Is this funny: Can we develop
non-violent humour?
“In its
original historical meaning, a cartoon (from the
Italian
cartone, meaning "big paper") is a full-size
drawing
made on
paper as
a study for a further artwork, such as a
painting
or
tapestry.
In modern print media, a cartoon is an illustration, usually humorous
in intent.” (Wikipedia, 2006)
The current
conflict over the freedom to publish cartoons featuring the Prophet
Muhammad – Peace Be Upon Him - or alternatively, the freedom to have
your community and their views respected by others touches on
perennial themes of what are the boundaries of freedom, if any. As
debates for thousands of years by philosophers and ethicists testify,
there are no easy answers here. No clear boundaries. One thing is for
certain – any given freedom requires boundaries and implies
responsibility to use the freedom wisely and for the greater common
good.
This
implies that any freedom - and by implication the boundaries of such
freedom - is always negotiated, dependent on consensual agreements of
most members of a community, society, civilisation.
Contextualising humour - a
personal history
What is
also negotiated is what constitutes humour, what is considered funny.
I still remember my (male) colleges at the university where I worked
at the time joking over the rapes of women in Bosnia. It is not just
Serbs doing it they said, every side involved in the conflict (ie.
Bosnian Muslims, Croats, Serbs) was doing it, it just depends who is
better in this task! Being the only female in the room, and being a
feminist, and having spent painful months reading testimonies of raped
women, I simply couldn’t find that ‘joke’ funny. In fact I was
insulted and saddened over the lack of compassion exhibited. I felt
diminished as a person and as a woman. How they felt about me not
joining in and sharing a joke with the blokes I didn’t know, but it is
possible that they thought I was too serious, not fun to be with,
stern and burdened with ‘political correctness’.
I also
remember the question posed on Australian national radio some years
back by a show host: Which section is missing from the feminist
library? The humour section, was the ‘correct’ answer. To me, this was
just nonsense. While I (and I guess many other people as well) do not
enjoy jokes about stupid blondes, bosses and secretaries and doctors
and nurses, I do enjoy a good laugh. I still recall going to the
cinema to watch Baby Boom in 1987 and laughing out loud while
listening to Diane Keaton re-telling the Cindarella story to her
daughter. As I was the only one in the cinema laughing I started to
feel all these eyes on me. I had to gather all my energies to stop.
Luckily, a minute later there was a scene in which a near avalanche of
snow falls on somebody after they open an entrance door and with all
the other movie goers now laughing out loud also, I managed to release
the accumulated energy through laughter. While I personally thought
that particular scene was pretty stupid, I welcomed it as an
opportunity to both express my self and ‘fit in’ at the same time.
These days I do enjoy various forms of political satire - with Judy
Horacek being my favourite political as well as feminist cartoonist.
I’ve seen
two of the twelve cartoons that have caused so much stir all over the
world. I am not sure what to think of them. But that is beside the
point as they are not mocking my lot and me. All I know is
that sensitised by my experiences of being a woman influenced by
feminism and yet living in the patriarchal world (which continuously
provides endless misogynous jokes that cause very little if any
uproar), I am usually conscious of whether a joke may offend people
whose religious worldviews and cultural beliefs I don’t share. I would
especially not dare tell/repeat a joke about an Aboriginal person,
whether in Australia, or overseas. And I don’t think I’d be able to
share in a ‘humour’ which would put down racial and cultural groups
already vilified by western media and worldviews.
Verbal
aggression
But not
everybody shares my view here. In fact, authors of The Penguin Book
of Australian Jokes Phillip Adams and Patrice Newell argue in
their introduction that with the exception of the jokes involving
innocent plays on words, almost every genre of jokes circulating in
Australia is fundamentally “an act of verbal aggression against a fear
or an enemy, be it defiantly targeted or dimly perceived” (1995,
p.13). Almost without exception, they continue, the jokes about
Australian Aborigines are a “quintessential expressions of the
hostility that accrues to blacks in our cities and country towns”
(ibid.). So while a joke in isolation “may be a ‘thing of beauty and a
joy forever’” (p. 12), jokes in bulk are “appalling, Almost without
exception they deal in bigotry, sexism, racism, ageism and all the
other politically incorrect isms. They clearly help people deal with
their deep distaste for their own sexuality, their excremental
functions, their foreign neighbours, their political masters and an
infinite variety of things that go bump in the night.” (ibid. p. 12)
Not only is
the publication of cartoons part of verbal aggression, it goes much
further then that, argues Johan Galtung (2006):
To publish a caricature
of the Prophet, or indeed any visual depiction, is among the most
blasphemous acts that can be done to Islam…. Useful parallels: burning
flags; using pictures of the King or Bible pages as toilet paper;
tearing the Bible apart, throwing it in a toilet like guards do to the
Qur'an in Guantanamo. These are acts of direct violence, using symbols
as arms, a declaration of war, and war tends to be two-way traffic.
