The Politics of Laughter

so

a professor walks into a ted talk

that’s not even a joke and yet i imagine

most of you at least chuckled at that

simply in anticipation of some sort of

humor to follow

it’s our first glimpse at the incredible

power that humor and laughter possess

and of how deeply connected we are to

the rhythm

and idiom of comedy

but this isn’t just a talk about

laughter

this is a talk about the politics of

laughter

i first hit upon the idea of studying

the connection between

politics and laughter when i attempted

to build a republic

out of plato plato you see

felt that laughter was a form of

crudeness something that less refined

people

indulged in and so he argued that the

leaders and protectors of his ideal city

state

should not be inclined toward laughter

laughter it seems could be the one thing

that might destroy utopia

that’s some serious power right there

but today i will argue that plato got it

wrong

plato says you can’t have an ideal

polity with laughter

i say you can’t have one without it

i want to focus my discussion on two

questions

who can tell a joke about whom and who

can laugh at whose jokes

to launch my discussion i’ll start safe

with something trivial

something about which no one could

possibly find any controversy

by which i mean of course the n-word is

it really wrong

for a person like me in the middle of a

talk about the politics of laughter

to say the word necrophilia

wait was there some other n-word you

thought i was going to say

don’t worry i’m not actually going to

say the n-word

but do take note that so great was your

fear that i might do so

that you thought laughing at necrophilia

was a perfectly acceptable thing to do

but let’s turn now to the insight of the

great ricky gervais

a comedian who delights in challenging

boundaries

and who offers us this short but

eloquent insight

offense can never be given only taken

if ricky gervais is right and i think he

is

then those who laugh and those who make

us laugh are equal stakeholders

in the politics of laughter a role that

gives us two things

absolute freedom and absolute

responsibility

so what exactly links politics and

laughter well i just hinted at the

incredible power that laughter and humor

possess in what is politics if not the

continuous negotiation

of the distribution of power in many

ways politics and laughter

are the proverbial twins separated at

birth

one went on to serve the public in an

effort to improve the lives of millions

of people

and the other went into politics

before i can answer these questions i’ve

posed we have to make a slight detour

toward formal politics most notably the

law

even in a democracy such as america

there are limits to free speech

sometimes with tragic consequences

you may remember that time years ago

when hundreds of people perished

as the nightingale theater burnt to the

ground

why why ask so many anguished people

in the aftermath of that senseless

tragedy

because came the answer as we all know

you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater

that’s a bit of dark humor right there

there’s a different kind of politics

involved with dark humor it’s the

politics of

civil society civil society being the

social

glue that binds us together and helps us

negotiate the unwritten rules of social

propriety

you laughed at that joke it’s the

absurdity that makes it work

but you didn’t laugh too hard because it

might show disrespect

to the hypothetical victims of my

hypothetical inferno

our tempered laughter conforms to the

unwritten rules of social propriety and

thereby reinforces them

reassuring us that we are in good by

which i mean

civil company i mean if i told that joke

and someone yelled out

oh i know i love it when people burn to

death

we would all turn around with that

quizzical look of dude seriously

what a psychopath we would say

speaking of psychopaths freud wrote a

whole book on the joke in its relation

to the subconscious

freud differentiated humor which is what

the self-directed superego

uses to reassure the ever-anxious ego

from jokes the laughter of which

represents the narcissistic pursuit of

pleasure

through other directed aggression fun

guy that freud

but he does at least give me a quick and

ready answer to that ever vexing

question

if you could have dinner with one person

living or dead who would it be

for me it would be freud not because i

want to hear more about his ridiculous

theories of humor and laughter

but just so i can relish the moment when

i sit down across from him and say

hey freud did you hear the one about

your mother

but back to politics and more

specifically back to the law

yes there are limits to free speech but

from my research on this topic

arguably the least restricted and

therefore most protected form of speech

at least in the united states is satire

it’s as if the entire legal framework of

the united states has recognized

some deep fundamental connection between

laughter and democracy

that without our ability to satirize

things

to use every weapon in a comic’s arsenal

to expose the idiocy and hypocrisy of

others

especially of our public servants

democracy is somehow compromised

somehow broken

there’s a reason for this and the reason

is that laughter

in its moment confronts us with one of

the most precious political concepts in

