostile. Currently, many survivors of that troubled generation are no longer alive and the context has changed. Belatedly confessing poor taste then—mea maxima culpa—I seek redemption, now. Several recent studies have propelled me to revisit this minefield with renewed insight. Especially incisive is Alice H. Solomon’s excellent doctoral dissertation, “The Paradox of Holocaust Humor: Comedy that Illuminates Tragedy.” Noting that her subject still engenders “intense debate,” Solomon agrees with author Terence Des Pres that humor opposes persecution and operates as a trigger for resistance and rebellion. She paints a vivid narrative on a broad canvas that draws on graphic arts, literature, joke lore, folklore, philosophy, history, and film. Clearly, much of Jewish humor continues to illuminate the gap between the lofty sense of “closeness” and the dark reality. To cope with satanic figures, for example, like minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, anti-fascist Jewish wits referred to this incubus as “Wotan’s Mickey Mouse,” “Mahatma Propaganda,” and “Humpelstilzchen” (Solomon 2011: 2; Lipman 1991: 40) This represents a far cry from self-hatred, a recurrent misinterpretation of Jewish humor. Heavily freighted with theoretical constructs—superiority, incongruity, and release via Kant, Hobbes, and Freud—Solomon’s work applies many salient points to our subject culled from film as well as from literature. In this latter category, she draws on the final essay of philosopher Terrence Des Pres before his death. Des Pres wrote (1988: 216–18; Solomon 2011: 15). “Since the time of Hippocrates . . . laughter’s medicinal power has been recognized, and most of us would agree that humor heals.” Applied to the Holocaust, such a pronouncement seems highly irreverent. Nevertheless, humor did indeed provide “survival value.” As proof, Des Pres cites a joke from Emmanuel Ringelblum’s diary (1988: 218–19): A Jew alternately laughs and yells in his sleep. His wife wakes him up. “I dreaming that someone had scribbled on a wall [in Polish]: ‘Beat the Jews! Down with ritual slaughter!’ ‘So, what you were so happy about?’ Don’t you understand? That means the good old days have come back! The Poles are running things again!”

Another quip invites quotation in part (Des Pres 1988: 216): Germany has waged total a total war in Poland, a momental [“momentary”] war in France, a ratal [“installment”] war in England and a fatal war in Russia. H. [Hitler, sometimes Horowitz, sardonically] is trying to imitate Napoleon. .  .  . But H. is already late. Napoleon was in Moscow by the 14th or 15th of September. They say at the beginning of his Russian campaign Napoleon put on a red shirt, to hide the blood if he should be wounded. H. put on a pair of brown drawers.



God, Jokes, Parnusseh & Tsores: Jewish Humor

51

To buttress his provocative thesis, Des Pres referenced three comic novels by Tadeusz Borowski, Leslie Epstein, and Art Spiegelman. Since displacement is designed to counter the real world, comedy offers escape, while tragedy, Des Pres argued, affirms the real world; the comic spirit deflates that authority. Following Aristotle, tragedy engenders pity coupled with terror. Tragedy also “unites us with .  .  . suffering and quiets us with awe” (Des Pres: 219–21). Thus, laughter constitutes rebellion; the novels cited enable readers to go forward. Borowski mocks Auschwitz and those who looked on and made no sound of protest. Epstein’s novel evokes Bakhtin’s “carnival culture,” which degraded the grand, lofty, and solemn in favor of Rabelaisian consumption of food, sex, and fun. In Maus, Spiegelman displaces or represents Jews as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs, the rest as dogs. Mice, Des Pres (1988: 231) contends, are an “amalgam of lightness and weight.” In conclusion, he notes that Spiegelman employs “laughter to dispel and to embrace a kind of comic ambiguity that defuses hostility .  . . and prompts charity toward those who suffered, those who remember, and those who wish to know.” In short, laughter trumps tears, thereby “affirming life” and fostering resilience (Ibid. 232). Philosopher John Morreall (1983: 119–24) echoes these sentiments. In his illuminating discourse on the beneficial effects of humor, he identifies three salient functions: critical, cohesive, and coping. The most relevant words are summoned from survivor/theologian Emil Fackenheim: “We kept our morale through humor” (Lipman 1991: 8; Holocaust Resource Center 2001). Survivor/ psychiatrist Victor Frankl (1963: 68–69) attributed his survival in Auschwitz to a joke a day with the following observation: “It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human makeup, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.” Fearing the loss of foreign revenue and mindful of Ambassador Joseph Kennedy’s warning, Hollywood’s moguls, mostly Jewish, remained reluctant to attack fascism head on in the late 1930s. An early exception to this rule by profit margin, Charlie Chaplin, often misidentified as a Jew, refused to submit to the “sha-sha” syndrome that plagued and permeated “Tinsel Town.” Self-financed, his masterful The Great Dictator (1940) led a frontal assault on Hitler, his fellow travelers, and willing partners including Mussolini. Imparting pseudonyms, perhaps to prevent litigation, Chaplin comically mocked war and its proponents: Hynkel (Hitler), Garbich (Goebbels), Herring (Goering) and Napoleoni (Mussolini). Chaplin’s assault of laughter, “against which nothing can stand” according to Mark Twain, demolished the myth of Aryan supremacy. His brilliantly conceived and artfully rendered balloon scene conveys multiple meanings regarding Hitler’s primal fantasies and his recurrent flatulence. Despite a meandering speech touting peace, love, and compassion in the film’s coda, the Jewish barber rather than the German dictator has the final say. Consequently, Chaplin scored a significant victory at the box office as well as with discerning critics. Solomon (2011: 184–96) situates the roots of this triumph in medieval Europe and its carnivalesque tradition. Credit for a comparable breakthrough also goes to the Three Stooges for their satirical takedown of Hitler in three films: You Nazi Spy (1940), I’ll Never Heil Again (1941), and Back from the Front (1943). At the risk of alienating audiences, which most Hollywood moguls wished to avoid, the 1940 film elevated courage over profit. With

52

The Languages of Humor

opening words in Yiddish: “Sholem Aleichem,” the film begins with cabinet members of Moronica looking for a fool to lead the country into war in order to make money. Anticipating a later bit by Lenny Bruce, the plot thickens with the appearance of a paperhanger named Moe Hailstone. A deus ex machina black feather wafts downward onto Moe’s upper lip to provide a Hitler-like face. His mantra “We must make our country safe for hypocrisy” and slogan “Moronica for Morons” resonates with the “rubes.” Moe recruits Curley as Field Marshall Herring and Larry as minister of propaganda. Their imperious reign ends in the rioting of an angry mob that leads them into a lion’s cage and as the subjects of a high protein dinner. Lawrence J. Epstein (2004: 175–76) notes that Moe Howard earned the dubious honor of impersonating Hitler: the first American actor to do so. As slapstick provocateurs, the Stooges probably enjoyed immunity to savage the Nazis with impunity. More critical attention, writes Alice Solomon, was paid to German Jewish émigré director Ernst Lubitsch. His film, To Be or Not to Be (1942), costarred comedian Jack Benny and Carole Lombard as his libidinous wife. After we were “Pearl Harbored” in 1941, American audiences appeared more receptive to anti-fascist cinema. The film starts with a joke that proved controversial. An actor, disguised as Adolph Hitler, peers through a delicatessen window at a luscious hunk of meat, salivating like a Pavlovian (Ivan, not Anna) dog. The narrator remarks: “That’s impossible. He’s a vegetarian! And yet—he doesn’t always stick to his diet. Sometimes he swallows up whole countries. Does he want to eat up Poland too?” In the ensuing action, the Hitler impersonator enters Gestapo headquarters, where he is greeted with “Heil Hitler!” To which he replies, preceding Mel Brooks by forty years, “Heil Myself!” It’s only a play. Jack Benny as star actor Joseph Tura is vain to a fault, not unlike his radio persona fashioned over many years. Benny plays five roles: all prerequisites for survival. Solomon insightfully notes that the parody operates on two levels: projecting an insecure actor as well as a crazed dictator. Lubitsch avoids overt mention of Jewishness except for Greenberg’s quip demeaning Tura’s acting ability: “What you are [doing to Shakespeare] I wouldn’t eat,” no doubt a reference to ham. The only other link to ethnicity derives from Shylock’s soliloquy, again mouthed by Greenberg minus the Jewish identity tag and the Christian animus: “Hath not a Jew eyes . . . hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions fed with the same food?” in favor of a more general “we” (Solomon 2011: 201–03). The film, inviting sharp criticism, proved a guilty pleasure with a happy ending to a plot that unmasked unspeakable horrors. On the German plane to freedom in London, the pseudo-Hitler commands two soldiers to jump, minus parachutes after heiling der Furhrer. They do so, willingly like millions of their compatriots, en route to a modern Gotterdammerung. Thus, German Jewish émigré Lubitsch converted laughter into resistance and a template for Mel Brooks to follow (Solomon 2011: 197–206).

Holocaust humor as a survival mechanism Before the Final Solution was launched in 1942, ghetto Jews mocked Hitler and his minions. They referred to Hitler’s attempt at autobiography as Mein Krampf (Cramp). They conferred Horowitz, a Jewish name, on the odious tyrant. Other “Aryans” they



God, Jokes, Parnusseh & Tsores: Jewish Humor

53

divided into two categories: non- and barb-Aryans and poked fun at the so-called super body types of Hitler, Goering, and Goebbels. Consequently, Hitler feared humor and loathed German cabaret because its featured artists were mainly Jewish. One outstanding Jewish comedian, Weiss Ferdl, appeared on stage with portraits of Hitler and Goering. He peered out at the audience and asked: “Where should I hang them?” (Lipman 1991: 116; Morreall 1983: 111–23) During the war and its aftermath, Jews retaliated with humor in Yiddish: Wos darfn mir veynen, vos darfen mir klogen, mir veln afrankn a Kaddish noch zogn Why must we cry, why must we wail; we’ll yet live to say Kaddish for Frank [Auschwitz Commander]. * Lomir zayn freylach un zogn zich vitzn; mir veln noch hitlern shiva noch zitsn Let us be happy and tell jokes; we’ll yet live to sit Shiva for Hitler. (Patt 2016: 115)

On the other side of our comic coin, anti-Semitic jokes enjoyed wide currency in postwar Germany first, and then spread to Sweden, England, and the United States. Neo-Nazis relished Auschwitz schadenfreude. Anthropologist Alan Dundes, somewhat apologetically, explained this phenomenon as symptomatic of recurrent bigotry. Since repression and censorship, according to Dundes (1987: 20), prove counterproductive, he sanctioned the publication of this repugnant genre as some kind of psychic release. A Mainz informant related the following, which Dundes recorded with collaborator Thomas Hauschild in both German and English: Wie viele Juden passen in einen Volkswagen? How many Jews fit into a Volkswagen? 506, sechs auf die Sitze und 500 in die Aschenbecher. 506, six on the seats and 500 in the ashtray.”

Others, equally inflammatory follow with the same theme and vicious wordplay. Take the one of several that Dundes coauthored with Uli Linke (1987: 34, Ch. 3–4) in subsequent chapters. Was ist eine judishe sauna? What is a Jewish sauna? Aus-schvitz Auschwitz.

As a countermeasure, Jewish comedians and filmmakers found a way to retaliate with their own brand of aggressive humor. Sid Caesar and Mel Brooks punctured the myth of Aryan supremacy with their parody of the German professor as idiot in early television. Lenny Bruce picked up the satirical baton and speculated that Adolph Hitler, originally a house painter, was discovered by central casting for the role of dictator. Reluctant at first, Hitler is persuaded to accept the role because that was the only way

54

The Languages of Humor

he could get laid and make money. With only one ball, the Russians discovered in an autopsy, Hitler’s emasculation continued in send-ups by George Carlin, an IrishAmerican acolyte of Lenny Bruce along with other comic “hit-men.” Bruce assailed Holocaust deniers with a routine as a craven salesman who hawked German cars with this come-on” “Here’s a Volkswagen pick-up truck which was just used slightly during the war carrying the people back and forth to the furnaces. Epstein (2001: 171) cites another “bit” in which Lenny Bruce holds up a newspaper with a headline: “Six Million Jews Found Alive in Argentina.”

Humor as a weapon for cultural affirmation A theoretical template invites exegesis. Clearly, to this observer, Jewish humor continually serves as a mechanism for defense as well as a weapon for cultural affirmation. It also functions as a deeply subversive force. Germane to this study are the salient tendencies first delineated by Sigmund Freud. The good doctor observed that a collection of jokes under the rubric of Jewish wit had a tendency toward democratic deflation, revolt against religion, articulation of social principles and self-criticism (Freud 1938: 689–91, 705–30, 803). Based on the Freud paradigm complemented by the Mintz model let us examine this unique comic sensibility by drawing on jokes dealing with God, religion, Hitler, and money to illustrate my thesis. Jewish jokes genre enabled a people living on the margins of several cultures to cope with the adversity of minority group status, to establish a coherent identity, and, when necessary, to take the offensive against the enemy even during the most calamitous conditions. Leo Rosten (1982: 24) relates a number of folk sayings about God etched in acid: If God lived on earth, men would knock out all his windows. God may love the poor, but He helps the rich. Dear God: You help total strangers, so why not me? Oh, Lord: help me. If you don’t, I’ll ask my uncle in New York.

One joke, found in many anthologies with quite a few variations on the same theme, provides fuel for the burning bush. It involves a dilatory tailor and his dissatisfied customer and forms the template of an entire book by Richard Raskin God versus Man in a Classic Jewish Joke (1991:39–51): A tailor promised to alter a suit for a wealthy client. Instead of two weeks, it took two years. The client complained. “You needed two years to finish my suit while God created the world in only six days!” “Nu,” the tailor replied: “Look at the world and look at this magnificent suit.”

This joke has elicited a compelling discourse which posits a skeptical stance vis a vis God. Jewish jokes stretch our tolerance for ambiguity (Raskin 1991: 47–49). One



God, Jokes, Parnusseh & Tsores: Jewish Humor

55

finds echoes in the Tevye stories by Sholem Aleichem. “With your help, God, I nearly starved to death.” Tevye tries to transcend his tsores (trouble) with a quotation, usually garbled, from the literature of theology: Bible or Talmud. An ironic shrug, a cleansing laugh, a restored sense of dignity helps Tevye survive as he dances on the tightrope between piety and protest (Greenberg and Howe 1965: 38–42, 50–55). A more recent version of skepticism is evoked in the following joke: Chaim Mintz went off alone one day to scale Mount Carmel. As he dug his boot onto a ledge, it gave way and he fell 150 feet, managing, by a miracle, to grab a branch from a gnarled tree. “Help! Help!” he cried. A great voice far above intoned. “My son, do you have full faith in me?” “Yes! Yes!” “Do you trust Me without reservation?” “Oh, yes, Lord!” “Then let go of the branch.” “What?” “I said, ‘Let go of that branch!’” A pause: then Mintz said, “Excuse me, but, is there anyone else up there? (Rosten 1982: 25)

Irreverence toward the divine is found in the comic antics of Woody Allen who considers God a tremendous underachiever. Woody juxtaposes the inability to secure a plumber during weekends with the death of God. If Jesus was a carpenter, Woody wonders what he charged for bookshelves (Yakower 1991: 162). The virtuous man, he knows, will “dwell in the house of God for six months with an option to buy.” In the film, Love and Death, Woody as Boris asks: “If God is testing us, why doesn’t He give us a written?” (Ibid). Allen concludes that Jews celebrate Yom Kippur to honor a God who broke all of His promises to His people. Countering the notion that the evil does not sleep well at night, Woody observes, however, “They seem to enjoy their waking hours more” (Telushkin 1992: 144). Religious confrontations appear in a series of Jew-Christian jokes. We now have definitive proof that Jesus was Jewish: At age thirty, he was still living at home. He followed in his father’s business. And his mother went around the neighborhood proclaiming that her son was a God, her son was a God! * An old Jewish man was struck by a car in front of a Church. A priest ran out to administer last rites. “Do you accept the father, the son, and the holy ghost?” the priest asked ritualistically. The man looks up at the assembled crowd and replies plaintively: “I’m dying and he asks me riddles!” (Davies 1991: 195) * A Jew is taken to a Catholic hospital for an emergency operation. A nun in the admitting room asked him what relative would be responsible for the bill. He reasoned that his only living relative is a sister who converted and

56

The Languages of Humor became a nun, and old maid who could not be responsible for the bill. “I’ll have you know,” the nun replied testily” that we are not old maids. We are married to our Lord, Jesus Christ. “Oh, in that case,” the Jewish man exclaimed, “send the bill to my brother-in-law!” * “Rabbi” cried the little Jew, “a terrible thing has happened. My son wants to marry a gentile girl.” “Your son!” replied the rabbi. “Look at me and my son. Here I am the leader of the community. Everyone looks up to me as an example and my son not only wants to marry a shiska but he also wants to be baptized.” After a long silence, the little Jew said: “Everyone comes to you with their problems but what do you do when you have such a terrible problem. To whom do you turn?” “What can I do? I turn to God.” “And What did God tell you?” God said to me “Your son! Look at mine!” (Grotjahn 1970: 139)

On one level this last joke constitutes a mini-rebellion against God; on another, the joke reflects a wonderful capacity to live in ambiguity between truth and myth in defiance of authoritarian figures. Lacking power, Jewish jesters identified with the rabbi as trickster. Witness these jokes (Mintz 1986: 129; Cray 1964: 331–245): Priest to rabbi during interfaith banquet: “When are you going to give up your silly dietary laws?” Rabbi: “At your wedding, Father.” Priest to rabbi: “Have you ever sinned?” “To tell the truth, I once had a ham sandwich. Rabbi: And you, father?” Priest: “I once had a woman.” Rabbi: “Beats a ham sandwich, no?”

Money has been associated with Jewish figures, indeed equated with God. A preoccupation with parnusseh (livelihood) most certainly courses through the Jewish experience. Listen to this sage from Chelm: “If I were Rothschild, I would be richer than Rothschild . . .” quipped a scholar. “How could you be richer than Rothschild?” asked a skeptic. “I would have his money and do a little teaching on the side.” (Novak and Waldocks 1981: 179)

Teaching on the side provides a clue to the character of Jewish humor. Thus, a comic figure of Jewish folklore deals with a primary need. True, man does not live by bread alone; but he and she in this enlightened age do need bread for survival. Therefore, we are obliged to examine the juxtaposition of Jews, jokes, and “bread,” that is, money



God, Jokes, Parnusseh & Tsores: Jewish Humor

57

leaving aside for the moment the Nietszchian possibility that God is dead or at best living in Argentina (Rosten 1982: 69). Despite the stereotypes hurled at Jews by antiSemites, poverty rather than wealth characterized the life of European Jewry. Deep Are the Roots of Jewish Humor. To cope with their dismal conditions, Jews developed a tradition of folk-humor featuring arcane characters and droll types, namely, schnorrers, schlemiels, schlimazels, luftmentschn, and their kin. Some like the trickster, Hershl Ostropolier was real. Born in Ukraine around 1750 to impoverished parents, Hershl had neither trade nor calling. He gained parnuseh (payoff) by entertaining a melancholy Hasidic rabbi whose arrogance matched his ignorance. The rabbi often rebuked his court jester for spending so little time at prayer. Hershl retorted: “You have so much to be grateful for: your carriage and your fine horses, your home, your gold and silver, your fancy dishes. But look at me. I have a nagging wife, my six children and a skinny goat. And my prayers are very simple: Wife, children, goat, and I’m done” (Novak and Waldocks 1981: 27). As court jester, Hershl played the rebel with a cause. His pranks, though impish, were essentially ventilations against a grinding poverty. Like other fool figures, Hershl Ostropolier unmasked the rich who pretended to be righteous and those who pretended to be learned. Later Yiddish writers created comic characters that snatched ironic victories from the jaws of defeat. Marginalized, the Jews found laughter in the context of tears. Listen to Sholem Aleichem: Dear Yankel, you ask me to write you at length and I’d like to oblige, but there’s really nothing to write about. The rich are still rich and the poor are dying of hunger, as they always do. What’s new about that? And as far as pogroms are concerned, thank God, we have nothing more to fear, as we’ve already had ours—two of them, in fact, and a third wouldn’t be worthwhile. . . . Mendel did a clever thing though; he up and died. Some say of hunger, others of consumption. Personally, I think he died of both. I really don’t know what else to write about, except the cholera, which is going great guns. (Samuel 1944: 189)

Sholem Aleichem etched memorable portraits of Tevyeh the dairyman who argues with God, Motl, the cantor’s son who delights in orphan status because of the attention he receives (mir iz gut, ich bin a yosum), and Menachem Mendel, der luftmentsch, the would-be millionaire who builds financial castles in the air of stock-speculation. In this literature, humor functions as a cultural line of defense. It mocked the habit of self-absorption and the practice of avoidance (Greenberg and Howe 1965: 26, 53–55). My son lost his wife who left him with three children; his house burned down and his business went bankrupt—but he writes a Hebrew that is a pleasure to read.

The great Yiddish writers taught their readers how to extend their arms and box with God. They helped to create a delicate balance between piety and complaint. In the shtetl, “if a poor man eats a chicken, one of them is sick” (Ibid 27).

58

The Languages of Humor

Jewish humor in the Emancipation era Emancipation created another comedic possibility: the wit of retaliation as well as the humor of marginality. For some, conversion has served as a passport to the “good life.” Poised between two, sometimes more cultures, the assimilated Jew not unlike a fiddler on a hot tin roof, was sorely tempted to jump. Needless, to say a whole host of jokes surfaced to target would-be jumpers and to maintain some measure of control over a restless flock (Ehrlich 1978: 396). Among Jewish converts who failed to find fulfillment in his new religion, Heinrich Heine ranks at the top. Born in Dusseldorf in 1797, Heine made his mark as a Romantic poet but he also emerged as the sharpest wit as a Christian with a Jewish sensibility. In her recent book, author Ruth Wisse deftly captures Heine’s ambivalence in his arresting self-identification as “a renegade Jew and a phony Christian” who characterized his conversion with a painful confession that it was his “ticket of admission into European culture” (Wisse 2013: 37–38). Looking back in angry repentance at this Faustian bargain gone wrong, Heine employed lacerating wit as both shield and rapier. Based on what follows, he also put an indelible Jewish imprint on political humor, a palpable tradition that animates our contemporary political discourse (Untermeyer 1943: 8–11; Rose 1956: 133–34, 154; Freud 1938: 705, 728–30). Heine’s quoted bon mots wrenched from context: Aristocracy is composed of asses—asses that talk about horses. Hugo is the perfect egoist or rather the perfect Hugoist Vanity is one of his [Musset’s] four Achilles’ heels All women love him [a minor poet]—all except the Muses My constitution grows worse—even worse than the Constitution of Prussia. She is truly like the Venus di Milo. She is incredibly old, she has no teeth, and her body is covered with yellow spots. In the days of Napoleon, when coffee was made out of acorns and princes out of nothing at all

Bilious to a fault, Heine evokes Thomas Hobbes’ argument that a sense of superiority dominates humor in his one-liners from above. Speaking through a surrogate, Heine created a character named Hirsch-Hyacinth. “I was sitting next to Solomon Rothschild,” Hirsch boasted, “and he treated me just as an equal, quite famillionaire.” Quoting this gem of condensation wit, Sigmund Freud appreciated Heine’s uncensored malice and unhappy laughter. Both aggressor as well as victim, Heine left a legacy, succinctly stated: “The pertinence of irony refracted through a prism of multiple meetings” (Whitfield 1978: 48; Freud 1938: 705, 728–30). Eventually, this strain of humor so heavily salted with self-denigration siphoned off the wellsprings of Jewish identity.

Jewish humor between the old and the new world A different kind of humor, essentially Ashkenazi or Eastern European, was needed to bridge old and new, European and American cultures. Once rare, now plentiful,



God, Jokes, Parnusseh & Tsores: Jewish Humor

59

scholars of humor, drawn from all disciplines—psychology, sociology, literature, anthropology, history, philosophy, and biology—continue to debate the functions of humor. Of the many theories advanced including instinct, evolution, superiority, incongruity, surprise, release, mechanical behavior et al., a synthesis formulated by Lawrence Mintz is most helpful in Jewish humor analysis. (Mintz 1977: 4). The Mintz model provides a template of four categories. The first is critical humor directed by one group, usually the dominant, against the other, often the subordinate. Secondly, self-deprecating humor emerges in which the target group maintains that its members can identify their flaws more accurately than its traducers. Thirdly, realistic humor examines the problems of all groups as in the observational humor of Jerry Seinfeld. Finally, central to this chapter, is critical humor directed against the majority culture by members of a previously disparaged group. Thus, the humor wheel comes full circle. In the first category, critical hostility is granted license and oppression is justified. Nevertheless, it can also serve softer aims such as the deflection of hostility and the substitution of ritual in lieu of real punishment. Critical humor tends to strengthen the morale and identity of the group on attack while the prime motive is to elicit conformity or at least to reduce tension by airing the source of that tension. At this point, analysts of Jewish humor diverge. An extreme view, held by many observers with a psychanalytic bent (see Freud, Reik, and Lewin), is that Jews suffer from psychic masochism while other more contemporary scholars like Ben-Amos, Davies, Boskin, and this writer argue that self-criticism serves as an internal regulating mechanism to acculturate “greenhorns” or outsiders. In this mode, victims transform faults into virtues, thereby gaining ironic victories. Questioned, one famous example of alleged self-disparagement no longer applies. I refer to Groucho Marx’s oft-quoted resignation letter to an organization to which he had briefly belonged. “Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.” Rather than self-mockery, biographer Lee Siegel (2015: Ch. 6) cogently argues, Groucho, a self-educated autodidact, had contempt for the card-players and nouveaux riches that populated the “club.” A Jewish aristocrat, Marx wanted separation; hence, this famous, if misinterpreted, letter. Realistic humor explores the incongruities of dual culture status. It concerns the knotty questions of intermarriage-conversion, immigrant adjustment and, in religion, the Reform-Orthodox-Conservative trinity of choices. whose strongly nostalgic and mildly pointed jokes aptly fit this model The strongly nostalgic and mildly pointed jokes of Sam Levinson, the avuncular teacher who morphed into a comedian, aptly fit this model. As a teacher turned comic, he concluded, “Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your children.” His gentle humor evoked warm responses, especially from the elderly: Christians as well as Jews (Shepard 1979: B2; Telushkin 1992: 37). Mintz completes the cycle in category four—critical humor against the majority with a curious twist or karate chop, verbally. A mirror image of category one, it also reflects revenge, assertions of superiority, affirmations of cultural pluralism, attacks on the establishment, and occasional apologies for assimilation. Mintz finds examples of this kind of humor in Lenny Bruce, Don Rickles, Alan King, Dick Gregory, and Richard Pryor, among others, the majority of whom are Jewish (Mintz 1977: 4).

60

The Languages of Humor

The importance of Lenny Bruce and other humorists Indeed, watching Lenny Bruce perform in a local theater on Manhattan’s Lower East Side rekindled my love for Jewish humor in 1963, as I recognized an exemplar of Mintz’s stage four with occasional forays into the prior three. Other academic pursuits had curbed my enthusiasm for mame-loshen and joke lore. I bought Bruce’s records, read his routines, and conjured up a new path to publish rather than perish. When John Cohen’s edited Bruce bits became available through Ballantine Books in 1967, I read every word with relish and assigned the book to students in my history classes. They shared my renewed fascination. To satirize racism, we read the bit on “How to relax a colored man at your party.” An African-American student joined me in this tete a tete; I played the vulgar white man. My students at LIU Brooklyn chortled with laughter. I found a formula to gain their attention and respect, which subsequently contributed to a personal triumph—the first David Newton Award for Excellence in Teaching at LIU. My interpretation of “Lenny Bruce: A Jewish Humorist in Babylon” initially, a conference paper in 1974 later, led to my first publication in Jewish Currents, in which I continue to swim (Dorinson 1981: 14–19, 31–32). Before Bruce self-destructed, abetted by censors and law enforcers, on a toilet in his California dream house, subject to bank foreclosure, Lenny assayed many roles in his short, tragic but creative life as hipster, underground man, counter-culture hero, hustler, junkie, victim, litigant, satirist, priest, Jew, and transformative comedian. In his early bits, Bruce projected the hustler as the ultimate villain who sparks derisive laughter with organized religion as his principal target. He fingered the Pope, Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, and Stephen Wise. Pickled in Jewish brine, these bits are aggressive, if not transgressive. Listen to his British-accented rabbis who are so reformed, they’re ashamed they’re Jewish: This Sabbath we discuss Is-Roy el. Where is Is-Roy-el? Quench yon flaming portside. Las, Alas poor Yodel. . . . Today on Chin-oak with Rosh-hashing approaching . . . someone had the chutzpah to ask me, “Tell me something, Doctor of law, is there God or not? What cheek! To ask this in a temple! We’re not here to talk of God—we’re here to sell bonds for Israel. . . . A pox upon you Christ and Moses! Go among them and kiss your empty mezuzahs (Cohen 1967: 36).

For Lenny all residents of big cities, in his brilliant binary, are Jewish; but “if you live in Butte Montana you’re going to be goyish if you are Jewish. Bruce consequently embraced Italians, Dylan Thomas, Count Basie, Eugene O’Neill, converted Irishmen, mouths, bosoms, rye bread, chocolate children’s tushy kissers as tribal members while conferring the goyish label on spam, evaporated milk George Jessel, Danny Thomas, baton-twirlers, fudge-eaters, and gold star mothers (Ibid). Perhaps this last designation coupled with the following neology or definition landed this hot comedian in the cooler for defamation coupled with charges of obscenity:



God, Jokes, Parnusseh & Tsores: Jewish Humor

61

What is a Jew? A Jew, In the dictionary, a Jew is one who descended from the ancient tribe of Judea, but . . . you and I know what a Jew is: one who killed our Lord. . . . We did it about two thousand years ago, and there should be statute of limitations for the crime . . . and those who posed as Christians . . . still make the Jews pay their dues. (Ibid.: 40)

In subsequent riffs on this theme, Bruce added warnings regarding the return of Jesus who would face a similar outcome for all the crimes that have been committed in his name. As gadfly and shaman (Albert Goldman’s designation), Lenny Bruce confirmed Freud’s humor paradigm. Animated by a democratic mode of thought, he deflated the pompous and powerful and identified with outcasts and losers. Lenny deliberately used Yiddish phrases, hip-argot, jazzy improvisations, and obscene language to shock white Christians into an awareness of their deeply buried feelings about foreigners, blacks, and Jews, strangely prescient and deeply disturbing in the 2016 American election.

Jewish stereotype in America That repugnant recurrence of Jewish stereotype is rooted in the American experience harking back to Stage one, found in nineteenth-century caricature. Leading magazines, Puck, Judge, Life, and Leslie’s Weekly identified Jews with greed, bargain hunting, and fraud, principally, arson (Glanz, 1973: 114–15; Appel 1981: 103–18). In Puck, for example, a cartoon depicts two hook-nosed stereotypical Jewish merchants in conversation: “Ah, Jacob, I fear I hafe not many tays to live.” “Nonsense, Fader, you have as much as t’irty years yet before you.” “Non, Jacob, no! The Lord isn’t going to take me at 100 when he can get me at 70.

Such stereotypes continue currency in our oral tradition; Jews remain identified with the money obsession (Dundes 1987: 189, 194–95): How do Israelis take a census? Roll a nickel down the street. What is their favorite football cheer? Get the quarterback! Station KVY, Tel Aviv signals: “1400 on your dial, but for you, 1395!” Why did Moses accept the Ten Commandments? Because they were free.

Status joins money as a favorite pursuit: “What is a CPA?” “It’s a Jewish boy who can’t stand the sight of blood and one who stutters.”

62

The Languages of Humor

Sorrow and pleasure fuse when a father discovers that his son is a homosexual but that that he’s going with a doctor. Finally, stage one joke lore retains physical caricature. The Jewish nose is so big because the air is free. When Little Red Riding Hood calls on her Bubby, she exclaims: “Bubby, what a big nose you have!” The Wolf replies: “You should talk!” (Ibid). As Jewish humorists became more comfortable with their newly won status in America, they took off their kid gloves and began an assault on the icons of our culture. They laughed at themselves as well as their neighbors. A number of jokes help us score some salient points (Simons 1963; Boskin 1980: 52). A rabbi, a priest, and minister converse. They are all suffering from a loss of congregants. So, they devise a scheme to attract new members: through music. The priest secures the services of Perry Como to sing “Ave Maria.” The minister hires Andy Williams to sing “Rock of Ages.” And the Rabbi solicits Robert Merrill to sing “Gold Mine in the Sky.” They compare notes. 15,000 join the Catholic Church. 10,000 join the Protestant faith. “How many converts did you make?” asked the minister the Rabbi? “None,” replied the Rabbi, “but 50,000 Jews joined the air force.” * A Jewish merchant lay dying. Situated in a room behind the store, eyes closed, he asks for his family “Sarah, my wife, are you here at my bedside?” “Yes, Sam, I’m here as usual.” “My oldest son, Benjamin, are you here?” “Yes, Dad, I’m standing right here.” “My daughter, Rachel. Are you present?” “Yes, father, I’m at the head of the bed.” “And my youngest son, David, are you here also?” “Yes, Dad, I’m right beside you.” “Then,” said the merchant, “If all of you are here, who’s minding the store?”

In a more aggressive vein, witness this encounter: A Jewish couple converts. They join a prestigious and restricted country club from which Jews and dogs are banned. She takes a plunge into the chill waters of the restricted pool. Shocked, she yells: “Oy gevaldt!” Then, sheepishly, “whatever that means.” Later that day, she finds her husband, Mitchell ne Morris praying to their new God in the old Jewish way with tallit, tviln and yarmulke. “What are you doing praying to Jesus in that garb?” Exposed, he replied: “Oy, mein goyisher kop!” * At a subsequent meeting of the other male converts, a discussion ensues regarding motivation.



