FUNNY AS HELL
The main functions of humor for victims of repression, mass violence and
genocide
Valerie Verkerke 5744938
Master thesis Holocaust and Genocide Studies Supervised by Ugur Ümit Üngör
University of Amsterdam Graduate School of Humanities 31-1-2014
Table of contents
Introduction 2
Chapter 1. Humor Theories 8
Chapter 2. The functions of humor in authoritarian regimes 21
2.1 Political jokes in authoritarian regimes 21
2.2 The topics of political jokes 29
2.3 Wit as a weapon? The functions of political jokes 36
Chapter 3. The functions of humor for victims of mass violence and genocide 44
3.1 Humor of victims during mass violence and genocide 45
3.2 Humor of victims after mass violence and genocide 59
3.3 Can genocide ever be funny? 66
Chapter 4. Revolutionary humor: Creative resistance in Syria 71
4.1 Humor before the uprising (1971-2011) 72
4.2 Humor at the start of the uprising (March 2011-beginning of 2012) 75
4.3 Radicalization of the conflict (February 2012-2013):
The more violence, the more humor? 82
Conclusion 94
Sources and Literature 98
Appendices 111 Appendix A 111 Appendix B 112 Appendix C 113 Appendix D 114 Appendix E 115 Appendix F 116
Introduction
Most people will agree that there is nothing funny about genocide and mass violence. Generally, when people think about the Holocaust or, for instance, the raging civil war in Syria, they will not immediately envisage jokes or satire. There is a taboo, a certain kind of awkwardness surrounding this topic. When people joke about something as serious as the Holocaust, they are quick to regard this as discrimination or simply as shocking and tasteless. This discomfort is exemplified by a recent debate in a Dutch newspaper, following an interview with a Dutch columnist, Sylvia Witteman. In this interview Witteman talks about her sense of humor in the presence of her friends, which she describes as being very different from what she would joke about in her columns in the paper. She says that she occasionally cracks inappropriate jokes about Anne Frank and the Nazi concentration camps.1 This
statement caused quite a stir, especially when Leon de Winter, a Dutch - and Jewish - author, personally attacked Witteman, calling her a hypocrite for joking about sorrows of the Holocaust, while never experiencing similar tragedy.2 His emotions prevent him from posing
valid arguments to why it is inappropriate, according to him, to joke about the Holocaust. This example demonstrates how sensitive the topic of genocide is when combining it with humor. De Winter’s emotional reaction fits the tradition which presumes that joking about the Holocaust is the same as trivializing the acts of Hitler. What both Witteman and especially De Winter lack is a thorough understanding of humor in situations of genocide and conflict. The debate needs much more depth and knowledge, by examining how humor was used by people who actually lived and still live in situations of mass violence. What are the main functions of humor for citizens in authoritarian regimes and for victims of mass violence and genocide?
The thesis will use a victim centered approach and examine several case studies. I selected these case studies based on the amount of sources and their diversity. First of all, this research will investigate the use of humor among citizens in a political or military dictatorship, in which political opposition and criticism are usually not tolerated. People living in an authoritarian regime can be seen as victims of repression and sometimes even mass violence. However, German citizens under Nazi rule were not as victimized as citizens
1 Haro Kraak, ‘De grap eraf’, De Volkskrant (8-1-2014), available at:
http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2844/Archief/archief/article/detail/3573538/2014/01/08/De-grap-eraf.dhtml, accessed on 22-1-2014.
2 Leon de Winter, ‘Leon de Winter halt uit naar Sylvia Witteman’, De Telegraaf (10-12-2013), available at: http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/22127078/__De_Winter_boos_op_Witteman__.html, accessed on 22-1-2014.
under Stalin’s brutal rule, or victims of mass violence. This thesis will also examine victims of genocide, especially the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and Bosnian victims of repression and mass violence during the Bosnian war. Lastly, it will focus on the humor among Syrians, who have to cope with an extremely violent repression by the regime, civil war and mass atrocities.
Definitions of humor
All studies that discuss humor should begin with some clear definitions. This is quite a challenge, considering humor comes in so many forms and is open to numerous interpretations, since everyone has their personal sense of humor. Moreover, laughter is not simply an expression of happiness, but should be considered in a wider context. Laughter can follow from humor, but humor is not necessarily a condition for laughter, and laughter does not necessarily indicate humor. Take for example, nervous laughter.3 Fascinating is that
crying can accompany laughter, but laughter can also occur when someone feels sad or angry. Some people laugh in order not to cry. In this research, I refer to laughter as a result from a joke or another type of humor, that was intended by the person telling the joke to be humorous for the public.
This research will investigate dark humor among victims of mass violence and repression. This is not a simple kind of humor and can cover both black humor and gallows humor. Some scholars claim that black humor originated in North America among slaves, who created this kind of humor as a passive-aggressive means of circumventing their oppressors.4 In this view, black humor can only exist when there is an oppressor. The term
was first introduced by André Breton in 1935, in Anthology of Black Humor, who defined black humor as laughter arising from cynicism and skepticism. Black humor is currently considered to tackle taboo subjects such as death, in an unusually humorous manner, while retaining seriousness. It can cause the audience to experience both laughter and discomfort. Some people view it as disturbing or think it intends to shock, but that is not necessarily true.5
3 Eric Olson, ‘The horror of humor: tension, dehumanization and related observations’, senior thesis, Gustavus Adolphus college (2007).