Nobody should be astonished, or hide behind some human right to be
surprised if there is counter-violence.
Still,
Adams and Newell argue that even though there may be a link between
the unpleasant joke and the unpleasant social outcome (e.g.
“anti-Semitic jokes providing the mortar for the bricks of the
crematoria”) to ban them, to deny their existence, would be hopeless
and possibly even dangerous, as bottled up resentments intensify
rather than dissipate (p. 18). Furthermore, humour and jokes allow
people the pleasure of laughter; a method of dealing with the
darkness. They help subvert dogma and religious certainty (ibid.). And
lastly, politically incorrect jokes, jokes about “racial or sexual
relationships are the most honest of indicators about what we are
really feeling” (p. 16).
With the
previous discussion in mind, how do we, as a global human community,
decide on the boundaries of freedom and how do we negotiate what is
funny? Cartoons that mock the Muslim Prophet are possibly an honest
indicator of the way many people in the West feel these days towards
Muslims and their faith. By the same token, the riots and burning of
embassies in the Muslim world possibly are also an honest indicator
about the way many people there feel about the West in general and
about some actions by some Westerners (such as publishing a picture of
the Prophet) in particular. Now that these honest feelings are out,
the main question becomes: Where do we go from here? Can we find ways
to negotiate the boundaries of freedom so that a freedom of one group
does not infringe on the freedom of an another one? Should these
freedoms be negotiated within the boundaries of nation states,
cultures and civilisations or do we need a new global ethics for a
global millennium? Can we develop some sort of a moral compass for
humour devoid of bigotry, sexism, ageism, blondeism and homophobia?
Can we begin joking and cartooning more and more about ‘us’ and less
and less about ‘them’?
Laughing at the self vs
laughing at the other
It
is bad enough that more than half of Australian schoolchildren in
Victoria view Muslims as terrorists, and two out of five agree that
Muslims "are unclean"
(Sydney Morning Herald, 5th
February, 2006).
The continual portrayal
of ‘the other’ as barbaric, violent and strange in western media does
nothing to reverse this prejudice.Rather, this orientalism (Edward
Said) may directly contribute to both the growing Islamophobia in the
west as well as to growing radicalisation of Islam elsewhere. The rise
of contemporary Islamic fundamentalism, at the expense of Islamic
nonviolent liberalism, is associated with ‘pride, cultural
assertiveness and defiance and a search for authenticity’ (Zakaria,
2006, p. 14). Any attack on deeply held values within Islam, and any
identification of the whole religion with the violent behaviour of
some of its members will do little to help the forces of liberalism
within the Islamic world. Instead “it will feed the fury that helps …
[radical Islam] win adherents (Zakaria, 2006, p. 15).
Thus while it would certainly be very unhealthy to live in a
humourless society, it is important to realise certain guidelines and
boundaries for humour in a contemporary multicultural, global society.
In today’s society “to be monocultural is no longer sufficient to be
literate” (Galtung, 2006). Rather, some multicultural knowledge and
sensitivity beyond that is needed not to overstep norms of decent
human behaviour” (ibid.). For humour to be able to dispel various
forms of darkness rather then reinforce them we need to negotiate and
learn from ‘the other’ what/when/by whom is considered funny.
I think this is important as
I myself remember not being offended by a particular critique of
Yugoslav people when published by local persons living in the former
Yugoslavia – in fact I always welcomed such self critique. But I
often found deeply offensive some cartoons coming from those residing
outside of these boarders that portrayed Yugoslav people using similar
mockery. Especially as they were connected to particular politics (as
in ‘lets go bomb the barbarians’), as humour and all the other forms
of communication inevitably are. I also found deeply offensive
cartoons that engaged with a nationalistic discourse during the break
up of Yugoslavia – cartoons that were used to somehow diminish the
other and enhance one’s own group feelings of self-importance and
self-righteousness.
There is a big difference
between self-critique and the critique of the group external to the
self – between laughing at the self/one's own mob and laughing at/
stereotyping/ putting down the other. In the second case, I have come
to learn that the joke is only funny if both parties involved think
so.