God, Jokes, Parnusseh & Tsores: Jewish Humor

63

Mitchell defends his conversion on spiritual grounds. To which one skeptic retorts: “What do you take us for: a bunch of goyim?” (Boskin 1980: 49–52; Ehrlich 1978: 394–96)

To explain the connection between Jewish humor and American life, another critic observed, takes genius and chutzpah (Rovit 1967: 237). With these admonitions in mind, let us continue our journey through American Jewish humor with exegetical rather than ex-cathedral commentary coupled with specific illustrations. Writer Abe Burrows confessed: “Humor is a way to keep from killing yourself. .  .  . It removes anxiety. Other kids threw rocks, I make jokes” (Wilde 1976: 89). Making jokes, another scholar after the fashion of Mel Brooks, is a way of keeping the Malechamoves (Angel of Death) away. Unzer shtick (our thing), it helps to define our place in an increasingly amorphous, anxiety-provoking America. A distillation of the eastern European shtetl experience, fusing poverty, pain, and put-downs, Jews entered American culture laughing at tsores (trouble). Critic Leslie Fiedler charted this process with bittersweet irony (Fiedler 1963: 34–35). Prior to the First World War, Jewish women as well as men flocked to vaudeville where they often pandered to blatant stereotypes and exploited self-hatred. Later, they even “blackened up” to express their pastiched neshumas (multilayered souls), For example, take Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, George Jessel, and Sophie Tucker. American radio fostered a blander style of humor. Veterans of vaudeville, Jewish comedians like Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, George Jessel, Henny Youngman, Ed Wynn, and Fanny Brice flocked into this hot new medium. Arguably, the most successful of this group, Benny Kubelsky, originally an orthodox Jew, emerged as Jack Benny. Joining his program, wife Sadie Marks, sporting a new name and new nose, surfaced as Mary Livingston. To be sure, Dennis Day, Messrs. Kitsel, and Schlepperman, as well as Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, provided comic relief ethnically, but the victim, more often than not of their verbal barbs was the miserly, vain, slightly pompous main man himself. Yet Benny’s image was waspish at best, as Edgar Bergen recalled. Perhaps the persona’s preoccupation with money hinted at Jewish roots subliminally. Later in his highly successful career, the thirty-nine-year-old miser came out of the cultural closet to poke fun at his own tribe. When, for example, General Motors recalled 72,000 Cadillacs on the eve of Yom Kippur, Benny, and hand on chin, quipped: “I’ve never seen so many Jews walking to synagogue in my life” (Livingstone-Benny 1978: 65–66, 235; Allen 1956: 65–69, 71). Many Jewish wits from Heinrich Heine to Lenny Bruce arrived at the realization: as vet gurnisht helfn (nothing helps). Or as a yiddishe sphrechvort (folk saying) puts it, “A mentsch tracht un gut lacht” (A man muses and God disabuses). In pursuit of parnusseh (a living), Jews gravitated to the merchant trades in which some acquired status and accumulated money. The joke lore that followed the trek from the shtetl to suburbia displayed a sharper edge. At Easter-time, all of the merchants on High Street agree to carry some religious message in their window decorations. George (ne Sedalia) Horowitz, the only Jewish businessperson on the street, agrees to go along. He lined the central window of his store with artificial grass and placed in it several Easter bunnies and a large assortment

64

The Languages of Humor

of decorated Easter eggs. Next to the largest stuffed bunny, he placed a sign on which he printed in large bold type: “CHRIST HAS RISEN,” and underneath, in smaller letters: “but Horowitz’s prices remain the same” (Ehrlich 178: 394–95). To survive in a hostile world, Jews developed acute antennae and rapier wit: one for defensive purposes, the other for attack. Unable to find a permanent niche in Gesellschaft, Jewish wags created a pastiche of group experience. They blended poverty, pain, and “put-downs” with anger, intellect, and “send-ups” which enabled them to enter mainstream America laughing. Writing with savage mockery or pulsing with coarse vitality, they sought money (geldt by association as George S. Kauffman scoffed) and recognition. Not “high-brow” intellectuals but Jewish vaudevillians, Alfred Kazin correctly observes, introduced America to their culture on favorable terms (Kazin 1974: 589–90). However, as in the Horowitz-Easter joke cited above, they proceeded with caution. Initially, they impersonated other ethnic groups. Witness Weber and Fields, Gallagher and Shean, Smith and Dale. Some even hid behind black masks as well as Irish names. Eddie Cantor, Sophie Tucker, George Jessel, and, especially, Al Jolson waxed hot under burned cork. Jolson had inherited a Jewish blue note. Fusing this somber, cantorial strain with vibrant, sometimes demonic energy, Jolson touched a vital cord when he conjured up a magnolia-scented South teeming with togetherness or gemeinschaft. Oozing schmaltz (high cholesterol chicken fat), Jolson pandered to America’s darkest stereotypes. His success paved the way for ethnic landsleit (fellow travelers) to mix saccharine sentiment and aggressive humor effectively (White 1971: 531–43). Rarely reflective, Jewish entertainers used Yiddish accents, dialect stories, unabashed sentiment, gritty jokes, frantic energy, “spin-offs from immigrant experience” (Howe 1976: 566). The Marx Brothers carried on the vaudeville tradition minus the minstrel masks. Fortified with S.J. Perelman scripts, they plunged into “gleeful nihilism.” Listen to Groucho, the shnorrer as explorer or the egomaniac as Napoleon. To the strains of the Marseillaise, dressed as the great dictator, he says: “Ah, the Mayonnaise. The Army must be dressing.” Groucho and his brothers debunked all-American institutions, slaughtered all our sacred cows. Nothing escaped their demolition derby romantic love, fair play, college athletics, higher education, lower politics, business, law, medicine, the martial spirit, not even Horatio Alger. Groucho quips: “When I came to this country, I didn’t have a nickel in my pocket. Now, I have a nickel in my pocket” (Bier 1968: 270–71). Yet, the Brothers Marx engaged in “ethnic signaling” through coded Jewish references. Consider this scene from Coconuts, the 1929 film as cited by Jarrod Tanny (2016: 55): Groucho: Now all along here—this is the riverfront—those are levees. Chico: That’s a Jewish neighborhood. Groucho: Well, we’ll Passover that . . .

While watching television recently, I observed the insidious stereotype equating Jews and money purveyed with the seemingly incongruous juxtaposition of Jews and communism. The Jews in the anti-Semitic folk culture get it from both ends. Daniel Bell and Richard Hofstadter have traced the roots of this nativist bilge to the sour dregs of



God, Jokes, Parnusseh & Tsores: Jewish Humor

65

populism (Hofstadter 1956: 77–81; Bell 1944: 15–20). In the canards of Tom Watson’s cracker-barrel bigotry, Jews owned Wall Street. Hence, his hate-laden pontifications promoted the lynching of Leo Frank. Later, during the Great Depression other “white knights” such as Farther Coughlin and Gerald L.K. Smith took up the populist cudgels to continue their assault on the Jew as banker. Roget’s Thesaurus identified the word Jew as synonymous with usurer, cheat, extortionist, and schemer (McWilliams 1948: 90). Lamentably, one hears echoes of this hate-speech among white supremacists in the so-called Alt-Right movement, emboldened by the Trump campaign for president. Even my radical mother of blessed memory, however, could not deny Jewish success in the American market place. As economist Robert Cherry has observed, Jews appear to enjoy a median income 30 percent above the national average (Cherry 1989: 182–84). Thomas Sowell (1981: 98) even put it higher: 73 percent above the national average. This is a product of many variables and the subject of lively discussion, indeed debate, among scholars. Some, like David Riesman stressed education. Nathan Glazer pointed to religious values while Thomas Sowell focused on cultural values, especially professional education. Whatever the root cause, Jews remain the target of “underachievers” below and the “power elite” above. Pilloried at both poles, Jews continue to laugh: at themselves as well as at their enemies. Once upon a time, religion reconciled us to death, pain, evil, bankruptcy and tsores. Now, humor primarily performs this vital function.

Conclusion Comedy, it appears, provides armor in the confrontation with the Malech-hamoves (Angel of Death). Ultimately, the Jewish comic sensed that the whole business of money and success was “filthy lucre,” in a word, dreck. (Howe 1976: 570; Brown 1959: 234–304). The Jews prefer to run with Woody Allen rather than walk with King David through the valley of the shadow of death. Material success has not brought the “bluebird of happiness” that Jan Pierce used to sing about. Indeed, one is reminded of the messiah watcher in the mythical town of Chelm. Vastly underpaid, he asked the town elders, all sages, for a pay hike. After days of deliberation, they turn him down. Although they concede that the pay is very meager, the work is very steady (Guttmann 1973: 331). Since the gap between dream and reality persists, Jewish humor provides a necessary bridge linking God, Jews, jokes and money. This bridge carries the Hebrew children across a grim past, a scary present, and future schlock. Girded with the armor of wit, the minions of Jewish humor cross over with a secret weapon: one that historian Arthur P. Dudden, borrowing a phrase from literary humorist Mark Twain has correctly called the “Assault of laughter: against which nothing can stand.” A funny thing happened on the way to this coda. A dear friend sent me a collection of Jewish-themed cartoons selected by Bob Mankoff, former cartoon editor at New Yorker and the Cartoon and Humor Editor of Esquire at present. Here, minus the graphics are the punch lines of each. An enormous whale lies on a long strip of sand, probably Coney Island, and spouts: “I’m not beached. I just don’t swim on Saturdays.” In another by

66

The Languages of Humor

J.B. Handelsman, a religious patriarch who reflects a modern entrepreneurial spirit while adhering to tradition ignites Chanukah candles with an updated exegesis of the miracle of lights while his wife and two children listen intently to his sage words: “The Internet startup had only enough cash for one more day. But, miraculously, the money lasted for eight days, until more venture capital could be raised.” Paul Noth captured many a Jewish child’s wish for Christmas gifts as a yarmulke clad lad sitting on Santa’s lap, as many did years ago at Macy’s Department Store, tells the venerable bearded benefactor: “First of all, this conversation never happened.” Eric Lewis depicts a Carousel in a resort area manned by a rabbinical figure selling tickets to a merry-goround with chairs, some elevated, minus horses for a Have Nagila Go-Round. These comic riffs reinforce the interplay among God, Jews, and thus, Jewish humor endures in joke lore, folklore, and graphics. It is firmly rooted in Jewish cultural DNA and surfaces, as I have tried to demonstrate, when Jews are threatened with destruction. Clearly, a shield against an often-hostile world, where race bigots and antiSemites slither up from their rocks as in Charlottesville, Virginia and elsewhere, “our humor,” (unzer shtick), cogently serves as a weapon of cultural affirmation: against which insults and clubs will not stand. According to a Jewish editorial writer for the New York Times Moses Velazquez-Manoff (2017: SR 11) observed that Germany— once the hotbed of violent fascism and genocidal anti-Semitism-now employs humor to thwart neo-Nazis on parade. One hopes that this strategy, probably rooted in that traditional Jewish response to oppression and tsores (troubles), succeeds beyond the wildest dreams of both Mark Twain and Sholem Aleichem.

References Allen, S. (1956), The Funny Men, New York: Simon and Schuster. Appel, J. J. (1981), “Jews in American Caricature: 1820-1914,” American Jewish History, 71: 103–33. Ausubel, N., ed. (1948), A Treasury of Jewish Folklore, New York: Crown Publishers. Back from the Front (1943), “the Three Stooges” (Staring), [Short film], USA: Columbia Pictures. Bell, D. (1944), “The Grass Roots of Jew Hatred,” Jewish Frontier, 11. Ben-Amos, D. (1973), “The ‘Myth’ of Jewish Humor,” Western Folklore, 32 (2): 118, 129–30. Bier, J. (1968), The Rise and Fall of American Humor, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Boskin, J. (1980), “Protest Humor: Fighting Criticism with Laughter,” Bostonia (December). Boskin, J. (1997), Rebellious Laughter: People’s Humor in American Culture, Syracuse NY: Syracuse University Press. Boskin J., and J. Dorinson (1985), “Ethnic Humor: Subversion and Survival,” American Quarterly, 37 (1): 81–97. Brown, N. O. (1959), Life against Death; The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History, New York: Random House, Vintage. Cherry, R. (1989), Discrimination: Its Economic Impact on Blacks, Women, and Jews, Lexington: D. C. Heath Lexington Books.



God, Jokes, Parnusseh & Tsores: Jewish Humor

67

Cohen, J. ed. (1967) The Essential Lenny Bruce, New York: Ballantine Books. Cray, E. (1964), “The Rabbi Trickster,” Journal of American Folklore, 77. Davies, C. (1991), “Exploring the Thesis of the Self-deprecating Jewish Sense of Humor,” Humor, 4 (2). Des Pres, T. (1988), “Holocaust Laughter,” in B. Lang (ed.), Writing and the Holocaust, New York: Holmes & Meier. Dorinson, J. (1981), “Lenny Bruce: A Jewish Humorist in Babylon,” Jewish Currents, 35 (2): 14–19, 31–32. Dundes, A. (1987), Cracking Jokes: Studies of Sick Humor Cycles and Stereotypes, Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, Chapters 3-4. Dundes, A. (1971), “A Study of Ethnic Slurs: The Jew and the Polack in the United States,” Journal of American Folklore, 84 (1971): 189, 194–95. Dudden, A. P. ed. (1987), American Humor, New York: Oxford University Press, 97–117. Ehrlich, H. J. (1978), “Observations on Ethnic and Intergroup Humor,” Ethnicity, 6: 383–98. Epstein, L. J. (2001), The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America, New York: Public Affairs. Epstein, L. J. (2004), Mixed Nuts: America’s Love Affair with Comedy Teams, New York: Public Affairs. Frankl, V. E. (1963), Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy, New York: Pocket Books. Fiedler, L. (1963), “The Jew as Mythic American,” Ramparts, 2 (2): 34–45. Freud, S. (1938), The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud, New York: Random House. Gendel, H. (n.d.), “Harry Gendel, Yiddish Actor/Standup Humorist,” Guide to the Records of the Hebrew Actors Union RG 1843, 1-1: 13, 430 (offers biographical content but not the joke). Glanz, R., (1973), The Jew in Early American Wit and Graphic Humor, New York: Ktav. Greenberg, E., and I. Howe eds. (1965), A Treasury of Yiddish Stories, New York: Viking Press. Grotjahan, M. (1970), “Jewish Jokes and Their Relation to Masochism,” in W. Mendel (ed.), A Celebration of Laughter, Los Angeles: Mara Books. Guttmann, A. (1973), “Jewish Humor,” in L. D. Rubin, Jr. (ed.), The Comic Imagination in American Literature, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Hofstadter, R. (1956), The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R., New York: Alfred Knopf. Howe, I., and K. Libo (1976), World of Our Fathers, New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 566. Hurwitz, N. (1974), “Blacks and Jews in American Folklore,” Western Folklore, 33 (October): 309. I’ll Never Heil Again (1941), the “Three Stooges” (Staring), [Short film], USA. Columbia Pictures. Kazin, A. (1974), “The Jew as American Writer,” in A. Chapman (ed.), New York: New American Library. Kesten, H. ed. (2016) [1943], Heinrich Heine: Works of Prose, 8–11, New York: L. B. Fisher. Kramer, G. M. (2016), “Humor and the Holocaust?” Documentary Explores the Boundaries of Comedy and Tragedy, Salon, retrieved from http://www.salon/ com/2016/04/26/humor and the Holocaust Survivors Amongst Ourselves will talk about some funny things. Lipman, S. (1991), Laughter in Hell: The Use of Humor during the Holocaust, Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.

68

The Languages of Humor

Livingstone-Benny, M., H. Marks, and M. Borie (1978), Jack Benny: A Biography, Garden City: Doubleday. Mankoff, B. (2017), “Bob Mankoff’s Favorite Jewish-themed Cartoons in the New Yorker.” Jewish Humor Central, Wednesday, May 17, 2017 www.jewishhumorcentral. com/2017/05/bob-mankoff-new-yorker-cartoon-editor.html McWilliams, C. (1948), A Mask for Privilege: Anti-Semitism in America, Boston: Little Brown & Co. Mintz, L. E. (1977), “Jewish Humor: A Continuum of Sources, Motives, and Functions,” American Humor, (Spring). Mintz, L. E. (1986), “The Rabbi Versus the Priest and Other Jewish Stories,” in A. Ziv (ed.), Jewish Humor, Tel-Aviv: Papyrus Press. Morreall, J. (1983), Taking Laughter Seriously, 199–24, Albany: SUNY University Press. Morreall, J. (2001), “Humor in the Holocaust: Its Critical, Cohesive, and Coping Functions,” posted in Shoen Book Holocaust Resource Center. Novak, W., and M. Waldoks eds. (1981), The Big Book of Jewish Humor, New York: Harper and Row. Patt, A. (2016), “Laughter through Tears: Jewish Humor in the Aftermath of the Holocaust,” in E. Lederhendler and G. Finder (eds.), A Club of Their Own: Jewish Humorists and the Contemporary World: Studies in Contemporary Jewry, An Annual, XXIX, New York: Oxford University Press. Popova, M. (2013), Victor Frankl on the Human Search for Meaning, http: www. brainpickings.org. Rabinowitz, H. R. (1977), Kosher Humor, Jerusalem: R. H. Hochen Press. Raskin, R. (1991), “God versus Man in a Classic Jewish Joke,” Judaism, 40 (3). Rose, W. (1956), Heinrich Heine: Two Studies of His Thought and Feeling, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rosten, L. (1982), Hooray for Yiddish! A Book about English, New York: Simon and Schuster. Rovit, E. (1967), “Jewish Humor and American Life,” American Scholar, 36 (Spring). Samuel, M. (1944), The World of Sholem Aleichem, New York: Alfred Knopf. Shephard, R. F. (1979), “Dr. Levenson Proves Laughter Is the Best Medicine,” New York Times, November 22. Siegel, L. (2015), Groucho Marx: The Comedy of Existence, New York: Yale University Press. Simmons, D. C. (1963), “Protest Humor: Folkloristic Reaction to Prejudice,” American Journal of Psychiatry, 120 (Winter): 567–70. Solomon, A. M. (2011), “The paradox of Holocaust Humor: Comedy that Illuminates Tragedy,” Doctoral Dissertation, City University of New York, 2011#3468240, UMI 3468240. Sowell, T. (1981), Ethnic America, New York: Basic Books. Tannay, J. (2016), “Decoding Seinfeld’s Jewishness,” in E. Lederhendler and G. Finder (eds.), A Club of Their Own: Jewish Humorists and Their Contemporary World, New York: Oxford University Press. Telushkin, J. (1992), Jewish Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say about the Jews, New York: William Morrow. Untermeyer, L. (1943), Heinrich Heine: Works of Prose, in H. Kesten (ed.), New York: L. B. Fisher. White, S. (1971), “The Burnt Cork Illusion of the 1920s in America: A Study in Nostalgia,” Journal of Popular Culture, 5 (3).



God, Jokes, Parnusseh & Tsores: Jewish Humor

69

Whitfield, S. (1978), “Laughter in the Dark: Notes on Jewish Humor,” Midstream, 24 (2). Wilde, L. (1976), How the Great Comedy Writers Create Laughter, Chicago: Nelson-Hall. Wisse, R. R. (2013), Making Jewish Humor, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Yakower, M. (1991), Loser Take All: The Comic Art of Woody Allen, New York: Continuum Publishing, a Frederick Ungar Book. Yacower, M. (1981), Method in Madness: The Comic Art of Mel Brooks, 15–20, 47–56, New York: St. Martin’s Press. The Great Dictator, (1940), Chaplin, C. (Dir.), [Film], USA. United Artists. The Last Laugh (2017) [Documentary Film], Pearlstein, F. (Dir.). The Producers (1968), Brooks, M. (Dir.), [Film], United States MGM. To Be or Not to Be (1942), Lubitsch, E. (Prod. and Dir), [Film], United States Warner Bros. You Nazi Spy (1940), the Three Stooges (Staring), Jules White (Prod. and Dir.) [Short film], USA. Columbia Pictures.

4

Holocaust Jokes on American and Israeli Situational Comedies: Signaling Positions of Memory Intimacy and Distance Jeffrey Scott Demsky and Liat Steir-Livny

Introduction Current skits airing on popular American and Israeli sitcoms reveal that both societies have apparently reached the point where Woody Allen’s witticism about humor being the combination of tragedy plus time now applies to the Holocaust. It is true that Jews under Nazism often relied on black humor as a coping mechanism for negotiating their captivity (Lipman 1993; Levin 2004; Ostrower 2014). After the war, survivors sometimes continued to find in levity a means for contemplating their Nazi-era experiences (Dagan and Dishon 2001). However, prisoners’ use of humor to facilitate healing is significantly different from subsequent onlookers’ appropriation of the impulse to fashion amusing television sitcoms. In this sense, American and Israeli sitcom writers reflect a larger creative razing of boundaries, taking place across multiple genres, pushing aside the expectation of solemn memorialization and steering the history into new commemorative spaces (Boswell 2012: 182–83). We do not consider the question of whether or not this sort of joke work is amusing, or appropriate. Rather, we are studying its messaging, delivery, and impact on what has come to be known as Holocaust consciousness. Owing to the wide dissemination associated with some of these series—many are globally syndicated— it is a powerful, cross-cultural form of communication (Katayama 2009: 125). That an abundance of Holocaust-inspired jocularity now exists on American and Israeli television programming may not necessarily mean that the memory’s “end” is nigh as some alert (for example, Rosenfeld 2013). Rather, the irreverent barbs might be better understood as directed at the dominant, inherited form of memorializing, and those figures in the United States and Israel judged to have stewarded the legacy in sometimes-questionable directions. Admittedly, vast differences separate the American and Israeli experiences with this memorialization, including issues of national demography, geography, majority/ minority relations, and dominant religion. Conspicuous distinctions also exist between



Holocaust Jokes on American and Israeli Situational Comedies

71

the kinds of humor being developed and broadcast in the two countries. If a strict comparative framework is impossible, however, there are some overarching themes that encourage us to conclude a dichotomous framework is both possible and needed. In both instances, the producers and consumers of these renderings tend to come from the so-called second, third and fourth generations’ encounter with the Holocaust. A shared familiarity with devising cheeky Holocaust iterations via computer-mediated communications—for example, Photoshopping, GIFs, memes, and redubbed movie dialogue—is another important linkage joining the two discourses (see for example, Rosenfeld 2015). So, too, is the reality of having grown up in an age where intermittent outbreaks of mass murder and genocide regularly appear on global news reports, a turn that invariably mitigates the ways these viewers encounter Holocaust accounts. Television’s status as a guardian of the hegemony on one hand and as a presenter of certain subversive content on the other, becomes complex when sitcoms are concerned (Shifman 2008). On the one hand, situation comedy is generally perceived as a tool for representing superficial, reproduced stereotypes (Brook 2001). It repeats the predictable traits of sitcoms’ protagonists perpetuates gendered, ethnic, and class-based social representations, and strengthens hegemonic groups’ control over minority groups (Mastro and Tropp 2004: 120). Yet on the other hand, sitcoms are also able to offer a subversive look. The comic dimension may give room for criticism either by creating a carnivalesque situation—which enables a temporary release from inflexible hierarchies (Bakhtin 1984); by building antithetical frameworks of context between the possible and the unfeasible (Palmer 1988); generating conflict between different meanings (Boxman-Shabtai and Shifman 2014: 977), or by the exaggeration and vulgarization of stereotypes to the point where they are diminished or shattered (Lubin 2006). While there are claims that Holocaust humor cheapens the Holocaust, now seven decades past the end of the Second World War, living in a “fake news” age, an obvious toxic atmosphere for Holocaust history, jokes may prove a useful way to help people form bridges to this memory, ensuring that it is remembered at all (Pinnock 2007: 516). Humor matters. Its words, images, and impacts cannot be undone (Wisse 2013). Like tragedies, comedy and satire have the ability to help people learn about serious topics, something Charlie Chaplin demonstrated in The Great Dictator (1940), although he later expressed ambivalence about his role. Alternatively, teasing Nazi/Holocaust memory may also have the exact opposite impact, as people might take from such ends the lesson that humanity is inexorably baneful, and laughing about it is all you can do (Desilet and Appel 2011: 343–49). This combustible foundation is the one upon which American and Israeli Holocaust sitcom humor rests. It is a risky business, but a flourishing one nevertheless.

Holocaust humor in American sitcoms In his groundbreaking study of American television and the Holocaust, Jeffrey Shandler demonstrated that television programs—more than theater, books, or motion pictures—promoted what later came to be known as Holocaust consciousness.

72

The Languages of Humor

He argued that it was while watching TV, alongside family members and neighbors, that folks, mostly Christian Americans, first confronted the realities of the European Jewish destruction. This process played out in various ways. Factual broadcasts sourced from wartime newsreels provided viewers a foundational basis of knowledge about what had happened (Shandler 1999: 24–27). The documentaries also helped establish a contextual backdrop against which viewers could understand later events like the much-publicized Adolf Eichmann’s trial (1961). Perhaps unwittingly, the factual television accounts also spurred the rise of fictionalized renderings. Such episodes were unconventional, but effective, examples of culture conveying history. A 1963 Twilight Zone (1959–64, CBS) episode entitled “He’s Alive” is one such instance. Aired just six months after Eichmann’s execution, the show cast Dennis Hopper as an American Nazi named Pete Vollmer. In the episode, Vollmer is a rabble-rouser who spends his days spewing anti-Jewish bigotries. In line with the Twilight Zone genre, Adolf Hitler soon appears to Vollmer in the flesh. “You invoked my name, you took my ideas,” the Hitler figure bellowed, “Now, we are immortal!” During the episode’s closing monologue, the show’s Jewish-American creator and lead writer, Rod Serling, a Second World War veteran, explained that he wrote the episode to remind Americans that tolerating ethno-racial prejudices put the nation at risk of resuscitating Hitlerism in a domestic context (Shandler 1999: 140). Additional Nazi/Holocaust “guest appearances” appear across the landscape of American television during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Holocaust (1978) the miniseries that Elie Wiesel characterized as a “soap opera” is perhaps the bestremembered example, but disparate shows from Hogan’s Heroes to All in the Family, Star Trek to Sledge Hammer aired episodes that intersected with this memory. Scriptwriters occasionally poked fun at Nazis, an impulse visible in Mel Brook’s The Producers (1968), but humor-based representations of the Holocaust were infrequent. This is what makes the “comedic turn” that we are exploring important. With regard to the American Holocaust sitcom humor tradition that emerged during the 1990s, we observe two major themes. The first theme is the subtle use of satire to both acknowledge and tweak what, for most Americans, had become a received and external history. The second leitmotif involves the more direct use of mocking to deflate the normative expectations of piety that surrounds this remembrance. Viewed collectively, these impulses demonstrate Americans’ growing reliance upon humor to negotiate this inherited past. In the popular American sitcom Seinfeld (1989–98, NBC), the “Raincoats” episode brazenly depicted Jerry and his Jewish girlfriend kissing throughout a screening of Schindler’s List. It aired around the same time that the US Holocaust Memorial Museum opened its doors, the period when American artist Art Spiegelman won a Pulitzer Prize for his Holocaust comic Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, and the same year that Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg, 1993) received the Academy Award for Best Picture. The comedic riff signaled new a variation in Holocaust cultural discourse, namely having fun with the memory. Looking back some twenty odd years now, the scene also encapsulated a phenomenon we characterize as “intimacy and distance.” The young couple’s irreverence did not necessarily intend to spoof European Jewish suffering, promoting memory distance. It was just that Jerry’s parents were visiting from Florida, and the theater was the only space where they could find some privacy. Nevertheless, such goings-on might be interpreted as disrespectful. Jerry’s nemesis, Newman, who



Holocaust Jokes on American and Israeli Situational Comedies

73

observed the affections, reporting them in fine-grained detail to Mr. and Mrs. Seinfeld, faulted Jerry’s dereliction to the memory. So, too, did Jerry’s soon-to-be-ex girlfriend’s father, who Newman also told. However, this sort of scenario can also be read to indicate closeness to the trauma. Representing the daughters and sons of the survivor generation, Jerry and his date already knew a great deal about the Holocaust before going to watch Schindler’s List. In this sense, their heady embraces derived less from an intention to denigrate the remembrance than to perhaps point out its saturation in contemporary American discourse (Rider 2013: 43–47). It is unknowable if the show’s creative team recognized that their related “Soup Nazi” or “Mr. Pitt as Hitler” skits would inspire evermore comedic Holocaust repurposing on additional American sitcoms. But that is what happened, and continues to happen. In 2004, Seinfeld’s co-creator, Larry David, a second-generation Jewish-American, returned to the muse in his Curb Your Enthusiasm series (HBO 2000-present). “The Survivor” episode mischievously used the device of a family dinner party to bring together an erstwhile CBS Television Survivor contestant, and former death camp prisoner. As the popular culture “survivor” regaled guests with harrowing stories of poisonous spiders, the Holocaust victim exploded. “That’s a very interesting story” he said, “But I was in a concentration camp! You never even suffered one minute in your life compared to what I went through!” “Look,” the reality television participant retorted, “I’m just saying we spent forty-two days trying to survive. We had very little rations, no snacks. I couldn’t even work out when I was over there. They certainly didn’t have a gym.” Such biting jocularity pushed well past the earlier Seinfeld treatments. Jewish-American David, who like Seinfeld, has knowledge regarding the Holocaust and its mythical place among American Jewry, uses this theme in order to critique the young generation not possessing of the emotive and cognitive skills required to approach this seventy-five-year-old history. Absent this contextual backdrop, however, appropriating Holocaust suffering into contemporary environments often lends itself to trivialization and mis-remembering (Levi, 1989: 128). Especially these risks are viable among Americans born well after 1945, those not possessing of the emotive and cognitive skills required to approach this over seventy-year-old history. It is at this unlikely juncture where American sitcom writers—many from Jewish heritages with firm knowledge of Nazis’ crimes—could play a role in drawing up skits that appear to deflate the Holocaust’s importance.

Holocaust humor on American sitcoms as a negotiation of the memory Americans’ knowing about the Holocaust is not the same as their upholding its memory. Nowhere is this murkiness more visible than on American sitcoms. South Park (Comedy Central, 1997-present) is the longest-running American sitcom modeling a slippery use of Holocaust memory. The animation series depicts the lives of four grade-schoolers, and their neighbors, living in a quiet Colorado town. One of the boys, Kyle Broflovski, is Jewish, likely an eponymous character for the show’s co-creator, Matt Stone. Kyle struggles to negotiate his Jewish identity, a process complicated by the

74

The Languages of Humor

cascade of harassment he receives from his bigoted classmate, Eric Cartman. Although just a fourth-grader, Cartman is a hardened racist and anti-Semite. Throughout the show’s run writers have used his character to negotiate Nazism/Holocaust history in comedic ways. During the show’s first season, its “Pinkeye” episode (1997) featured Cartman outfitted in an Adolf Hitler Halloween costume. The youngster wore the garb because he reasoned the get up would garner him a top-prize in his school’s annual contest. Throughout the first half of the school day, no authority figure commented on Cartman’s attire. This changed, however, after the school’s principal saw the boys in the cafeteria. She ordered Cartman to her office, sat him before a movie screen, and made him watch a film that began by announcing, “Adolf Hitler was a very bad man.” Unfortunately, the images Cartman witnessed for example, Hitler set atop a rostrum reviewing troop columns only enamored him further. After delivering several ebullient “Sieg Heil” salutes to the screen, Cartman slips into a daydream sequence. He is now the Führer, holding a riding crop and screaming German-sounding gibberish. This was not the only episode in which South Park’s writers used their sitcom to point out the dissonance between normative expectations for Holocaust memory piety, and a churning American irreverence (Des Pres 1991: 277). The 2004 “Passion of the Jew” episode finds Cartman again attired as Adolf Hitler. Assembling a public march in support of Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, Cartman leads a goose-stepping mob. He exhorted his followers with Germanlanguage commands like “Es ist Zeit für sauberung!” (It is time for clean-up) and “Wir müssen die Juden ausrotten!” (We must exterminate the Jews). Such cartoonish dialogue about the six million victims is unavoidably provocative. It also points out how American sitcom humor which aims to criticize, broadcast globally, can inadvertently sanction more undesirable forms of mockery in Europe and elsewhere (Demsky 2016: 9–11). South Park, however, also sometimes uses humor to bolster Holocaust truth functions. This is the case in their Anne Frank parody, aired in the 2008 “Major Boobage” episode. Ostensibly, the story’s plot involves children huffing cat urine. To discourage them, authorities decided to round up and deport the town’s cats. Nothing overt about this narrative suggested a looming Holocaust joke. However, when authorities arrived at Eric Cartman’s home, searching for cats, a doorway to genocide humor opened. The anti-Semitic Cartman now channels Meip Gies, frustrating the officers’ search. After it was safe, as plangent, minor-mode background music crescendos, Cartman ascends a staircase to his attic. He is hiding a cat. Before closing the attic’s latch, he slips the animal a book and says, “Here, write a diary.” Although debasing Anne Frank’s experiences to that of a stray cat, South Park writers also conjured up a factual bridge to memory. The real-life Anne often began her diary entries by writing “Dear Kitty.” It is possible the show’s creative team selected the episode’s feline/attic angle as a tangential way of again positioning her memory in western consciousness (Sackett 2002: 243). “Death Camp of Tolerance” aired in 2002, is another instance where South Park writers simultaneously had fun with, but also helped promote, Holocaust memory. Parts of the show satirize Schindler’s List, as the boys are imprisoned in a Nazilike work camp which is supposed to encourage tolerance towards minorities. As with the earlier Seinfeld episode, the jabbing appears to target Holocaust memorialization, rather than its victims. Indeed, at the time it aired, the topic of how Americans commemorated this history was publicly churning, following Norman Finkelstein’s indictment of the so-called Holocaust industry (Finkelstein 2000: 3–4).



Holocaust Jokes on American and Israeli Situational Comedies

75

The South Park team points this episode squarely into that debate, satirizing things like the cropping up of “Museums of Tolerance,” whether in Los Angeles, Washington DC, or Jerusalem, that fund their operations by promoting victimization discourses. That Cartman, of all people, thoroughly enjoyed his visit to the museum, since he encountered lots of familiar expressions of his own bigotries, is something writers challenge their audiences to contemplate, asking ultimately what positive effect things like blockbuster films and grand exhibitions have on the members of third and fourth generation post-Holocaust observers.

Holocaust humor on American sitcoms as a mockery of the memory Across cultures, a familiar idiom teaches people about the differences between “laughing with” and “laughing at” people. This is particularly true with regard to Holocaust sitcom humor. Shows like the animation series The Simpsons (Fox, 1989-present), perhaps reflecting its patrician roots, have trodden lightly on this history. They mock Adolf Hitler, rather than his deeds and as such, representing a preliminary example of what in the years to follow (especially in the last decade) flourished globally as the “Hitler parodies” phenomenon (Rosenfeld 2013). Take for example “Simpson and Delilah,” a second season episode (1990). As the family watched a televised quiz show, the host read a question calling for North Dakota’s capital city. At the exact moment that his sisters-in-law correctly state, “Bismarck,” Homer blurts out “Hitler!” Such comedy identifies Homer’s ignorance, which satirically also skewers wider American society. The device also manages to “get a laugh” on Adolf Hitler without really saying anything at all. That forty-five years after Hitler’s death Homer’s blunder had humor value is significant. It indicates that American viewers still remembered what Hitlerism denoted, but appreciated that such horrors were long past. It is a balance of intimacy and distance. In 1995, the show’s “Bart vs. Australia” episode again came back to this device, as young Simpson called a random phone in South America, hoping to verify the Coriolis effect in toilet bowls. A man drawn to resemble Hitler, presumably in Argentina and standing before a Mercedes Benz with an “Adolf 1” license plate, answered Bart’s call. Again, so absurd as to be completely unmoored from reality, the sitcom’s comedic repositioning of Hitler’s memory aimed at evoking viewers’ humor rather than outrage, while referencing the historical truth that in the aftermath of the Second World War many former Nazi criminals found safe haven in South America. Not all-American sitcoms, however, abide this template. Series like Family Guy (Fox, 1999-present), a long-running show airing directly after The Simpsons, have many Holocaust humor episodes in which the viewer might come to question who/ what they are laughing at (Banjo 2011: 138). These dialogues represent evidence in which current American Holocaust sitcom humor has a sniping effect that pierces the empathic tradition. “Space Cadet” (2013) depicts Nazis forcing a row of prisoners into a smoke-stacked building that contains an implied gas chamber. “I guess it wouldn’t matter if I had a doctor’s note excusing me?” one of the men asks the Nazi guard.