4 This is argued by Steve Lipman, Laughter in Hell: The use of humor during the Holocaust (Northvale, New Jersey, London 1993), and Jacqueline Garrick, ‘The humor of trauma survivors: it’s application in a therapeutic milieu’, Journal of aggression, maltreatment and trauma 12 (2008).
5 ‘Black Comedy’, available at: http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Black_comedy.html, accessed on 22-1-2014.
The fact that black humor tackles taboos and can be quite absurd, explains why some people refer to it as grotesque or sick.6
Gallows humor is mostly defined as a kind of humor that treats serious, life threatening or painful subjects in a light or satirical way.7 According to Antonin Obrdlik,
gallows humor ‘originates among people who constantly face death, providing them with a psychological escape or at least a means of psychological compensation (…)’8 According to
Hans Speier, in gallows humor, misfortune assumes a kind of inevitability, like the weather or death.9 Take for instance people whose jobs entail saving lives, such as firemen, doctors
and nurses who have to deal with death on a daily basis. Gallows humor is similar to dark humor, but some insist that in contrast to black humor, the victim is the source of the comedy and not the oppressor.10 Alan Dundes argues that gallows humor refers only to jokes made
about and by the victims of oppression.11
Some people interpret gallows humor as a form of fatalism and black humor as a form of protest. However, I do not want to make such a distinction and I believe black humor and gallows humor can often intertwine, for they can both target the oppressor but also the self. In this thesis, I mostly use the term dark humor to cover humor that is deeply connected to pain, death and oppression. It is a humor used by people who experience tragedy and joke about the absurdity of life. Dark humor is also the humor of people who experience pain second hand: for example genocide scholars. It is the kind of humor you do not necessarily laugh at and it can be highly ironic. Irony is a kind of humor that signals a difference between appearance and reality. There is a conflict of meanings which might create ambiguity between its explicit and implicit meaning.12
Dark humor can take different forms, but the subjects of my research are mostly (political) jokes and satire. One of the most common types of humor is the joke. Giselinde Kuipers defines a joke as ‘a short story, ending in a punch-line, usually featuring more or less standardized characters, settings and motifs, which is transmitted orally.’13 She continues to 6 Vassilis Saroglou, Lydwine Anciaux, ‘Liking sick humor: Coping styles and religion as predictors’, Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 3 (2004) 257-277.
7 Katie Watson, ‘Gallows humor in medicine’, Hastings Center report 5 (2011) 38.
8 James Thorson, ‘A funny thing happened on the way to the morgue: Some thoughts on humor and death’, Death Studies 9 (1985) 203.
9 Hans Speier, ‘Wit and politics: an essay on wit and power’, American journal of sociology 5 (1998) 1354. 10 Jacqueline Garrick, ‘The humor of trauma survivors: it’s application in a therapeutic milieu’, Journal of aggression, maltreatment and trauma 12 (2008) 175.
11 Alan Dundes, Thomas Hauschild, ‘Auschwitz Jokes’, Western Folklore 4 (1983) 249.
12 ‘The politics of Irony’, available at:http://www.ru.nl/politicsofirony/project-description/scholarly-background/, accessed on 29-1-2014.
13 Giselinde Kuipers, ‘Goede humor, slechte smaak: een sociologie van de mop’, dissertation University of Amsterdam (2001), 3.
argue that 'jokes (...) are social facts: they are not invented by professionals, but created by society as a whole. Jokes exist only because people feel they are worth passing on to others.’14 This is a very important characteristic of the joke and these two quotes summarize
perfectly how I define jokes in this thesis. In the second chapter, the focus will be on political jokes, told and spread among people who live in authoritarian regimes. I will refer to these jokes as ‘political jokes’, because the state’s monopoly on all elements of society means that jokes about economy or society are automatically jokes about the politics (and ideology) of this regime.
Finally, satire will be an important theme in this thesis. Satire can appear in all kinds of forms, but always exposes a subject to ridicule, often through exaggeration or irony, for the purposes of social, political and cultural critique. Satire can show how absurd reality is, but it is not necessarily designed to make people laugh, in contrast to parodies, which are usually comic and not always critical. They ridicule through mimicry, taking an existing form or genre and manipulating its conventions, style and techniques in order to mock.15
Previous studies and scientific contribution of my thesis
This thesis builds on a solid body of publications. Many scholars have attempted to describe humor in a single theory, which resulted in various theories on humor, mainly from philosophers, anthropologist, psychologist and sociologists. An overview of these theories will be given in the first chapter. There are several scholars who collected political jokes from authoritarian regimes, mainly from the Soviet-Union. David Brandenberger, Emil Draitser, Seth Graham and Ben Lewis are the most important here.16 Although these studies focus on
political jokes, they are not very analytical and usually do not compare their specific cases to others. With regard to humor and its potential danger, it is interesting to consider studies on ethnic humor. Christie Davies has written much on the cultural differences in humor and the meaning of ethnic jokes. Kuipers focuses on Dutch jokes and sense of humor and is chief editor of HUMOR: international Journal of Humor Research.17 The direct relationship
between humor and victims of genocide however has yet to be explored.