The role of the underlying
worldview
I strongly
believe that the publication of these cartoons in Danish
Jyllands-Posten
was very little about
the ‘ongoing debate on freedom of expression that we cherish so
highly’, as argued by the editors. Or, that this issue ‘pits the
strictures of Islam/Muslim Sensitivities’ against ‘Western freedom of
expression/liberty’ (Zakaria and Roy, 2006, p. 13 and 16). This is
because a “freedom of expression does not mean the duty of expression
of whatever comes to one mind” (Galtung, 2006) which is “rather
obvious” (ibid.). In fact, in these very societies where ‘freedom of
speech’ is a right and a highly respected value, many “legal and
social limits on expression” (Roy, p. 16) are already imposed and in
place:
Anti-Semitic cartoons
would almost everywhere [in Europe] be liable to legal prosecution.
More and more European countries have passed laws banning homophobia
or protecting minorities from degrading insult. Would cartoons mocking
dwarfs or blind people be published in respectable European
newspapers? No. Why, then, the social acceptance for mocking Muslims,
which sometimes verges on racism? …(ibid.)
The
actions of editors of newspapers that published cartoons went “beyond
valid norms for public space” argues Johan Galtung (2006):
They broke into Muslim
private space; like a thief into a private home … claiming freedom to
move as a human right.
So
while I think that freedom of expression, speech and press is one of
the greatest human accomplishments, these freedoms should be protected
where and when possible and sensible but not ‘at all costs’.
That higher principles take precedence over human life is one of the
central tenants of society build on hierarchical and patriarchal
values. The central tenant of a society build on values of centrality
of human (and human - nature) relatedness is to take seriously
concerns and interests of global human community, as well as the
non-human community, future generations of people and other living
beings.
A
joke about a ‘three legged pig’ or ‘gorillas mating with Poms’ (Adams
and Newell, p. 197-8) is only funny if you are not sensitised about
the actual torture and suffering animals go through in the hands of
humans, and/or if you are not ‘a Pom’ (British). The other day
Australian ABC radio featured an interview with a cartoonist who
fiercely defended freedom of speech telling Muslim protestors to
‘lighten up’. And to - if they can’t ‘take a joke’ - not read the
‘bloody newspaper’. The last question in the interview – the question
of whether he ever felt that the cartoon went too far – and the answer
to this question was, however, the most telling. The cartoonist felt
deeply offended and was quite upset when some of his colleagues took
him as a target! Some boundaries need to be placed, he said, and
making fun of him should be out of bounds!
Being a cartoonist, he made this last point in a funny way but still
this is where a fundamental guidelines, some sort of a moral compass
perhaps lies. As summarised brilliantly by Will Rogers (quoted in
Loomans and Kolberg, p. 14) “everything is funny as long as it is
happening to somebody else”. Adams and Newell would agree. They warn
about entering the pages of Australian Jokes at own peril, as
this will be done with a “knowing that every time you split your sides
you’re having a laugh at someone else’s expense…” (ibid. back cover).
Furthermore, for a racist joke to be seen as funny, racism has to be
an underlying worldview, we have to have an ‘inner racist’ within us.
The joke about the difference between a blonde and a shopping trolley
(a shopping trolley has a mind of its own) is only funny if we still
have some elements of sexism within us (as most of us, raised and
living in patriarchal societies almost inevitably do).
If
the underlying worldview is the desire to negotiate - to work things
out - with ‘the other’ you become sensitive about what you can say,
when and where about such group. You are also careful about what type
of behaviours you choose to engage in, preferring those that don’t
reaffirm various forms of direct, structural, cultural,
epistemological and ecological violence.
If
on the other hand, the underlying worldview is to ‘get back’ at the
other – you publish cartoons. Or you torch embassies. Or you bash
people of ‘Middle Eastern appearance’. Or you assault an Aussie
lifeguard at Cronulla beach. Or, you engage in wars and insurgences.
While certainly waging wars and publishing offensive cartoons should
not be put at the same line of responsibility for eliciting violence –
offensive jokes are indeed a relatively minor form of expressing ‘true
feelings’ of dislike and lack of respect towards the other – there is
also no doubt that they too are informed by a nationalistic,
ethnocentric worldview. It is true that it is counter productive to
ban such jokes. As long as the nationalistic, ethnocentric and
‘getting back at them’ discourse predominates such externally imposed
measure will not be very successful. Without some sort of inner moral
compass, the externally imposed ban would have the directly opposite
effect to what it tries to achieve.