76

The Languages of Humor

Amused, the jailer smiles at the condemned and says, “Ahh .  .  . you, get in there!” The 2016 episode “Candy, Quahog, Marshmallow” also reaches toward this end. One scene was set inside a postwar movie studio. A German director declared, “Okay. Now that World War II is over we can get back to writing comedies!” He hands another man a list. “Get me these comedy writers.” Looking over the sheet, the second man shakes his head. “They won’t be available.” “What?!” “This is so crazy,” the director exclaimed, “Get me my agent!” “Sorry,” the assistant again replies, “He isn’t available either.” Dumbfounded, the director turns to a staffer, “What happened?” Met with a deep, empty stare, the German man soon confesses, “Oh, yeah. I remember.” Other instances in which Family Guy punch lines poke at Holocaust violence include “Long John Peter” (Kristallnacht joke); “Mc Stroke” (Dachau joke); and “Cool Hand Peter” (dead Jews joke). Like with Seinfeld and South Park, Family Guy writers also parodied Schindler’s List. In “Family Goy,” (2009) the show’s writers re-imagine Amon Göth as Peter Griffin. He is drawn shirtless, cigarette dangling from his mouth, aiming a rifle out of his Quahog bedroom window. He aims and shoots at Mort Goldman, his Jewish neighbor and friend. “Fighting Irish” (2015) featuring Liam Neeson as a guest character, also takes a swipe at the film, closing the episode, “Oskar Schindler wasn’t real and neither was anything in that movie.” “Brian’s A Bad Father” (2014) satirized Saving Private Ryan, specifically the scene depicting the Nazi and JewishAmerican soldier engaged in a hand-to-hand death struggle. Embedding a cut-away joke thanking the Mazda car company for sponsoring the film, scriptwriters had the Nazi utter the company’s “zoom-zoom” slogan as he stabbed his Jewish adversary. Some people find this sort of creative intervention amusing. Understandably, others do not agree. We ultimately view these sorts of creative interventions as a way of dealing with postmemory, in line with the kinds of secondary witnessing about which Marianne Hirsch and others have written (Hirsch and Kacandes 2004: 22). Although noticeably askance from the accurate, lived experience, these off-kilter impressions are derived from the factual atrocities and still stoke some form of historical remembrance. Humorizing the Holocaust does not signal a rejection of prior memory, but rather is something that exists on its own terms, as another layer of memorialization (Landsberg 1997: 66–68).

Part II: Holocaust humor in Israeli sitcoms For many years, Israeli culture recoiled from dealing with the Holocaust from a humorous or satirical perspective. The perception was that a humorous approach to the Holocaust might threaten the sanctity of its memory or evoke feelings of disrespect toward the subject and hurt the survivors’ feelings. Official agents of Holocaust memory continue to make use of this approach, but since the 1990s, a new unofficial path of memory has begun taking shape in tandem with it. It is an alternative and subversive path that seeks to remember—albeit differently. Texts that combine the Holocaust with humor are a major aspect of this new memory (Steir-Livny 2017). Although Holocaust satire appeared on Israeli television since the 1990s (Zandberg 2006; Steir-Livny 2016), Holocaust humor on Israeli sitcoms began appearing only two



Holocaust Jokes on American and Israeli Situational Comedies

77

decades later. In a society in which the Holocaust is such a fundamental experience, it seems that inserting Holocaust references in sitcoms was much tougher then addressing the subject in sporadic skits. While analyzing Holocaust humor in Israeli sitcoms one can find four major topics that are being discussed and mocked: Holocaust as an integral part of contemporary life in Israel; constant victimization; official ceremonies’ codes; and the ethnic conflict in Israel.

Acting out the Holocaust in the Israeli present “The Holocaust is tattooed on the Jewish-Israelis collective arm” claims poet Roni Somek (Steir-Livny 2014: 1). The Holocaust indeed was, and remains, a central trauma in Israel’s national consciousness. The memory of the trauma does not fade over the years; on the contrary, Holocaust representations and the public discourse regarding the Holocaust have only grown stronger in recent decades (Steir-Livny 2009). There is massive use of Holocaust rhetoric by politicians, journalists and educators who, many times, frame the Holocaust as a current, ongoing local trauma rather than an event that ended decades ago in another place (Meyers, Neiger and Zandberg 2014). The way the Jewish-Israelis “live” the Holocaust in the present is criticized and humorized in caricatures, social media, films and also on Israeli TV in satire shows since the 1990s (Steir-Livny 2017). Israeli sitcoms reflect the way the collective memory agents had succeeded in turning the Holocaust into the main perspective through which the Jewish-Israelis, even the young generations, perceive the world. Sometimes they do not mention the Holocaust, but the trauma is present in visual, vocal or symbolic aspects. For example, Adir Miller and Ran Sarig, the creators of the sitcom Traffic Light [Ramzor] (Keshet Broadcasting, Channel 2, 2008–14), integrated Holocaust black humor associations into many episodes and emphasized through them how Holocaust recollection is an integral part of the young generations’ lives. The series revolves around the lives of three, thirty-something-year-old men in contemporary Israel. Amir, one of the sitcom’s main characters, uses the “Jewish Partisans’ anthem” as the personal ringtone for when his mother calls, alerting him that it is her on the phone. In one episode, when one of the men takes his wife to a Bed & Breakfast, they learn that the place has strict rules, including a prohibition on mobile phones. They decide to escape, in a scene reminiscent of escape scenes from concentration camps in Holocaust films (with barbed wire, dogs barking in the background and watchtowers). In another episode, while Amir and his wife Tali explore the genetic tests they need to undergo before getting pregnant, they find out that the Israeli obsession with reproduction and the desire to create the perfect baby has infiltrated Israeli society from the Aryan ideology: there is a company named Highgene, where you can choose all the ingredients to form the perfect child as well as abort embryos which are suspected of minor “faults,” such as having red or curly hair. In his next sitcom, Miller’s Junction [Tzomet Miller] (Keshet Broadcasting, Channel 2, 2016) Miller plays an extreme comic version of himself: a well-known stand-up

78

The Languages of Humor

comedian who tries to stay popular. In the first episode of the first season (“Asi is a Friend”), his agent persuades him to visit a children’s hospital in order to entertain the sick children. Miller is hesitant. In these events, he explains, the sick children always bring along their families, and all the healthy children bypass the sick and run to have their picture taken with him. Eventually, because lack of time, the sick children do not manage to do the same. His agent promises this will not be a problem. Indeed, when they arrive at the hospital, his agent mounts a chair and starts screaming, “All those who are healthy go to the right. All those who are sick, go to the left!!” Miller looks at him shocked. “Why are you so alarmed?” asks the agent, “it is [meaning the clear association] just in your head!” and he continues with the “selection.” But, of course, it is not just in Miller’s head. It is “in the head” of the Israeli spectators who can immediately understand the association. The above examples demonstrate, through black humor and self-deprecating humor, that all Jewish-Israelis recognize Holocaust commemoration as integral part to their identity. They satirize it, but this satire reflects an unshakable intimacy. Public opinion polling notes this commitment. For example, in a survey conducted among high-school students, 76 percent said that the Holocaust influences their perspectives. According to another survey, 98.1 percent of Jewish-Israeli adults claim that Holocaust memory is a guiding principle in their lives (Friesem 2017).

Reenactments of victimization Within official national commemorations of the Holocaust, the perception that JewishIsraelis still face imminent danger reappears many times. Alon Gan refers to it as a “victimization discourse” and “victimized awareness” that shapes the Israeli identity (Gan 2014: 28–35). Bar-Tal claims that this constant victimization creates a feeling of constant siege, fear, and anxiety (Bar-Tal 2007). Holocaust satire works against this impulse, attempting to both reveal and ridicule this mechanism in order to break it (Steir-Livny 2017) An episode in the sitcom Naor’s Friends [Hahaverim shel naor] (Israeli Channel 10, 2006–11) models and simultaneously subverts these efforts. The sitcom deals with the lives of unmarried thirty-something friends living in TelAviv. In the third seasons’ ending episode (“Profile right side”), two parallel stories take form. In one, Naor’s friends Netzach and Deddy travel to South America in order to locate and kill “the last Nazi.” In the second story, Naor travels with his mother and his friends Daniel and Dafi to London. In the first story, after the friends locate the last Nazi, they learn that he is actually a huge fan of Israel. Moreover, he actively atones for his past sins. Whenever an Israeli arrives at his estate, he hosts him like royalty, provides him with “the most luxurious food and most beautiful prostitutes.” In addition, since he is in the coffee business, each year he sends free coffee to Israeli cafes throughout the country. The friends decide to forgive him and enjoy his generous hospitality. In the second story, Naor and his mother come across two actors in London who offer them small paid parts in their The Merchant of Venice production. Since Naor’s mother wallet was stolen, and they need the money, they accept the offer. However, when they arrive at the production, and go on stage, they find out that this is a neo-Nazi theater.



Holocaust Jokes on American and Israeli Situational Comedies

79

Since they were cast as the play’s Jews, the anti-Semitic crowd boos and shouts Nazi slogans toward them. Naturally, they flee as fast as they can. These two stories symbolize creative and humorous ways in which the young generation reconstructs the official perceptions of siege and eternal victimization. Even though the last Nazi is already old, and claims contrition, the episode reminds viewers that the danger has not disappeared. There is a new generation of neo-Nazis who want to destroy the Jewish-Israelis, and thus the passage of time doesn’t change the fact that the Jewish-Israelis are forever hated and eternal victims of anti-Semites and their prejudices.

Reconstructions of Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day official ceremonies Official ceremonies marking Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day (Yom hazikaron lashoa velagvura) are held in Israel every year on the Jewish date of 23 Nissan, and take place on the eve before Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day, as well as on the following morning and evening. The canonical ceremonies marking this day have a similar narrative structure: they usually combine prayers for the dead, sad songs and spoken texts and passages of melancholic poetry or prose, accompanied by text highlighting the Zionist “lesson” of the Holocaust. Alternative ceremonies are an integral part of the changes that have developed in Israeli culture regarding Holocaust commemoration since the 1990s, and are expanding every year voicing other narratives and suggesting various ways to gather and remember (Steir-Livny 2017). Israeli sitcoms that deal with the remembrance ceremonies criticize the young generations as captured in the official codes and unable to break away from them. For example, the sitcom Mother’s Day [Yom haem] (Dana Eden Productions, Channel 2 Keshet 2012, 2016) follows the life of the Shahinu family and especially Ella, the mother. Episode six of the first season (“Fire brothers, fire”) deals with Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day. On this day, Israeli TV stops the regular programs and broadcasts only Holocaust relates films and programs. Ella finds out that her best friend Micky has a fetish for this day (“They are going to screen the miniseries Auschwitz by the BBC. So much fun!”). Micky awaits this day with anticipation (“I’m crazy about this depression. I wait for it all year long”). Ella finds herself fighting for her daughter’s role in the school’s ceremony. She insists that Tamara, her daughter, will recite the song “Fire, My Brother, Fire,” a well-known Holocaust poem. Ella claims that this is the song her mother, the Holocaust survivor sang to her “as a lullaby,” and Tamara, the third-generation Holocaust survivor must recite it. Ella pushes toward it as if it is the most important thing her daughter can do in the education system. She sends emails to the teacher, the headmaster and the parent/teacher association, brings Tamara’s grandmother, the Holocaust survivor to school in order to influence the teacher, interfere in her daughters’ audition and doesn’t rest until the teacher caves and assign Tamara and another pupil together to recite the poem. At home, Ella rehearses with Tamara the part as if it is the lead in a Broadway show. Alas Tamara doesn’t have a white shirt to wear to the ceremony. Ella remembers she received a gift—a white T-shirt from the exterminator she invited in order to solve the cockroach

80

The Languages of Humor

problem in their apartment. She gives it to Tamara and they both do not notice that the T-shirt has a slogan in the back. On stage, during the reciting of the poem, as Tamara turns her back to the crowd, everyone can see the slogan on her back: “The best in extermination.” Of course, the teacher kicks Tamara off from the stage. A similar example can be found in the sitcom My Successful Sisters [Ha’ahayot hamuzlahot sheli] (Guri Alfi, Yes, 2016), which follows the life of three unsuccessful sisters in their twenties and thirties. Episode nine of the first season deals with Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day ceremonies. The episode reveals, like in Mother’s Day, that Mor, the youngest sister, who is a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces, has a Holocaust fetish. She is depressed because all the soldiers traveled to a “fun day” at Yad Vashem (“I’m crazy about Yad vaShem,” she tells her sister). She stays in the army base and spends the day watching Holocaust films on TV with a friend (“I’m crazy about these films”). Orit, the oldest sister is a high-school teacher. She has new subversive ideas that crash in the face of reality and the conservative values of a typical Israeli high school. Orit is asking to change the frozen official structure of the high school ceremony “which is based on victimization,” deal with universal issues like racism, explain to the highschool students the universal danger (“in each and every one of us there is a little Nazi”). The headmaster rejects her ideas and wants to continue with the known routine, but Orit insists. The headmaster finally agrees to let her arrange the ceremony. But as she approaches the high-school students with her new ideas (“I want each and every one of you to go on stage and describe an episode in your life in which you were Nazis”), she finds out that they feel no need to change anything. “We don’t have a little Nazi inside of us,” they declare, and reject any attempts to change the ceremony (“we love the format”). The episodes clearly criticize the educational system that turned Holocaust commemoration into a series of clichés, and the high-school students’ inability to detach themselves from the official codes of commemoration. These scenes critique the way the young generations find themselves locked in the same mental “prison,” as they revive the codes of Holocaust commemoration in the Israeli present, but simultaneously these scenes ratify these codes and strengthen them. The person who appears ridiculous is Orit, the teacher who decorates herself with “advanced notions” that nobody is interested in.

Holocaust humor and the ethnic conflict The encounter of the Jewish-Israeli Ashkenazim (Jews who immigrated from Western countries) and the Mizrahim (Jews who immigrated from Asia and North Africa), was complex and hurtful. Its echoes are still present in contemporary Israel. There is enthusiastic debate regarding this encounter, representing two major schools of thought: the first claims that the Mizrahim were deliberately pushed to the margins of society and that the divisions between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim are still preserved in present-day Israel (for example, Chetrit 2004). The second claims that many of the clashes were due to the chaotic period of establishing a state, the ethnic conflict had vastly changed over the years, and the Mizrahim’s situation had changed for the better (for example, Smooha 2007).



Holocaust Jokes on American and Israeli Situational Comedies

81

Until recent decades, the Holocaust in North Africa was rarely discussed. The Holocaust was perceived and commemorated solely as an Ashkenazi trauma and the persecutions, labor camps and the North African Jews who were sent to concentration camps in Poland were marginalized. Thus, Mizrahim were marginalized not only in the general Israeli culture, but also in the realm of Holocaust commemoration (Yablonka 2008, Kozlovsky Golan, 2017). The perception that Israeli Ashkenazim have made the Holocaust a dominant component of Israeli identity, thus excluding the Mizrahim—not only from the particular memory of the Holocaust but also from “Israeliness” in general—constantly reappears throughout the recent decades in the serious works of researchers, artists, authors and public figures (Yablonka 2008: 268–89; Steir-Livny 2014: 113–48) and also in YouTube skits, satire shows and in Israeli sitcoms and comic daily dramas. For example, in the sitcom Naor’s Friends, one episode revolved around the question, “Can a Mizrahi man have a relationship with an Ashkenazi woman whose grandparents are Holocaust survivors?” Naor Zion, a Mizrahi male, the maker and star of the sitcom, meets in this episode an Ashkenazi young woman whose grandparents are Holocaust survivors, and falls for her. According to the episode, being the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors strengthens the stereotype about women of Polish origin (In Israeli humor, women of Polish origin are often considered as cold, nagging, and bossy). Her name is Ya’ara and her surname is Warsaw. Naor says that her name makes him want to “act like a partisan and start an uprising.” His friends warn him that dating her will “start well and end like the Holocaust,” but he refuses to listen. As time goes by, he learns that his friends were right. The sequence depicting their relationship includes scenes in which she is cold to him, makes him clean the house while she doesn’t lift a finger, makes comments about every little thing, and bosses him around. Throughout the sequence, the Hymn of the Partisans plays in the background. While having dinner at her house, he meets her mother, a second-generation Holocaust survivor, who mocks him and treats him in a racist manner. Naor decides to end the relationship, and returns to his Mizrahi friends. Through this comic episode, harsh and radical perspectives on an AshkenaziMizrahi relationship in Israel are presented, and the incapability of holding a dialogue is demonstrated. In the binary division between the two worlds, the Holocaust is an Ashkenazi marker of identity. This episode seems like a kind of a late revenge on the Ashkenazim who did not let the Mizrahim enter the realm of Holocaust commemoration: a Mizrahi satirist ridicules their world while using Holocaust associations. Another “revenge” in the system that rejected the Mizrahim can be found in Zaguri Empire (Herzliya Studios, HOT Telecommunication Systems, 2014-2015). Writer Maor Zaguri, a Mizrahi Jew, created a daily comedy-drama series which is, to a large extent, autobiographical, revolving around the life of a family of Jewish-Moroccan descent living in Beersheba: Albert “Beber,” the patriarch, a grouchy man trying to earn a living, Vivienne, his wife, trying to keep the family intact, and their eight children—Aviel, Avishag, Eviatar, Miriam (Miri), Avi, Avishay, Abir and Avigail—who are constantly getting into trouble. The second season’s first episode, focuses on Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day. In this day a siren is sounded at a set time, during which

82

The Languages of Humor

Israelis are expected to stand at attention and in silence to respect the dead. When the siren begins, Beber refuses to stand up. In the furious comic dialogue that develops between him and his son Aviel, who asks the family to respect the siren and stand at attention, Beber, who feels like he has been marginalized by the Ashkenazi hegemony, states that once people start acknowledging the adversities experienced by Jews of North African descent in Israel, he will show his respect to the trauma of the European-descended Jews. Aviel, yells at him, trying to convince him to stand up, but Beber refuses. The placing of Aviel, who accepts the official codes of Holocaust commemoration and Beber who resists them because he feels that he and his culture were marginalized by the Ashkenazi hegemony, reflects the complex relationship of Mizrahim with the commemoration on a range that moves from total acceptance to detachment and rejection. A discussion of the so-called detachment of Mizrahim from the trauma combined with their appeal to the Holocaust is to be found in the daily comedy-crime drama The Arbitrator [Haborer] (HOT Telecommunication Systems, 2007-2014) which tells the story of Israeli criminals, most of whom are of Mizrahi descent. In the fifth episode of the third season, one of the most preposterous and exaggerated characters on the show, Naomi “Spoon,” the daughter of a Mizrahi crime family who has repented and found God, decides to travel to Poland. She scolds her husband for not wanting to join her with a series of absurd sentences like “Shame on you. Have a bit of culture! We’re going to fall on the graves of the righteous . . .” In her opinion, if there had been some Moroccans in the Holocaust, things would have looked different: “wow wow wow, the things I would have done to them had I been in the Holocaust, all the Kapos would have been sent to the hospital by the end of the first day! Like someone could wake me up at four in the morning and tell me to go take a shower in the snow???? . . . I’d tell them: pal, all Holocausts come to an end and you’re on my list!!!.” In these sitcoms humor is used in order to vent frustration, and as a social cohesion tool for a marginalized group. They seemingly display the Mizrahim’s lack of understanding of the Holocaust as well as a lack of sensitivity toward it, showing another manifestation of the hegemonic argument regarding the detachment of the Mizrahim from the Holocaust. Alternatively, the skits can be interpreted as a form of resistance, undermining these perceptions: the fact that Mizrahi comedians repeatedly engage in the issue suggests that they are actually profoundly interested in it rather than detached from it. In addition to and along with claims according to which exaggeration of the vulgarization of stereotypes shatters them (Lubin 2006) the Mizrahi characters in the skits are an inclusive collection of overstated negative stereotypes, and therefore these skits break the stereotypes rather than confirm them. They speak against common concepts in society regarding Mizrahim and their emotional detachment from the Holocaust in order to rebel against these concepts, make them absurd and shatter them.

Conclusion Comparisons between Israeli and American sitcoms demonstrate that even though in both countries Holocaust black humor represents positions of distance and intimacy to the



Holocaust Jokes on American and Israeli Situational Comedies

83

history, there are differences in the themes and perceptions of these sitcoms. It seems that American sitcoms are more focused on breaking what Tim Cole (1999) calls “The myth of the Holocaust.” The shows’ creators and fans grew up in a society in which Holocaust became a major part of the American and Jewish-American collective identities. In the United States, comedy writers are enabling laughter where, until these shows cropped up, Americans received only pathos-ridden glimpses of this history. While some shows see in the Holocaust a backdrop against which to critique wider American values, most treat the subject with black humor aimed at both remembering and moving on. Of course, such representations can be problematic because the domestic American television audience is overwhelmingly non-Jewish, lacking natural bridges to this memory. Animation sitcoms viewers specifically may also be more youthful, absent any serious understanding of the loss, and could come to normalize as factual the comic misrepresentations they witness. Israeli Holocaust humor in sitcoms is different for several reasons: first, the context: the use of the Hebrew language turns it to an inner dialogue between Israelis. The Israeli Arabs, who also know Hebrew, are also subjected to the Israeli educational system, thus mostly have the serious historical knowledge regarding the atrocities. The encounter with Holocaust humor is not their first and only knowledge about the topic. Second, Holocaust humor in these sitcoms contains notably more social aspects than the American sitcoms. The creators are not busy just breaking the myth (a process which began in Israeli culture almost two decades before the sitcoms began to address it) but use it in order to critique Holocaust commemoration in Israel and expose its problems: acting out the trauma, constant victimization, national ceremonial codes and the marginalization of Mizrahim. Yet, the polysemic reading of these sitcoms revile that alongside their critique on Holocaust commemoration they can be read as ratifying these elements, by representing them in a popular genre as a natural and integral part of Holocaust awareness in Israel.

References Abrams, N. (2012), The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Bakhtin, M. M. (1993), Rabelais and His World, trans. H. Iswolsky, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Banjo, O. (2011), “What Are You Laughing At? Examining White Identity and Enjoyment of Black Entertainment,” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 55 (2): 137–59. Bar-Tal, D. (2007), Lihyot im hasichsuch [Living with the Conflict], Jerusalem: Carmel [Hebrew]. Blau, S. (2005), “You must be joking!” Index on Censorship, 34 (2): 57–62. Available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03064220500157814?mobileUi=0 (accessed January 1, 2010). Boswell, M. (2012), Holocaust Impiety: In Literature, Popular Music and Film, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Boxman-Shabtai, L., and L. Shifman (2014), “Evasive Targets: Deciphering Polysemy in Mediated Humor,” Journal of Communication, 64 (5): 977–98.

84

The Languages of Humor

Brook, V. (2001), “Virtual Ethnicity: Incorporation, Diversity, and the Contemporary ‘Jewish’ Sitcom,” Emergences, 11 (2): 269–85. Brook, V. (2003), Something Ain’t Kosher Here: The Rise of Jewish sitcom, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Chaitin, J. (2007), “Yeladim venechadim shel nizolim mitmodedim im haSshoah” [“Children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors deal with the Holocaust”], in Z. Solomon and J. Chaitin (eds.), Yaldut bezel hashoah [Childhood in the Shadow of the Holocaust: Child Survivors and Second Generation], 304–36, Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad [Hebrew]. Cole, T. (1999), Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler: How History Is Bought, Packaged, and Sold, New York: Routledge. Dagan, H., and G. Dishon (2001), “Holocaust-Nostalgia: Rethinking Trauma and Nostalgia in Light of Pizza in Auschwitz,” Theory and Criticism, 38–39, Winter 2001: 185–209 [Hebrew]. Demsky, J. (2016), “Searching for Humor in Dehumanization: American Situational Comedies, the Internet, and the Globalization of Holocaust Parodies,” in R. Taiwo, A. Odebunmi, and A. Adetunji (eds.), Analysing Language & Humor in Online Discourse, 1–19, Hershey, PA: IGI Publishing. Des Pres, T. (1991), “Holocaust Laughter”, in Writing into the World: Essays, 1973-87, 277–93, New York: Viking. Desilet, G., and E. Appel (2011), “Choosing a Rhetoric of the Enemy: Kenneth Burke’s Comic Frame, Warrantable Outrage, and the Problem of Scapegoating,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 41 (4): 340–62. Ebbrecht, T. (2010), “Migrating Images: Iconic Images of the Holocaust and the Representation of War in Popular Film,” Shofar 28 (4), Summer: 86–103. Finkelstein, N. (2000), The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, London: Verso. Friesem, L. (2017), Mi 0 le 180 kamash (kilometer shoah) [From 0 to 180 Mph*(*Mile per Holocaust): Holocaust Tweets as an Act of Resistance], a seminar in the course Jews, Hebrews, Israelis: Cultural Aspects of Jewish Identity, Ra’anana: The Open University [Hebrew]. Gan, A. (2014), Korbanutam omanutam [From Sovereignty to Victimhood: An Analysis of the Victimization Discourse in Israel], Jerusalem: The Israel Democracy Institute [Hebrew]. Harlap, I. (Forthcoming), Television Drama in Israel: Identities in Post-TV Culture, New York: Bloomsbury. Hirsch, M., and M. Kacandes, eds. (2004), Teaching the Representation of the Holocaust, New York: Modern Language Association of America. Katayama, H. (2009), “A Cross-cultural Analysis of Humor in Stand-up Comedy in the United States and Japan,” JoLIE, 2 (2): 125–42. Kimmerling, B. (2001), Ketz shilton haahusalim [The End of the Ashkenazi Hegemony], Jerusalem: Keter [Hebrew]. Kozlovsky Golan, Y. (2017), Masach shel sichecha [Forgotten from the Frame: The absence of the Holocaust Experience of Mizrahim From the Visual Arts and Media in Israel], ­ Tel-Aviv: Resling [Hebrew]. Landsberg, A. (1997), “America, the Holocaust, and the Mass Culture of Memory: Toward a Radical Politics of Empathy,” New German Critique, 71: 63–79. Levi, P. (1989), The Drowned and the Saved, London: Vintage. Levin, I. (2004), Mibaad ladmaot [Through the Tears: Jewish Humor under the Nazi Regime], Jerusalem: Yad Vashem [Hebrew].



Holocaust Jokes on American and Israeli Situational Comedies

85

Lipman, S. (1993), Laughter in Hell: The Use of Humor during the Holocaust, Northvale, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Lubin, O. (2006), Women Reading Women, Haifa and Or Yehuda: Haifa University and Zmora Bitan [Hebrew]. Mastro, D., and L. Tropp (2004), “The Effects of Interracial Contact, Attitudes, and Stereotypical Portrayals on Evaluations of Black Television Sitcom Characters,” Communication Research Reports, 21 (2): 119–29. Meyers, O., M. Neiger, and E. Zandberg (2014), Communicating Awe: Media Memory and Holocaust Commemoration, New York: Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Milner, I. (2003), Kirey Avar [A Torn Past], Tel Aviv: Am Oved [Hebrew]. Ostrower, H. (2014), It Kept Us Alive: Humor in the Holocaust, Jerusalem: Yad Vashem Publications. Palmer, J. (1998), The Logic of the Absurd: On Television Comedy, London: BFI. Pinnock, S. (2007), “Atrocity and Ambiguity: Recent Developments in Christian Holocaust Responses,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 7 (3): 499–523. Rider, A. (2013), “The Perils of Empathy: Holocaust Narratives, Cognitive Studies and the Politics of Sentiments,” Holocaust Studies, 19 (3): 43–72. Sackett, R. (2002), “Memory by Way of Anne Frank: Enlightenment and Denial among West Germans, Circa 1960,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 16 (2): 243–65. Shalom Chetrit, S. (2004), Hama’avak hamizrahibe’israel: bein dikui keshihrur, bein hizdahut lealternativa, 1948–2003 [The Mizrahi Struggle in Israel: Between oppression and Liberation, Identification and Alternative, 1948–2003], Tel Aviv: Am-Oved/Ofakim Series [Hebrew]. Shandler, J. (1999), While America Watches: Televising the Holocaust, New York: Oxford University Press. Shifman, L. (2008), Haars hafrecha vehaima hapolania [Televised Humor and Social Cleavages in Israel, 1968-2000], Jerusalem: Hebrew University and Magnes Press [Hebrew]. Shohat, E. (2007), Mizrah umaarav [East and West in Israeli Cinema], Raanana, The Open University [Hebrew]. Smooha, S. (2007), “Rav tarbutiyut bahevra haisrelit” [“Multiculturalism in Israeli Society”], in I. Yovel (ed.), Zman yehudi hadash [New Israeli Time], vol. 4, 221–28, Jerusalem: Keter. Steir-Livny, L. (2016), “Holocaust Satire on Israeli TV: The Battle against Canonic Memory Agents,” Gdańsk Juornal of Humanities (Jednak Książki. Gdańskie Czasopismo Humanistyczne), 6: 197–212. Steir-Livny, L. (2017), Is It OK to Laugh about it? Holocaust Humour, Satire and Parody in Israeli Culture, London: Vallentine Mitchell. Wisse, R. (2013), No Joke: Making Jewish Humor, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Zandberg, E. (2006), “Critical Laughter: Humor, Popular Culture and Israeli Holocaust Commemoration,” Media, Culture & Society, 28 (4): 561–79. Zandberg, E. (2015), “Ketchup Is the Auschwitz of Tomatoes’: Humor and the Collective Memory of Traumatic Events,” Communication, Culture & Critique, 8 (1):108–23. Zertal, I. (1993), Hauma vehamavet [The Nation and Death], Tel Aviv: Dvir [Hebrew].

5

Intertextuality and Cultural Literacy in Contemporary Political Jokes Villy Tsakona

Introduction Jokes are considered to be the folk genre of humor par excellence. They are usually anonymous creations circulated orally and, more recently, online and often traveling from one language to the other and/or from one sociocultural community to another. As “key vehicles for popular creativity” (Davies 2016: 263), they have attracted the attention of humor scholars early on and continue to be the most researched genre of humor. Commenting on the evolution of jokes in time, Davies (2016: 263) suggests that “jokes have become shorter and less demanding of the intellect of the listener and the skill of the joke teller. Jokes have come to acquire less local cultural knowledge and where this is required it is explicitly conveyed within the joke.” He thus talks about a “democratization of joke telling” (Davies 2016: 257), as joke forms have become simpler than before and hence easier to tell even for “unskilled” joke tellers (Davies 2016: 257, 262; see also Laineste 2016: 11). Recent research on online jokes may support such claims, mostly by pointing out how the social media allow for the creation and dissemination of humorous material to anybody who has access to such media as well as to the necessary software (see among others Laineste and Voolaid 2016). This, however, does not necessarily entail that jokes have become easier to grasp (and laugh at). Given that intertextuality is identified as a key mechanism for the creation of such texts, jokes usually rely on cultural knowledge and allusions to diverse previous texts (Laineste 2016: 18, 22; Laineste and Voolaid 2016). Therefore, contemporary jokes may turn out to be demanding texts testing recipients’ background knowledge and literacy skills. In this context, the present study sets out to investigate the interplay between contemporary political jokes, intertextuality, and cultural literacy. More specifically, I will try to show that a wide variety of intertextual resources may be attested in jokes concerning current political affairs. Such allusions are significant for the production of the humorous effect and need to be traced and deciphered by recipients who wish to understand the jokes. In this sense, joke creators portray themselves as capable of handling cultural references and project their potential audience as equally



Intertextuality and Cultural Literacy in Contemporary Political Jokes

87

capable of doing so. It is therefore suggested that contemporary political jokes rely heavily on individuals’ cultural literacy (Hirsch 1980, 1988) to convey their critical messages. Consequently, the linguocultural allusions included in political jokes may contribute to dividing potential joke recipients into “culturally literate” and “culturally illiterate” ones. In what follows, first I discuss the connection between intertextuality and cultural literacy, and then explore the relationship between intertextuality, cultural literacy, and humor. After that, the data of the study is presented and analyzed. The final section of the chapter contains the conclusions of the study.