14 Ibidem.
15 Bronwen Low, David Smith, ‘Borat and the problem of parody’, Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education 11 (2007) 28.
16 David Brandenberger, Political humor under Stalin: An Anthology of Unofficial Jokes and Anecdotes (Slavica Publishers 2009); Emil Draitser, ‘Soviet underground jokes as a means of popular entertainment’, Journal of popular culture 1 (1989); Seth Graham, ‘A cultural analysis of the Russio-Soviet Anekdot’, dissertation University of Pittsburgh, Faculty of Arts and Sciences (2003), and: Ben Lewis, Hammer and Tickle: a history of Communism told through communist jokes (Londen 2008).
17 Giselinde Kuipers, ‘Goede humor, slechte smaak: een sociologie van de mop’, Dissertation University of Amsterdam (2001).
In genocide studies, especially within victim studies, humor is not thoroughly researched. Interviews with victims do not focus on humorous anecdotes and their meaning, because humor might still been seen as something bad or distorting. It is believed that victims use humor in order to hide horrible memories or pretend things were not so bad. However, humor is not always a way to trivialize what happened; it could have been an important part of their wartime lives. There is a current trend in victim studies that wants to modernize the classic interviews with victims. Noah Schenker argues that an interview should focus more on the interaction with the victim and more attention should be given to the moments off camera, which often can be the most interesting, for instance when the interviewee tells a joke.18 With this in mind, genocide studies can benefit from looking at the humorous
responses to genocide and the victims’ experiences. When examining two very human topics, humor and mass murder, one might get a better understanding of why and how these two opposites are actually intertwined. Furthermore, this thesis will contribute to social debate, by giving a historical context to the problematic relation between humor and genocide, in order to have a well-argued debate about this topic.
Method and sources
The aim of this thesis is to provide the reader with an analytical and comparative overview of the functions of humor for victims of repression and genocide. In order to achieve this, I divided this thesis into four parts. Before analyzing the jokes, one needs to have a background study on the existing theories on the functions of humor in general. Humor studies started out as a research field of mainly philosophers, but since the 1970s sociologists have a growing interest for humor as well, for it is a highly social phenomenon. The aim of this chapter is to collect the views of different scholars on why people make jokes. These theories can contribute to understanding why people laugh in the face of death and annihilation.
The second chapter will examine humor in authoritarian regimes in comparative perspective. The case studies I have chosen are on the Soviet Union during the reign of Stalin and the Third Reich under Hitler. In addition, two more modern case studies will be examined: China and North Korea. This chapter will thus examine political jokes and satire and the different functions humor could have for the citizens. The aim of this chapter is to
18 Noah Schenker, lecturer at the seminar ‘The past and future uses of Holocaust testimonies’, organized by the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (3-12-2013).
gain more knowledge as to why people joke in repressive regimes and what this means for their position and belief in the system.
The third chapter will investigate humor in relation to genocide, with case studies on the Bosnian and Jewish victimization. In contrast to the previous chapter, genocide is not just considered as an act of repression but it is the aim of a select group of powerful persons to eliminate a certain ethnic, religious or political group. The aim of this chapter is to understand how people can laugh in the most serious and horrible circumstances. The chapter mostly focuses on jokes, collected from testimonies and interviews. In the case of Bosnia, examples of art and satire are given as well. The second part of the chapter focuses on how humor functioned after the victimization. The chapter ends with a consideration on how people currently deal with humor and genocide and if there are certain ‘rules’ to jokes about genocide.
The final chapter covers creative protest in the uprising in Syria. This chapter does not just examines political jokes, but a broad spectrum of ‘revolutionary humor’, such as sarcastic and witty protest banners, satirical puppet shows, cartoons and songs, and even dark jokes of the people who suffer mass violence on a daily basis. This humor clearly distinguishes itself from previous chapters, because this particular use of humor is clearly bound to activism. The sources are gained from the internet, mostly blogs, articles and social media.
In the conclusion I will give an overview of the different functions of humor for victims in comparative perspective, based on the analyzed case studies, and I will return to the debate between Witteman and De Winter.
Different types of sources are used in his study. The basis will be the classic and modern humor theories. Jokes are received from collections by scholars, testimonies and interviews with victims. For the most recent case studies, North Korea, China and Syria, jokes were mostly collected from the internet. In the appendices some cartoons and pictures are showed that underpin and support the thesis.
Chapter 1. Humor theories
‘Dissecting humor is an interesting operation in which the patient usually dies.’ 19
Despite the danger described in the quote above, various scholars with different backgrounds have proposed different theories of humor in which they try to explain what humor is and why we laugh. The variety of attempts and theories shows that there can be no general, overarching theory of humor. Just as everyone has his own sense of humor, humor is too complex and too different for everyone to explain in one single theory. This chapter will give a short, but comprehensive overview of several classic and recent humor studies from a philosophical, psychological, anthropological and sociological point of view. I will cover the different functions of humor and the primary debate among scholars, which I use as a starting point for my research into humor in cases of conflict, oppression and genocide.