the history of politics

namely equality

drawing on what literary theorist

mikhail bakhtin referred to

as the carnivalesque in which social

hierarchies are amusingly inverted in

the celebration of carnival

and on what thomas hobbes referred to as

sudden glory

in which the crafter of a clever joke

momentarily rises above their target

the laughter born of comedy offers us

the chance if only for a moment

to shine a bright light on the

pervasiveness of injustice and

inequality

and to dare to imagine a better world

lest you think that the politics of

laughter is a distinctly american thing

let me give you an example from

someplace else by which i mean of course

north korea yes you heard that right

during a visit to north korea i was

having dinner one evening with my

official government minders

i asked them if north koreans had a good

sense of humor

of course we do came the response we

north koreans love

a good joke and of course you do i

thought to myself

because let me be frank when i think of

laughter

i think of north korea they then

proceeded to tell me a north korean joke

a joke that by the way was an english

language joke

would you like to hear it well of course

you would

so a general goes into a restaurant to

have dinner

the waitress approaches him and asks yes

general what will you have

the general replies first i’m going to

have t

and then i’m going to have next to d

so the waitress slaps him storms off

that my friends is the end of that joke

at the time i didn’t know how to respond

i was lost

my minders who by the way were very

friendly had their own bit of sudden

glory with me

amused as they were by this american

professor who couldn’t understand what

they saw

as a simple english language joke

they then explained the joke to me the

tea and the joke you see

is not the beverage tea but the english

letter t

in what letter is next to t the letter u

as in you

so you see there it is north korea come

for the politics

stay for the laughter let me return to

the two questions i posed earlier who

can tell a joke about whom

and who can laugh at whose jokes

i’ve already talked about how laughter

allows us to break through

and tear down vertical boundaries social

and political hierarchies that effuse

injustice

but what about horizontal boundaries

shouldn’t laughter allow us indeed force

us to cross those boundaries as well to

engage with persons from communities

other than

our own to build a better and more

inclusive society

can laughter be the potential antidote

to the ever-divisive politics of

identity

those who make us laugh should not be

constrained

for we cannot compromise their power to

take us to places we might not

otherwise go and we who are taken to

those

unfamiliar perhaps uncomfortable places

we have the responsibility not just to

laugh but to react and more importantly

to reflect

laughter has the power to transport us

and at the same time

transform us if i am told there are

jokes i cannot say

or there are jokes at which i cannot

laugh then what i am really being told

is that

there are places i cannot go boundaries

i cannot cross

people i cannot meet it’s a world of

walls

and a world of walls is not a utopia but

a dystopia

when laughter exerts its power to break

through the boundaries and walls between

us

it transforms the divisive act of

laughing at someone

into the empowering act of laughing with

them

you might be thinking at this point so

zuk

are you really saying that when it comes

to laughter nothing is taboo

my response as surprising as it may be

is quite the opposite

in laughter i would argue everything is

taboo

and here’s why taboo is a word that

comes to us from the pacific islands

and it is a word that most of us misuse

and misunderstand

we think it means forbidden or off

limits

what it actually means is this when

something is taboo it is considered to

be imbued with so much power

that only a person with the appropriate

amount of knowledge

and the appropriate amount of skill a

chief for example

can manage and control the power of the

taboo object

politics as i’ve already stated is

thoroughly imbued with power

clearly enough power i would argue to

make it taboo

so whom do we trust to manage and

control that power

i for one wouldn’t trust politicians to

do so

no the only source of power we have that

can tame and control politics is in fact

none other than the power of laughter

and that means

that those among us with the right

amount of knowledge

and the right kind of skill to induce

laughter

our comedians are the ones we should

turn to to keep us safe

in our moments of need and crisis

comedians in other words

are the chieftains indeed the guardians

of our humanity

in the end what am i saying laughter

doesn’t just break down the walls that

prevent us from understanding one

another

that obscure our vision of a better

world

laughter also makes us hunger for that

better world

to build a better world is inherently a

political project

and as i argue it we can’t get there

without laughter

will we ever get there that i can’t say

these are difficult and uncertain times

but what i can say is this when the

revolution does finally get here

it’s going to be hysterical

thanks very much you’ve been a great

audience and don’t forget

due to the pandemic i’m here all week