Intertextuality and critical literacy The concept of intertextuality is attributed to Kristeva (1980: 66), usually quoting her words: “Any text is constructed of a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another.” However, the multiple ways different utterances/texts may be connected with each other have been described by Bakhtin (1986) before Kristeva’s work (for overviews on intertextuality, see among others Duff 2004: 237–39; Mazurek-Przybylska 2016: 81–83). Intertextuality infiltrates everything we say or write: our utterances/texts respond to previous utterances/texts; they reflect, recontextualize, or even re-accentuate them via implicit or explicit references. As a result, we are surrounded by a network of interrelated texts, where each of them may influence the form and/or content of the other. In this process, the role of the addressee is not less significant than that of the text producer: they take each other into consideration when shaping their utterances/ texts or interpretations. In particular, they make specific assumptions concerning each other’s available background knowledge that needs (and is expected) to be activated to process discourse. In this sense, communication is based on the intertextual links both the producer and the addressee can trace between the text at hand and preexisting or upcoming ones (Bakhtin 1986: 68–99). Fairclough (1992) draws on Bakhtin’s (1986) description of intertextuality to offer his own critical account of it. He actually takes Bakhtin’s discussion a step further by suggesting that there is an important relationship between intertextuality and hegemony: The concept of intertextuality points to the productivity of texts, to how texts can transform prior texts and restructure existing conventions (genres, discourses) to generate new ones. But this productivity is not in practice available to people as a limitless space for textual innovation and play: it is socially limited and constrained, and conditioned upon relations of power. (Fairclough 1992: 102–03)

As already mentioned, interpreting a text including implicit or explicit intertextual references presupposes the recognition and understanding of such references. This, however, may not always be possible for all potential recipients of a text. Furthermore, such references are often “taken by the producer of the text as already established or

88

The Languages of Humor

‘given’—though there is the question of for whom they are given”—(Fairclough 1992: 120, my emphasis). As a result, intertextuality contributes to the ideological constitution of individuals through texts as producers/recipients who are capable of handling such references and tend to accept the respective views and values. More specifically, Fairclough (1992: 133–36) claims that intertextuality generates representations which can organize people into communities. Those recipients who are eager and able to decipher the intertextual allusions, and hence produce an interpretation of the text more or less similar to the one “intended” by its producer, become part of the in-group the producer wishes to create via his/her text. On the contrary, those who are reluctant or incapable of establishing the prerequisite intertextual connections are excluded from the in-group and may also be considered as “inadequate” recipients. In other words, intertextuality enables speakers to distinguish between “informed” and “inadequate” recipients, thus engaging the former and denigrating the latter. In this sense, intertextuality may enhance communicative inequality via rendering texts opaque to potential recipients: The text’s intertextual implicitness shapes the politics of communication in elitist terms; the response’s deeper meaning can be grasped only by insiders, i.e., viewers who share a given ground of knowledge. Duties (and hence power) are differently distributed between communicative roles, while the sign-maker does not bother to make the text clear and explicit (or even enjoys making it implicit), viewers are asked to unwrap the message to understand the exchange. Success or failure in communication is assigned to viewers; if they fail to understand the exchange, they are excluded not only from enjoying its meaning, but also from the affective reward of feeling part of the elite who shares that intertextual system of reference. (Adami 2012: 134, my emphasis; see also Norrick 1993: 69, and references therein)

In other words, implicitness enhances the elitist function of intertextuality especially in public communication, where participants are not familiar with each other. In informal contexts, where participants know each other well, intertextual allusions may mark and reinforce an intimate knowledge of each other (Adami 2012: 141; see also Duff 2004). It is exactly at this point that recipients’ literacy skills become significant and enter the discussion on intertextuality. What distinguishes between “informed” and “inadequate” recipients as well as between “skillful” and “less-skilled” text producers often seems to be their cultural literacy (Hirsch 1980, 1988). The term refers to a specific amount of “common” cultural knowledge pertaining to historical, political, literary, and other issues that “needs” to be possessed by “every adequate” reader, namely by every individual who wishes “to comprehend the messages conveyed through conversation, newspapers and other media that report historical events or engage ideas from world literature and history” (Cadiero-Kaplan 2002: 375). In Hirsch’s (1980: 45) own words, “Cultural literacy implies . . . shared knowledge about ourselves, our history and our



Intertextuality and Cultural Literacy in Contemporary Political Jokes

89

world, our laws, our political, economic, and social arrangements, our classical texts from a great many domains including TV, the movies, and literature.”1 Even though the notion of cultural literacy appears appealing at first sight and promising for cultivating literacy, it has been strongly debated because of its discriminatory connotations, since it is in principle difficult (if not impossible) to determine what is to be included in “shared” background knowledge, especially in contemporary multicultural communities. Hirsch’s (1988) proposal was exclusively referring to Western traditions and (American) upper- or middle-class cultures and values, hence his work has been criticized for being conservative, assimilative, monoculturalist, classisist, elitist, (neo)nationalist, sexist, and eventually repressing for those groups of readers who do not identify themselves with the abovementioned traditions and values (see among others Graff 1989; Paul 1990; House, Emmer, and Lawrence 1991; Cope and Kalantzis 1992; Cadiero-Kaplan 2002: 374–76, and references therein). In other words, cultural literacy, as conceived by Hirsch (1980, 1988), provides access to a significant amount of (written and oral) texts circulating in specific sociocultural communities ascribing to Western, upper/middle-class traditions and values. On the contrary, people who consider different values and knowledge as “shared” and perceive different cultural material as part of their cultural literacies “should” belong to different communities and are usually excluded from the abovementioned ones. This reminds us of the hegemonic and elitist dimension of intertextuality which empowers specific readers and excludes others (see previous paragraphs). There is another aspect of cultural literacy that seems relevant to the present discussion. The emphasis placed on cultural literacy for making sense of texts eliminates the possibility of a critical approach to the same texts. The emphasis placed on retrieving “shared” cultural information and on assigning specific culturally salient interpretations to texts undervalues or even eliminates diverse and/or critical approaches to texts: “In pursuit of cultural literacy . . . any sense of literacy as dynamic and critical ability is lost” (Graff 1989: 50; see also Paul 1990: 528). Hence, recipients may often be satisfied exclusively with making sense of the allusion(s) to other “culturally significant” texts and may not proceed with a between-the-lines, critical interpretation of the allusion(s) and, in particular, of their “new” emerging meanings due to the recontextualization of the alluded material. This is also in line with Fairclough’s (1992: 133–36) claim that recipients’ efforts to reach coherent interpretations of texts lead them to acquiesce to, rather than reject, the texts’ presuppositions (including their intertextual allusions). When it comes to political jokes, which are the focus of the present study, the recipients’ wish and attempt to understand the punch line and to laugh with it may actually bring them (at least) one step closer to acquiescing to their ideological assumptions. In what follows, I will explore the interplay between humor, intertextuality, and cultural literacy. In particular, I will try to show that humor depends on intertextuality and that its most prominent sociopragmatic function, namely its inclusive/exclusive one, can be directly associated to individuals’ ability to establish, trace, and interpret intertextual references, which seems to depend, among other things, on their cultural literacy.

90

The Languages of Humor

Humor, intertextuality, and cultural literacy Even though speakers may not always realize it, intertextuality is the sine qua non for humor. The mere concept of script opposition used to account for most (if not all) humorous instances (Raskin 1985; Attardo 1994, 2001) relies on intertextuality. When interpreting humorous texts, recipients evoke specific scripts, namely previous experiences and knowledge of the world (including, and/or included in, previous texts) to make sense of the humorous material at hand. Such previous intertextual experience and knowledge become the benchmark against which the second, incongruous script of interpretation creating the humorous effect surfaces. In other words, script opposition or incongruity2 cannot actually be established without reference to previous (con) texts, which are considered as expected, conventional, or normal in some sense. It is therefore suggested that “intertextuality lies at the heart of humor” (Attardo 2001: 71), as it helps determine what is incompatible or incongruous in a given (con)text. Humor scholars tend to highlight the positive aspects of intertextuality and presupposed shared knowledge in humor. For instance, Norrick (1989: 118, 120) claims that the teller [of a joke] presumably displays knowledge of the intended reference and challenges the audience to discover it. . . . The tests we pose in telling jokes seek not, however, primarily to embarrass hearers, but rather to discover what Goffman (1959) calls relevant social data about them—data on their attitudes, beliefs, group membership, and so on. . . . This complementary exhibition of shared knowledge particularly when it involves some specialized or arcane source, attests to common interests and encourages mutual involvement. So, joke telling counts as positive politeness (Brown and Levinson 1978), as an invitation to demonstrate membership and solidarity. (emphasis in the original; see also Norrick 1993: 69–72, 109)

Therefore, it is often taken for granted that recipients will recognize the allusion(s) in a humorous text and will be able to establish common ground with the humorist; sometimes humor researchers tend to forget that those lacking the required linguocultural skills to comprehend it are placed in an “inferior position” (MazurekPrzybylska 2016: 91; see also Werner 2004, Tsakona 2011). In addition, by considering jokes a folk genre and a “key vehicle for popular creativity” (Davies 2016: 263; see the Introduction), it is usually implied that the vast majority of individuals can indeed reach specific interpretations and enjoy the humorous meanings. Intertextuality is thus celebrated as a rich resource to be exploited by humorists (see among others Hlynka and Knupfer 1997; Manteli 2008: 229–304, 2011; Astapova 2015: 84–85, 87, Laineste 2016: 18, 22; Laineste and Voolaid 2016). But what if joke recipients do not get the allusion(s)? What if the “invitation to demonstrate membership and solidarity” (see Norrick’s 1989 quotation above) fails to be delivered? Things may not always run smoothly in humorous communication (see Bell 2015, and references therein). Furthermore, if intertextual allusions in humorous texts are judged as not easily accessible to all the members of the audience, humor becomes “sophisticated” (Raskin 1985: 46, 136) or “intellectual” (Hlynka and Knupfer 1997: 405), that is, it acquires an exclusive function (cf. the previous section). It is exactly this dimension of humor that renders it an understanding/intelligence test for



Intertextuality and Cultural Literacy in Contemporary Political Jokes

91

the addressee (Sacks 1974; Sherzer 1985: 218–19) and a reason for “self-gratification” for the humorist who came up with the allusion (Hlynka and Knupfer 1997: 405; see also Norrick 1993: 69–72, 98; Mazurek-Przybylska 2016: 91). Whether consciously or unconsciously, humorists may create “ideal” interactants who are “well informed” and “culturally literate,” and share a common “cultural memory” (Werner 2004; see also Laineste and Voolaid 2016: 26) Cultural literacy is most relevant here, as it could assist humor recipients in identifying and interpreting references to specialized texts that are perceived as “common” knowledge. This is particularly important in public forms/genres of humor (e.g., jokes, cartoons, sitcoms, comedies) whose cultural references and connotations are usually considered accessible to anyone. On the other hand, when specific (con) texts are projected as “common” knowledge independently of, for instance, the social or ethnic background of recipients, social exclusion and communicative inequality are perpetuated, and sociocultural differences are swept under the carpet and eventually ignored (see the previous section). For instance, research has pointed out that political cartoons often draw on previous texts that are silently projected as widely accessible and known to their audience, but turn out to be comprehensible only to those recipients who are familiar with specific political, historical, religious, and other texts. Thus, they contribute to the creation of elitist3 interpretative communities whose members are capable of deciphering the intertextual references and tend to align with their presuppositions (Werner 2004; Tsakona 2011). Given the above, the function of intertextuality and the role of cultural literacy in humorous communication can be related to both incongruity and superiority/ aggression theories of humor (see Raskin 1985; Attardo 1994; 2001). On the one hand, intertextuality connects the text including the allusion with previous (con)texts which are constructed as expected, conventional, and normal—and simultaneously helps identify the differences or the incongruity between them. On the other hand, intertextuality marks group boundaries: those belonging to the in-group are constructed as “superior” because they can make sense of the intertextual references, while those who are not capable of recognizing and processing the allusion(s) are deemed “inferior,” and hence they are excluded from the group. Cultural literacy is the key to identifying and interpreting the humorous incongruities, and hence allows for the distinction between the two groups. The following analysis of the data is intended to highlight the centrality of allusions to creating and comprehending humor as well as the cultural literacy skills exhibited by the humorists and attributed to their “intended” or “implied” or “ideal” addressees. It will be shown that the intertextual allusions included in political jokes are remarkably diverse and complex, and may divide potential recipients to those “in the know” and those “out of the know.”

Political jokes—and the data of the study Political jokes are one of the most common kinds of jokes. They are built around the discrepancies between the actual state of political affairs and the (often idealized) image of how political issues should or could be. Joke tellers select specific aspects

92

The Languages of Humor

of politicians’ behaviors or political events and represent them as incongruous, unexpected, or abnormal. Thus, they create and share political jokes to convey their criticism and to express their anxieties and protests against politicians and/or the existing living conditions. Political jokes also seem to help people cope with everyday hardships by allowing them to laugh their troubles away. Sharing such texts contributes to creating a sense of community and to reinforcing the solidarity among those who share them (see among others Obrdlik 1942; Shehata 1992; Davies 1998: 77–83, 176–81; Tsakona and Popa 2011; Moalla 2013; Tsakona, 2015, 2017, 2018). When investigating political jokes, scholars mostly concentrate on what the joke content and humorous incongruities can tell us about how individuals perceive and evaluate the social reality surrounding them. So, scholars attempt to trace and analyze the intertextual links established between these texts and a wide variety of other (con)texts, such as political speeches and decisions, public deliberations on political issues, accounts of socioeconomic conditions, political criticism coming from opposing political parties or citizens, and so on. The present study will leave aside the intertextual allusions to, for example, political figures, decisions, and events (see Tsakona 2018) and will instead concentrate on the various nonpolitical texts alluded to in political jokes, so as to shed more light on the background knowledge or cultural literacy required of their potential audience. This discussion is expected to bring to the surface how joke recipients are constructed or imagined within these texts by joke tellers. Τhe data examined here comes from a large corpus of canned political jokes referring to the Greek financial crisis and collected from January 15, 2010, to December 12, 2013 (596 jokes). All of them were sent to the author’s personal email account by friends and relatives. None of the emails sent was excluded from the collection and, at the same time, no other material was added by the author (e.g., downloaded from websites or coming from printed collections). Although the corpus does not claim representativeness, it could be suggested that it was randomly selected and this selection was not biased by the author’s personal preferences (see also Tsakona 2015, 2017, 2018).

Data analysis “Intertextuality occurs any time one text suggests or requires reference to some other identifiable text or stretch of discourse, spoken or written,” as Norrick (1989: 117) claims in his work on intertextuality and humor. The aim of the following analysis is to demonstrate that, even though (political) jokes are usually perceived as part of the folklore and as created to be widely accessible, they often draw on allusions which render their comprehension a demanding task. More specifically, it will be shown that contemporary political jokes on the Greek financial crisis presuppose recipients’ cultural literacy skills, since they include intertextual references to (a) older, sometimes classical texts and (b) more recent ones . Furthermore, although the main purpose of such jokes is to criticize political affairs and express people’s dissatisfaction and indignation with politicians and their actions, at the same time they divide their audience into those “in the know” and those “out of the know.” Needless to say, some of the intertextual references employed in the examined texts may be inaccessible to the present analyst.



Intertextuality and Cultural Literacy in Contemporary Political Jokes

93

Allusions to older or classical texts Several political jokes on the Greek crisis draw on historical, religious, or mythological knowledge to convey their humorous criticism:4 (1) Μια σαλάτα του Καίσαρα 6,90. Λογικά πρέπει να την κράταγε και όταν ήρθε και όταν είδε και όταν νίκησε. A Caesar’s salad [costs] €6.90. Obviously [Julius Caesar] must have held it when he came and when he saw and when he conquered. (2) - Χαίρετε. Έχετε λίγο φαγητό για έναν γέροντα; -Ε  ίσαι Έλληνας; - Σωκράτης ονομάζομαι κύριε. Δεν είμαι Αθηναίος, ούτε Έλληνας πολίτης, αλλά πολίτης του κόσμου. - Άει στο διάολο ρε κωλόγερε συριζαίε. Χάσου από δω. Εδώ είναι μόνο για Έλληνες.

- Hello. Do you have some food for an old man? - Are you Greek? - My name is Socrates, sir. I am not an Athenian or a Greek but a citizen of the world. - Go to hell, you dirty old man, voter of SYRIZA.5 Get away from here. This is only for Greeks.

(3) Αν ο Ντα Βίντσι ήταν Έλληνας θα ζωγράφιζε τη «Μόνο Μίζα». If [Leonardo] da Vinci were Greek, he would paint the “Mono Miza”/“Only Bribe.”

In joke (1), reference is made to the well-known quotation Veni, vidi, vici (I came, I saw, I conquered) attributed to Julius Caesar (in Plutarch’s The Life of Julius Caesar).6 This allows the joker to humorously comment on the high prices of a Caesar’s salad in crisis-ridden Greece. The humorist suggests that the salad must have been carried by Julius Caesar himself; otherwise, it would not have been that expensive. If recipients are not familiar with Julius Caesar’s quotation, they cannot understand the incongruous importance of a salad held by J. Caesar himself in one of his glorious victories. Another allusion to the classics is included in joke (2), where a phrase attributed to Socrates (in Plutarch’s Of Banishment) is employed to ridicule the members of the Greek extreme-right, neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, who used to organize charity meals exclusively for Greek citizens, thus excluding immigrants and refugees living in Greece. Although Golden Dawn members project themselves as supporters of “pure” (Ancient) Greek values and traditions (against, e.g., foreign influences), they do not show respect for Socrates and his words. An incongruity is thus created between Golden Dawn members’ admiration for the Ancient Greek civilization and their ignorance of Socrates’ quotation. On the other hand, joke recipients are implicitly portrayed as capable of recognizing the quotation and its meaning. Joke (3) is based on an untranslatable pun on the name of da Vinci’s painting Mona Lisa (pronounced [móna líza] in Greek), which is distorted to Μόνο Μίζα (only

The Languages of Humor

94

bribe, pronounced [móno míza]). The joke humorously attacks Greek politicians’ and authorities’ tendency to receive bribes to do their jobs, and accuses them of corruption. If recipients are not familiar with what is da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, they will not be able to grasp the incongruity created by the pun. Biblical allusions are also common in the data examined, as examples (4–5) illustrate: (4) - Καλημέρα. Έχετε τρόφιμα; - Ναι. Είσαι Έλληνας; - Δεν υπάρχει Ιουδαίος και Έλληνας, δεν υπάρχει δούλος και ελεύθερος, δεν υπάρχει άντρας και γυναίκα . . . - Ποιος είσαι ρε; - Ονομάζομαι Ιησούς. Είμαι εβραίος. - Χάσου από δω ρε. Είναι μόνο για Έλληνες λέμε.

- Good morning. Do you have any food [for the poor]? - Yes. Are you Greek? - There is neither Jew nor Gentile,7 neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female . . . - Who are you dude? - My name is Jesus. I am Jewish. - You get out of here. It’s only for Greeks, I told you.

(5) Όταν πεθαίνει ο άνεργος πάει στη Γη της Αγγελίας.

When unemployed people die, they go to the Advertisement’s Land.

Joke (4) resembles joke (2), but this one recontextualizes a well-known quotation from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (3:28) to criticize Golden Dawn’s discriminatory practice of organizing charity meals exclusively for Greek citizens, and hence to ridicule its members for being religious fanatics but simultaneously ignoring Christian values and texts. Joke recipients are thus expected to recognize the quotation, so as to grasp the incongruity between the Christian values supposedly embraced by Golden Dawn members and their exclusive, racist practices. Example (5) is based on an untranslatable pun. In Greek, the word αγγελία (short advertisement, pronounced [aɟelía]) is only slightly different from the word επαγγελία (promise, pronounced [epaɟelía]). So, in the joke, η Γη της Επαγγελίας (the Promised Land) of the Old Testament becomes η Γη της Αγγελίας (the Advertisement’s Land), where unemployed Greeks are looking for jobs. The joke is a critical comment on the increase of unemployment in Greece during the financial crisis, which has led people to despair. Those recipients who cannot reconstruct the biblical allusion will miss the incongruity created by the pun. Other historical and cultural references are also present in the data under scrutiny: (6) Δεν διάβασα το Μνημόνιο γιατί διάβαζα το ημερολόγιο των Μάγιας. Τα ίδια λένε και τα δύο. I haven’t read the Memorandum because I was reading the Maya Calendar. They both say the same things.



Intertextuality and Cultural Literacy in Contemporary Political Jokes

95

(7) Η Ελλάδα είναι αναπόσπαστο κομμάτι της Ευρώπης, που την εγάμησεν ο Ζεύς ως ταύρος—αλλιώς δεν εξηγούνται τόσα βόδια στη Βουλή.  Greece is an indispensable part of Europe, who was fucked by Zeus transformed into a bull—there is no other way to explain the presence of so many oxen in the [Greek] Parliament.

Joke (6) parodies a statement by former minister M. Chrisochoidis when the first Memorandum was signed by the Greek government, the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Commission (in 2010). Although Chrisochoidis was a prominent member of that government, he publicly admitted that he voted for the Memorandum without having read (any part of) it. His statement was heavily criticized as cynical and frivolous by the media and the citizens. The joke reflects such criticism. Furthermore, the Maya Calendar is here represented as similar to the Memorandum since they both predict disasters, that is, the end of the world and the end/destruction of Greece respectively. In other words, the joke conveys Greek people’s skepticism concerning the effectiveness of the austerity measures and the reforms imposed on the Greek state. Recipients unfamiliar with what is included in the Maya Calendar will miss the incongruous comparison with the memorandum text. Finally, joke (7) presupposes recipients’ familiarity with the Greek mythology, in particular with the myth of Europe’s abduction by Zeus who was transformed into a bull. The allusion serves to create a pun on the Greek word βόδι (ox), which is often used to insult someone as stupid and incapable of handling anything. Hence, Greek parliamentarians are portrayed as inadequate in their role, and joke recipients are expected to be able to make the connection between this inadequacy and the Ancient Greek myth of Europe and Zeus, so as to get the pun. The examples analyzed here illustrate some of the references which are projected as “common” knowledge among Greek joke tellers and joke recipients. They come from “prestigious” (con)texts such as classical and religious texts, history, art, and mythology. Joke comprehension seems to rely on the recognition and “proper” interpretation of such allusions. It could therefore be suggested that the joke tellers creating and circulating such texts appear to be able to handle such allusions and to create puns and humorous incongruities with them. At the same time, they expect their addressees to (be able to) do the same, if humor is to succeed.

Allusions to more recent cultural (con)texts Some of the intertextual references appearing in the data examined here draw on cultural knowledge and contexts that are more recent, but still exclusive. The following examples are illustrative: (8) Δ  εν διάβασα το Μνημόνιο γιατί σημασία δεν έχει η Ιθάκη αλλά ο πηγαιμός. I haven’t read the Memorandum because Ithaka is not important, it’s the trip that counts.

The Languages of Humor

96

Example (8) alludes to C. P. Cavafy’s ([1911] 1992) poem Ithaka, which has become particularly well-known for its central idea that when we set out to achieve an important goal, it is not the goal itself that counts, but what we experience and learn while striving to achieve it.8 This idea is here recontextualized to humorously justify minister M. Chrisochoidis’ refusal to read the text of the first Memorandum (see also joke 6). This recontextualization of the poem serves to criticize the minister for offering an excuse that hardly makes sense, or for underestimating the significance of the Memorandum. Joke recipients need to trace the poetic allusion to get the incongruity of comparing the poetic Ithaka with a financial agreement between the Greek state and its creditors. Fairytales also become intertextual resources for Greek humorists: (9) Ψήφισε Αλί Μπαμπά. Έχει μόνο 40 κλέφτες.

Vote for Ali Baba. He has only 40 thieves.

(10) Έχουν παγώσει τα δάχτυλά μου στο πληκτρολόγιο. Θα με βρουν κοκαλωμένο στο λάπτοπ και θα γίνω το κοριτσάκι με τα πλήκτρα. My fingers are freezing on the keyboard. They will find me frozen in front of my laptop and I will become the little key girl.

Example (9) alludes to the Middle-Eastern folk tale of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” from The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights ([1706] 2010): Ali Baba is here preferred to Greek parliamentary parties, because he only has forty thieves, while the Greek Parliament has three hundred members who are implicitly compared to, or represented as, thieves to create an incongruity. In joke (10), humor is based on a pun: Το κοριτσάκι με τα σπίρτα (The Little Match Girl, i.e., the title of a fairytale by H. C. Andersen [1845] 2015), becomes το κοριτσάκι με τα πλήκτρα (the little key girl). Both girls die because of the extreme cold; the Greek one because she cannot afford to pay for heating, which is a problem many Greeks face since the beginning of the financial crisis. In both jokes, tracing the intertextual reference is a prerequisite for getting the humorous incongruities. More popular allusions appear in jokes (11–13), such as the Big Brother reality TV show (where participants lived in a house watched by cameras and every week they voted out one of them as “less suited” for the tasks assigned to them), the Forbes List (including the richest people in the world), and the cartoon series Tom and Jerry (featuring the competition between a cat and a mouse): (11) - Άσε, στη δουλειά έχουμε γίνει Big Brother! -Τ  ι; Σας έβαλαν κάμερες; - Όχι, αλλά κάθε βδομάδα έχουμε και μια αποχώρηση!

- Dude, at the office we have become like the Big Brother [reality TV show]! - How? Did they install cameras [to watch you]? - No, but every week someone is leaving!



Intertextuality and Cultural Literacy in Contemporary Political Jokes

97

(12) Ειμαι στη θεση 3.319.900.737 στη λιστα του Forbes . . . Τι τον ηθελα εκεινο το freddo σημερα, επεσα 2 θεσεις γαμωτο. I am number 3,319,900,737 on the Forbes List. . . . Why did I drink that freddo [i.e., cold cappuccino coffee] today? Damn it, I went down 2 numbers. (13) Πάει ο Τσίπρας και ο Στρατούλης στην Αγγλία για μία συνάντηση με τον Κάμερον. Πηγαίνουν στο ξενοδοχείο και ανοίγουν την ντουλάπα να βάλουν μέσα τα ρούχα τους και βλέπουν ένα ποντικό. «Ρε συ», λέει ο Τσίπρας, «ξέρεις πως είναι ο ποντικός στα αγγλικά για να πάρουμε τηλέφωνο στην Reception να τους πούμε ότι βρήκαμε ένα;» «Όχι» λέει ο Στρατούλης, «εσύ»? «Ούτε εγώ» λέει ο Τσίπρας, «αλλά άσε, θα πάρω εγώ να εξηγηθώ!»

- Yes, Reception? - Yes, how can I help you? - Do you know Tom and Jerry? - Yes, of course. - Jerry is here.

Tsipras and Stratoulis [i.e., the leader and a prominent member of the then major Opposition party, SYRIZA] go to England to meet Cameron. They check in the hotel and they open the closet [in their room] to put in their clothes and they see a mouse. “Dude,” says Tsipras, “do you know how they say ‘mouse’ in English so that we call the reception and tell them that we found one?” “No,” says Stratoulis, “do you?” “Me neither,” says Tsipras, “but let me call [them] to explain myself!” - Yes, Reception [there]? - Yes, how can I help you? - Do you know Tom and Jerry? - Yes, of course. - Jerry is here.9

Such intertextual references contribute to the creation of humor referring to the unemployment affecting many people who get fired from their jobs (joke 11), the high cost of living in Greece (even coffees are too expensive; joke 12),10 and SYRIZA politicians’ inability to recall a rather common English word (which is also used in Greek in phrases such as Μίκυ Μάους [Mickey Mouse] and computer mouse; joke 13).11 The humor of such jokes becomes opaque for those who may not recognize the allusions and hence may not be able to interpret them in the new context. More specifically, joke recipients are projected as familiar with the Big Brother reality show and its rules so as to make the incongruous comparison between the show and a work environment where one employee is fired every week (joke 11);12 as knowing the content of the Forbes List (joke 12); and as familiar with the animation used in joke (13) to create the humorous incongruity between a leading politician who is expected to recall common English words, but instead evokes animation characters to communicate in English.

The Languages of Humor

98

Allusions to popular songs, proverbs, and various genres and registers are also common in these jokes, which however may not be accessible to all potential recipients. Examples (14–16) are indicative of this tendency: (14) - Γιε μου που πας; - Μάνα θα πάω στα φανάρια!

- Son, where are you going? - Mother, I am going to the traffic lights!

(15) Στους γονείς μου οφείλω το «ζην», στον δάσκαλό μου το «εύ ζην», στη Eurobank 30.000 ευρώ . . . στην Πειραιώς 22.000 ευρώ, στην εφορεία 12.000 ευρώ . . . To my parents I owe my life, to my teacher [I owe] my good life, to Eurobank [I owe] €30,000 . . . to Piraeus [Bank I owe] €22,000, to the tax office €12,000 . . . (16) Νεοελληνική γλώσσα και γραμματική (Τριανταφυλλίδης, Μπαμπινιώτης) Πως κλίνεται το ρήμα πτωχεύω; εγώ πτωχεύω, εσύ κερδίζεις, αυτός πλουτίζει, εμείς πεινάμε, εσείς τα τρώτε, αυτοί μας πηδάνε

Modern Greek language and grammar (Triantafyllidis, Babiniotis)13 How is the verb “go bankrupt” conjugated? I go bankrupt you earn he becomes rich we starve you spend [our money] they fuck us

Joke (14) presupposes knowledge of a Greek song14 referring to young people forced to sail away to earn a living, and including the following verse: –Γιε μου πού πας; -Μάνα, θα πάω στα καράβια (Son, where are you going?—Mother, I am going to the ships). This verse is punningly distorted here to refer to unemployed people who “go to the traffic lights” to earn some money: cleaning windshields of cars stopped at traffic lights or begging for money from car drivers stopped at traffic lights is usually taken up by immigrants who have recently arrived from their countries of origin in order to make ends meet. The fact that the same practice is adopted by Greeks is indicative of their desperation due to unemployment. The humorous incongruity between young people who were forced to sail away to make a decent living (in the past) and young people who clean windshields to earn tips for a living (in the present) cannot be understood if recipients have never heard the song in question.



Intertextuality and Cultural Literacy in Contemporary Political Jokes

99

Joke (15) is based on the Greek proverb Στους γονείς οφείλουμε το ζην, στους δασκάλους μας το ευ ζην (We owe our lives to our parents and our good life to our teachers), meaning that children are grateful to their parents for raising them (for helping them survive) and to their teachers for making their lives better. The proverb is recontextualized here to humorously criticize those Greeks who lived beyond their means and now are in debt to Greek banks and the Greek state. It is difficult to get the joke without evoking the meaning of the alluded proverb. Various registers and genres are also exploited to create humor, such as grammar books. Joke (16) humorously comments on how Greek people often perceive their financial state (i.e., εγώ πτωχεύω [I go bankrupt], εμείς πεινάμε [we starve]) and the role of banks and politicians therein (i.e., εσύ κερδίζεις [you win], αυτός πλουτίζει [he becomes rich], εσείς τα τρώτε [you spend our money], αυτοί μας πηδάνε [they fuck us]). The incongruous conjugation of the verb should be contrasted to how verbs are normally conjugated in grammar books (i.e., maintaining the same verb in all persons); otherwise, the joke will fall flat. The diversity of cultural allusions attested in the data examined cannot be captured by the limited number of examples analyzed here. Other sources for intertextual references attested in the present corpus include previous joke cycles, literary texts, Greek folk songs and folk poems, lullabies, prayers, funeral speeches, films, TV series and celebrity shows, (personal and commercial) advertisements, news articles, weather forecasts, slogans, legal, military, religious, sport, and psychological registers, children’s games, computer games, online social media and respective practices, political statements, figures, decisions, and events (see also Tsakona 2018). Still, the present analysis hopefully shows that recipients’ cultural literacy is called for when interpreting political jokes on the Greek financial crisis. Such jokes project specific linguistic, textual, cultural, historical, and other knowledge as “given” among potential recipients, who are in turn expected to be familiar with the wide variety of intertextual references exploited by joke creators to produce a humorous effect and to critically comment on Greek politics and economy. Without evoking the relevant (con)texts, recipients will not comprehend the political jokes.

Conclusion Research on political humor usually emphasizes that one has to be familiar with the respective sociopolitical contexts to understand it. The present study has tried to demonstrate that not only is a detailed knowledge of political affairs required for this task, but cultural knowledge is equally important for it. Jokers draw on recipients’ assumed cultural literacy to create their punch lines and to convey their criticism. Even though the amount of jokes analyzed here is relatively small, it hopefully captures the diversity and the complexity of sources alluded to in such texts (see also Tsakona 2018). The close relationship between humor and intertextuality is not new to humor researchers. Recently, it has been brought to the limelight again due to the significant role intertextuality plays in the creation of online humor disseminated via the social media. In this context, the present study has focused on the interplay between intertextuality,

100

The Languages of Humor

cultural literacy, and humor to show that intertextual references are so common and diverse in contemporary political jokes that they may result in more or less significant difficulties in their interpretation. Whether consciously or subconsciously, humorists creating and/or disseminating political jokes position themselves as “culturally literate” and simultaneously position their (potential) addressees as “culturally literate” in the same sense. Consequently, jokes often do become understanding texts which check whether interlocutors share a common linguocultural background (cf. Sacks 1974; Sherzer 1985; Tsakona 2011, 2018; Mazurek-Przybylska 2016). This may further lead to the exclusion of some of them from a specific group, thus confirming the hegemonic or elitist dimension of intertextuality and cultural literacy. On the contrary, those who identify and reconstruct the “intended” meanings of the allusions remain part of the group. Striving for establishing coherence, joke recipients may become satisfied when they finally identify the “smart” intertextual reference that seems to be responsible for the production of the humorous effect. While laughing with the incongruity of each joke and perceiving the critical perspective put forward by the humorist, recipients may neglect to critically reflect on the humorous messages conveyed. Thus, intertextuality may contribute to bringing recipients closer to the humorists’ evaluations and ideological assumptions, and may simultaneously prevent recipients from scrutinizing the joke content and its implicatures. The design of the present study does not allow us to investigate in depth the various interpretations these jokes may generate and/or their implications for recipients’ ideologies and political affiliations. It would, however, be interesting to pursue more reader-oriented approaches to political (or other) jokes (see among others Kramer 2011; Laineste 2011; Stewart 2013; Tsakona and Popa 2013). Finally, it is more often than not taken for granted by humor scholars that recipients will understand the jokes (whether political or not) and that jokes are easy-to-grasp folk texts. The present study has tried to support the claim that more research is required to explore the extent to which contemporary jokes can easily be characterized as a “folk,” “popular” genre, given the cultural literacy skills deemed necessary to process them. Through developing intertextual links with texts that may be considered “well-known” or even “culturally significant,” and through circulating mostly in online environments, jokes may no longer be as accessible as they used to be when they were an oral genre. Moreover, their online dissemination helps them reach a significant number of recipients who may belong to diverse sociocultural groups and may not be familiar with the intertextual references included in the jokes. In other words, many of these recipients may lack the implied (and sometimes imposed) cultural literacy skills necessary to interpret such texts. It therefore seems to be too soon to speak of a “democratization of joke telling” (Davies 2016: 257).

Acknowledgments The author is grateful to Argiris Archakis, Marianthi Georgalidou, and Vicky Manteli for invaluable feedback on the present study.



Intertextuality and Cultural Literacy in Contemporary Political Jokes

101

Notes 1 Hirsch’s (1980, 1988) proposal for cultural literacy involves what he perceived as “the American culture” and had an applied orientation: it aimed at reforming the American education via rediscovering the “Great Books” or “Classics” from history, literature, science, and so on. Given that the present study does not have an educational orientation, I will use the term critical literacy only in reference to the skills and knowledge required of readers to establish coherence in discourse. I will therefore leave any pedagogical aspects or implications of, for example, the use of political jokes/humor in education (cf. Werner 2004) for future investigation. Furthermore, the fact that Hirsch limits the scope of cultural literacy to the American culture does not prevent us from using it in the Greek context, where the data examined comes from. 2 Here I use the terms script opposition and incongruity interchangeably. Attardo (1997: 403) has convincingly argued that “SO [i.e., script opposition] and incongruity are different conceptualizations of the same phenomenon.” 3 This may happen without cartoonists realizing it and at the expense of their ­popularity. 4 All the data presented here was translated by the author for the purposes of the present study. Some humor may be lost on the way. Unconventional spelling was maintained in the Greek original texts, but was not reproduced in the English translations. Square brackets include additional explanatory material. It should also be noted that due to space limitations short jokes were preferred to longer ones (which were more than one page long in several cases and included multiple and more complex intertextual references). Short jokes also proved relatively easier to translate. 5 SYRIZA is a left-wing Greek party, which, among other things, opposes nationalism and is in favor of multiculturalist policies. 6 Caesar’s salad is incongruously associated with Julius Caesar instead of the Italian chef Caesar Cardini who first created it. This constitutes a more recent allusion, thus the joke is a mixed case which could also belong to the examples of the following section/ category. 7 In the original text (St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians 3:28), the word used for Gentile is Έλλην (lit. Greek). 8 These verses of the poem Ithaka (Cavafy [1911] 1992) are indicative: Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is what you are destined for. But do not hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, so you are old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you have gained on the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich. Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you would not have set out. She has nothing left to give you now. 9 The underlined extract appears in English in the original Greek joke. 10 The joke may also criticize Greeks for considering themselves rich and living beyond their means (see also Tsakona 2015: 296–97, 2018: 7–8). 11 It is also possible that SYRIZA politicians are here targeted for the limited skills in English attributed to them. This has resulted in the creation of a stereotype widely reproduced in recent political jokes targeting SYRIZA members and particularly

102

The Languages of Humor

the party leader A. Tsipras (see also Spilioti 2016: 71–72, Tsakona 2017: 1039, 2018: 9–10). At the same time, the use of English in the original Greek joke presupposes that understanding English is part of recipients’ literacy skills. 12 An indirect allusion to Orwell’s ([1949] 2013) 1984 novel may also be relevant here. 13 These are the names of the authors of the two most popular grammar books of Modern Greek. 14 The song is based on a poem by Nikos Kavvadias (1975) titled “Οι εφτά νάνοι στο S-S Cyrenia” (The seven dwarfs on S-S Cyrenia), which became a song by T. Mikroutsikos.