It is generally agreed that there are three major theories of humor (‘the classic theories’): the incongruity theory, the superiority theory and the relief theory. Today, no scholar still believes in just one of the above described theories. However, these theories are, if one combines them, still very useful for the field of humor studies. As Giselinde Kuipers summarized it: ‘The incongruity theory looks at the structure of humor, the relief theory at the effects of humor and the superiority theory at the feeling the joke appeals to.’20 To
complete the overview, this chapter will look at the cohesive function of humor and the debate whether humor is an expression of criticism, protest and conflict.
The Incongruity Theory
The incongruity theory is the theory that states all humor is based on the perception or recognition of incongruity.21 Humor is found primarily when there is an incongruity (a clash)
between expectation and reality. It is this element of surprise that makes a person laugh. For example, people laugh at a joke because most of the time the punch line turns out to be the opposite of what you expect is going to happen. The structure of a joke is often designed according to this approach. In addition, when someone on the street trips and falls, it clashes
19 Arthur Berger, ‘Anatomy of a joke’, Journal of Communication 3 (1976).
20 Giseline Kuipers, ‘Goede humor, slechte smaak: een sociologie van de mop’, Dissertation University of Amsterdam (2001), 23.
with the idea of what one expects to happen – someone who continues his walk. Furthermore, the person who fell lost his ‘dignity’ by falling, thereby breaking the pattern.22
The incongruity theory can be traced back to the eighteenth century. The idea of incongruity plays a central role in the German philosopher Immanuel Kant's account of laughter, which states that laughter arises from a sudden transformation of an expectation into nothing. In contrast, the Austrian philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer argues that there is more to the punch line of a joke than just ‘nothing’. Rather, people get something that they were not expecting. The punch line of a joke just does not fit in the expected pattern.23
The central weakness of the incongruity theory is that it is not comprehensive enough to explain all cases of laughter. It does not focus on the social character of humor, its context or its means of communication.24
What could this theory explain in situations of humor and laughter in cases of conflict? People in a situation of mass violence or genocide were not expecting this to happen to them. There is an incongruity between their perceptions of life and what is actually happening. This absurdity might be a topic of humor for victims of mass violence and genocide.
The Superiority Theory
The second and oldest theory is the theory of superiority. Just like the incongruity theory, the superiority theory is based on a certain contrast that triggers laughter. However, the superiority theory claims that this contrast must be between someone’s superiority and someone else’s inferiority. The incongruity does not exclude feelings of superiority, for laughing at someone who stumbles and falls on the street can create feelings of superiority, but it does not take this feeling as a necessity.
Supporters of the superiority theory believe that ‘the humor we find in comedy and in life is based on ridicule, wherein we regard the object of amusement as inferior and/or ourselves as superior.’25 Plato saw humor as something strictly negative and stated that
laughter always results from feelings of pleasure at seeing others suffer. In this case, humor is always laughing at someone; insulting, hurting and denigrating.26 Humor is thus connected
to feelings of aggression and superiority. A couple of years later, Thomas Hobbes continued
22 Kuipers, ‘Goede humor, slechte smaak’, 24.
23 John Morreal, Taking Laughter Seriously (New York 1983) 16-17. 24 Ibidem, 27.
25 Adrian Bardon, ‘The philosophy of humor’, in: Maurice Charney, Comedy: A Geographic and Historical Guide (Connecticut 2005) 2.
this line of reasoning, arguing laughter is ‘nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception or some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.’27 So according to the superiority theory humor creates a
feeling of triumph and self-glory, whereas the incongruity theory sees laughter as an intellectual reaction to something unexpected.28
The biggest objection against the superiority theory according to Kuipers is that it completely ignores the ambiguity of jokes. A joke about a person or a specific group could be meant as an insult, but it could also be to amuse, to tease, or to attack a taboo. Laughter can be more than just a form of aggression, it is also an ambiguous form of communication. There can never be one specific meaning to a joke and there are always different interpretations possible. Is not laughter usually a sign not to take something too seriously? For example, by telling a not too extreme joke about some political group, one can determine the group’s political climate. The reactions of the group will indicate on what political side they are on.29
Although superiority is not necessarily a part of humor, the jokes that make one feel superior are appreciated more than those that do not.30 For example, the jokes Dutch people
make at the expense of the ‘stupid Belgians’, can be seen a way to feel better about oneself. Is this considered aggressive? The ambiguity of (ethnic) jokes is still a heated subject, especially in determining when targeting persons or groups in humor is just a joke and when it has a serious meaning.31 The sociologist Christie Davies examined ethnic jokes and those
who are the butt of the joke, such as the stereotypical ‘dumb blonde’. According to Davies, ethnic jokes are a way of playing with the forbidden, of playing with ethnic verbal aggression just like other jokes play with taboo subjects such as sex.32 Humor is ‘merely playing with
aggression’; although he states that in some cases ethnic jokes overlap with actual ethnic hostility.33 Michael Cundall argues that racist and ethnic humor is not always directly
harmful. The outcome of the joke depends on the context of the joke; whether the joke is based on either preexisting oppression and racism or not.34
27 Kuipers, ‘Goede humor, slechte smaak’, 28.
28 John Morreal, Taking Laughter Seriously (New York 1983) 15. 29 Kuipers, ‘Goede humor, slechte smaak’, 21-22.
30 Ibidem, 31.
31 Kuipers, ‘The sociology of humor’, 388-389.
32 Review of Christie Davies, The Mith of Nations (New Brunswick, Londen 2002), in: Western Folklore 3 (2004) 257.
33 Ibidem.
34 Michael Cundall, ‘Towards a better understanding of racial and ethnic humor’, Humor: The International Journal of Humor Research 2 (2012) 156.
