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