References Adami, E. (2012), “The Rhetoric of the Implicit and the Politics of Representation in the Age of Copy-and-Paste,” Learning, Media and Technology, 37 (2): 131–44. Andersen, H. C. ([1845] 2015), The Little Match Girl, trans. J. Hersholt. Available online: http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheLittleMatchGirl_e.html (accessed August 16, 2017). Astapova, A. (2015), “Why All Dictators Have Moustaches: Political Jokes in Contemporary Belarus,” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 28 (1): 71–91. Attardo, S. (1994), Linguistic Theories of Humor, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Attardo, S. (1997), “The Semantic Foundations of Cognitive Theories of Humor,” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 10 (4): 395–420. Attardo, S. (2001), Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Bakhtin, M. (1986), Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, Austin: University of Texas Press. Bell, N. D. (2015), We Are Not Amused: Failed Humor in Interaction, Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. Brown, P., and S. Levinson (1978), “Universals in Language Usage: Politeness Phenomena,” in E. N. Goody (ed.), Questions and Politeness, 56–310, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cadiero-Kaplan, K. (2002), “Literacy Ideologies: Critically Engaging the Language Arts Curriculum,” Language Arts, 79 (5): 372–81. Cavafy, C. P. (1992), Collected Poems, trans. E. Keeley and P. Sherrard, (ed.) G. Savidis, rev. edn, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Available online: http://www.cavafy.com/ poems/content.asp?cat=1&id=74 (accessed January 26, 2017). Cope, B., and M. Kalantzis (1992), “Contradictions in the Canon: Nationalism and the Cultural Literacy Debate,” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 12 (2): 85–115. Davies, C. (1998), Jokes and Their Relation to Society, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Davies, C. (2016), “How Jokes Change and May Be Changed: Simplifying, Transforming, and Revealing,” Tertium Linguistic Journal, 1 (1/2): 253–66. Duff, P. A. (2004), “Intertextuality and Hybrid Discourses: The Infusion of Pop Culture in Educational Discourse,” Linguistics and Education, 14 (3/4): 231–76. Faiclough, N. (1992), Discourse and Social Change, Cambridge: Polity Press. Goffman, E. (1959), The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Arden City: Pacific Books.



Intertextuality and Cultural Literacy in Contemporary Political Jokes

103

Graff, H. J. (1989), “Critical Literacy versus Cultural Literacy–Reading Signs of the Times?,” Interchange, 20 (1): 46–52. Hirsch, E. D. (1980), “Culture and Literacy,” Journal of Basic Writing, 3 (1): 27–47. Hirsch, E. D. (1988), Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, New York: Vintage Books. Hlynka, A., and N. N. Knupfer (1997), “A Thinking Person’s Comedy: A Study of Intertextuality in ‘Cheers’,” in R. E. Griffin, J. M. Hunter, C. B. Schiffman, and W. J. Gibbs (eds.), VisionQuest: Journeys toward Visual Literacy. Selected Readings from the Annual Conference of the International Visual Literacy Association (28th, Cheyenne, Wyoming, October, 1996), 401–10. Available online: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED408995 (accessed December 31, 2016). House, E. R., C. Emmer, and N. Lawrence (1991), “Cultural Literacy Reconsidered,” in E. H. Hiebert (ed.), Literacy for a Diverse Society: Perspectives, Practices, and Policies, 58–74, New York: Teachers College Press. Kavvadias, N. (1975), Traverso, Athens: Agra. [in Greek] Kramer, E. (2011), “The Playful Is Political: The Metapragmatics of Internet Rape-Joke Arguments,” Language in Society, 40 (2): 137–68. Kristeva, J. (1980), Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, trans. L. S. Roudiez, Oxford: Blackwell. Laineste, L. (2011), “Politics of Taste in a Post-Socialist State: A Case Study,” in V. Tsakona and D. E. Popa (eds.), Studies in Political Humour: In between Political Critique and Public Entertainment, 217–41, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Laineste, L. (2016), “From Joke Tales to Demotivators: A Diachronic Look of Humorous Discourse in Folklore,” Traditiones, 45 (3): 7–25. Laineste, L., and P. Voolaid (2016), “Laughing across Borders: Intertextuality of Internet Memes,” European Journal of Humor Research, 4 (4): 26–49. Manteli, V. (2008), “The Acharnians’ Revival on Modern Greek Stage: Translation and Performance,” PhD diss., University of Athens, Greece. [in Greek] Manteli, V. (2011), “Humor and . . . Stalin in a National Theatre of Greece Postmodern Production,” in V. Tsakona and D. E. Popa (eds.), Studies in Political Humor: In between Political Critique and Public Entertainment, 243–70, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Mazurek-Przybylska, Β. (2016), “Intertextual Face of Humor: A Case Study of Lauren Cooper Meets Dr Who,” Israeli Journal of Humor Research, 5 (1): 80–94. Moalla, A. (2013), “Tunisia in the Aftermath of the Revolution: Insights into the Use of Humor on Facebook to Create Social Bonds and Develop Relational Identity,” SAGE Open, 3 (3): 1–7. Norrick, N. R. (1989), “Intertextuality in Humor,” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 2 (2): 117–39. Norrick, N. R. (1993), Conversational Joking. Humor in Everyday Talk, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Obrdlik, A. J. (1942), “‘Gallows Humor’–A Sociological Phenomenon,” American Journal of Sociology, 47 (5): 709–16. Orwell, G. ([1949] 2013), 1984. London: Arcturus. Paul, R. (1990), “Critical and Cultural Literacy: Where E. D. Hirsch Goes Wrong,” in R. Paul, J. Willsen, and A. J. A. Binker (eds.), Critical Thinking: What Every Person Needs to Survive in a Rapidly Changing World, 527–33, Sonoma State University, Center for Critical Thinking and Moral Critique. Available online: http://www.criticalthinking. org/data/pages/19/47b8df537bbfee98e8590b44e6a3bc50513670ae53678.pdf (accessed January 26, 2017).

104

The Languages of Humor

Raskin, V. (1985), Semantic Mechanisms of Humor, Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Sacks, H. (1974), “An Analysis of the Course of a Joke’s Telling in Conversation,” in R. Bauman and J. Sherzer (eds.), Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking, 337–53, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shehata, S. S. (1992), “The Politics of Laughter: Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarek in Egyptian Political Jokes,” Folklore, 103 (1): 75–91. Sherzer, J. (1985), “Puns and Jokes,” in T. A. van Dijk (ed.), Handbook of Discourse Analysis, vol. 3, Discourse and Dialogue, 213–21, London: Academic Press. Spilioti, T. (2016), “Radio Talks, Pranks, and Multilingualism: Styling Greek Identities at a Time of Crisis,” in J. Mortensen, N. Coupland, and J. Thøgersen (eds.), Style, Mediation, and Change: Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Talking Media, 51–76, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stewart, C. O. (2013), “Strategies of Verbal Irony in Visual Satire: Reading the New Yorker’s ‘Politics of Fear’ Cover,” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 26 (2): 197–217. The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights, vol. 1 ([1706] 2010), ed. R. Irwin, trans. M. C. Lyons and U. Lyons. London: Penguin. Tsakona, V. (2011), “Humor, Religion, and Politics in Greek Cartoons: Symbiosis or Conflict?,” in H. Geybels and W. Van Herck (eds.), Humor and Religion: Challenges and Ambiguities, 248–67, London: Continuum. Tsakona, V. (2015), “‘The Doctor Said I Suffer from Vitamin € Deficiency’: Investigating the Multiple Social Functions of Greek Crisis Jokes,” Pragmatics, 25 (2): 287–313. Tsakona, V. (2017), “Democracy is 4 Wolves and 1 Sheep Voting for Food: Analyzing Jokes about Politicians in the Financial Crisis,” in T. Georgakopoulos, T.-S. Pavlidou, M. Pechlivanos, A. Alexiadou, J. Androutsopoulos, A. Kalokairinos, S. Skopeteas, and K. Stathi (eds.), Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Greek Linguistics. Volume 2, 1035–49, Berlin: Romiosini. Available online: http://www.cemog.fu-berlin. de/en/icgl12/offprints/tsakona/icgl12_Tsakona.pdf (accessed March 30, 2018) , [in Greek]. Tsakona, V. (2018), “Intertextuality and/in Political Jokes,” Lingua, 203: 1–15. Tsakona, V., and D. E. Popa (2011), “Humor in Politics and the Politics of Humor: An Introduction,” in V. Tsakona and D. E. Popa (eds.), Studies in Political Humor: In between Political Critique and Public Entertainment, 1–30, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Tsakona, V., and D. E. Popa (2013), “Editorial: Confronting Power with Laughter,” European Journal of Humor Research, 1 (2): 1–9. Werner, W. (2004), “On Political Cartoons and Social Studies Textbooks: Visual Analogies, Intertextuality, and Cultural Memory,” Canadian Social Studies, 38 (2). Available online: http://www.educ.ualberta.ca/css/Css_38_2/ARpolitical_cartoons_ss_textbooks. htm (accessed December 31, 2016).

6

Humor and Liminality: A Case Study of the Maltese Ġaħan Mary Ann Cassar

Introduction “Don’t take it as a matter of course, but as a remarkable fact, that . . . fictitious narratives give us pleasure,” Ted Cohen quotes Ludwig Wittgenstein as saying. Cohen continues, “A joke is a kind of story meant to make us laugh.” By jokes Cohen means “only a few particular kinds of contrivance. . . . One is the kind of joke that is a very short story— fictional, beginning with a description of people, their things, and their actions, and ending with a very concise conclusion (usually a single sentence) called ‘the punch line’” (1999: 1).1 Jokes are thus essentially brief narratives with unexpected endings, usually identified by scholars of humor as an incongruity (Carroll 2014: 49–50, 53), the happy resolution of which provokes laughter. Daniel Wickberg allows us to elaborate further on this, as he relates the structure and content of jokes to traditional folktales. “The joke,” he explains, “stands in a historical relationship to the comic folktale . . ., the joke aims at ultimate abstraction, condensation of detail, and exclusion of all elements not to the ‘point’.” Jokes are not “the products of ubiquitous folk culture” (1998: 122), but they nevertheless draw on folktales in their narrative elements and structure and their culture-based content. Jokes share many similarities with other forms of laughter provocation;2 they may all, broadly speaking, be said to speak a similar language. What distinguishes one from the other, though, is its particular nuance. While jokes arise out of an incongruity or an error in reasoning, slapstick and even caricature depend on the motifs of exaggeration and hyperbole, which may be considered errors of representation or distortions of reality. Both caricature and slapstick may be seen as aspects (or exemplifications) of farce, a word which originally meant “stuffing” and evokes the idea of exaggeration. The core farcical language of exaggeration finds expression in the visual field of caricature, while the exaggerated physical action characteristic of farce is more evident in slapstick. In contrast, jokes do not require the visual or physical exaggeration of farce. The laughter provoked by jokes hinges on a kind of logical error disguised as an incongruity, a characteristic that it shares with wit.3 But unlike the fast-paced banter of

106

The Languages of Humor

wit, with its unfaltering cut-and-thrust dialogue, jokes follow a different rhythm and depend on the unhurried but surprising conclusion of a narrative. The provocation of laughter in jokes hinges primarily on three main elements: the context of the joke, which includes setting, characters, and the language of expression; the committing of a redeemable error4 (perceived as an incongruity) and the felicitous resolution of this error; and, finally, audience reception. In addition to this, jokes depend on an element of ambiguity or even, I would like to argue here, liminality. To serve as an acceptable point of departure on the road to laughter, a story must have, in some way, the potential to be faintly puzzling or eyebrow raising and for a joke to be successful its message needs to be in some way ambiguous. A discourse intended to provoke laughter proceeds by first positioning itself firmly within generally accepted sociocultural and linguistic norms, patterns, and conventions, only to then suddenly shift itself out of these patterns creating a moment of incongruity. This shift may be described as a movement into a different world, and it is the liminality of the joke and the positioning of itself between divergent worlds that allows for the possibility of puzzlement, the resolution of which is quickly followed by pleasure and concomitant laughter. The provocation of laughter in jokes depends therefore on the sharing of a common worldview by the audience, which allows for an act to be deemed erroneous and yet redeemable. This chapter analyses the workings of this process and the importance of liminality through the study of a particular character in Maltese folklore that has its roots in traditional folktales from Turkey and neighboring Sicily: the much-loved wise fool Ġaħan. The chapter focuses on one specific folktale, that of Ġaħan u l-Bieb (Ġaħan and the door), and uses this tale to illustrate the pivotal role that liminality plays in jokes and laughter provocation. In this tale, I argue, the general liminality of the joke manifests itself quite explicitly in the contextual elements of the narrative: the setting symbolically references this liminality by continuously positioning itself on the threshold or interface between different states or worlds, while the characters are dual in nature, fulfilling their own symbolic functions in the narrative. This duality and liminality extends to the message of the tale which, following the resolution of the joke, continues to be ambiguous in its meaning. This allows for the joke to be read in multiple ways: certainly, as a children’s tale intended to provoke laughter, but also as sociopolitical commentary. Liminality here cuts across all the aspects of the tale: the context, the error and resolution, and audience reception. Throughout the story, character and reader are caught between different contexts, different frames of reference and different interpretations and it is out of this space of multiplicity and liminality that the humor of the tale emerges.

The evolution of Ğuhâ/Hoga The stories of the Maltese Ġaħan are very similar to those of Giufà in Sicily. Both Malta and Sicily were under Arab rule for three centuries around the year 1,000. Scholars believe that many of these stories, like the name Ġaħan itself, are likely to have been derived directly from the Arab world where a character named Ğuhâ is referenced in



Humor and Liminality: A Case Study of the Maltese Ġaħan

107

literature as early as the eighth or ninth century (Corrao 1993: 22; Galley 1971: 66). The word Ğuhâ has been interpreted as meaning someone who walks hastily or whose actions are not grounded in rational considerations and the name is used by a famous poet in the seventh century to indicate a form of madness (Corrao 1991: 21).5 Soon the name Ğuhâ (or the related Ğ’hâ) evolved to encompass and absorb the entire character of the Princeps Stultitiae (the character of the prime fool) popular in most countries around the Mediterranean, whether Muslim, Christian, or Jewish. Indeed, in Jewish and North African stories we find the character of Chi ha (as the name of Ğuhâ is often transcribed), while in Corsica the character is known as Jehan le Fou, possibly named after the most famous witty fool of France, “Maître Jehan,” in the second quarter of the fourteenth century (Al-Shamy 1980, cited in Carrao 1991: 60).6 A somewhat novel and deeper dimension came to be added to the character of Ğuhâ when it became associated and nearly assimilated with another character and another name: that of Hoga. Some Muslim traditions—especially in Turkey—insist that the name refers to a real historical figure. Interestingly, however, there is considerable ambiguity over who this person was. Some claim that he was born in Basra in Anatolia in the seventh century (Vella 1995: vii–viii), while an inscription at Aksehir gives the date of Hoga’s death as 1284/5 (Corrao 1991: 22). In the Turkish tradition, which assumes, in the manner of Cratylus, that there is an essential link between name and thing, the name “Nasr-ed-Din” Hoga is taken to express the nature of an extraordinary Mullah with incredible wit.7 The amalgamation of the characters of Hoga and Ğuhâ as descriptors for the same quasi-mythical person has been attributed to the great Persian Sufi poet Ğalâl ad-dîn Rûmî (Arberry 1961; Corrao 1991: 25). In the complex character that emerges, the folly of the Arabic Ğuhâ merges with the sagacity of the Turkish Hoga in the figure of a mystic infinitely amused by his own reputed shamanistic sanctity. The amalgam proved to be especially popular in the early centuries of the postmedieval era, with Ğuhâ/Hoga appearing in innumerable forms and endowed with innumerable traits. At first glance, the two sides of this character may appear to be split according to context, with the character appearing to be maximally cunning in some urban settings, while behaving like a simpleton in a rural environment. But on closer examination and with the whole gamut of stories taken into consideration, all possible permutations of the combination of both sides of this character can be found. The duality of the Ğuhâ/Hoga character as a sagacious fool manifests itself in the evolution of this character in a number of ways and this is reflected in the many names and appellations used to refer to this figure. In Eastern traditions, names are often believed to be indicative of the character that bears them. Among the hundred names given to the subversive mystic disguised as mentally minus habens, perhaps some of the most significant revolve around the root letters h-m-r, which in Semitic languages mean donkey. The character of Hoga/Ğuhâ is frequently seen riding a donkey— an image that, when perceived from a Christian perspective, is rife with religious symbolism, recalling the figure of Christ on Palm Sunday. For this reason, the character is sometimes referred to as Bu Hamâr (literally: the one with the donkey (Galley 1971: 65)). The image of this character riding a donkey evokes a sense of religious symbolism that is juxtaposed with the connotations of stupidity associated with this animal. In doing so, the image may also be said to serve perhaps as a quasi-Platonic

108

The Languages of Humor

reference to the paradoxical conjunction of mind and body—or of the spiritual and the bestial—in the human being. This donkey-riding image became particularly popular after the Mongolian invasions of the Muslim world, which were successfully carried out on horseback. Significantly, the image may also be identified with certain classical precedents, such as the Myth of Silenus (Lanza 1997: 26–33) and the stories of Midas, in which the donkey is not merely a symbol of simple stupidity but points to a complex duality of wisdom and idiocy, power and weakness. Through all of these allusions, the complex character of Hoga/Ğuhâ as donkey-rider becomes associated with both the figure of the monarch and that of the fool. Another appellation for the Ğuhâ/Hoga character can be found in Sicilian folklore where Giufà is sometimes referred to as the brother of King Solomon. This association is clearly intended in jest, but it once more draws attention to the juxtaposition of the ridiculous and the solemn, of foolishness and wisdom in these stories. Referring to Ğuhâ/Hoga as Solomon’s brother may be read as an attempt to undercut the notion of absolute power, but it may also be interpreted as an attempt at comic relief, introducing a note of jollity in the otherwise nerve-wracking atmosphere surrounding such power. This kind of “cooling” element in the narrative, which anticipates Thomas Moore’s embodiment of the Medieval virtue of hilaritas, alerts the reader to the potential political and socioeconomic implications of the stories, disguised and rendered digestible in the jocularity of the tales. The duality associated with this character may be said to manifest itself in his physical appearance. Some authors describe the Maltese Ġaħan as having a receding hairline despite his young age (Vella 1995: viii)—a characteristic that also links him to the Turkish folk character of Keloglan (a baldheaded, poor, and orphaned character affected by ringworm). This particular detail is interesting as the character’s baldness points to a juxtaposition of age and youth, and of the wisdom of a sage undercut by the follies of young age.

The Maltese Ġaħan The stories of Ğuhâ/Hoga emerge out of an oral tradition of storytelling, elements of which are still evident in the folktales of the Maltese Ġaħan and in the setting and context of the story of Ġaħan u l-Bieb. The stories were recounted in the medieval Arab world by “Hakija,” who were first mimics and later professional storytellers. Most of these storytellers performed in central public places, such as the marketplace, but in some instances, such as in the city of Fez, they occupied a particularly liminal space close to the city gates. By the sixteenth century, the telling of these tales moved from the outside market to the indoor setting of the coffee house, crossing a symbolic threshold between outside and inside, public and private space. In the nineteenth century, the Madhkana (literally, a place for laughing) was a particularly famous coffee house in Cairo where one could hear the stories of Ğuhâ being recited. The association with the city gate and the crossing of thresholds between public and private spaces, or between the inside and outside, is intimately related to the notion of liminality being developed here. Indeed, as we shall see, in the story of Ġaħan u l-Bieb—a tale that can



Humor and Liminality: A Case Study of the Maltese Ġaħan

109

be found in three different versions in the original Turkish, Arabic, and Maltese—the motif of the door is given particular significance, as is the relationship between the interiority of the home and the exteriority of that which lies beyond its threshold. The most comprehensive collection of Maltese Ġaħan stories, Il-Ġaħan ta’ Madwarna, published by Doris Vella, numbers sixty-five. Many of these stories, however, are not so well known among the Maltese and it is only around twenty stories, most of which are Arab in origin, that can be said to be truly popular. The stories were traditionally passed on by word of mouth but they received a great boost in popularity and, arguably, became even more imprinted in the Maltese collective memory, when three of these stories were chosen to be included in the first Maltese-language readers for primary school children aged between seven and eleven years old. The series of readers, titled Ġabra ta’ Ward, was first published in 1934 and continued to be used in schools till the mid-seventies. As a result, the three stories—Ġaħan u l-Bieb, which was included in the first-year reader, Ġaħan u l-Flieles (Gahan and the Chicks) and Ġaħan u l-Ħanżir (Gahan and the Pig), which were included in the second-year reader—introduced the character of Ġaħan to generations of Maltese schoolchildren for a period of around forty years leading to a great increase in the popularity of the character which became much-loved by the Maltese population. Most stories include episodes that reflect daily life in Malta in the nineteenth and early twentieth century when rural life was centered around the church and the few literate personages in the village were the priest, the family doctor, the notary public, the lawyer, and perhaps an architect. Each adventure usually starts with Ġaħan trying to follow some specific order or social custom. As the story progresses, Ġaħan inevitably manages to alter the usual and established way of doing things, producing an unexpected and undesired result for which he always has a simple explanation. The error usually results when Ġaħan interprets the instructions given to him—or some other words uttered in the course of the story—other than the way in which they were intended. This paves the way for what conventionally seems like paradoxical reasoning as the tacit assumptions and the propositions entailed in the spoken words are misinterpreted or simply not taken into account by Ġaħan. The Ġaħan u l-Bieb story that this chapter focuses on may be considered the paradigmatic Ġaħan story of the Maltese islands as it perfectly epitomizes the many conventions of the rest of the tales and can be used to show how the humor of these stories emerges out of a certain play of liminality. In this particular tale this concern with the liminal cuts across all aspects of the narrative, such as the setting, the characters, and the error and its resolution allowing for different possible interpretations, all of which are grounded in laughter.

Setting and context: Beds, doors, and thresholds The Ġaħan story makes use of framing devices that situate the fabula at some kind of threshold or crossroads. The story begins as follows: “It was Sunday, and Ġaħan’s mother wanted to go to Mass early. Ġaħan liked to dawdle between the blankets and did not want to quit his bed quite so early” (Vella 1956: 36–38). The story is thus

110

The Languages of Humor

initially set inside the home, with Ġaħan in particular still lying in bed. In its oral tradition, recited as it would have been by storytellers in a public arena, this tale would have immediately positioned itself in a liminal space between the public and private spheres of the home and, perhaps, the marketplace. The listener of this oral tale would have been transported across this public/private divide as he or she would also have been transported from the world of immediate reality to that of this imagined narrative space. The home may be considered a private and nonregulated space into which one can retreat in order to escape the socially ordered environment of the workplace or the public sphere more generally. In this case, the home of Ġaħan and, more particularly, the even more private space of his bed, is no exception. Still in bed, suspended in a space between sleep and wakefulness, dreams and reality, Ġaħan refuses to abandon the comfort of his own private space for the regulated environment of the outside. Lying in bed, Ġaħan is not quite sleeping; he is in fact doing nothing. Giuseppe Antonio Borgese suggests that stories such as those of the Ġaħan saga constitute a peculiar genre of oral literature, which he calls, using a manifest oxymoron, “The Epic of the Neighbourhood” (Sciascia 1991: 7). Borgese claims that the genre came into existence in regions where people interrupted their daily and annual patterns of work with “huge parentheses of doing nothing” due to their inability to otherwise occupy themselves with art, sinful activities, or any other forms of luxurious indulgence. Here “doing nothing” emerges as an almost pathetically ridiculous mode of the carnivalesque moment in Van Gennep’s account of liminality (1961)—one that is particularly exemplified by the character of Ġaħan himself. Sicilians speak of “the craft of Giufà” (the Sicilian name of Gaħan) when they mean no craft at all. Giufà is essentially unemployed and his “laziness” may be considered an art form in itself (Sciascia 1991: 14–15). Indeed, the Italian word for laziness, ozio, comes from the Latin otium which means leisure time during which one can also enjoy contemplation. This may be linked to the idea of a possible space for creativity. “Doing nothing” may open up a space for artistic or otherwise extraordinary regeneration of the spirit. Lying in bed in the liminal space between sleep and wakefulness, Ġaħan positions himself in the paradoxical space of a doing nothing that constitutes a retreat from the regulated order and conventions of the outside world, but opens up a space for creative inventiveness. The scene swiftly shifts, however, from the bed to the door—to the threshold between the home and the public sphere. “His mother,” we are told, “put on her Sunday best and before leaving said: ‘Listen son, I’m going to church. Get up and when you go out make sure to pull the door behind you.’ ‘Just leave it to me Mother!’ answered Ġaħan.” If the first few lines of the tale present us with a strong sense of interiority, privacy, and unconventionality, the rest of the scene points to the importance of the exterior, the public, and the regulated. The very first scene of the tale is therefore predicated on a duality that will be repeated in different forms throughout the story. Even more significantly, this scene positions itself in a liminal space of in-betweenness, drawing attention to the very physical marker of liminality—the door—that will serve as the driving force of the joke that is to come.



Humor and Liminality: A Case Study of the Maltese Ġaħan

111

Duality of characters and religious symbolism The duality of the setting is echoed in the nature of the characters that feature in this tale and their actions: those of Ġaħan himself and, of course, his mother. These characters present us with two other forms of liminality—that between the literal and the symbolic, the spiritual and the profane. The story continues: “A short while later, he got up, and prepared to go out, when he recalled what his mother had told him. What is one to do? He opened the door, took it off [its hinges], got hold of it by the knocker and started pulling it behind him. Was that not what his mother had told him?” The tale here recounts how the foolish son takes his mother at her word, failing to understand her true meaning. The joke depends on a play between what is meant and what is understood, but the figures of Ġaħan and his mother, and their behavior in this and the following scenes, alert the reader to an ulterior underlying duality and liminality that adds to the complexity of this tale. In this particular scene, Ġaħan’s door-carrying pilgrimage from private domicile (oikos) to public assembly-place (ecclesia) is passed over in the narrative. The story affects in ellipsis an instantaneous leap across the polis, avoiding any elaborate mention of this transition. But while the tale chooses to gloss over and omit the descriptions of such events in the fabula, it does provide other details that have significant symbolic value. The Door story takes us directly and instantly from Ġaħan’s unhinging of the divisive door to him barging into church. But the tale gives a clear description of how the door is dragged behind him. In a Sicilian version of the tale, Ġaħan is described as carrying the door on his back with one edge resting on his shoulders (Carrao 1991: 73). In a Christian context, Ġaħan carrying the door up to the sanctuary conjures up images of Christ carrying his cross up to Calvary. This is the highest sublimation that the Maltese Ġaħan is blessed with: the character of Ġaħan appears to here take on some of the attributes of the religious figure of the martyr and savior, suggesting that this character may perhaps function in the tale as an uncompromising witness to some hidden truth. As Corrao suggests with reference to the character of Ğuhâ, perhaps, the function of the Ġaħan stories may be that of “helping man to transcend the plane of immediate experience, torn apart and contradictory, in order to discover a hidden dimension of reality . . . situated beyond good and evil and recognizing the impossibility of understanding them rationally, accepting them as mystery or paradox” (Corrao 1991: 41). The Maltese version of the tale differs from an alternative one provided by Vella (1995: 1), where the error takes on a slightly different form. Here, Ġaħan is asked by his mother to take the measurements of the door to the carpenter at the market in order for a new door to be made. Ġaħan does not carry the door on his back; instead he drapes himself onto the door to quite literally take its measurements with his arms and legs. He then proceeds to walk to the carpenter, his arms and legs kept splayed apart to preserve the measurements of the door. Here the door does not constitute a massive adjunct to the body, as it does in the Turkish-Maltese versions where the scene exemplifies the incongruous conjunction of the animate and the inanimate that Bergson identifies as the essential source of laughter (“Something mechanical encrusted on the living” (1911: 37)). Instead Ġaħan identifies himself with the door

112

The Languages of Humor

by keeping his arms and legs in a fixed position according to the height and breadth of the door. His élan vital is thus negated through the reduction of his body to a mere instrument of measurement. Despite the differences in the two versions, however, both these scenes may be read as being rife with religious symbolism. In the alternative version, the character does not carry the door on his back as Christ does the cross, but he symbolically crucifies himself onto it. Indeed, when Ġaħan is questioned about his antics, he is compared to someone who is crucified: “Can you tell me why you are walking that way—feet apart and arms open as if crucified?” (Vella 1995: 1). This religious symbolism extends to the figure of Ġaħan’s mother, who watches the spectacle of her son being mocked by the congregation as he drags the door into church in a manner that recalls how Christ, condemned to crucifixion by the Romans, was mocked by all and sundry as he carried his cross to the place of crucifixion. The mother here clearly parallels the mother of Christ, “Our Lady of Sorrows.” There are no evocations of the sublime when the reader first encounters Ġaħan’s mother in the first scene of the tale. Instead the character appears to embody a sense of domesticity while also occupying a distinctly urban space, bringing together the Greek notions of oikos and polis. By the scene at the church, however, this urban domesticity takes on an additional sense of sanctity that emerges from this religious symbolism. In its juxtapositioning of the sacred with the profane, this story reveals traces of its Arabic origins and the complex character of Hoga/Ğuhâ described earlier in the chapter. In the Maltese “thousand and one comic tales” of Ġaħan (Delais 1986), as in the Arabian Nights, “both the usual incidents and the extraordinary coincidences are but the web and weft of divine Providence,” a fabric in which the sacred and profane meet (Haddawy 1992: xiv–xv). The emerging contrast between the sublime and the banal, the sacred and the profane, and the real and the symbolic is what contributes to the effectiveness of this scene and renders it significant in the context of this argument. If the joke in this tale and the laughter it provokes emerge out of an indeterminacy and an ambiguity in language, the liminality of the characters and the illicit juxtapositions that they appear to embody continue to draw attention to this duality.