Alan Dundes argues that ‘jokes told about the members of one particular ethnic, national, or religious group may offer a socially sanctioned outlet for the expression of aggression towards that group’.35 To illustrate his point he gives examples of ‘Executioner’s’
jokes circulating in 1980s West Germany, that make fun of the fate of the Jews. He argues that jokes are always an important barometer of the attitudes of a group and these jokes demonstrate anti-Semitism. Ashes, burning and Auschwitz are popular themes in these jokes.36 They are aggressive towards Jews and reflect the same power balance that existed
during the war, that portrays the Germans as superior beings and the Jewish people as victims.
According to the superiority theory, humor always consists of feelings of superiority in relation to the inferiority of the butt of the joke. Humor can thus be seen as an expression of Schadenfreude; a feeling of pleasure experienced at another’s misfortune. Schadenfreude does not necessarily have to be experienced as harmful, as shown in the next example. When someone trips, you laugh in surprise but also at the misfortune of the person that fell. For a small moment one can feel triumph or superiority at someone else’s misfortune. At the same time, Schadenfreude can evolve into a feeling that a victim’s misfortune is deserved (‘Just World Hypothesis’).
At a higher level, people from one group can assign negative characteristics to an outsider (be it individual or a group), and the humorist arouses mocking laughter and a feeling of pleasure at other people’s inferiority.37 Schadenfreude can be harmful when it
evolves into indifference toward or even rationalization of harmful acts: ‘In order for atrocities and genocides to occur, dehumanization must take place. This desensitizes perpetrators by inducing pleasure when witnessing the harmful effects of violent acts. Intergroup conflict becomes easier when people replace guilt and empathy with pleasure.’38
Philosopher Ted Cohen states that the superiority theory also works the other way around: ‘It is a wonderful thing about humor that it is the province of the powerful and of the powerless, that it is a response to weakness and to strength.’39 He adds that ‘when a situation
is so extreme as to be incomprehensible, one can find (..) humor in the resulting sense of powerlessness.’ One can experience ‘a mood of acceptance, of willing acknowledgement of
35 Alan Dundes, Thomas Hauschild, ‘Auschwitz Jokes’, Western Folklore 4 (1983) 250. 36 Ibidem, 251-254.
37 Isabel Ermida,‘Together of apart: targeting, offence and group dynamics in humor’, JoLIE 2 (2009) 96. 38 Ida Tsutsumi Acuna, ‘Battling Schadenfreude’ (20-11-2013), available at:
http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2013/11/20/tsutsumi-acuna-battling-schadenfreude/, accessed on: 19-1-2014. 39 Ted Cohen, ‘Humor’, in: Berys Gaut, Dominic McIver Lopes, The routledge companion to aesthetics (Londen 2001) 380.
those aspects of life that can be neither subdued nor fully comprehended. This makes humor both the province of the powerful and of the powerless.’40
This theory could be very useful when looking at cases of victimization and oppression, for example the Jewish humor that could be found in concentration camps; where the Jewish people found themselves in an extremely powerless position, but laughed at the same time.
The Relief Theory
The relief theory is centered on the belief that humor functions mainly as the release of tension. In contrast to the two other theories, it focuses more on the physical role of laughter, less than the emotions or the objects of humor. First of all, laughter is a physical outburst that creates a relaxed and liberated feeling, because endorphins (natural painkillers) are released.41
In a 2001 study by Herbert Lefcourt42, it was concluded that individuals with a greater sense
of humor are thought to be more capable to cope with stress, to get along well with others, and to enjoy better mental and even physical health.43 Today, laughter is even considered to
be a powerful form of therapy and people can take courses in it.44
The relief theory has had a great influence on modern humor scholarship, mostly through the work of Sigmund Freud.45 In Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905),
Freud combined his psychoanalytic theory with the relief and incongruity theory.46 According
to Freud the incongruity in a joke leads to a discharge of mental energy in the form of laughter. The mental energy always consists of feelings of lust or aggression. He also distinguishes an absurd, slapstick kind of humor, which releases childish energy. Then, he discerns humor that requires emotional disengagement; with laughter, one could distance oneself with negative emotions such as fear and grief.47 So on the one hand, humor acts as an
escape mechanism, but forms a defense against negative emotions as well. In chapter 3 this will be tested for the Bosnian and Jewish victims of mass violence and genocide.
40 Adrian Bardon, ‘The philosophy of humor’, 18. 41 Kuipers, ‘Goede humor, slechte smaak’, 31.
42 Herbert Lefcourt, Humor: the psychology of living buoyantly (New York) 2001.
43 Rod Martin, ‘Sense of humor’, in: S.J. Lopez, C.R. Snyder, Handbook of positive psychological assessment (Oxford University Press 2001) 1.
