Honest confession: I was making a comparative list between things that are often the subject of jokes and a list of things that are often the subject of suffering. I looked up jokes first and made a list of the things often joked about: death, marriage, sex, sexism, religion, money
I then realized I was actually writing these things by accident under the things that are often the subject of suffering. But it did not seem to make much of a difference which list these were under. The lists are very similar.
Part of the list had happy sides to the suffering side: a happy marriage in which one has married the right person is not the source of suffering, a religion which is actually taken to be a source of good will and love (it can happen!), a good romp in the hay with no disastrous consequences (it can happen?)
There was something that caught my attention- some of the things on the suffering list did not have a really happy side. Take child abuse. I could not think of the benefit or happy side of child abuse. It seems to be one of those “bad by definition without exception” categories. Or drug addiction. “Well, he’s a functioning addict” might be as good as it gets. But yet, though these things that are often the subject of suffering have a funny side?
But their funny sides might be on the tasteless side as well? Take for example the Family Guy joke of Brian talking to a young woman named Tracy:
Tracy: And then in high school, I was violated sexually by my father, it happened on numerous occasions and I was too afraid to tell anyone because I felt like it was my fault.
Brian: So… you do go all the way. (Family Guy, Former Life of Brian)
South Park even titled one of their episodes “Child Abduction Isn’t Funny” to make the point that the subject they are about to make jokes about isn’t funny, except that it is WITHIN the episode of South Park.
Some have argued that some things that are the subject of suffering can be funny after a certain period of time. This might add to the topic of psychical distance. How does one get some distance? Well, over time of course. Time heals all wounds and puts a clown hat on them. Unless you are Zeno of Elea, then tragedy never gets a humorous twist and wounds are never healed. But time is often given as a requirement for the tragic to become funny. This comes up in the Benign Violation theory as well, that a way to make the horrible benign is see it from a distance, and time in this cases is a way to produce such a distance. Genocide yesterday? Not funny. Genocide 1,000 years ago? Funny. Of course, when something is too far back in time, the humor and tragedy fades, so maybe we need to have a tragedy that is around 22.3 years to 100 years old (borrowed from South Park: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=612DEoTFH0o )
“Hitler wasn’t such a bad guy. After all, he did kill Hitler.” (www.laffgaff.com)
I find this joke to be a very clever gem. It is funny, many agree. And it is a triple threat- genocide, suicide, and paradox. It can be laughed at by many, even those of the groups targeted by the Nazi regime. Not all will laugh, some will not think the time has created the comic from the tragic, but some will.
Concern (one of the many): Tragedy is never far from our more daily lived experience. One can imagine a young man in the trenches joking about how he is about to be blown to bits, we have comedians joking about their very present and very dangerous cancers (Tig Notaro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kz-lV4t-3w ), and dates calling you fat. Hitler was in the past, but dates calling you fat is very present.
I went on three dates with someone, and on the third date, I was graced with the great truth that I was “too fat to be attractive” I was shocked. 1) How did it take him three days to figure out that I was fat? Surely, if I was too fat to be attractive I would have been very visibly and noticeably fat. 2) What kind of person tells a date that on their third date? The correct protocol is to never call the supposed unattractive pile of nothing after the first (or third date). You ghost them, just like any other mature adult.
A few years back, I was reading at a coffee shop, as the pretentious types like me tend to do. While I was reading, or trying to, I overhead the table next to me deep in Socratic debate. “My friend told me that she thinks she has a coke problem. I was like, thinking, ‘whatever, you’re fat, like you could really have a coke problem, PUH-lease! Shut up!” And to think, I hope to meet the love of my life in a coffee shop. Not that day. Not that day…
“You’re too fat to be attractive” “You don’t have a drug problem because you are fat, friend.” How could these slices of life be soo cruel, and yet, both have become sources of humor for me. To be honest though, the second scenario got a chuckle much sooner.
Our first response to these jokes and situations is rightly shock. I was shocked to hear such a cruel judgment from a date, I was shocked to hear such cruelty dealt to a friend, and shocked when I hear jokes like “My babies first phrase was, Now that I’m born, I’m pro-choice.” Shock is correct—the social norms of friendship, dating, respect, life, babies—they are violated. But these are no benign violations that have been softened with time. The struggle of society and weight continues for everyone, of bad friends and drug addiction, or the right to choose. We feel shock, but also humor at the same moment, or very soon. Life is the joke, as long as we remember the order of the show. Tragedy then comedy, just like those Greeks said.
Time does not pass for many tragic jokes. They are about wounds that do not heal because they are the wounds that make life life. Bad marriages, loneliness, cancer, sexism, death: these are all wounds that bleed without end. They are always the things that cause suffering. They are the tragic of everyday life. There is no distance or time that changes that. All of it calls for tears. But perhaps next we laugh through the tears. Nihilistic observation humor.
“You ever notice that life is meaningless in the grand scale of things?”
Silence.
“Is this thing on? Does it even matter that it is?”
Why I Laugh 