Beyond error The crucial factor in any kind of laughter provocation is the committing of a harmless error. The error committed by Ġaħan occurs in language: it is, specifically, an error of understanding or an error of sequentiality that arises as a result of unstated assumptions and tacit presuppositions that go wrong. In the context of this argument one could indeed describe this error as one of framing: if in its setting and its characters the story positions itself in a space of liminality between the inside and the outside and the real and the symbolic, the error and the resultant joke that the whole tale hinges on also occur in the space between different frames of reference in language. One way in which the tale gives the impression of (pseudo) objectivity is by excluding all direct illocutionary elements except for the conventionally formulated command of the mother and the subsequent acknowledgment and reference to it by Ġaħan. The interest in the door story is focused on the perlocutionary effect of



Humor and Liminality: A Case Study of the Maltese Ġaħan

113

the mother’s directive and, even more so, on the perlocutionary sequel which, after a pregnant pause, goes well beyond the usual understanding of the codified expression of the mother’s order.8 In the Maltese version, the only spoken parts of the story are the mother’s imperative, Ġaħan’s verbal acknowledgment, and the reference to the command at the end, which almost amounts to what Latin rhetoricians referred to as an inclusio or narrative frame. There is no further dialogue recorded in the story. It is tempting to describe the mother’s use of language as figurative or even metaphoric. But upon close analysis the mother’s directive can be seen to constitute a shorthand phrase. The order “pull the door behind you” should be taken literally, but it implies a caveat: “Pull the door behind you until its edges hit the frame” or “until it slams shut.” Ġaħan’s “error,” in as much as it is an error, is that he fails to recognize this implied caveat and executes his mother’s orders far beyond the limits implied by her coded reminder. In this story, therefore, the error appears to be one of sequentiality: Ġaħan’s actions do not constitute the logically correct follow-up to his mother’s directive. But the assumption that this is in fact an involuntary error—that it constitutes a failing of the son’s powers of reasoning and comprehension—can be questioned. Ġaħan’s error (the voluntariness of which can also be debated) could be attributed to the interpretation of an order outside its intended frame of reference. What Ġaħan’s actions point to here is an excessive literalness—not a literal understanding of something that is meant to be figurative, but a literalness that allows for no nuance or condition. One could relate this to Paola Vassalli’s description of the Sicilian Giufà as “inhabit[ing] a world made up only of things, lacking in feeling and desire, tied to reality by the demon of ‘literality,’ to use Leonardo Sciascia’s term—taking everything according to the letter and at the same time missing the spirit” (Vassalli 1993: 16). Ġaħan’s actions are equivalent to an attempt to crack a nut with a steamroller! In the terminology of Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, it could be said that Ġaħan does not interpret the thought expressed in Mother’s order “optimally” but counterproductively to her explicit intention (1986: 233). But Ġaħan’s misinterpretation is not necessarily unintentional. As we have seen, the Maltese character of Ġaħan emerges from the tradition of the wise fool—a character that is positioned in a space of liminality between the ridiculous and the sagacious. The Arab Ğuhâ is described by the Egyptian essayist al ‘Aqqâd as exemplifying a logic of absurdity, while the Persian character is one who pokes fun at the orthodoxy and the Turkish figure serves as a social critic (Carrao 1991: 24). In the Medieval Arabic tradition, Ġaħan is generally represented as the wisest of fools, as the most naïve of knaves and the would-be liar who always blurts out the truth. In the Ğuhâ narratives, the figure is more complex than some allegorical projection of wisdom and folly. In some accounts of the stories, the character of Ğuhâ is based on a philosopher from Baghdad in the tenth century who feigned folly to avoid being beheaded for heresy. The superficial contrast between the sagacity evidenced by the character on some occasions and the stupidity displayed in others has led some learned Arab commentators to hypothesize that there were in fact two Ğuhâs (Carrao 1991: 21)— two brothers, like Prometheus and Epimetheus in the Greek myth. But in the Maltese tradition and in the door story that we are looking at here, Ġaħan is clearly singular and his folly and wisdom one and the same. Indeed, Ġaħan’s apparent stupidity serves

114

The Languages of Humor

as the very means by which his sagacity is displayed. The dual nature of Ġaħan may be said to reflect the Socratic paradox of learned ignorance. Some critics have asserted that Ġaħan’s folly may be feigned (Galley 1971: 67; Carrao 1991: 37), like Hamlet’s madness. Feigned madness is a common motif in literature and, perhaps, even in history (Carrao 1991: 30). Certainly in both Muslim and feudal Sicily it was a wellknown gambit often played by the peasants to avoid paying taxes or having to comply with arbitrary exercises of power. If Ġaħan is perceived as a wise fool, then his supposed error might be interpreted as a flouting of social conventions. Ġaħan does not merely misunderstand because he is a fool, he intentionally “misinterprets” in a gesture of subversiveness. Here the symbolic significance of the door as a point of liminality again becomes important. If the door serves as a symbol of a boundary between the inside and the outside, the public and the private, then Ġaħan’s dislodging of the door may be said to symbolize his breaking down of these barriers and the social codes that they imply. Ġaħan’s unconventional behavior may be interpreted therefore not merely as a failure or inability to understand, but as the consequence of a desire to willfully misunderstand—to attend to a nonstandard sense of an utterance that has caught his ear and mind in a semi-somnolent imaginative state. His dislocating response indicates that he had in his grasp an opportunity not to be missed, to signify by a show of dialectical resistance to this particular command his anarchist rejections of all commands whatsoever. His aberrant decoding of Mother’s order contains as its major implicature the core of his political and moral creed (Carrao 1993: 23). There is a strongly marked interval of time in the text between Ġaħan getting out of bed (a space of passive inaction and kindling imagination) and getting to the door (a marker of self-enclosure and openness to others). It is within this time that is missing from the narrative that Ġaħan presumably lingers in what I described earlier as a space of “doing nothing”—a paradoxical space of passivity and activity that allows for a creative disruption of social norms. It is at this point in the story that one is reminded of the alleged merging of the characters of Ğuhâ and Hoga by Rumi. It has been written of Rumi that all his stories “involve a breaking open. . . . It happens in the moments of greatest vulnerability. . . . These heroes and heroines move toward a bursting-open point, about which Rumi is ambivalent” (Barks 1990: xi). Such a point is perhaps reached by Ġaħan the moment after he crosses the threshold separating his bed-centered oikos from the work-centered polis. Ġaħan’s bursting-point comes at the moment when he takes a decision that has a double import: he will follow Mother’s diktat literally while flouting her intent and, in so doing, dislodge the symbol and instrument of divisiveness that, following the norms of convention, his mother decrees should remain in place. In this tale, the choice between closing or completely removing the door off its hinges appears to gesture toward a dualism between psychological self-immurement and openness to others. The story had been interpreted in this sense by the most distinguished Maltese playwright, Francis Ebejer, in his play, Il-Ġaħan ta’ Binġemma. In Act I of the play, Ġaħan indulges in a long soliloquy in which he provides detailed information about his literary antecedents. En passant, he chides Maltese girls for their hesitancy in accepting supposedly forward-looking young men as boyfriends: “What



Humor and Liminality: A Case Study of the Maltese Ġaħan

115

locked doors are there in your minds and feelings and in your memory of yourselves as Maltese that are being opened and closed for you right now?” (2002: 47). Here the door serves as a metaphoric threshold between the conventional and unconventional—an association that continues to be strengthened as Ebejer’s play proceeds. This scene may indeed be said to acknowledge and shed light onto a similar symbolism in the original Maltese tale in which Ġaħan’s dislodging of the door constitutes a complete rejection of such conventionality. Such an interpretation is also substantiated by the Turkish version of this story. In this version the key phrase on which the story turns is not “pull the door” but “keep your eye on it.” Nasr ed-Din claims that he has fulfilled this directive by bringing the door along with him. If, as in the Maltese version, the door functions here as a symbol of enclosure and captivity on the one hand, and openness and liberation on the other, then perhaps this scene suggests that this threshold of conventionality cannot ever be gotten rid of or, alternatively, should never be forgotten or let out of one’s sight. The subversive nature of Ġaħan’s actions is reflected in the way that they are received by the church-goers. In the Maltese version this story ends in church. According to Galley, had the scene been set in North Africa or Turkey, Ġaħan’s mother would have not gone to church, but rather to the baths; had it been in Egypt, it would probably have been the market (Galley 1971: 64). But here it is the church that serves as the setting for this final scene: He arrived at the church and he continued walking inside with all the ensuing loud noises. Everybody smiled and said: “See what Ġaħan has brought along!” His mother, who was there seeing and hearing all [that was going on], fell into a swoon of embarrassment and asked him: “What have you done, fool?” “Mother,” he answered, “Didn’t you tell me to pull the door behind me when I leave the house?” (Vella 1956: 37–38)

The church-goers’ reception occurs within the sacred space of the church—a space in which laughter is not appropriate. But it is from within this solemn space that the text provokes laughter, flouting religious conventions in the same way Ġaħan’s own actions disrupt the social order.

Conclusion The people who encounter Ġaħan in church fulfill an interesting function in this tale. As witnesses to his supposed folly, they constitute an audience that is comparable to that of the reader. The tale thus presents us with two levels on which the joke is received: that of the characters in the narrative and the readers outside of it. Perceiving the tale from the viewpoint afforded to us as readers the joke appears to be embedded in a number of contexts and settings that are conspicuously marked by duality and a sense of liminality. As readers we are able to see beyond the semantic ambiguity and (voluntary or involuntary) misunderstanding that lies at the heart of the joke itself and

116

The Languages of Humor

this allows us to read Ġaħan’s actions as part of a far more complex narrative of social transgression and subversion. Discourses that provoke laughter are always elliptical in style. In a joke, many steps are omitted from the telling of the narrative. Information is placed in odd places. Narrative structures are used to construct a sequential order and create expectations on the part of the audience. But built into the structure, style, and characters of such laughter-provoking tales is an open-endedness that allows for multiple courses of action, a potential for the narrative to deviate from the expectations it sets up, and liminalities that can be exploited for a surprise ending. It is this liminality and duality that creates the ambiguity, puzzlement, and uncertainty necessary for the progression to eventual laughter. Koestler describes this as the sudden perception of a single idea situated in two self-consistent but habitually incompatible matrices (Koestler 1989: 38–42)—a position of liminality that situates itself between multiple frames of reference. Suls suggests that anyone who ends up laughing at a joke has to proceed through two stages. In the first stage the perceiver finds his expectations about the ending of the joke thwarted in the punch line. In the second stage he engages in a form of problem-solving to find an alternative cognitive rule that would make the punch line follow from the first part of the story. Though the punch line seems incongruous to the preceding text, it can still be seen to follow certain rules (Suls 1972: 82–83). Raskin and Attardo in their General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) also identify six Knowledge Resources (KR) that must be used when generating a joke (Attardo and Raskin 1991: 293–347). These are the language or the actual verbalization of the joke, the narrative strategy or organization, the target or the butt of the joke (which is not always required), the situation, the logical mechanism (“which accounts for the two ways in which the two senses (scripts) in the joke are brought together”) and finally, and perhaps most importantly, the script opposition. Stressing the importance of this, the authors argue that Raskin’s earlier version of this theory “could collapse” all the six Knowledge Resources into this final one (Ruch, Attardo and Raskin 1993: 126). This particular resource refers to the way that a joke is fully compatible with two distinct scripts and it is the punch line that triggers the move from one script to another. Both Suls and Raskin and Attardo show that for a joke to work there need to be two possible scenarios into which it can fit. The text must occupy a liminal space in which it is possible to slip from one scenario to another with ease. Suls speaks of problem-solving to find a cognitive rule by which to interpret the text so that the punch line makes sense. Raskin and Attardo also speak of reinterpretation. This problem-solving and reinterpretation of the text can only take place in a liminal space. In its multiple forms across different languages and traditions, the Ġaħan door story always remains open-ended allowing for the possibility of different psychoanalytic, sociopolitical and literary interpretations.9 Recent readings of the character of Giufà, for instance, tend toward psychoanalytic and other psychological interpretations, as can be seen in the winning entries of cartoonists and illustrators who responded to Giufà through a visual medium in an illustration competition (Vassalli 1993: 15–20). These various interpretations are made possible through the liminality that lies at the heart of these tales—a liminality that, in the door story we have looked at, extends



Humor and Liminality: A Case Study of the Maltese Ġaħan

117

across the entire narrative, marking the nature of the characters themselves and their setting. Such liminalities create the space for the possible perception of an incongruity, of an error that has been committed, of a puzzlement that may be resolved without any harmful effect, and for the building up of a narrative tension that results, as it does in the “door” story, in peals of laughter.

Notes 1 The other kinds of jokes discussed by Cohen are formula jokes and “shaggy dog ­stories.” 2 The most prominent current theories of laughter provocation fall under analyses of the superiority theory (where the source of laughter is the realization of the laugher’s superiority over the one who serves as the butt of the joke), release (where laughter is seen as a means of discharging repressed mental energy), play (laughter as a disengagement from serious activity), the dispositional theory (where humor is said to arise as a result of a disposition to elicit a pleasurable reaction), and theories of incongruity. 3 The logical error related to wit is of the semantic kind. All kinds of semantic “errors” can be made to deliberately provoke laughter, the most refined of which are witticisms and puns. 4 This is based on Aristotle’s insight in the Poetics (5. 49a34–36), that “the laughable is some mistake . . . which is not painful or destructive to life” (Else 1963: 183). 5 The poet states: “Mi hai confuse la mente . . . sinché sono diventato pazzo quasi come Ğuhâ” (Corrao 1991: 21) (You have confused my thoughts . . . up to the point of becoming almost as mad as Ğuhâ; my translation). 6 The sound of this name is quite close to Ġaħan, as well as to the Medieval French name for the various Biblical Johns. 7 Nasr means victory while ed-Din means religion or faith. Thus Nasr-ed-Din stands for Religious Victory. The bearer of the name, diminutive in stature and wearing a huge turban, is said to have appeared at the court of the ruthless conqueror Timur (Tamburlaine) seeking employment, in a move diametrically opposed to what one would expect of Ġaħan. Timur said he would give him a job if he could answer a list of questions, in an almost formulaic application of the Sphinx’s operational model. If the questions were not answered he would be executed. The non-formulaic peculiarity of the Nasr ed-Din story is that his answers were masterpieces of laughter provocation. His responses were so hilarious that they induced the emperor to assign the jobseeker a post at court. Like all court jesters Hoga tended to be very bold in his speech, always walking a thin line between reward and execution. One day Timur saw his own aging face in a barber’s mirror and began to wail at the sight. The court politely wailed with him, including Nasr ed-Din. After the emperor regained his composure, Nasr ed-Din continued his loud lamentations. When Timur asked why he carried on so, Nasr edDin sobbed, “You wept over just one glimpse of yourself. But I have to look at you all day!” (Hyers 1996: 116). 8 In the Theory of Speech Acts, J. L. Austin distinguishes between the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary aspects of speech. The locutionary act, the most basic level, refers to the sounds speakers produce when uttering words which are combined in sentences that have a meaning. The illocutionary refers to the force with which the speaker intends the utterance to be understood, for example, whether the speaker is

118

The Languages of Humor

simply making a statement or giving an order or a warning. The listener’s understanding of the speaker’s intention marks the utterance as an illocution. Illocutionary acts are also identified by the contextual situation of the speaker and the listener together with grammatical conventions in a given context. The perlocutionary act refers to the effect that an utterance has on the listener. In saying something the speaker is also doing something, affecting the listener. However, the response to the perlocutionary act is dependent on the listener and the context. 9 Mystical interpretations have led some readers, foremost among them the g­ reatest of Sicilian folklorist Pitré, to trace at least one Ġaħan story to an Indian source, ­Panchatantra (Di Leo 1996).

References Al-Shamy, H. (1980), Folktales of Egypt, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Arberry, A. J. (1961), Discourses of Rūmī, London: John Murray. Attardo, S., and V. Raskin (1991), “Script Theory Revis(it)ed: Joke Similarity and Joke Representation Model,” HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research, 4 (3/4): 349–69. Barks, C. (1990), “Introduction: ‘Scrimshaw’,” in C. Barks and M. J.-D. Rumi (eds.), Delicious Laughter: Rambunctious Teaching Stories from the Mathnawi of Jelaluddin Rumi, x–xi, Athens, GA: Maypop Books. Bergson, H. (1911), Laughter, trans. C. Brereton and F. Rothwell, London: Macmillan. Carroll, N. (2014), Humour: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cohen, T. (1999), Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Corrao, F. M. (1991), “Per Una Storia di Giufà,” in F. M. Corrao (ed.), Giufà: il Furbo, lo Sciocco, il Saggio, 19–45, Milan: Mondadori. Corrao, F. M. (1993), “Il Viaggio di Giufà,” in P. Vassalli and C. Capizzi (eds.), Giufà Tante Storie, 21–27, Enna: Azienda Autonoma Provinciale. Delais, J. (1986), Les mille et un rires de Dj’ha, La Legende des Mondes, Paris: Edition L’Harmattan. Di Leo, M. (1996), Le Storie di Giufà, Palermo: Flaccovio. Ebejer, F. ([1985] 2002), Il-Gaħan ta’ Bingemma, Valletta: Klabb Kotba Maltin. Else, G. F. (1963), Aristotle’s Poetics: The Argument, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Galley, M. (1971), “A Mediterranean Hero,” Journal of Maltese Studies, 7: 64–70. Haddawy, H., trans. (1992), “The World of The Arabian Nights,” in M. Mahdi (ed.), Introduction to The Arabian Nights, London: Everyman’s Library. Hyers, C. (1996), The Spirituality of Comedy, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Koestler, A. (1989), The Act of Creation, London: Penguin. Lanza, D. (1997), Lo Stolto: Di Socrate, Eulenspiegel, Pinocchio e Altri Trasgressori del Senso Comune, Turin: Einaudi. Ruch, W., S. Attardo, and V. Raskin (1993), “Toward an Empirical Verification of the General Theory of Verbal Humor,” HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research, 6 (2/4): 123–36. Sciascia, L. (1991), “L’Arte di Giufa,” in F. M. Corrao (ed.), Giufà: il Furbo, lo Sciocco, il Saggio, 7–15, Milan: Mondadori.



Humor and Liminality: A Case Study of the Maltese Ġaħan

119

Sperber, D., and D. Wilson (1986), Relevance: Communication and Cognition, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Suls, J. (1972), “A Two-stage Model for the Appreciation of Jokes and Cartoons,” in Jeffrey H. Goldstein and Paul E. McGhee (eds.), The Psychology of Humor, New York: Academic Press. Van Gennep, A. (1961), The Rites of Passage, trans. M. B. Vizedom, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Vassalli, P. (1993), “Giufà Tante Storie,” in P. Vassalli and C. Capizzi (eds.), Giufà Tante Storie, 15–20, Enna: Azienda Autonoma Provinciale. Vella, D. (1995), Il-Gaħan ta’ Madwarna, Valletta: Malta Union of Teachers. Vella, E. B. (1956), Gabra ta’ Ward, L-Ewwel Ktieb, London: Oxford University Press. Wickberg, D. (1998), The Senses of Humor, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

7

Multifacet Pragmatics of Russian Post-Soviet Jokes Nataliia Kravchenko and Tetiana Pasternak

Introduction According to the general theory of verbal humor (Attardo 1994; Brock 2004; Gruner 2000; Krikmann 2006; Raskin 1985; Veale 2004), humor-generating inconsistencies are noncasual and governed by consistent patterns. Each joke text is necessarily constructed by two opposed scripts, that are “compatible” due to a common trigger that enables the transition from one to the other. At the semantic level a trigger corresponds to any pun and other double meaning means inducing ambiguity. At the pragmatic level the shifting from expected to unexpected script is triggered by the violation of cooperative maxims that indicate an additional meaning intended to restore logical coherence, truthfulness, unambiguity and completeness of information. Humor research assumes that a joke constitutes a particular type of “non-bonafide” communication that violates the Cooperative Principle (hereinafter CP) and its maxims in terms of Gricean pragmatics: be informative, truthful, serious, etc. (Grice 1975). However, if the speaker is initially “tuned in” to the “joke wave” or switched to such a wave, Cooperative Principle takes effect again—but in a specific comic manner with modified Maxims. For example, the traditional Maxim of quality of information will be replaced by the transformed Maxim “Provide as much information as is needed for this joke.” The common Maxim of quality gives place to a “joke-oriented” Maxim according to which interlocutors will say the “truth” that is consistent with the world of joke. Therefore, pragmatics of jokes presents some new insights into the problem of the hierarchy of Cooperative Principles integrating the traditional CP as “the lowest common denominator,” a humor-CP and a “meta-CP” which regulates violations of the CP (Attardo 1994: 286–87). Another contribution to the pragmatics of humor is made within the relevant theory. According to the theory of irony, proposed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson (1986), ironic utterances are just “echoing” references or quotations of some other utterances the speaker wants to ridicule as inappropriate or irrelevant (Krikmann 2006: 45–47).



Multifacet Pragmatics of Russian Post-Soviet Jokes

121

In addition, it is not exactly correct to say that maxims are violated on “narrator’s level” since “the speaker delegates the responsibility for the violations ‘inside the joke’ to some character(s) of the narrative” (ibid.). Despite the interest of the contemporary theories of verbal humor to the pragmatics of joke, the problem of pragmatic triggers and intensifiers of both the scripts’ collision and comic effect remains virtually unexplored. The same debating is the point of conversational implicatures and the complex patterns of their inference as contributing to solution of the scripts’ inconsistency and induction of comic effect. Still open is also an issue of the cognitive-pragmatic basis of the scripts’ opposition viewed from the perspective of pragmatic presuppositions as the cultural stereotypes, precedent phenomena, and other knowledge structures that constitute the “unmarked” background of the jokes’ reverse reality due to the fundamental human ability to reason out prototypically. One more point that deserves attention is the problem of interrelation between the pragmatic and cognitive-pragmatic triggers in humor generating.

Database and methodology The data analyzed in the research include the texts of the Russian-speaking anecdotes compiled by Stas Atasov (2013). In carrying out the research tasks, we have used explanatory tools provided by Grice’s and neo-Gricean inferential pragmatics, aimed at inferencing humor-generating implicatures correlating with contextual assumptions and contextual conclusions. In explicating the relationships of “script overlap” and “script opposition” we have relied on analysis provided by Victor Raskin’s script-based semantic theory of humor. In specifying the function of generalized conversational implicature as a humor intensifier we have applied Membership categorization device analysis developed by Harvey Sacks aimed at describing how the involvement and refutation of the “categories” relate to the inference and cancelling of general conversational implicatures thus contributing to the intensification of the comic effect.

Humor-generating triggers within the framework of pragmatic presuppositions: Pragmatic presuppositions vs. joke incongruity The analysis of the corpus of the contemporary Russian anecdotes has revealed three main types of pragmatic presuppositions (PPs) about “normative” (expected, actual, possible) state of affairs. Such presuppositions function as an unmarked background counterpart of the marked (incongruent, salient) script. According to R. Stalnaker (1972; 1973; 1974; 1999), pragmatic presuppositions correspond to the background beliefs of the speakers, that is, propositions whose truth is taken by communicators for granted in making their statements. Similarly, Teun A. van Dijk equates presuppositions with “the knowledge or belief sets of speaker

122

The Languages of Humor

and hearer” (Dijk 1976: 77). In his later works, Dijk understands presuppositions as a subset of the cognitive context conditions, projecting this phenomenon into the level of discourse-analysis (2008; 2012). In more narrow sense, presupposition refers to a logically necessary condition, which must be satisfied for a particular state of affairs to be possible (Ping 1999: 133). However, the understanding of the pragmatic presuppositions in the framework of our research implies that such knowledge structures may refer to different types of established information—not only about canonical version of the course of events but also concerning the alternative world with its own carnival and game laws. On the one hand, such type of pragmatic presuppositions (let us call them the presuppositions about the expected incongruity) relies on the knowledge about the joke genre properties. On the other hand, they generalize the audience’s cognitive experience in interpreting different preceding incongruences, for example, based on the recognizable binary scripts (e.g., Frog as Princess and as food), foreseeable unpredictability of blonde-haired women, expected irrelevancies associated with ethnic stereotypes, and so on. In jokes PPs provide the possibility of contextualization of the inversed, incongruent reality within a system of normative cultural and social stereotypes, familiar circumstances, scenarios, and communicative conventions. Pragmatic presuppositions are evoked due to the fundamental human ability to reason out from parallel cases and prototypically. Therefore, they constitute the necessary conditions for the “unmarked” (actual, expected, possible) background information to be involved as opposed to nonexisting, unexpected, impossible or less plausible states of affairs. Types of pragmatic presuppositions were studied in (Stalnaker 1974; Makarov 2003; Kravchenko 2017) having specified general, interpersonal, conventionalcommunicative, situational, and some other types of presuppositions. In view of the genre specifics of anecdotes, interpersonal PPs (the speaker-listener personal beliefs about each other, their social status, the level of familiarity and social distance, their belonging to the common/alien group) as well as situational PP (as interactants’ knowledge about the particular communicative situation) are not significantly relevant as a “normative” counterpart of the inversed reality. On the other hand, general, conventional-communicative and cultural presuppositions serve as ex contrario background of the key anomalies, which condition the joke text to be funny, that is, a. ontological (referential, semantic) anomalies based on the distortion of the world and its realities; b. logical-pragmatic incongruence of the irrational conclusions that formally conform the syllogistic arguments and are assumed to be true; c. value inconsistencies discrediting the universal and ethnic values. General presuppositions as a set of “common” (for members of a given language community) knowledge of the world (Makarov 2003: 135–37) constitute the common sense presuppositions (hereinafter CSPs) opposed to the ontological non-normativity of joke.



Multifacet Pragmatics of Russian Post-Soviet Jokes

123

Conventional-communicative presuppositions (hereinafter CCPs) is the interlocutors’ competence about the “normative” rules of communication and interaction as well as conventionalized meanings expected from certain utterances in the similar contexts. Such expectations are violated by logical-pragmatic incongruence. The cultural or linguistic-cultural presuppositions (hereinafter LCPs) refer to underlying assumptions, beliefs, and ideas that are culturally rooted, widespread, but rarely if ever described or defined. They look so basic and obvious that do not require verbal formulation (Ping 1999: 133–34). Such presuppositions embody the prototypical world of values, universal and ethnic axiological norms and therefore constitute a “dichotomy test” for the reversed values of joke.

Common sense presuppositions vs. ontological non-normativity of joke Analysis undertaken by our research has shown that events’ unpredictability relies on the overlapping of “common sense presuppositions” from different “possible worlds.” Such ontological presuppositions cannot cancel each other due to their inherent property not to be refuted by the context (precisely this characteristic allow PPs to be the condition of the utterances’ meaningfulness). Consequently, their overlapping results in the meanings collisions that require some additional cognitive efforts to overcome the contradiction and find a context (a conceptualization format) suitable for the interpretation of the inversed state of affairs, values, or logic. According to V. Raskin (1985), the renewal of understanding is followed by the emotion of surprise and satisfaction, causing the reaction of laughter. Let us consider the overlapping of the alternative “common sense” presuppositions, supporting two opposed scripts. (1)  The old professor says to his colleagues “I have recently dreamed as I am giving a lecture to the students. I wake up and, you know, what? I am really giving a lecture!” (Atasov 2013).

In (1) the humor-generating inference includes the following steps: a. overlapping the CSPs: sleep excludes verbal activity in the transmission of information while a lecture presupposes such type of activity. Therefore, different PPs associate with incongruous scripts of SLEEP and TEACH; b. overlapping the inference 1 (the speaker/narrator is giving a lecture in a dream) and the inference 2 (the speaker/narrator is really sleeping while lecturing). The scripts are linked via the component “have a dream about teaching” compatible with both. A statement of the fact that professor is dreaming about giving a lecture but is actually giving a lecture acts as a trigger for shifting from the possible script of “Teaching while sleeping (teaching in a dream)” to the impossible script of “Sleeping while teaching”; c. an additional trigger of the scripts’ partial overlapping is the component “old professor” associated with PPs “Falling asleep in unexpected places.” Such

124

The Languages of Humor

peripheral characteristic of the frame “old professor” is inserted into the frame “lecture,” so that the situation “professor’s dream” is simultaneously placed in two possible worlds: professor, while lecturing, manages to sleep and vice versa, while sleeping he manages to lecture. This triggers the ontological anomaly and comic effect.

Conventional-communicative presuppositions vs. logical-pragmatic incongruence of joke Conventional-communicative presuppositions (CCPs) is the interlocutors’ competence about the “common” and conventional meanings based on the precedential usage and understanding of certain utterances in particular recurrent contexts. Such competence apply to the meanings, implied by “idiomatic” indirect speech acts, by indexes of conventional implicatures, congruent or paired roles, stereotypical politeness expressions, and so on in correspondence with culture-specific conventions of a certain society. The violation of CCPs as in (2–4) serves as a trigger of pragmatic logical absurdity. (2)  Drunk again?! Go where you got drunk, understand?!—Understand. Hello! Serioga, it’s OK, I’ve asked for leave (Atasov 2013).

In (2) the absurdity relies on the collision between predictable and unexpected meanings inferred from the same utterance. Predictable inference “Don’t come back until you sober up” bases on CCPs about precedents of the conventional usage and understanding of the indirect idiomatic speech act (Go where you got drunk, understand?). Unpredictable inference “I am allowed to go on drinking” is a formal, literally understood consequence from two premises (1) “I am sent where I got drunk,” and (2) “I’ve got drunk in Serioga’”: “If I am sent where I got drunk, that is to Serioga, it means I am allowed to go on drinking.” Intensification of comic effect is achieved by means of overlapping another group of CCPs about the status role distribution in a group “family” and the actual role inversion in the dialog. The communicative dominance of the wife is marked by the face threatening act, while subordinate “childish” behavior of the husband is indexed by the expression “I’ve asked for leave,” referring to the scheme “parent” (wife)— “child” (husband).

Linguistic-cultural presuppositions vs. value incongruence of joke While common sense presuppositions and communicative-conventional knowledge constitute the “unmarked” background to contrast ontological (semantic) and logicalpragmatic absurdity of a joke, the linguistic-cultural presuppositions involve the cognitive contexts of the prototypical world of values violated by the joke subjective moral. For this purpose, an anecdote often explores particular intertextuality resources associated with cultural and ethno-cultural presuppositions based on cultural stereotypes, precedent names, and texts imported from works of art and literature,



Multifacet Pragmatics of Russian Post-Soviet Jokes

125

cartoons, films, fairy tales, and so on. Such presuppositions describe moral rectitude (either universal or ethno-specific) as opposed to the “inverted” ethics of an anecdote. LCPs are attracted to implement the strategy of “downgrading” and “depreciating” (the value associated with any rectitude, precedent phenomenon, creation, bells lettres, etc.) as in (3–6). (3)  A New Russian hunter releases an arrow from a bow. Following it he finds a frog sitting near his arrow. The frog tells him, “Take me home, put me on your pillow, kiss me and I’ll turn into a beautiful woman”—“Ok, I’ll take you home, put you on the pillow, but won’t kiss you,” says the New Russian. “Why?” asks the frog. “There are many beautiful women, but a speaking frog is drop dead gorgeous.” (4)  The blankethas run away, the sheet has flown, and the pillow as a frog has galloped from me. Where’s a candle?—It’s in the stove. Where’s a book?—It’s running away. I’m not going to buy such Cannabis again! (5)  Once Ivan Tzarevitch came to the French restaurant and saw there frogs fried, frogs boiled, frogs in sauce. “That is how they are handled here. I’m fool, did marry one!” * (6)  Two frogs are croaking in their bog. Suddenly an arrow lands near them. One frog with happy tears says, “Finally Ivan Tzarevitch will come to me!”— The other one—“You’re a fool, we live near Paris.” (7)  Ivan Tzarevitch kissed a frog and it turned into a handsome man. “A male,” guessed Ivan. (8) 

Once Ivan Tzarevitch kissed a frog, but it suddenly screamed in a superhuman voice “I’m transforming!!!” (Atasov 2013).

In (3) the intertextual LCPs associated with “The Tale of Frog Princess” collide with the LCP “values of the New Russians.” In (4) the poem by K. Chukovsky “Moydodyr” (Chukovskiy 2012), known to all Russian culture-bearers since their childhood, is extracted from the semiosphere of precedent texts and placed in the frame of “hallucinations,” triggered by the word “Cannabis” presupposing “altered state of awareness.” The joke includes scripts of “fairy tale” and “horrors” (narcotic hallucinations); the scripts are linked via the component of “unusual behavior of inanimate objects.” Reference to a drug (Cannabis) acts as a trigger for shifting from the first script to the second. As a result, a national-precedent phenomenon, which has been nurturing and teaching all Russian native speakers for dozens of years, is devaluated to the level of senseless and incoherent story. We identified that the value collision may be caused by overlapping between different types of the presuppositions: a. intertextuality LCPs and social LCPs in (3) where LCPs associated with “The Tale of Frog Princess” interact with LCPs about “values of the New Russians”;

126

The Languages of Humor

b. intertextuality LCPs and common sense presuppositions in (4) and in (5–6), where fairy tale LCPs collide with CSP “cultural tradition in France to eat frog legs” as well as with zoological knowledge about sex difference of animals as in (7); c. two intertextuality LCPs as in (8). The joke (8) includes scripts of “fairy tale” and “science fiction/computer game story.” The scripts are linked via the component of “transformation.” Interpreted in technological meaning, it triggers the scripts’ shift. The comic effect is intensified by the meaning of unexpectedness, indexed by prefix “зa” (in Russian) with the meaning of “start doing something suddenly”) in combination with the adverb “как” (suddenly) and opposition between “speak in a human voice” and “screams in a superhuman voice” associated with transformer or humanoid. As a result, the distortion of the prototypical world of values inducing the humorgenerating effect results in possible worlds of inverted values based on the collision of scripts: for example, “The Princess/Vasilisa the Wise1 versus the food” (5–6), “the Princess/Vasilisa the Wise versus the prestigious thing” (3), “the Princess/Vasilisa the Wise versus the animal differing on the basis of sex” (7), “the fabulous transformation versus technological transformation” (8). Such scripts involve the binary categories crucial for differentiation between true and inverted values of spiritual wealth and physical well-being, the lofty and the mundane, the intrinsical and the extrinsical. They are as follows: a. underestimation of love at the expense of overvalue of food; b. prestige or status value instead of devotion; c. cynicism vs. high feelings; d. fairytale vs. routine; e. faerie vs. technology. In this vein our results correlate with the observation by V. Raskin (1985, 1994), S. Attardo (1991, 1994, 2002), and A. Krikmann (2006) that the scripts evoked by jokes often involve some binary categories which are essential to human life, such as real/ unreal, true/false, good/bad, death/life, decent/indecent, rich/poor, etc.

Humor-generating devices in the framework of Gricean theory In addition to pragmatic presuppositions, constructing ex contrario background contrasted to a would-be absurd world of joke, not less important are the means, which trigger and resolve such incongruity.

Cooperative maxims “violation as the trigger of scripts” shifting The analysis has shown that key role in overcoming inconsistency is performed by particularized conversational implicatures, which, in turn, are triggered by a violation



Multifacet Pragmatics of Russian Post-Soviet Jokes

127

of cooperative maxims. For example, in (11C) the last utterance flouts both the Maxim of relevance (shifting topic without corresponding signal) and quantity of information (it is unclear why it is necessary to escape). (11) 

(A.) Two frogs are croaking in their bog. Suddenly an arrow lands near them. One frog with happy tears says, (B.) “Finally Ivan Tzarevitch will come for me!”—The other one, (C.) “You’re fool, let’s run away. We live near Paris” (Atasov 2013).

Maxims’ violations result in conversational implicature establishing a link between archery and frogs’ location near Paris: “You do not look to be kissed and transformed into a princess, but to be eaten.” In view of this at least three research problems arise: a. how does maxims’ violation trigger the scripts’ collision? b. how does an inference of the implicature contribute to a humor-generating process? c. how do pragmatic triggers (maxims’ violation) relate to cognitive-pragmatic triggers (ontological, logical, and value presuppositions)? Jokes violate maxims so frequently that “the claim that all jokes involve the violation of (at least) one maxim of the CP is commonplace in humor research” (Attardo 1993: 541). Genre properties of a joke a priori involve an ignoring the Gricean principle of cooperation in as much as: a joke conveys fictitious (or at least greatly exaggerated) events; it implies the most essential part of information; humor meaning-making is incongruous and somehow incoherent; a joke is always ambiguous and obscure. Such properties correlate with obligatory violation of cooperative maxims of: Quality (try to be truthful and sincere; do not give information that is false or for which you lack the evidence); Quantity (make you contribution as informative as is required); Relation (be relevant, cohesive and coherent in your speech moves) and Manner (be perspicuous and orderly in your moves, avoid obscurity and ambiguity). In addition to the “genre bound” violation, maxims are constantly flouted on the internal level of both the dialogs between the characters as in (12) and the narrator’s monologue as in (13). (12)  A family comes to the restaurant. After having a meal, the father pays the bill and the mother tells the waiter, “Don’t you mind if we take uneaten food home, for a dog?—“Yes, surely.”—The children shout all together, “Hurrah! We’ll have a dog?” * (13) 

Green tea or green coffee for slimming. It’s nothing! If you eat “green” sausage, you’ll lose 10 kilos a day! (Atasov 2013).

In (12) the infringement of the maxim of quality (truthfulness) (take uneaten food for themselves and not for their dog) creates a comic effect after comparing the parents’ request with the meaning “They do not have a dog” inferred from the utterance of children who perceived the parents’ words literally.

128

The Languages of Humor

In (13) there is an evident violation of the maxim of relevance. The situation of food-born disease is not logically linked with the situation of slimming due to the “green” fat burners. The scripts “Food for Slimming” and “Poisonous Food” are linked via the component of “green” with regard to the appearance (color) of the compared products. In addition, the joke flouts the maxim of quantity, as the narrator does not explain what the “green sausage” is, thus stimulating interpreter’s heuristic abilities to restore the implied meaning. As a rule, a joke simultaneously violates all cooperative maxims as in (14). (14) (A) Ivanov comes to Petrov and asks, “How can your cow milk give 10 litres of a day?” (B) Petrov answers, “It’s a matter of kindness. I come to it and say with kindness”, (C) “What do you have today: milk or beef?” (Atasov 2013).

In (14C) the basic narrator flouts the Maxim of Quantity (a fully informative statement should sound like this “if you do not milk 100 liters, you will go to the slaughter house”; the Maxim of Style (the narrator expresses himself ambiguously, using pun and thus implying different meanings and referents of the word “beef ”); the Maxims of Quality (the narrator intentionally distorts the “common” state of affairs since it is impossible to scare somebody kindly); the Maxim of Relation (referring to semantically incoherent scripts of “the choice between high and low milk yield” and “the choice between life and death”). Scripts are related via the component of a cow that simultaneously provides with milk (life necessities) and beef. Maxim of Relation is usually observed at the level of formal cohesion in the characters’ speech moves. However, it is always ignored at the level of semanticconceptual coherence. For example, in (15) a punch utterance “Every time is different” is a formally logical conclusion following from the previous description of the event. However, it is absolutely incoherent at the level of actualized scripts corresponding to the topics of “miraculous transfiguration of the Frog-Princess” and “the consequence of multiple hitting the ground.” (15) 

The Frog hit the ground with her head and turned into a beautiful girl. Hit another time and . . . turned into a bloody mess. Every time is different (Atasov 2013).