44 ‘Laughter Therapy’, The Guardian (6-7-2008), available at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/jul/06/healthandwellbeing4, accessed on: 19-1-2014. 45 Kuipers, ‘Sociology of humor’, 366.
46 Ibidem, 367.
A 1940 study by Alfred Radcliffe-Brown also concludes that humor releases tension, but it focuses on social tension instead of Freud’s mental tension. The study introduces the term ‘joking relationship’: a relationship between two persons in which one is by custom permitted and in some instances required to tease or make fun of the other. These relationships manage the strain in specific relationships and humor can thus relieve tension and maintain the social order.48 This theory, that humor – and the release of tension by
laughter – can maintain and support the social order, is called the functionalist approach.49
Functionalists interpret humor in terms of the social functions it fulfills for a society or specific social group.50 Take for example carnival, an old ritual in which people, thanks to
a mask, could ‘change places’ with their rulers (a ritual of reversal). Carnival could thus function as a safety valve to blow off social tension. However, the overall function was to maintain and control social order. Rose Coser concludes in her study Some social functions
of laughter: A study of humor in a hospital setting (1960) that humor offers two social control
functions. First, joking reflects the social hierarchy that exists in the hospital (doctors joked more than residents or nurses and also joked at the expense of residents, residents in their turn ‘joked down’ on nurses). The making of jokes in this setting helped to maintain a hierarchical order.51 Second, joking also created solidarity among social groups. It is a sign of close
friendship, but also excludes people (for example gossiping or joking about superiors). The main criticism of this functionalist theory is its one-dimensional character. The belief that humor and the relief of tension, cohesion and hierarchy only lead to social control is outdated. However, the concept of maintaining order should be kept in mind when looking at joking in repressive regimes. For example, could it be possible that Stalin was aware that humor in Soviet society functioned as an escape mechanism for the people and thus helped to maintain his control over society? I will be looking at this discussion in more depth in the next chapter when looking at humor in repressive regimes.
The Conflict Theory
According to this theory, humor is an expression of conflict, struggle, or protest. Humor is not interpreted as a way of letting off steam, but is seen as an expression of social conflict. 52
Such as in the case of ethnic jokes, which not only target a specific group of people, but tend
48 Kuipers, ‘Sociology of humor’, 369. 49 Ibidem, 368.
50 Ibidem, 370. 51 Ibidem, 369. 52 Ibidem, 372.
to be hostile towards that ethnic group as well. Naturally, the ‘in-group’ making the joke would feel superior to the other group (‘the out-group’). This shows that the relation between humor and power, conflict and hierarchy is central to social scientific studies of humor.53 The
distinctions made in humor between the in-group and the out-group, is striking for a genocide scholar, since this distinction is also a necessary condition for genocide to occur. In extreme cases could ethnic jokes incite genocide? For example, In Rwanda the radio station RTML played a key role in the organizing of the genocidal process. Hate speech was concealed in songs and jokes, to get people riled up against their Tutsi enemies. Further research could focus on the role of humor in the organization of the genocidal process.
There has been a long tradition of discussion among scholars whether jokes in oppressive regimes account as a form of protest or not. One of the first methodical researches on the function of humor in oppressive societies was carried out by Antonin Obrdlik. He investigated the meaning of jokes in Czechoslovakia during the Second World War, when the country was occupied by Nazi Germany.54 According to Obrdlik, anti-Nazi joking was a form
of resistance and a morale booster for the Czech population. On the one side, joking was both a form of relief and a positive reinforcement for the in-group, on the other side, joking was used as a weapon – an expression of aggression and resistance - against the out-group.55 For
example, the Dutch Museum of Resistance (Verzetsmuseum) labels jokes as a form of ‘small resistance’. This means that people living under Nazi rule had found a relatively safe way to express their feelings and thoughts about the occupation.56 Can humor in oppressive regimes
be considered a weapon of the weak or just as a means to let off steam?
In open societies, the dynamics of humor, conflict and power are very different, since there are hardly any legal restrictions on humor. Power can be mocked and criticized out in the open, through various kinds of humor, such as satire. Humor can also have a more direct role in politics, for instance to ridicule political opponents. According to Avner Ziv, humor has a corrective function, when humorists for example try to deal with society as a whole. Especially with satire, ideologies and leaders can be laughed at. Laughter is thus a tool to correct and improve society.57
53 Ibidem, 367.
54 Avner ziv, ‘The social function of humor in interpersonal relationships’, Symposium: global laughter 1 (2010) 17.
55 Antonin Obrdlik, ‘Gallows humor: a sociological phenomenon’, American journal of sociology 5 (1942) 713.
56 ‘Klein Verzet’, available at: http://www.verzetsmuseum.org/museum/nl/kinderen/over-de-oorlog/voorkant/klein_verzet, accessed on 19-1-2014.