It
is only by the changing of the underlying worldview that a different
taste for what is seen as funny develops. If still in doubt, contrast
cartoons by, for example, Horacek and Polyp (from New
Internationalist) with cartoons published in conservative western
media. Or with a tsunami joke about sharks stricken with diarrhoea
(from eating Thai food all week). Obviously, such a joke is only funny
if you haven’t deeply sympathised with people that were killed and
injured and/or if none of your friends and family members died in this
disaster. Otherwise, and rightfully so, is the appropriate question:
‘How can people be so cruel!?’.
Non-violent communication and
humour
If jokes
that deal in ‘bigotry, sexism, racism, ageism and all the other
politically incorrect isms’ are the quintessential expression of
bigoted, sexist, racist, agist and politically
incorrect/hierarchically structured and (using Riane Eisler’s term)
‘dominator’ society, what type of jokes would a fundamentally
different society with a fundamentally different underlying worldview
produce? For example, what would humour be like in a society in which
cultures of peace, compassion and non-violent communication are firmly
embedded?
I believe
that such a global peaceful, transcultural, ‘independent and
sustainable but yet interconnected, interdependent and interrelated
world’ (Elise Boulding, 1990) would be based on the following
principles:
1.
People own up their own ‘stuff’. There is an
awareness of one’s own agenda, underlying worldview, assumptions,
perceptions, fears, beliefs about self and others.
2.
There is an awareness and an understanding of what
kind of actions may have certain (violence promoting) consequences.
Thus, by choosing to engage in actions that may be offensive, you also
accept the risk that such offence may cause you and ‘your own’ group
distress further down the track, through the retaliatory actions of
‘the other’.
3.
There is an overall understanding that your speech
can be part of the problem or part of the solution. That is, that your
speech can be expression of verbal aggression or an expression of
desire to negotiate and ‘work things out’.
4.
There is an acknowledging that absolute freedom
does not exist, and that each right to __ has carries also the
responsibility for __.
5.
Humour becomes a means of reducing inflated
individual and collective Ego, thus you engage in laughing at self and
your own group more often then in laughing at her/him/them. You also
do the later, if you must, in a safe space – verbally, with ‘your
own’, removed from the eyes and ears of her/him/them.
6.
Reducing your own Ego also means that you don’t
identify so much with certain dogmatic principles and rules that help
define your own individual and collective identity. That is, you take
offence against yourself and your own group as lightly as possible.
Or, at the very least, you practice how not to exaggerate events out
of proportion. You certainly don’t over-generalise – making ‘all of
them’ accountable for the actions of some of their members. You don’t
buy into the paranoid worldview in which ‘all of them’ are inherently
against you and everything you stand for and hold dear. You become
honest about what type of grievances you are really expressing, at any
given moment. And, most importantly of all, you don’t respond to one
type of (ie. epistemological, cultural) violence with even more
intense one (ie. physical, direct violence).
7.
Humour becomes a means of destabilising centres of
oppressive political, cultural, epistemological, economic and military
power – and hopefully a means that can help create a world without
institutionalised violence and social injustice. Apparently, the
Muslim world is full of Mullah jokes, and as far as I know, portraying
Mullahs is not seen as out of bounds by the majority of Muslims. Such
a simple editorial intervention could have spared many grievances and
the intense escalation of violence and still enable expression of the
‘freedom to speak’, to express true feelings. “A better education for
a Danish cultural editor …, and the spiral of violence would not have
been unleashed” (Galtung, 2006).
8.
There is a consultation with local groups, and
various minorities (ethnic, religious, gender) in terms of the
boundaries of free speech. Many Australian academics these days have
come to accept research with Indigenous people as far superior
than research about Indigenous people. Many projects do not
take of the ground until local Indigenous communities are consulted.
Certainly, Australian society is nowhere near a preferred vision
wherein non-Indigenous and Indigenous people or ‘ethnic’ and
mainstream Anglo-Celtic communities work in partnerships and wherein
racism is the thing of the past. Still, such examples - relatively
newly formed cultural ‘sensitivities’ show that there are other ways
of doing things, there always are alternative ways of communicating
non-violently. So instead of being “long on general principles [such
as freedom of speech] and short on human sensitivity [not to insult
and offend]” (Galtung, 2006) you do your best to learn from the other:
Imagine you
question the norm against the visual depiction of the Prophet.
Something new stimulates curiosity, not animosity. So you ask a
Muslim, tell me more, I want to know why. You learn. And understand
that freedom of speech is not a license to insult. (ibid.)
9.