As shown by our data and in view of the basic constitutive features of the joke—namely the scripts’ opposition, it should come as no surprise that just the violation of the Maxim of Relation is the fixed property of a joke, entailing the other maxims’ flouting. Such observation proves the ideas of S. Attardo and V. Raskin (1991) and Krikmann (2006: 45–47) that there is a certain hierarchy of Communicative Principles in jokes, and it is the Meta-Communicative Principle that regulates violations.

Point of a joke in terms of particularized conversational implicature As shown by H. P Grice (1969, 1975, 1989) and his followers (Bach 1994, 2012; Horn 2004; Carston 2004), the maxims’ violation is a communicatively significant deviation



Multifacet Pragmatics of Russian Post-Soviet Jokes

129

indicating that the speaker implies some additional meaning and intends it to be inferred by the hearer. By this it is assumed that violating the maxim, interlocutors continue to follow the principle of cooperation implicitly, restoring logical coherence, completeness of information, truthfulness and unambiguity. According to H. P. Grice (1975: 50), the process of inferring conversational implicatures (CI) based on the maxim’ flouting, involves considering the Cooperative Principle, shared conventional (language) code, background knowledge and the linguistic context of usage (co-text). Speaking about inferring the implicature H. P. Grice meant so-called “particularized conversational implicature (PCI) carried by saying that p on a particular occasion in virtue of special features of the context” (Grice 1975: 56). About the latter’s function as comic effect intensifier see 5. In a joke, the maxims’ inference is associated with decoding the unexpected and paradoxical meaning inconsistent with common state of affairs. The meaning, restored by means of PCI, serves as an orientation mode in a “possible world” of joke and, simultaneously, produces a humor-generating effect. In (16) the violation of the Maxim of Quantity (it is unclear why the customer gives such a big tip to the cloakroom attendant) and Relevance (illogical refocusing the conversation from the amount of tips to the benefit from a fur coat) triggers an additional meaning to overcome the inconsistency. The inferred PCI is as follows: “the cloakroom attendant was rewarded for having given someone else’s fur coat that is more expensive than the tipper’s.” Its inference bases on the maxims’ flouting with considering the cooperative principle, shared conventional (language) code, the context of usage (suggesting the coherence of such items as “amount of tip,” “fur coat,” “cloakroom setting” and “low voice comment”). Moreover, the important device to ensure the intended inference is the “common sense” presuppositions (in Grice’s terms—background knowledge) about the ordinary duties of the cloakroom attendant to give out the coats, the amount of tips for it etc. (16)  In a theatre cloakroom. The wife tells his husband in a low voice, “You are crazy! 100 rubles to the cloakroom attendant?!!—Yes, but look, what a fur coat!” (Atasov 2013).

As shown above the inference of PCI triggered by the maxims’ violation always relies on the pragmatic presuppositions about the “common” state of affairs, communicative conventions and values. It makes one person laugh when contrasting the meanings restored from the implicature with the “common” state of affairs. For instance, in a common situation the cloakroom attendant gives out coats to its owners but it is comic when accidentally he or she returns someone else’s clothes to the wearer who, in return, gets happy of such “an exchange.” It is ridiculous to imagine that anybody would intentionally eat spoiled sausage to slim down due to diarrhea. It is funny when the cow understands polysemy (which contradicts to the corresponding ontological or referential presuppositions) and responds to the intimidation by the perlocutionary action of increasing the milk output, etc. From the cognitive-pragmatic perspective, the leading function of PCI as a humorgenerating device is explained by the amount of efforts spent on the information processing. To find the relevant context in which the inconsistent utterance becomes

130

The Languages of Humor

meaningful, the hearer instantaneously needs to “attract” and “sort out” many cognitive contexts, rejecting irrelevant ones for interpretation. In our opinion, the existence of the incongruent scripts as a constitutive property of any joke complicates the implicatures’ inference, which becomes a bicomponent process, involving the working out of two interrelated implicated meanings. The first or “anticipatory” implicature is an attempt to understand what is actually said that is triggered by violation of one or more cooperative maxims as. For example, “They do not have a dog” as in (12), “green sausage means the spoiled meat producing poisoning” as in (13), “a cow is threatened to be killed unless it gives much milk” as in (14), “the cloakroom attendant gave out somebody else’s expensive fur coat” as in (16). If to examine such types of meanings within the framework of the relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986) we can see that anticipatory implicatures correlate with contextual assumptions activated both by the utterances and by inputs from the “common sense” presuppositions. Such implicated contextual assumptions do not produce a comic effect themselves but contribute to the humor-generating function of the second type of implicatures, correlating with contextual conclusions. Implicated conclusions result from the comparison between implicated assumptions and logical state of affairs in the real world. It is the latter meaning which generates the humor effect (see Figure 7.1.).

Figure 7.1  The creation of comic effect.



Multifacet Pragmatics of Russian Post-Soviet Jokes

131

In telling the joke the speaker intends to convey the double meaning and indexes this by ostensive stimuli (term by Sperber and Wilson) that foreground both contiguity and incongruity, giving rise to predictable complication of the inference process and expected perlocutionary reaction of laughter resulted from the renewal of understanding. At the pragmatic level the first facet of the jokes’ ostensive stimuli, which is their function to mark incongruity, corresponds to the Maxims’ violation. The second facet, that is the stimuli’s contiguity property, prompts conventional implicatures.

Comic effect intensifiers Identifying the humor-generating pragmatic devices, we distinguished between the humor triggers and intensifiers. The latter contributes to the reinforcement of the comic effect evoked by pragmatic triggers. As shown by the findings, among intensifiers of absurdity the most common are (a) a violation of categorical semantic presuppositions (e.g., playful oddities— talking animals, things, etc.) and (b) a collision between generalized conversational implicatures and the ways of their contextual cancellation.

Violation of categorical presuppositions as a comic effect intensifier Categorical presuppositions relate to the notion of semantic compatibility restricting the choice of actants “governed” by the scope of the predicate’s applicability (Paducheva 1977). For example, this is the case when inanimate objects are attributed the actions that are not characteristic of them. Thus, the predicate “discuss” presupposes the animate actant and the expression “the frogs are discussing” would then violate the categorical presuppositions. Such violations are foregrounded by the most “fabulous” anecdotes about animals (as in 3, 6–9, 11, 14–15) since the “animal” actant is off the scope of applicability of the predicates “read,” “talk,” “laugh,” etc. In (14) the comic effect is intensified due to the violation of the categorical presupposition that the cow is capable to associate the word “beef ” with cow meat. In (17) the violation of semantic categorical presupposition induces two types of normative “shifts.” The first deals with ontological knowledge, confronting the “common sense” presuppositions (in the joke dogs can read and speak with a human voice). The second relates to the absurdity at logical-conceptual level, when the inference “Dogs can do everything what they cannot read about” is a syllogism consequence from two premises (a) “Dogs are illiterate (cannot read)” and (b) “Illiteracy absolves from responsibility.” (17) 

One dog is telling the other dog before the entrance to the butcher’s: “Let’s enter!”—“We can’t. Look at the table: “Do not enter with dogs!”— “You’re fool! Nobody knows that we can read!” (Atasov 2013).

132

The Languages of Humor

In certain jokes as in (14, 17, 18, 19) the categorical presupposition violation becomes the case of reflection or self-reflection in the part of either characters or a narrator, which further strengthens the comic effect. (18)  I have recently kissed a frog but she began spitting, covering her mouth with legs. How fastidious! (19)  One man brings a speaking frog to the circus. The circus manager does not believe that the frog can speak. The animal tamer puts the frog’s nose out of joint. It answers in return: “Let’s assume, ribbit” (Atasov 2013).

Due to the inclusion of the actant “frog” (18) into such predicates as “spit with disgust,” “cover the mouth with legs” the violation of categorical presuppositions is foregrounded as the reflection of the character-person thus becoming the anecdote’s punch line. Similarly, in (19) the frog’s capability to talk using, furthermore, a bookish hedge “let’s assume” is highlighted by the narrator as the point of the joke. As shown by the analysis, the violation of categorical presuppositions intensifies the humor effect produced by the collision of pragmatic presuppositions—ontological, conventional-communicative and linguistic-cultural. Such collision involving the scripts’ opposition is trigged, in its turn, by maxims’ violation and overcome by corresponding implicatures.

Generalized conversational implicature as a humor intensifier One of the least developed aspects of the theory of H. P. Grice and his followers is the concept of Generalized conversational implicature (hereinafter GCI), that is “the use of a certain form of words in an utterance would NORMALLY (in the absence of special circumstances) carry such-and-such an implicature or type of implicature” (Grice 1975: 56). For example, the GCI inferred from the utterance “Parents did not allow Igor to come home late” is as follows “Igor is the son of these particular parents.” For the present purpose the working out of GCI bases on the Membership categorization device proposed by Harvey Sacks (1992) within the framework of the conversational analysis. The inference of GCI involves the category of “family” and subcategories of “parents” and “children” that operate consistently: if we characterize some people as parents, and Igor as a son, then we imply that Igor is the son of these parents, not of some others. Such categorization is supported by “category bound activities” appropriate for a certain category. In such a way, a predicate “not allow” is an indicative activity for parents while “to come home late” is an activity typical for an adult son. Moreover, the categories “parents” and “children” come under the group of “paired categories” whose members are connected by the conventional rights and obligations. Similarly to particularized conversational implicature, GCI may be canceled by the context as in (20). (20)  Parents did not allow Igor to come home late. They were annoyed by that some Igor constantly comes to their home (Atasov 2013).



Multifacet Pragmatics of Russian Post-Soviet Jokes

133

The context entails another Membership categorization device indexed by indefinite pronoun some implying the “outsider.” The latter relates to the category “people not linked by kinship,” cancelling the initial GCI evoked by the category “family.” Therefore, a humor-generating semantic anomaly is achieved here due to the conflict between GCI (Igor is the son of these particular parents), the contextual meaning cancelling GCP (Igor is not the son of these parents) and presuppositions about the normal state of things—it is abnormal when a stranger comes regularly to somebody’s home late. The effect of failed expectancy may result from two types of overlapping: (a) interaction of preceding GCI with sequential contextual meaning, as in (20) and (b) interaction of preceding contextual meaning with sequential GCI as in (21). (21)  (A) A taxi driver gives a lift to an affluent customer. (B) He pays exact sum per counter. (A) The taxi driver says: “Yesterday I gave a lift to your son and he left me $100 tips”—(B) “That’s because his father is a millionaire and I am an orphan (Atasov 2013).

In (21) the comic effect is achieved through a contradiction between the speculation about the client’s material well-being (an affluent customer), its subsequent confirmation by the action of his son (left $ 100 tips) and the sequential GCI inferred from the closing utterance: “his father is a millionaire,” which implies the absence of kinship relationship between the speaker (B) and the one whose father is a millionaire. The incongruity between the scripts “the haves” and “the have-nots” inducing the humor effect is contextually enhanced by the self-distribution of the speaker (B) into the category of “orphan” with associative meanings “having no relatives,” “poor,” “destitute.”

Conclusion The research addresses the problem of pragmatic triggers and intensifiers of the humor in Russian post-Soviet jokes within the framework of pragmatic presuppositions, particularized and generalized conversational implicatures, flouting of cooperative maxims, relevance-seeking inferential procedure and violation of categorical semantic presuppositions. We argued that general, conventional-communicative and cultural presuppositions constitute the “unmarked” background of the jokes’ reverse reality due to the fundamental human ability to reason out prototypically. We identified the consistent oppositions between the type of pragmatic presupposition and the key distortions in the world of joke: “common sense presuppositions” vs. ontological anomalies distorting the world and its realias; conventional-communicative presuppositions vs. logical-pragmatic incongruence of a joke; linguistic-cultural presuppositions vs. “inverted” ethics of an anecdote manifested by strategies of “downgrading” and “depreciating.” Linguistic-cultural presuppositions primarily base on intertextuality resources involving the binary categories of true and inverted values: cynicism vs. high feelings, status value vs. devotion, fairytale vs. routine, faerie vs. technology, etc.

134

The Languages of Humor

We argued the key role of particularized conversational implicatures actualized by violating cooperative maxims in resolving incongruence. The violation of the Maxim of Relation, reflecting the scripts’ semantic-conceptual incoherence, is a hierarchically dominant type of Cooperative principle non-observance, involving the other maxims’ flouting. The humor-generating function of PCI relies on the patterns of its complex inference, which entails two phases. The first phase consists in working out the anticipatory implicature that correlates with contextual assumptions and is constructed on the basis of processing of incongruence, pragmatically triggered by Maxims’ violation. Such first-stage implicature forms a premise for the second phase of the meaning processing, resulted in implicated conclusion based on the overlapping of implicated assumption (anticipatory implicature) and “common sense” presuppositions. So, it is an implicated conclusion that constitutes the point of a joke. Humor intensifiers contribute to the reinforcement of comicality induced by pragmatic triggers. Among intensifiers we identified generalized conversational implicatures and violation of categorical presuppositions. In the former case the intensification of humor is due to the conflict between generalized conversational implicature, the contextual effects which remove such implicature, and presuppositions about the normal state of affairs. In the latter case the comic effect may be intensified when an actant is off the scope of semantic applicability of the predicates (e.g., animals or inanimate objects are attributed the human actions, etc.) violating the corresponding categorical presuppositions. As a whole, the study of pragmatics of jokes contributes to understanding the humor-generating triggers and intensifiers as well as patterns and conditions of inference of implicated meanings redressing joke incongruity.

Note 1 In Russian folktales Vasilisa the Wise was turned into a frog.

References Atasov, S. (2013), Anecdotes ‘Having the Legs of Routine’. Part One. In the Family Circle, Litres [in Russian]. Available online: https://www.litres.ru/stas-atasov/anekdoty-navse-ruki-ot-skuki-chast-pervaya-v-krugu-semi/ (accessed June 4, 2017). Attardo, S. (1993), “Violation of Conversational Maxims and Cooperation: The Case of Jokes,” Journal of Pragmatics, 19 (6): 537–58. Attardo, S. (1994), Linguistic Theories of Humor, Berlin–New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Attardo, S. (1998), “The Analysis of Humorous Narratives,” HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research, 11 (3): 231–60. Attardo, S. (2001), Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Attardo, S., and V. Raskin (1991), “Script Theory Revis(it)ed: Joke Similarity and Joke Representation Model,” HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research, 4 (3/4): 293–347.



Multifacet Pragmatics of Russian Post-Soviet Jokes

135

Attardo, S., C. F. Hempelmann, and S. Di Maio (2002), “Script Oppositions and Logical Mechanisms: Modeling Incongruities and Their Resolutions,” HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research, 15 (1): 3–46. Bach, K. (1994), “Conversational Implicature,” Mind & Language, 9: 124–62. Bach, K. (2012), “Saying, Meaning, and Implicating,” in K. Allan and K. M. Jaszczolt (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics, 23–45, New York: Cambridge University Press. Brock, A. (2004), “Analyzing Scripts in Humorous Communication,” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 17 (4): 353–60. Carston, R. (2004), “Truth-conditional Content and Conversational Implicature,” in C. Bianchi (ed.), The Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction, 65–100, Stanford: CSLI. Chukovskiy, K. I. (2012), Moidodyr, Kyiv: Master-klass (in Russian). Grice, H. P. (1969), “Utterer’s Meaning and Intentions,” Philosophical Review, 78: 147–77. Grice, H. P. (1975), “Logic and Conversation,” in P. Cole and J. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts, 41–58, New York: Academic Press. Grice, H. P. (1989), Studies in the Way of Words, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gruner, C. R. ([1997] 2000), The Game of Humor: A Comprehensive Theory of Why We Laugh, New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers. Horn, L. R. (2004), “Implicature,” in L. R. Horn and G. Ward (eds.), The Handbook of Pragmatics, 3–28, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Kravchenko, N. K. (2017), Discourse and Discourse Analysis: Short Book of Reference, Kyiv: Interservis (in Russian). Krikmann, A. (2006), “Contemporary Linguistic Theories of Humour,” Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, 33: 27–58. Available online: https://www.ceeol.com/search/articledetail?id=235340 (accessed June 4, 2017). Makarov, M. L. (2003), Basics of Discourse Theory, Moscow: ITDGK ‘Gnozis’ (in Russian). Paducheva, H. V. (1977), “Notion of Presumption in Linguistic Semantics,” Semiotics and Informatics, 8: 91–134 (in Russian). Ping, K. (1999), “Cultural Presuppositions and Misreadings,” Meta: Translators’ Journal, 44 (1): 133–43. Available online: http://readinglists.westminster.ac.uk/items/4D7C4EFEBBF8-D350-B742-F9FAEF18C6EF.html (accessed June 4, 2017). Raskin, V. (1985), Semantic Mechanisms of Humor, Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company. Raskin, V., and S. Attardo (1994), “Non-Literalness and Non-bona-fide in Language”, Pragmatics and Cognition, 2 (1): 31–69. Sacks, H. (1992), Lectures on Conversation, ed. G. Jefferson, intr. E. Schegloff, Oxford: Blackwell. Sperber, D., and D. Wilson (1986), Relevance: Communication and Cognition, Oxford: Blackwell. Stalnaker, R. (1972), “Pragmatics,” in D. Davidson and G. Harman (eds.), Semantics of Natural Language, 380–97, Dordrecht: Reidel. Stalnaker, R. (1973), “Presuppositions,” Journal of Philosophical Logic, 2: 447–57. Stalnaker, R. (1974), “Pragmatic Presuppositions,” in M. Munitz and P. Unger (eds.), Semantics and Philosophy, 197–214, New York: New York University Press. Stalnaker, R., and N. Block (1999), “Conceptual Analysis, Dualism, and the Explanatory Gap,” Philosophical Review, 108: 1–46. Van Dijk, T. A. (1976), “Pragmatics, Presuppositions and Context Grammars,” in S. J. Schmidt (ed.), Pragmatik II, 53–82, Munich: Fink.

136

The Languages of Humor

Van Dijk, T. A. (2008), Discourse and Context: A Socio-Cognitive Approach, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Van Dijk, T. A. (2012), “Discourse and Knowledge,” in J. P. Gee and M. Handford (eds.), Handbook of Discourse Analysis, 587–603, London: Routledge. Veale, T. (2004), “Incongruity in Humor: Root Cause or Epiphenomenon?” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 17 (4): 419–28.

Part Two

Visual Humor

8

Caricature as a Weapon in Class Struggle: Early Soviet Graphic Satire Annie Gérin

The proletariat is entitled to all artistic methods that lead it to its objectives, in spite of what pedants believe. The proletariat is therefore free to enjoy whimsy. And we indeed often use it: every issue of Krokodil is replete with caricature. It is not only possible, but also fully legitimate in literature, theatre, and cinema. In order for it not to turn into simple mockery, it only needs to communicate some valued concept. Anatoly Lunacharsky ([1931] 1965: 205) In the years following the October 1917 Revolution, visual artists were recruited by the Soviet government to actively participate in propaganda work. The best-known images then produced are earnest and optimistic representations of emerging Soviet life. However, in the first decades of the regime, much visual propaganda was in fact satirical. Through the use of caricature, it was aimed at discrediting enemies of the regime as well as mocking social and cultural practices inherited from prerevolutionary times. Furthermore, Soviet satire became an object of debate in intellectual and political circles, concerned with its potential legitimacy and efficiency. This chapter charts this little-known history and seeks to explain the prevalence of satire in general, and more specifically of caricature and its collective variant known as tipazh in Soviet propaganda art.

Caricature and Tipazh In its most common understanding, a caricature is a comic visual or textual representation that exaggerates or overly simplifies certain features of a face, a body, an object, or a situation. It does so in order to highlight the amplified aspects, give them a disproportionate importance, reduce its target’s stature to the isolated traits, or reveal some hidden character symbolized by the overblown features. Often, the techniques of caricature serve the purpose of satire, a rhetorical mode that aims to expose and criticize vices or wrongdoings, particularly in the context of politics and other topical issues; satire’s ultimate goal is to eradicate behavior considered deviant

140

The Languages of Humor

from the accepted norm and therefore to have an impact on political consciousness or social practices. In this context, when a caricature isolates features of its target, it does so in order to create shorthand—making the overblown traits stand for the vilified character or behavior. Caricatures of Hitler, for example, that became prevalent in Soviet propaganda during the Second World War, deform his body, elongate his features and provide him with bloodshot eyes that give him a lupine, carnivorous appearance. Caricatures of Leon Trotsky and of Gregory Zinoviev produced after their banishment from the Soviet political leadership in the mid-twenties for their rivalries with Stalin exaggerate their nose and stretch out their ears. In a context of growing anti-Semitism under Stalin, these caricatural traits function to demonize them and highlight their hidden Jewish roots (Trotsky was the revolutionary surname of Leon Bronstein, and Zinoviev had been born Hirsch Apfelbaum) (Figure 8.1). In the context of early Soviet propaganda, entire groups or classes of people were often caricatured. Since there were no individual traits the artists could draw from, they often then resorted to what they called tipazh. While the practice became current earlier,

Figure 8.1  “We play, we play, but no one comes to hear.” Trotsky is represented here as a Jewish street performer, along with Grigorii Zinoviev dressed as a gypsy and Lev Kamenev turned into a parrot. Krokodil, no. 44 (1927), cover. Private Collection.



Caricature as a Weapon in Class Struggle

141

the term itself was coined in Russia in the late 1920s (Bonnell 1997: 38). Tipazh served the purpose of typecasting, or creating ensembles of exaggerated physical and moral characteristics, translating the essence of a given group, in order to better observe or describe it. The red-nosed priest, the potbellied capitalist wearing a top hat, the stooped baba (pejorative for peasant woman) with her kerchief tied around her face in an oldfashioned way, and the corpulent kulak (affluent peasant) garbed in a traditional Russian shirt, a cap on his head are hence caricatures of whole groups rather than individuals. For caricature to be effective, it needs to be grounded in some degree of reality or experience. More precisely, it must oscillate incessantly between fiction and reality. It is only then that it can fulfill two critical conditions: it should be easily linked to its mark, and it needs to mock it, by deforming it. Soviet artists understood this well. In fact, the craft of satire and caricature was discussed and debated at length in public conferences, art journals, and even in the satirical press where it became a self-reflexive gesture. A 1933 cover of the Soviet satirical journal Krokodil, for example, makes light of the use of caricature and tipazh, underscoring the incongruity between the distorted image and its actual referent. A skinny man in an overcoat watches from afar an artist

Figure 8.2  Krokodil 3 (1933), cover. “Let him go on representing me that way. It hasn’t occurred to him that I’ve slimmed down.” Private Collection.

142

The Languages of Humor

painting a satirical picture of a kulak immediately recognizable by his emblematic attributes. “Let him go on representing me that way,” he says. “It hasn’t occurred to him that I’ve slimmed down” (Figure 8.2).

From medieval laughter to satire: Caricature in tsarist Russia Caricature has deep roots in Russia, in medieval grotesque and carnivalesque figuration, and the wearing of deforming masks. The lubok is, however, its most direct ancestor. A popular visual art form that developed in the second half of the seventeenth century with the beginning of Russian print culture, the lubok is characterized by simple and often amusing graphics and narratives derived from folktales, religious stories, and occasionally current events. Portraying comic deformations of the human body, the absurd and carnivalesque reversals (such as domesticated animals overpowering humans), early lubki woodcuts were used mainly for entertainment. As Mikhail Bakhtin explains, medieval laughter tended to be farcical, irreverent, and inclusive ([1965] 2009: 11–12). Most importantly, it was ambivalent; it all at once degraded, denied, sanctioned, and revived. In the eighteenth century, however, comic genres—including the lubok—underwent crucial changes. Medieval humor increasingly gave way to biting and divisive satirical forms, usually charged with some social or political object lesson. Ushered in by the didactic impulse of the Enlightenment, satire was used to mock and ridicule in order to denounce, shame, or chastise behavior deemed deviant from the norm. As Michael Gardiner explains this modern type of laughter reduced “genuine carnival laughter

Figure 8.3  Mice Burying the Cat, anonymous lubok, circa 1725. Public domain.



Caricature as a Weapon in Class Struggle

143

to ‘cold’ irony and sarcasm, whereupon it loses its vital power, its status as a positive, regenerating force.” (2012: 54) Mice Burying the Cat is considered to be one of Russia’s first examples of satirical lubok. As Matthew Cullerne Bown argues, the cat in this image is a caricature of Peter the Great, who passed away in 1725. He is rendered identifiable by his exaggerated whiskers, “a reference to Peter’s [controversial] adoption of the European fashion of a moustache rather than the traditional Russian Beard.” (1998: 4–5) (Figure 8.3). While in central Europe caricature was mainly used by trouble rousers and opponents to the power that be, it is the Tsarina Catherine the Great who paradoxically imported satire to her court in the middle of the eighteenth century. A notable example of an enlightened despot, she cultivated correspondences with Voltaire, Diderot, and the French encyclopaedists. She praised the didactic and moral virtues of satire, and collected examples of European graphic and literary wit, such as the works of Rabelais, Molière, Jonathan Swift, and William Hogarth. She also favored homegrown political/ satirical lubki. In the first years of her reign, she even founded and directed one of Russia’s first satirical journals Vsyakaya vsyachina (All Sorts and Sundries, 1769–70). Her passion for literary and graphic satire led her to free editors from preliminary censorship, thus encouraging the publication of a dozen satirical periodical publications. These rapidly became immensely popular with Russia’s educated public, allowing for the broad circulation of critical ideas and the assessment of dissent. Only a few topics were off limits: the Tsarina herself, her government and public officials, and the bureaucracy. In the nineteenth century, satire developed into a key topic of erudite deliberation for the emergent Russian intelligentsia, most particularly in socialist circles. In fact, a critical, satirical spirit came to be understood as the hallmark of Russian intellectual culture. Dating the beginning of Russian literature to the middle of the eighteenth century when satirical genres emerged in Russia, Vissarion Belinsky wrote in 1845 that “the satirical tradition was never interrupted in Russian literature.” ([1854] 1955: 615) “It has always constituted the most vigorous, or rather the only vigorous trend in our literature,” added Nikolai Chernyshevsky in 1855 ([1855] 1978: 419). In 1859, Nikolai Dobrolyubov summed it up by simply stating that “our literature started out satirical, continued to be satirical, and stands today on satire.” ([1859] 1962: 314) The social role and significance of satire also became a topic for reflection, inasmuch as it was understood as having the capacity to participate in historical processes. In this vein, Aleksandr Herzen succinctly explained in 1858 that “laughter is one of the most powerful tools against all that is outdated and hangs on to God knows what, the great ruins that frighten the weak and hinder the development of a new life” ([1858] 1952: 190). While satire manifested itself most readily in literature, in the works of Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Aleksandr Pushkin, and Nikolai Gogol to name a few, it also occasionally found its way as caricature in the pages of newspapers, but only when it managed to elude censorship. Most surprisingly, caricatural representations flourished in the works of painters, critical realist artists such as Ilya Repin, Pavel Fedotov, Vasily Perov, and Vasily Pukirev. They sought to portray Russian social life through a lens that was critical of inequities and injustices. In this context, caricature and what

144

The Languages of Humor

Figure 8.4  Vasily Perov, A Religious Procession at Easter, 1861. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

would become known as tipazh allowed artists to identify their targets and make their shortcomings visible. Vasily Perov’s A Religious Procession at Easter (1861), for example, was removed from an 1862 exhibition held in Moscow “because it portrayed the clergy rolling drunk,” with an unambiguously mocking and critical intent (Bown 1998: 11). The priest figure is caricatured with an exaggerated red nose and a huge belly that betray his propensity for alcohol and food, contrasting with the svelte bodies of the parishioners (Figure 8.4). Satirical periodicals had decreased in numbers after the rule of Catherine the Great and their occurrence followed ebbs and flows in the application of censorship laws under different rulers. But in 1905, political events allowed them to flourish again, and caricature became ubiquitous fare in print culture. On January 5, 1905, a date now known as Bloody Sunday, a peaceful demonstration took place in Saint Petersburg in which over 30,000 citizens participated. The demonstrators were calling for the liberation of all imprisoned revolutionaries; better labor conditions; the concession of land to peasants; and the suppression of censorship. The imperial guards opened fire on the protesters, an act of excessive violence that caused thousands to be wounded and killed. The event led to a series of general strikes, affecting the majority of industries and paralyzing the government; it could no longer rule or enforce censorship laws. During that period, hundreds of satirists and caricaturists came out under the banners of a variety of illustrated journals, such as Pulemet (The Machine Gun, 1905–06), Zhupel (The Bogeyman, 1905–06), Gudok (The Whistle, 1906–07), Skorpion (Scorpion, 1906), Knut (The Knout, 1906–07), Buksir (The Tugboat, 1907), Signaly (Signals,



Caricature as a Weapon in Class Struggle

145

1906), and Strely (Arrows, 1906). Between 1905 and 1908, over four hundred such journals were created, serving as the barometer of public opinion and as the main outlet for caricature. They were all short-lived; the government reorganized itself and reestablished censorship in full force in 1906.

Soviet caricature Only one prerevolutionary satirical journal survived the October 1917 Revolution and, for close to a year, Soviet censorship. This journal is the weekly Satirikon (The Satyricon, 1908–14), renamed Novyi satirikon (The New Satyricon, 1914–18) following a rebellion of its main contributors in 1914. During the First World War, the journal became the voice of the liberal intelligentsia, and a forum for Russia’s patriotic voices. Then, at the beginning of 1917, Novyi satirikon adopted an aggressively anti-Bolshevik stance, and after the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power in October it increased its output of virulent caricature depicting them as monsters, idiots, and brutes. The journal survived until August 1918, when it was prohibited by the Revolutionary Tribunal of the Press, and hence deprived of paper and ink. With the liquidation of Novyi satirikon, Russian satirical press became almost nonexistent and very few public venues remained for caricature. There were a few attempts to create illustrated journals that endorsed Bolshevik ideological positions: Balalaika (Balalaïka, 1918), Bich (Whip, 1916–18), Gilotina (Guillotine, 1918–19), and Kransyi dyavol (Red Devil, 1918–19), to name a few. A small number of short-lived publications distributed exclusively to Red Army soldiers at the front also appeared, such as Krasnyi shmel (Red Bumblebee, 1920) and Krasnaya zvezda (Red Star, 1921– 22). But, as Sergei Stykalin (1963: 11–12) explains, during the period of the Civil War that followed the Revolution, material conditions were extraordinarily unfavorable, and no journal managed to publish with regularity. Everything was lacking: paper, ink, and lead type, as well as trained personnel.

Civil War-time satirical posters Since satirical journals lacked the means to communicate rapidly and effectively political and social events during the Civil War, they were replaced with large-scale posters, which afforded rapid and inexpensive dissemination of information. These were produced by a variety of presses working under Soviet jurisdiction, and they relied heavily on caricature and tipazh for their iconography. According to Stephen White, between 1918 and 1921, well over 3,600 posters were produced on a variety of themes (1988: 91). Important Soviet caricaturists Victor Deni and Dmitrii Moor contributed hundreds of posters, often with print-runs that reached 100,000 copies. “The League of Nations,” for example, is a poster designed by Deni. It was printed in Moscow by the publishing organ of the Revolutionary Military Council, the supreme military authority of Soviet Russia. Mocking the newly formed League of Nations, it ridicules France, the United

146

The Languages of Humor

States, and Great Britain through tipazh, portraying them as jowly, portly capitalists, their bellies resembling money bags; they sit on gilded thrones atop a heap of distorted bodies wearing measly rags. In the background, the dark silhouette of gallows is set against a blood-red sky. The poster was meant to concentrate into one image large amounts of information; it identified the League’s protagonists, clearly marked their ideological/economic allegiances, exposed the colonial roots of their prosperity, and denounced the hypocrisy of their peaceful mission. In other words, it discredited the League through caricature. But the seriousness of this wartime satire is emphasized by a warning written at the bottom right edged of the frame: “Anyone who tears down this poster or covers it up is performing a counter-revolutionary action” (Figure 8.5).

Figure 8.5  “The League of Nations,” 1920, poster by Victor Deni. Corpulent figures representing France, the United States, and England sit on a pile of emaciated corpses. On the flag, the slogan reads: “Capitalists of the World Unite.” Part of the David King Collection. Presented to Tate Archive by David King 2016. © Tate, London / Art Resource, NY.



Caricature as a Weapon in Class Struggle

147

A Dmitrii Moor poster from the same period presents a powerful trio formed of a soldier, an industrial worker and a peasant sweeping away cowering enemies of the regime into a comical procession. “The People’s Court” (1919, also published under the auspices of the Revolutionary Military Council) makes parodic use of the bustrophedic structure used in Russia throughout the tsarist period to depict imperial, religious, or military processions. Following the “S”-shaped trajectory of the parading wrongdoers, the viewer realizes the diversity of foes the young regime had to contend with. They are all drawn according to popular tipazh: top hat wearing capitalists, fat kulaks, antagonist military officials, representatives of several religions. A caricature of the self-proclaimed holy man and confidant to Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, Grigori Rasputin, assassinated in 1916, walks the bottom stratum of the procession, dragging behind him naked women clutching at his feet (Figure 8.6). Not all posters produced during the Civil War period were satirical or used caricature. Many drew on allegory to produce symbols of struggle and victory. Some played on pathos and were meant to draw tears by showing the misery of the oppressed. Others were designed to inspire, featuring heroic youthful male and female workers, earnestly looking to the future. But as one rapidly concludes when looking at the breadth of Civil War-time posters, satire played a privileged role in the propaganda arsenal, while caricature and tipazh became specialized tools used to discredit or shame enemies of the regime through ridicule. Why was this strategy so prevalent? We will come back to this issue later in this chapter. During the Civil War period, the most important publisher of satirical poster was the newly constituted Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA). It produced an

Figure 8.6  Dmitrii Moor, The People’s Court, 1919. A soldier, an industrial worker and a peasant team up to sweep away past and present foes. Private Collection.