The French philosopher Henri Bergson introduced this theory of humor as a social corrective. In his essay Laughter: an essay on the meaning of the comic, first published in 1911, he focuses on the social function of laughter and comedy. According to Bergson, humor has an educational function: ‘Laughter is a social reaction which punishes and puts down deviant elements in man’s behavior and in various elements’.58 A person or institution
that was the butt of a joke will not repeat the behavior that evoked this punishment. Moreover, the fear of becoming a target of laughter will prevent a person from falling back to the behaviour that led to the mockery. Laughter thus has the power to change behaviour of individuals, but also the behaviour of institutions or societies.59 Of course this theory has a
truth to it, but it will never be applicable to humor in general. Does laughter really have the intention and power to change? This question will be discussed throughout the thesis.
The Cohesive Function of humor
Finally, it has been generally well known that humor and laughter can establish and strengthen social relationships. Humor can be used as a key for opening up interpersonal relationships, and when someone tries to strengthen a relationship with someone else, one of the key things to do is to make that someone smile or laugh. In the end, everyone in one way or another belongs or wants to belong to a certain group of people. According to Avner Ziv, humor always arises from interpersonal relationships.60
What people in one country will think is funny, will not be understood in a different country, because of the different language, cultural knowledge and different norms and values.61 In one country humor is very different than the other. For example Englishmen are
known for their excellent British humor, whereas Germans are generally known for their lousy sense of humor. Also, national jokes often need a scapegoat; groups of people who are different, such as ethnic, political, social or religious minorities. Christie Davies states that ‘one of the most outstanding features of the jokes told in industrial societies is the enormous and universal popularity of jokes told at the expense of allegedly stupid groups of people, usually an ethnic group or minority’.62 Ask, for example, any Dutch person for a joke and the
chances are big they tell a joke in which the Belgians are made fun of. Such as:
58 Ibidem. 59 Ibidem. 60 Ibidem, 12.
61 Kuipers, ‘Goede humor, slechte smaak’, 10.
62 Christie Davies, ‘Ethnic Jokes, Moral Values and Social Boundaries’, The British Journal of Sociology 3 (1982), 383.
A German, a Dutchman and a Belgian are suspected of robbing jewelry, and are held at the police station.
When the jeweler enters to identify the suspect,
The Belgian steps forward and says: “Yeah, that’s him”. 63
There are also differences in humor between groups within a culture or country. Whereas psychologists and philosophers commonly look at the functions and meaning of humor for the individual, social scholars specifically look at the humor of a culture or social group and the social functions humor has in specific situations and relationships.
Sociological case studies focus for example on humor in hospitals, psychiatrics and the workplace.64 Sharing humor and blowing off steam together, can build the morale and
team spirit. Claire Smith studied the humor of correctional officers in prison.65 She states that
humor is crucial for them to cope with their difficult job and maintain job satisfaction. In cracking jokes like: ‘How do you know when an inmate is lying? When you see him opening his mouth’, and laughing about them, correctional officers create a shared identity and shared (moral) responsibility.66 She states that this humor is often offensive to outsiders:
The register of their humor is so specialized and dependent on a shared identity and shared context that those who are not literate in that register are sometimes unable to receive the multiplicity of its encoded messages, and accordingly they tend to focus on the surface of a joke, and the often ethically ambiguous and ambivalent issues it raises.67
Several studies focus on the use of gallows humor among people who have to cope with death and disease on a daily basis. Take for example an undertaker’s blog, which was filled with humorous anecdotes about his job. For example, one time he had to bury a clown. His job was to dress the dead man in clown’s clothes and to put on clown make-up. Later, while welcoming the guests, a clown walked in and the undertaker described their meeting:
I am not sure why I was surprised, I was anticipating clowns. He was a white-faced clown wearing a bright-striped one-piece jumpsuit. I asked him, “Who
63 Kuipers, ‘Goede humor, slechte smaak’, 25.
64 Rose Coser, ‘Some social functions of laughter: a study of humor in a hospital setting, Human relations 2 (1959); Joan Sayre, ‘The use of aberrant medical humor by psychiatric unit staff, Issues in mental health nursing 7 (2001); Janet Holmes, Meredith Marra, ‘Over the edge? Subversive humor between colleagues and friends’, Humor: The International Journal of Humor Research 1 (2006).
65 Claire Smith, ‘Prisons, performance area and occupational humor’, Oral Tradition 2 (2011), no page numbers.
66 Ibidem. 67 Ibidem.
are you here to see?” The words escaped my mouth an instant too late and the clown roared with laughter.68
He uses humor in order to cope with his job involving death and loss, but he also shares these moments with the surviving relatives. The next example is a joke told by a resident who works long hours in a hospital:
It was 3:00 AM and three tired emergency room residents were wondering why the pizza they had ordered had not come yet. A nurse interrupted their pizza complaints with a shout: “GSW Trauma One – no pulse, no blood pressure.”
The residents rushed to meet the gunney and immediately recognized the unconscious shooting victim: he was the teenage delivery boy from their favorite all-night restaurant, and he had been mugged bringing their dinner. That made them work even harder. A surgeon cracked the kid’s rib cage and exposed his heart, but the bullet had torn it open and they could not even stabilize him for the OR. After forty minutes of resuscitation they called it: time of death, 4:00 AM.
The young doctors shuffled into the temporarily empty waiting area. They sat in silence. Then David said what all three were thinking.
“What happened to our pizza?”