You manage to differentiate between different
humour styles, e.g. between a ‘Joy Master’, ‘Joke Maker’, ‘Fun
Meister’ and ‘Life Mocker’ (Loomans and Kolberg, 1993. p. 15). While
the Joy Master has mostly positive qualities, is inspiring, inclusive,
warm hearted, innocent, humanising and healing (ibid.) Life Mocker has
mostly negative qualities, and is cynical, sarcastic, exclusive, cold
hearted, worldly and dehumanising (ibid.). The positive sides of a
Joke Maker (e.g. wordplay, teaching stories, parody, instructive,
insightful) and Fun Meister (slapstick, clowning, naive, imitative,
entertaining) are to be balanced with their negative qualities (JM:
insulting, biting, satiric, stereotyping, destructive; FM: ridiculing,
dark humour, tragedy and suffering, hurtful, degrading) (ibid.).
10.
There is an awareness that ‘humour brings insight
and tolerance’ while irony (as well as sarcasm, stereotyping,
ridiculing, etc.) brings a ‘deep and less friendly understanding’
(Agnes Repplier, quoted in Loomans and Kolberg, p. 13).
11.
Principles of non-violent communication are
practiced in general, through the interrelation between empathic
listening and honest expression, both inclusive of observations,
awareness of feelings, and non-violent expression of needs and
requests (The Center for Nonviolent
Communication, 2006).
12.
There is an understanding of the fundamental
difference between multicultural humour (e.g. Goodness Gracious Me
series) and racist and orientalist bigotry and stereotyping that tries
to pass as funny.
13.
Most importantly, non-violent humour creators and
users consciously choose not to portray/see any form of violence as
funny nor to use violence as a form of public mass entertainment.
Whatever the societal principles, the main issue is what is the spirit
behind humour? As argued by Roy:
…for European Muslims,
the affair is not so much a matter of what is permissible in Islam as
it is about discrimination. Representing the prophet’s face, per se,
antagonized them far less than his portrayal as a terrorist. …If the
cartoons had portrayed the prophet doing good works, the proscription
against representation would have been muted – if noted at all. (ibid.
p.16-17)
So
the important question is whether humour is used to put down others
and get back at them, in one way or another, or to create new depths
of mutual understanding and compassion? We are all in this – life,
world – together and the emerging non-violent communication methods
need to reflect that. Saying that something is ‘just a joke’ if it
offends and hurts is no longer good enough, if it ever was.
Our
shared human condition, on the other hand, and the difficulties we all
face as we go about our daily lives, provides us with endless material
for laughing at all of us, at all of ours expense. Through humour
conceived in such a way we could use it to ‘Always Look on the Bright
Side of Life’, as Monty Python’s ironic take on British culture and
life in general reminds us.
Thus, creatively, compassionately and honestly dealing with the
current conflict over values, freedoms and humour at the global level
has become the necessity of our times. It is only by these means that
we could possibly hope to avoid a further escalation of violence and
also to protect all our freedoms. Unfortunately, in this global drama
of negotiating the funny and the permissible dozens of people have
already been killed. And that – by any indicators and within any
context - isn’t funny at all.
References:
Adams, Phillip and Newell, Patrice (1995) The Penguin Book of
Australian Jokes, Penguin (place missing).
Boulding,
Elise (1990)
Building a Global Civic Culture: Education for an interdependent
world, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY,
USA.
Eisler, Riane
(1996) Creating Partnership
Futures, Futures 28 (6-7) 563-566. Also Center
for Partnership Studies,
http://www.partnershipway.org/
Galtung,
Johan (2006) The Host Country/Immigrant Relation: A Proposal For a
Contract- With Some Implications for Denmark-Norway vs Islam, speech
given at the Aula de Cultura, CAM, Benidorm 30 de enero de 2006 (in
Spanish). English version received through email listserv of
www.transcend.org.
Loomans,
Diana and Kolberg, Karen (1993) The Laughing Classroom: Everyone’s
Guide to Teaching with Humor and Play, H J Kramer, Tiburon,
California, USA.
Roy, Olivier (2006) Holy War, Newsweek, 13th
February, 2006, pp. 16-17.
Said, Edward (1978) Orientalism, Routledge & Kegan Paul,
London,
UK
Sydney Morning Herald, 5th February, 2006,
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/schoolchildren-cast-judgements-on-muslims/2006/02/05/1139074109950.html.
The
Centre for Nonviolent Communication, http://www.cnvc.org/
Wikipedia,
online encyclopedia, 2006,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoons
Zakaria,
Fareed (2006) Islam and Power, Newsweek, 13th
February, 2006, pp. 13-15.
Ivana
Milojević
Adjunct Researcher
The
University of the Sunshine Coast
ivanam@uq.edu.au
www.metafuture.org