148

The Languages of Humor

estimated 1,600 different “ROSTA windows” between September 1919 and January 1922 (Mayakovsky 2010: 96). These propaganda posters were usually displayed in the morning in the windows of the Telegraphic Agency, train stations, kiosks, and empty storefronts across the country, hence their name. Several windows could be produced each day, in reaction to urgent news received from the front. In order to accelerate the production process (and because of material shortages) the posters were made by hand. First drawn on carbon paper, they were later painted with cut-out stencils made from cardboard and occasionally put through a printing press. This allowed for rapid duplication, with circulation reaching 150 to 300 copies (Mayakovsky 2010: 96). Artists adapted to their needs time-honored visual strategies borrowed from the lubok and from 1905 satirical journals. The Frenzied Polish Gentry Pounced on Russia Arrogantly, a ROSTA window produced by visual artist and poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, relies heavily on tipazh to create an easily interpretable narrative. It was made in reaction to a news brief published in the newspaper Izvestia on September 15, 1921, which related that the French ambassador in Warsaw had sent a “note” to the Polish government, advising that famine in Russia had created favorable conditions to exert pressure on the Soviet government. The Bolsheviks sent their response immediately: any negotiation would be bilateral, and would not be grounded in provocation or intimidation. In the series of twelve images that constitute the window, caricatural figures of portly Polish officers prance around in their green costumes decorated with extravagant gold trim and epaulets. Famine— which is more difficult to represent through exaggerated mimesis—is depicted as an enormous skeleton head topped with the imperial crown, an image which reveals both its source and the interests it serves. In the following panels the Bolshevik worker and the Red Army soldier make an appearance as enormous red silhouettes. They block their enemies in their stride. In the penultimate panel, a minuscule Polish general, radically diminished by the towering confidence shown by the worker, is sent back to Poland with his “note” (Figure 8.7). It is expected that Civil War-time posters will target military threat and famine. But an important number of ROSTA windows also caricature what were considered internal enemies. These are reactionary, antisocial, or criminal elements, as well as residual tendencies inherited from the tsarist past. From Now on Riding on the Engine Will Not Be Permitted, for example, accompanies a decree issued on April 15, 1921, criminalizing illegal passage on locomotives. Toward the end of the Civil War, few locomotives were in service, because of fuel shortages and the scarcity of spare parts. Trains that remained in functioning order had to be protected from saboteurs and careless stowaways. In the panels nine to eleven of this window, an analogy is made, which mocks the destructive nuisance and reduces the situation to a farce: “Imagine that someone hoisted himself onto your shoulders as you walked. You might be able to drag on for a bit. But you’ll soon crumble into a breathless mass.” Other common internal targets of the windows were profiteering, prostitution, and alcoholism. ROSTA windows were extremely popular yet short-lived, ending a few months after the Civil War. When the Soviet Union officially entered the Second World War, however, the form was revived. Between 1941 and 1945, the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS, which had gradually replaced ROSTA) produced an estimated 1,250 individual windows (Kolesnikova 2005: 5). The overwhelming majority of the



Caricature as a Weapon in Class Struggle

149

Figure 8.7 Vladimir Mayakovsky, The Frenzied Polish Gentry Pounced on Russia Arrogantly, 1921. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Photo © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem by Meidad Suchowolski. representations focused on external enemies of the Soviet Union, in particular Hitler, who is caricatured under various guises depending on the trait the artist wants to highlight, as a wolf, a pig, a crow, or a raggedy busker. ROSTA windows, along with other posters published by State publishing agencies to support various campaigns, served to establish caricature and tipazh in early Soviet Russia, and develop satirical strategies as a means for propaganda in print culture. Mayakovsky considered them “the ancestors of all Soviet satirical journals, ancestors from harder times, times when paper and machines were scarce and we worked by hand” ([1930] 1959: 210).

150

The Languages of Humor

Satirical press in the Soviet Union Except for the few exceptions mentioned above, there were no journals dedicated exclusively to satire in Russia before the period of the New Economic Policy (NEP, 1921–28) that followed the Civil War.1 Caricature hence found itself most often relegated to illustrated supplements printed and distributed by party papers. Krasnaya kolokolnya (Red Belfry, 1918), for example, was a Sunday supplement distributed free of charge with the daily Krasnaya gazeta (Red Newspaper, 1918). It showcased creations from working-class, nonprofessional caricaturists. Similarly, Krasnyi voron (Red Crow, 1922–23), a publication known for its incisive tone, was published under the auspices of the daily Krasnye ogni (Red Lights, 1922–23). Since the Revolution, the majority of periodicals published by the State had been distributed for free. Most focused on important social and political issues and the party’s ideological program. Even without charge, they remained inaccessible to the average worker because of the high level of literacy they required from their readers (Brooks 1989: 16–35). It is only with the NEP that periodicals started to be sold, either by street vendors, in kiosks, or, more often, by subscription. They were then subjected to market laws—even if the content of all periodicals needed to be approved by the party and their paper stock and ink were allotted by the State. The journals published during this period thus became more specialized, targeting particular readers: peasants, urban workers, women, militants, soldier, even nonparty citizens. In this context, the illustrated satiric press revived. It was understood that with the use of caricature and tipazh, satirical journals could better reach less literate publics. Each was designed to target a very specific public. For example, Mukhamor (Fly Agaric, 1922–23) was intended for Petrograd’s nonparty intelligentsia; Krasnyi perets (Red Pepper, 1923–26) spoke to an educated, Bolshevik readership; Komar (Mosquito, 1924–26), targeted Leninist youth; and Bezbozhnik u stanka (Godless at the Workbench, 1923–32) mainly served the purpose of antireligious activism. Even though the material challenges described above had at least partially been resolved, the life-span of NEP period satirical journals remained relatively short. According to Stykalin (1963: 335), the cause of their difficulties cannot be attributed exclusively to the conditions of production. Journals still had trouble connecting with broad readerships, in particular the workers, and address concerns of interest to them. In a system where the State considered the press as an important propaganda tool, this weakness did not go unnoticed. Indeed, in April 1927, the party’s Central Committee published a decree “On humoristic-satirical presses.” The decree constituted a severe critique addressed to Soviet satirical journals. It explicitly stated that they had not thus far sufficiently fulfilled their role: The majority of satirical-humoristic journals have not achieved their goal of becoming the organs of a chastising satire, directed against negative elements that hinder the construction of our regime, against remnants of the old order, and against chauvinism, petty bourgeois attitudes and reactionary tendencies, which survive in certain segments of the working class. They must combat, on the one hand, class enemies, whether it be inside or outside the borders of the USSR



Caricature as a Weapon in Class Struggle

151

and, on the other hand, ideologies hostile to the proletariat (in particular social democracy). If the journals do not target a mass readership, then they embark on a path that will inevitably lead them to espouse petty bourgeois interests. (Central Committee 1927: 74)

It gave them a clear mandate: “The principal role of satirical-humoristic journals is to criticize and unmask negative influences that hinder the construction of communism; conceptions, traditions and habits of the petty bourgeoisie, which reveal themselves in the everyday and in many aspects of social life; all corporatist tendencies, bureaucratic and chauvinist, which impede the interests and the duties of the proletariat in the construction of socialism; and all the enemies of the people, as well as those who support them, consciously or not” (Central Committee 1927: 74). Most importantly, the decree ordered journals to better target their readership and tweak the satirical and caricature strategies they used. Five journals were then assigned specific niche markets. First, Krokodil (Crocodile, 1922–2000) and Begemot (Hippopotamus, 1924–28) were required to target a readership mainly constituted of politically aware workers; Buzoter (Hellion, 1924–27), of professionals (therefore a more educated public); Smekhach (Wag, 1924–28), of office workers; and Lapot (Bast Shoe, 1924–33), of agricultural workers. In order to best fulfill their mandate, the editorship of these publications was directed to consult members of their targeted public, solicit feedback and consult studies conducted about readers’ likes and desires. Then, swept by the wave of centralization of resources, staves, and organizations, which characterized the period of the First Five-Year Plan (1928 to 1932), all satirical journals were liquidated, except for Krokodil and the antireligious illustrated satirical journal Bezbozhnik u stanka, which held a special status. Thus, Krokodil imposed itself as the only official satirical journal of Soviet Russia, and its print-run shot up to 500,000 exemplars. In the 1970s, it had reached six million (Pehowsky 1978: 729). Krokodil preserved its monopoly until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, in spite of several attempts to create new journals that always tended to be topical and therefore short-lived. For example, during the Second World War, several satirical periodicals were created specifically to entertain and inform soldiers stationed at the front: Perekrestnym ognem (Crossfires, 1942), Skvoznyak (Draft, 1942), Partizanskaya dubinka (Partisan Truncheon, 1942–43), among others. A number of important satirical journals, analogous to Krokodil, also appeared in the national languages of the Soviet republics, for example Perets dlya zapadnykh oblastei Ukrainy (West Ukraine Pepper, 1944–49, published in Ukrainian), Mushtum (Fist, 1951-present, published in Uzbek), Ara (Bumblebee, 1956-present, published in Kazakh), and Khorpushtak (Hedgehog, 1953-present, published in Tadjik). Krokodil was the first journal to successfully manage broad appeal for Soviet workers. This allowed it to secure continuous State support for close to seventy years. Founded in 1922 by a decree of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, it was first produced under the supervision of Rabochaya gazeta (Workers’ Newspaper, 1922–32), then, from 1932, by the daily paper Pravda (Truth, 1918–91). From its very beginnings, its aims were openly ideological. Born in the first year of the New Economic Policy, the caricatures it featured targeted most often NEPmen2 and

152

The Languages of Humor

the international bourgeoisie. During the Second World War, the journal became an instrument for patriotic mobilization, informing its readers on matters of international politics and ridiculing Russia’s enemies, in particular Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. In 1948, after the war, the Central Committee reviewed the journal’s performance and determined that the propaganda effort waged during the war years in the pages of Krokodil had often been awkward, had had limited impact, or had missed its target altogether. In an official decree, Krokodil editors were urged to improve the artistic quality of both their caricatures and texts. Most importantly, they were asked to adjust its mandate to correspond to the postwar context: “The main task of the journal is to fight against vestiges of capitalism in popular consciousness. With the weapon of satire, the journal must unmask plunderers of socialist property, vandals and bureaucrats, as well as all occurrences of conceit, toadyism and banality; it must respond swiftly to international events, and carry out a critique of bourgeois culture in the West, revealing its insignificance and its degeneration” (Central Committee [1948] 1954: 600). A similar message was sent once again in a resolution of the Central Committee taken in September 28, 1951. This time, the Central Committee accused Krokodil satirists of having a poor handle on politics: “Krokodil often prints tales and poems that are unrealistic and uninspiring, weak drawings and caricatures, which have no serious purpose, and are peppered with errors in their interpretation of questions of internal affairs or international events” (Central Committee [1951]1954: 621). Editors were advised to fact check, and cultivate the level of political consciousness of their contributors.

Theorization of satire and caricature If satire and caricature were deemed important enough to warrant constant meddling from the Central Committee in their production, they were also the subject of careful and insightful theoretical work, by none other than Anatoly Lunacharsky, people’s commissar of Enlightenment, the official in charge of art, education and propaganda from 1917 to 1929. Over his career, Lunacharsky wrote some thirty articles about satire, humor, and caricature in literature, the visual arts, cinema and the theater, and he befriended artists, writers, playwrights, and cinema directors who were keen on exploring satirical genres in their work: Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vsevolod Meyerkhold, and Sergei Eisenstein, to name but a few. After he retired from his commissariat, the Narkompros in 1929, he went on to found the Commission for the Study of Satirical Genres at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, which he inaugurated in 1931. His work as a commissar and as an intellectual influenced greatly early Soviet cultural practices. Because Lunacharsky was head of the commissariat in charge of giving commissions to artists for propaganda work, the influence of his theoretical writings and of his personal sensibility was felt. He was at the helm of the premier Soviet cultural institution, working in the service of a country barely coming out of feudalism, in which the majority of the population was only functionally literate. His mandate was to enable the passage from a reactionary culture to a revolutionary one. And he felt satire and caricature were tools that could be helpful in this task.



Caricature as a Weapon in Class Struggle

153

As a young Marxist intellectual, Lunacharsky’s understanding of laughter was shaped  by sociological concerns. His thinking was much indebted to the abovementioned  writings of Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, and Herzen when, from 1912 to 1914 while in exile in France, he published his first series of articles dedicated to the cultural specificity of comedy in the national theater traditions of France, Ireland, and England. But he rapidly expanded his understanding of the comic by studying the principal theories of laughter then circulating in the European intellectual circles. He read the recent works of authors as diverse as French philosopher Henri Bergson, English philosopher, biologist, and sociologist Herbert Spencer, Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, English psychologist James Sully, and German philosopher Theodor Lipps. During the 1920s and early 1930s, he went on to write a series of theoretical texts through which he developed his theoretical grasp of satire, humor, and caricature. Lunacharsky’s understanding of laughter3 goes hand in hand with the Marxist conception of art that he was developing during the same period. For Lunacharsky, art was first and foremost a social fact, developing in close, dialectical relation with economic, political, and cultural processes. “First, according to Marxism as a social theory, art is a defined superstructure, emerging from a distinct framework of social relations of production, which are determined by the predominant forms of labour of a given historical period” ([1923] 1967: 337). It was therefore considered as a constituent of the world of ideologies, like political thought, philosophy, and religion. And “among all these ideologies, art plays an eminent role. It is an organisation of social thought” ([1923] 1967: 337). Drawing on a Tolstoyan perspective (Tolstoy [1898] 1960: 49) prevalent in Russian intellectual circles in the beginning of the twentieth century, Lunacharsky also defined art as communication or the social distribution of emotions, and conferred it a performative role. Art, therefore, acquired the potential to act as a catalyst by triggering emotions. Satire, humor, and caricature, when used in arts and propaganda, were understood as serving this same role as a privileged means to elicit affect, hence complementing intellectual methods of socialist edification. Lunacharsky’s writings on laughter highlight historical and contemporary, local and foreign, literary, and artistic practices: those of Jonathan Swift, Nikolai Gogol, Anatole France, Ilf and Petrov, Georges Grosz, Vsevolod Meyerhold, and Vladimir Mayakovsky, to name but a few. In the works of art and literature he was interested in, he particularly appreciated the deployment of satirical strategies, the effect of which he described as “an aggressive laughter that hits the target” ([1930] 1967b: 185); laughter that “kills with the venom of its poisoned arrows” ([1920] 1964: 77); through which the “screeching of chastisement becomes audible” ([1920] 1964: 77); and that announces “the thunder of an upcoming battle” ([1920] 1964: 77). In order to underscore the belligerent nature of satire, Lunacharsky clearly distinguished it from humor, which he described, following Sigmund Freud and James Sully, as the more generous laughter of those who “fully understand the burden of existence, and seek to afford themselves and others a short respite.” ([1930] 1967a: 184) He defined more specifically caricature and its collective form, tipazh, as essential tools that artists could deploy in the context of satirical propaganda work, to synthesize complex situations and reveal hidden traits by exaggerating them. For him, artists “must resort to all sorts of hyperbole, caricature and utterly improbable comparisons—not to conceal reality but, through stylisation,

154

The Languages of Humor

to reveal it” ([1933] 1988: 327). In other words, for Lunacharsky caricature and tipazh contributed to realism; through them, artists could expose the true essence of things. Lunacharsky’s texts on laughter serve a triple purpose. They introduce the Soviet readership to satirical forms in literature, art, cinema, and theater, they explain in relatively simple terms the most recent theories of laughter, but they also encourage artists of all tendencies to integrate satirical strategies in their artistic practice. This is because, following Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, and Herzen, Lunacharsky considered that certain forms of laughter, and chiefly satire, were instruments that were particularly well suited for the critical analysis of social processes in revolutionary times. They could therefore be harnessed for the purposes of propaganda art, thereby serving as valuable complements to more “serious” material. As he underscored in a speech he pronounced on January 30, 1931, at the first meeting of the Commission for the Study of Satirical Genres: “Laughter is a tool, I would even dare to say a critical tool, which can either serve the objectives of auto-discipline for a social class; or alternatively, that can allow this class to exert pressure on other classes” ([1931] 1967: 533). As the passage quoted above highlights, in Lunacharsky’s work, laughter is much more than the mere result of enjoyment, tomfoolery, or entertainment. It is a weapon and a tool of class struggle; it discredits external foes, and it destroys outmoded or residual bourgeois values on the home front. Furthermore, laughter holds the potential of being an agent of social regulation, and consequently serves the goal of auto-discipline within a group. As Bergson explains in his influential study on laughter, “[Laughter] expresses an individual or collective imperfection which calls for an immediate corrective. This corrective is laughter, a social gesture that singles out and represses a special kind of absentmindedness in men and in events” ([1900] 1911: 87–88). In other words, laughter can contribute to social order, by establishing or consolidating norms. It does so by calling upon public opinion (a powerful tool in class struggle), which ridicules or punishes lapses, mistakes, and infractions: “For laughter to be effective, the laugher himself must first and foremost be convinced of the insignificance of his enemy. Secondly, laughter should attack the self-esteem of its target. Thirdly, in the eyes of its witnesses, mockery should be convincing; it should attract sympathy for the satirist’s attempt to break his enemy” (Lunacharsky ([1931] 1967: 536–37). In a speech Lunacharsky pronounced in 1931 at the Commission for the Study of Satirical Genres, this potential of laughter to correct ideological deviation and strengthen social tendencies, particularly in a revolutionary context is put forth explicitly: “Laughter has always been an important element in social processes. The role of laughter is as important as ever in our struggle, the last struggle for the emancipation of human beings” ([1931] 1967: 538).

Debates on satire and caricature If during the Civil War period everybody seemed to agree about the effectiveness of satire and caricature in propaganda posters, the consensus broke down over the course of the next decade as the young Soviet Union and its ideological master narrative transformed. Public attacks on satire first appeared in journals in 1925. Their authors



Caricature as a Weapon in Class Struggle

155

claimed the reception of satire and caricature was too difficult to control. Taken out of context, they could serve a counterrevolutionary purpose. Earnest forms of propaganda were easier to manage. Then, from April 1929 to January 1930, a lively debate around the relevance and usefulness of Soviet satire was waged. It mainly took place in a series of conferences at the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow and in the pages of Literaturnaya gazeta, which was arguably the most influential Soviet cultural periodical publication of the time. The 1929–1930 debate hinged on one crucial question, that of what revolutionary stage had been achieved. Following Lenin’s premature death in 1924, a struggle for Soviet leadership began, and two visions of the historical process confronted one another. The first, exemplified by Trotsky’s notion of “permanent revolution,” proposed that the revolution would take a very long time to take root, and that vigilance and selfcriticism would always be necessary in order to avoid the degeneration of revolutionary ideals and practices. The second was exemplified by Stalin’s slogan “socialism in one country” and his later assertion that socialism had been achieved. It convinced many artists and bureaucrats to become wary of critical and self-critical practices that would undermine confidence in either socialism or its achievability. In the fields of art, literature, theater, and the cinema, debates among creators raged. While all agreed that arts and propaganda should contribute to building the new regime and consolidating gains, there was no consensus as to whether or not satire, as a critical tool charged with destroying the past and discrediting enemies of the regime, still had its place. Proponents of satire argued, as Lunacharsky had in his writings, for the potential caricature had to render visible hidden menaces and complex social processes. They talked about how through laughter deviant behavior could be pointed out, so that social regulation and self-discipline could happen. They insisted on the fact that there were still vestiges of tsarists and bourgeois culture in Soviet society that needed to be eradicated. They felt laughter had proven to be a highly adaptable tool throughout the Civil War and the NEP period, tracking different enemies and speaking to different publics. Satire and caricature’s fiercest opponent was theater critic Vladimir Blum. He expressed his position in a number of articles, but most famously in a speech he gave at the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow on January 8, 1930, to an audience that included, among others, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Mikhail Koltsov, the editor of the satirical journal Krokodil. Grounding his position in a Stalinist perspective, he argued: “The notion of ‘Soviet satire’ is a contradiction in itself. It is just as absurd as the notion of ‘Soviet banker’ or of ‘Soviet landlord’” (Zozulya 1930: 3). Writer Efim Zozulya reported the debate in an article he published a few days later in Literaturnaya gazeta. The crowd of satirists and other interested parties gathered at the event, he explained, unanimously turned against Blum. “They weren’t only defending satire in its literary and formal sense, but rather the right to laugh” (1930: 3). For all intents and purposes, Soviet satire and caricature had been saved. Then, on March 6, 1931, a short communiqué appeared in the pages of Literaturnaya gazeta. Penned by Anatoly Lunacharsky, it announced the launch of a governmental commission for the study of satirical genres in art and literature, working under the auspices of the Social Sciences Division of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (1931: 4).

156

The Languages of Humor

It was to be headed by the now retired people’s commissar of Enlightenment, who had been appointed Member to the Academy in 1930. Satire, considered as a weapon in class struggle, would become a field of study in the highest scientific level of authority in the nation. The commission was short-lived, however. It was closed following Lunacharsky’s premature death in 1933, on his way to take an appointment as Soviet ambassador to Spain. If the “right to laugh” had been successfully defended, as Zozulya claimed, the practice of satire and caricature became nevertheless increasingly controlled. As we have seen earlier, the Central Committee intermittently meddled in the affairs of satirical publications. It was also involved in commenting on satirical practices in cinema, theater, and literature. All the while, Stalin increased his hold on power within the party, the Soviet bureaucratic apparatus expanded, and the so-called Cultural Revolution, a movement of the late 1920s and early 1930s, profoundly transformed the Soviet art scene. Mainly driven by young proletarian, the generation that had grown up with the Revolution, it forced the proletarianization of culture or, in other words, the explicit politicization of culture, more stringent party control, as well as a bias for explicitly proletarian concern. It also destroyed the climate of experimentation and of collaboration with fellow travelers, avant-garde artists, and bourgeois intellectuals that Lunacharsky had fostered and defended throughout his career as people’s commissar of Enlightenment. The Moscow Trials (1936–1938) were already looming on the horizon, and people were scared to say the wrong thing, or for their work to be interpreted as antiSoviet propaganda. As writer and critic Osip Brik put it in an article on film comedies he published in 1927, “Without Laughter, comedy is impossible. But it is difficult now to make a Soviet Comedy because we don’t know what to laugh at” (1927: 14).

Conclusion Satire and caricature are often associated with dissent and opposition. This was certainly the case of the Russian satire that emerged from the 1905 political crisis. However, the study of the early Soviet context sheds a particular light on these practices. Funded and regulated by the state through decrees, satire and caricature served the regime. For many, satirical posters and journals with their delivery of news through the means of caricature and tipazh, proposed an eye-catching alternative to the early Soviet press, which was particularly bland, poorly illustrated, and required a level of political literacy that was out of the reach of many readers. In this way, one could argue they became complementary to straightforward political rhetoric. They discredited enemies of the regime, organized knowledge to make it more easily accessible, and through their affective power contributed to the wide acculturation process that started in 1917 under the aegis of the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment. Indeed, as Lunacharsky explained, Soviet laughter was a critical weapon to be used in class struggle ([1931] 1967: 533). By the sharpened pen of experienced artists, it also served the reorientation and legitimizing of the party line, moving in sometimes contradictory or unexpected directions until 1991.



Caricature as a Weapon in Class Struggle

157

Notes 1 The Novaya Ekonomitcheskaya Politika was a temporary economic measure put in place in 1921. It reintroduced relative market freedom, aiming at stimulating the country’s economy, which had been seriously compromized by the First World War, the Revolution, the Civil War, and famine. The inauguration of the First Five-Year Plan in 1928 marks the end of the NEP. 2 NEPmen were businessmen who benefited from the market conditions created by the NEP. Even though the Policy had been initiated by the party, their entrepreneurial activities and their mere presence were considered by some an affront to the Regime. 3 In his writings Lunacharsky uses the term laughter (smekh) as an umbrella term, most likely in reference to Henri Bergson’s influential Le Rire: essai sur la signification du comique, originally published in 1900.

References Bakhtin, M. ([1965] 2009), Rabelais and His World, trans. H. Iswolsky, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Belinsky, V. G. ([1854] 1955), “Portretnaya gallereya russkikh pisatelei,” in V. G. Belinsky (ed.), Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v 12 tomakh, vol. 8, 613–34, Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literatura. Bergson, H. ([1900] 1911), Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, trans. C. Brereton and F. Rothwell, New York: Macmillan. Bonnell, V. (1997), Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters under Lenin and Stalin, Berkeley: University of California Press. Bown, M. C. (1998), Socialist Realist Painting, New Haven: Yale University Press. Brik, O. (1927), “Na podstupakh v sovetskoi komedii,” Kino front, 3: 14. Brooks, J. (1989) “Public and Private Values in the Soviet Press, 1921-1928,” Slavic Review, 48 (1): 16–35. Central Committee of the Communist Party (1927) “O satiriko-yumoristicheskikh zhurnalakh,” Krasnaya pechat, 11: 74. Central Committee of the Communist Party ([1948] 1954), “O zhurnale ‘Krokodil’,” in O partiinoi i sovetskoi pechati. Sbornik dokumentov, 599–600, Moscow: Izdatelstvo “Pravda.” Central Committee of the Communist Party ([1951] 1954), “O nedostatkakh zhurnala ‘Krokodil’ i merakh ego uluchsheniya,” in O partiinoi i sovetskoi pechati. Sbornik dokumentov, 621–22, Moscow: Izdatelstvo “Pravda.” Chernyshevsky, N. G. ([1855] 1978), “Ocherki gogolevskogo perioda russkoi literatury,” in N. G. Chernyshevsky (ed.), Izbrannye estetitcheskie proizvedeniya, 418–516, Moscow: Iskusstvo. Dobrolyubov, N. A. ([1859] 1962), “Russkaya satira ekaterinskogo vremini,” in N. A. Dobrolyubov (ed.), Sobranie sochinenii v 9 tomakh, vol. 5, 313–401, Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literatura. Gardiner, M. E. (2012), “Post-Romantic Irony in Bakhtin and Lefebvre,” History of the Human Science, 23 (3): 51–69. Herzen, A. I. ([1858] 1952), “O pisme, kritikuyushchem ‘Kolokol’,” in A. I. Herzen (ed.), Sobranie sochinenii v 30 tomakh, vol. 13, 189–91, Moscow: Izd. Akademii nauk SSSR.

158

The Languages of Humor

Kolesnikova, P. (2005), “Okna TASS” 1941/1945. Oruzhie pobedy, Moscow: Taktika. Lunacharsky, A. V. ([1920] 1964), “Budem smeyatsya,” in A. V. Lunacharsky (ed.), Sobranie sochinenii v 8 tomakh, vol. 3, 76–79, Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literatura. Lunacharsky, A. V. ([1923] 1967), “Marksizm i literature,” in A. V. Lunacharsky (ed.), Sobranie sochinenii v 8 tomakh, vol. 7, 331–40, Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literatura. Lunacharsky, A. V. ([1930] 1967a), “Chto takoe yumor?” in A. V. Lunacharsky (ed.), Sobranie sochinenii v 8 tomakh, vol. 8, 182–84, Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literatura. Lunacharsky, A. V. ([1930] 1967b), “O satire,” in A. V. Lunacharsky (ed.), Sobranie sochinenii v 8 tomakh, vol. 8, 185–87, Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literature. Lunacharsky, A. V. (1931) “Pismo v redaktsiu,” Literaturnaya gazeta, 15: 4. Lunacharsky, A. V. ([1931] 1965), “Kinematograficheskaya komediya i satira,” in A. V. Lunacharsky (ed.), Lunacharsky o kino, 192–212, Moscow: Izdatelstvo “Iskusstvo”. Lunacharsky, A. V. ([1931] 1967), “O smekhe,” in A. V. Lunacharsky (ed.), Sobranie sochinenii v 8 tomakh, vol. 8, 531–38, Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literature. Lunacharsky, A. V. ([1933] 1988), “Synopsis of a Report on the Tasks of Dramaturgy (Extract),” in R. Taylor and I. Christie (eds.), The Film Factory. Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents, 327, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Mayakovsky, V. V. (2010), Mayakovsky: Okna ROSTA i Glavpolitprosveta, 1919-1921, ed. A. Morozov, Moscow: Kontakt-Kultura. Mayakovsky, V. V. ([1930] 1959), “Okna satiry ROSTA,” in V. V. Mayakovsky (ed.), Polnoe sobranie sochinenie v 13 tomakh, vol. 12, 210, Moscow: GIKhL. Pehowski, M. (1978), “Krokodil-Satire for the Soviets,” Journalism Quarterly, 55 (4): 729. Stykalin, S. (1963), Sovetskaya satiricheskaya pechat 1917-1963, Moscow: Gospolizdat. Tolstoy, L. ([1898] 1960) What is Art? trans. A. Maude, Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill Company. White, S. (1988), The Bolshevik Poster, New Haven: Yale University Press. Zozulya, E. (1930), “Nuzhna li nam satira?” Literaturnaya gazeta, 2: 3.

9

The Interplay Between Visual and Verbal Language in “Famous Last Words” Cartoons Carla Canestrari

Introduction Jokes which play on the verbal mode have been largely studied from the point of view of linguistic and psychological aspects of humor. Cartoon has been defined as a kind of joke (Attardo and Chabanne 1992; Samson and Huber 2004; Tsakona 2009), but it has received less attention than verbal jokes (Hempelmann and Samson 2008). This chapter adds to the existing literature on cartoons and explores an area which has until now been neglected, namely, cartoons based on the expression “Famous last words” (from now on FLWs), which refers to a comment on a situation where the final outcome has not fulfilled the original expectations. The cultural impact of FLW cartoons and the lack of studies on the subject make them worthy of investigation, with a view to discovering the type of humor they are based on. In particular, this chapter focuses on the interplay between visual and verbal modes and their roles in the architecture of humor. It can be hypothesized that FLWs are based on incorrect predictions: an expectation of a certain event or situation is expressed and then disappointed when the actual event or situation occurs. This general pattern was verified using a corpus of 122 randomly selected FLWs from the abovementioned Italian cartoon series. The visual and verbal modes of the FLWs were analyzed in order to ascertain their role and in particular to investigate whether one or the other mode relates more frequently either to expectations or to the actual event or situation.

Working hypotheses and operative tools The cartoons used in the study were selected from a weekly magazine called La Settimana Enigmistica, which has been published in Italy since the 1960s and which were authored by Bort (Mario Bortolato) until December 2016. The title of the cartoon

160

The Languages of Humor

Figure 9.1  An example of one of the FLW cartoons in the corpus. The caption says: “Don’t worry. This is how to do it! I know exactly where to hang it without causing any damage!” This cartoon by Bort was published in La Settimana Enigmistica, n. 4377, 2016, p. 43, copyright © 2016 by La Settimana Enigmistica, all rights reserved. Reproduced by kind permission of La Settimana Enigmistica. series is Le ultime Parole Famose . . . (i.e., Famous last words . . .) and Figure 9.1 shows a typical example. The caption in Figure 9.1 reports the speaker’s boast that he can hang a painting correctly with the presumption that the interlocutor is not able to do it better. The picture shows a man with his finger stuck into the hole he has made in the wall, trying to stop the water leak that he has caused from flooding the room any further. A woman (probably his wife) watches what is going on. On the basis of the caption, the reader infers that the man is the speaker, the woman his interlocutor, and that the man has unintentionally provoked the flood in the attempt to hang the painting. What is pivotal to the humor in the example is that the prediction is made by means of the caption and the outcome (which does not fulfill the prediction) is depicted in the cartoon. In other words, a frame-shifting occurs (Culson 2001; Ritchie 2005). In the initial frame, information from the caption and from the picture are collected by the observer. Typically, information regarding the characters, the place, and the time relating to the story are displayed in the set-up (Sherzer 1985), also known as the build-up (Hockett 1977), or the introduction and dialogue (Attardo and Chabanne 1992). In case of captioned cartoons which are made up of single panels (such as FLWs), eye-tracking based studies have demonstrated that this information is retrieved by both exploring the picture and reading the caption (Carroll, Young, and Guertin 1992). Accordingly, in the case of the cartoon in Figure 9.1, the observer infers on the basis of the caption and the picture that the interlocutors of the dialogue reported in the caption are the



The Interplay Between Visual and Verbal Language

161

man and the woman portrayed in the image; the story takes place in their living room; and the man thinks that hanging paintings is a job for men and that the woman cannot do better than him. The constellation of meanings and interpretations listed so far is the initial frame and a shift to an alternative and subverting frame is activated by the punch line (Ritchie 2005). It is not always clear where the punch line is in FLW cartoons. Unlike cartoons consisting of several panels where the last one clearly contains the punch line (as in, for instance, the examples used by Fein, Beni-Noked, and Giora 2015), the information in FLW cartoons such as the one in the example is condensed into one panel and this blurs the boundary between the setup and the punch line. The drawing in Figure 9.1 provides both setup information (the man is the speaker of the line in the caption) and punch line information (he has completely failed at the job and the previous expectation is unfulfilled). It could also be argued that the punch line is triggered by a comparison between the information in the drawing and the information in the caption. Conversely, a clear boundary can be traced between the two frames mentioned earlier, namely an expectation and its nonfulfillment. As FLWs are based on incorrect predictions, it may be hypothesized that the humor derives from a “frame-shifting” between two frames, namely an expectation or prediction and its nonfulfillment. According to this hypothesis, an expectation or prediction (used interchangeably) of a situation or event is set in one frame and negated by the actual situation/event in the other frame. The question of whether expectations are mainly expressed via the verbal mode and their nonfulfillment expressed via the visual mode (as in the case of Figure 9.1) is the main issue that this chapter addresses. In order to investigate the interplay between verbal and visual modes in terms of frame-shifting, a corpus of 122 randomly selected cartoons depicting FLWs (published in La Settimana Enigmistica between 2011 and 2017) was considered. By visual mode we essentially refer to the iconic sign, in this case the drawing or cartoon. Depending on the author, the graphic style changes, but it is a common trait for these drawings to often closely resemble reality. For this reason, they are far from being caricatures which is normally a typical characteristic of cartoons (Hempelmann and Samson 2008). The verbal mode of FLW cartoons, and cartoons in general, is more articulated. According to Samson and Huber (2007), a cartoon contains a text (i.e., a verbal mode) if it contains at least one of the following elements: a caption, a speech balloon, or verbal text in the picture. In this chapter, this categorization is taken into account in order to operationalize the concept of verbal mode. Furthermore, the title (Le ultime parole famose . . .) at the top of each example is not considered as text.

Data analysis and results Each cartoon in the corpus was analyzed in order to ascertain the frame information which the visual and verbal modes provide. The first step was to focus on the visual and verbal modes in each of the 122 cartoons, all of which turned out to include both modes. The second step was to verify whether the cartoons were in fact based on the nonfulfillment of an expectation. Again, the result was that all of the 122 cartoons were based on an expectation and the nonfulfillment of that expectation.

162

The Languages of Humor

The third step was to study the type of information contained in each frame in order to establish which mode (i.e., verbal or visual) represented the expectation and which mode represented the nonfulfillment of the expectation. Cases where both the expectation and the nonfulfillment were expressed by the same type of mode were also coded. In this way, each mode could be classified according to whether it related to the frame expressing the expectation or the frame expressing the nonfulfillment or both of these. There were no cases of FLW cartoons which did not fit in to one of these classifications. A chi-square test was performed in order to verify whether the verbal mode was more frequently used to display one of the two frames. Significant differences in the role played by verbal and visual modes emerged. In fact, from the adjusted residuals analysis, it was found that the verbal mode more frequently expressed information relating to the expectations frame (95.1%) in comparison to the visual mode (1.6%). Conversely, the visual mode more frequently relayed information relating to the nonfulfillment frame (79.5%) or to both the expectation and nonfulfillment frames (18.9%) as compared to the verbal mode (1.6% and 3.3% respectively) (χ2 (2, N = 122) = 214.66, p