But comedy can also be a Trojan horse for sticky and powerful ideas that can play a part in shaping our world view. Comedy can make damaging ideas palatable and portable. Comedy can make those who are already disempowered seem risible to those in the dominant position. Comedy can also be an arena to release tension and say the unsayable, giving shape to fearful things that lurk in the shadows. It can be a place to air and even mock societal fears.
Screenwriter Nora Ephron used to say, โEverything is copy.โ She said that to mean that things that seem shocking, devastating or appalling when they are happening to you can be turned into a story you will later tell for the entertainment of others. If you fall over, you might be the butt of the joke at the time, but if you later tell the story of the fall, itโs your laugh. Words that are malicious and hurtful in most contexts, when owned and reframed by a comedian, can be an ironic reversal of hate speech. So, letโs talk about jokes.
There is currently a debate among comedians and comedy audiences about whether the current push-back on jokes which seem to โpunch downโ rather than โpunch upโ is censorship from an overly sensitive, faux-offended minority with more clout than they deserve, or a sign of social progress in which comedians are held accountable for systemically violent statements like anyone else would be. Even comedians who in many ways seem progressive donโt agree on free speech. Hereโs a sample of some recent remarks from the current crop of outspoken comedians, showing the range of viewpoints:
โFar-left political correctness is a cancer on progressivismโ โ Bill Maher
โIf something as benign as political correctness can kill comedy, then comedyโs already deadโ โ Hannah Gadsby
โComedians have a responsibility to speak recklessly. Sometimes, the funniest thing to say is mean. Remember, Iโm not saying it to be mean. Iโm saying it because itโs funnyโ โ Dave Chapelle
โI do think itโs important, as a comedian, as a human, to change with the times. To change with new information โฆ I think itโs a sign of being old when youโre put off by thatโ โ Sarah Silverman
I think, overall, this range of views is good. Convergent thinking is undesirable. It stifles creativity, flattens innovation and homogenises diverse voices. Itโs also essentially impossible for comedians.
You and I may both have hard lines on jokes we consider unacceptable, but those lines might be different. How do we decide which line is the right line?
Deborah Frances-White
One of the biggest roles of comedians in society is to think of something you havenโt already thought of and surprise you with a new way of looking at the world. Even if a comedian is reinforcing the status quo, they need to have a twist on the everyday because a punchline is a surprise by definition. That requires leeway and bandwidth in a creative space, but that space, as is true of almost everything in life, is neither infinite nor fixed.
You and I may both have hard lines on jokes we consider unacceptable, but those lines might be different. So how do we decide which line is the right line? Do we even want some kind of groupthink on that? How do we (or should we) ask speakers to be responsible without returning to top-down censorship?
Part of the reason I want to analyse freedom of speech through the lens of comedy is that hate speech is often clear to see when it isnโt intended to amuse, provoke or subvert. There are strong anti-hate-speech laws in many countries which punish people for using slurs in public.
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But comedy seems to operate in a grey area where things which are manifestly unacceptable somehow get a pass because the intention is to entertain and provoke laughter. Sometimes the comedian is using irony, so the literal meaning and the message of the joke might be at odds. For all these reasons, comedy is an excellent space to analyse the power, purpose and policing of free speech.
No one really knows why we laugh, but academic studies suggest that laughter plays an important role in social bonding. Academics Guillaume Dezecache and R. I. M. Dunbar suggest that human communities, being much larger than those of other primates, require more time for social maintenance โ and that laughter is a means of providing additional bonding capacity by expanding the โgrooming groupโ. Their study demonstrates that laughter enables a threefold increase in the number of bonds that can be maintained simultaneously, which has the potential to significantly increase the size of bonded communities.
Baboons pick lice off each other to bond and reinforce social structures. Humans, who are usually lice-free and running in larger packs, use jokes and laughter instead. It makes sense when โmaking funโ is about raising and lowering each otherโs status in jest. Grooming among animals can be an act of affection or dominance, much like teasing someone you love.
You know someone is a friend if they ask you to make them a cup of tea and you can say, โYes, Your Majestyโ (raise) or โAre your legs painted on?โ (lower). You wouldnโt say that to your bossโs boss or your new boyfriendโs mother. This makes sense of why you can endlessly rib your own mum but no one else is allowed to. Itโs why being given a (friendly) nickname in a new workplace or friendship group is a sign youโre starting to belong. Itโs why your best buddies are generally the people you laugh with most often.
Edited extract from Six Conversations Weโre Scared to Have (Hachette) by Deborah Frances-White, out now.
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