Joe found their pizza box where the delivery boy had dropped it before he ran from his attackers. It was face up, a few steps away from the ER’s sliding doors. Joe set it on the table. They stared at it. Then one of the residents made a joke.
“How much do you think we ought to tip him?” The residents laughed. Then they ate the pizza.69
The person who told this joke asked a friend (not a doctor), whether it was unethical to tell this joke. So she (Katie Watson) wrote an article about it.70 Watson states that the ethical
question here might be: ‘When is joking a form of abuse? – Abuse of a patient, abuse of trust, or abuse of power?’ Whom did the joking harm? According to Watson, it was not the patient who was the butt of the joke, it was death. The residents did everything in their power to save their patient, but they lost the battle to death. The motivation of telling the joke was to ‘integrate this terrible event and get through the shift’; it was merely a ‘survival instinct’.71 It
was very important the joke was told with no family of the patient present who could be harmed by overhearing it. In this case, context is extremely important. A joke among residents in a hospital like the one in the example above, would be totally inappropriate in a
68 Anonymous blog, ‘Your daily dose of death: Anecdotes of an undertaker’, available at: http://yourdailydoseofdeath.com/, accessed on: 19-1-2014.
69 Katie Watson, ‘Gallows humor in medicine’, Hastings Center report 5 (2011) 37. 70 Ibidem, 38.
different social environment, for example if patients or relatives of the delivery boy would have been there. Whether a joke is considered funny or not, depends on the position of the joke tellers and the audience. In the rest of the thesis, this phenomenon will be referred to as the ‘positionality’ of the joke teller and the audience.
There are many interesting anthropological, folkloristic and sociological studies about the social function of dark humor in different groups. For example, Pamela Downe explores how female prostitutes in Costa Rica use humor as a way to cope with and resist the violence in their lives.72 Donna Goldstein tried to explain the functions of humor for women
in poor communities in Brazil. According to Goldstein, the difficulty of daily life expresses itself in the form of dark humor. Unable to revolt, women use their laughter to oppose Brazilian racial, class and gender ideology.73 Another interesting study is the work of
Tangherlini, who studied the tradition of storytelling and joking among American paramedics74. According to Tangherlini, the storytelling clearly influences how emergency
workers cope with the psychological trauma associated with their work; how they interact with the environment and the public; and how they interact with both each other and other closely related agencies, such as the police or the hospital personnel.75 He finds that the
stories paramedics tell each other are soaked with strong language, gruesome details and laughter, which outsiders would not get at all. According to Tangherlini, storytelling enables them to assert some kind of control over uncontrollable events. It is a mechanism to cope with the craziness of the job.
Thus, when humor is directed at the in-group it enhances bonds and is a great way to establish and maintain intimacy. Psychologist Avner Ziv argues that laughter creates a situation of security within a certain group. A cohesive group is one in which there is a strong attraction between members, which is expressed in a number of external manifestations. In such a group, a member thinks of himself primarily in terms of his membership and the expression ‘we’ is more usual than the expression ‘I’. In times of stress, this receives more importance.76 Humor raises the morale of group members and strengthens ties between them.
Humor creates a common language in a group. This creates uniqueness for the group, because
72 Pamela Downe, ‘Laughing when it hurts: humor and violence in the life of Costa Rican prostitutes’, Women’s studies international forum 1 (1999).
73 Donna Goldstein, Laughter out of place: race, class, violence and sexuality in a Rio shantytown (The University of California Press 2003) 35.
74 Timothy Tangherlini, ‘Heroes and lies: storytelling tactics among paramedics’, Folklore 1 (2000). 75 Ibidem, 46.
jokes do not mean anything to outsiders. Jokes could thus serve as a defence against strangers.77
Soldiers are a specific group, with their own social behaviour and rules, far away from society. It is easy to presume that humor has a very cohesive function in this case. Social identity is very important and sharing jokes is a way to enhance that. During the First World War, frontline soldiers that made fun of the war and their own experiences in the trenches wrote The Wipers Times, a satirical magazine. The Wipers Times was named after the army slang for Ypres, where it was first produced. Boredom at the front was a major problem. Even when soldiers were at the front line, they mostly watched and waited. This gave them not only plenty of opportunity to feel boredom, but also fear. Both could be relieved by very dark humor. The Wipers Times was partly a product of soldiers' needs to tackle both the boredom and the fear and was a way to maintain the morale.78 One example is a spoof
advertisement ‘Are You A Victim of Optimism?’, which is actually a parody on the fact that the opposite was the case. Many soldiers suffered from the negative effects of the war which seemed endless. It also mocked the English propaganda that turned a blind eye on the negative side of the war and the psychological effects it has on the soldiers.79
This dark humor helped soldiers maintain a positive self-image, by mocking their own situation. However, maintaining a positive self-image can also be achieved by comparing it to the image of out-group. According to Isabel Ermida, ‘those we laugh with and those we laugh at occupy opposite positions on the humorous situational scale’.80 Humor has both the power
to include and to exclude. The in-group must be seen as somehow distinctive, positively, from the out-group.81 Humor an focus on the stereotypes of the out-group. For example, video
clips of the American army in Iraq show how they use humor to express boredom, but this humor is clearly targeted at the ‘other’, in this case the people of Iraq. It strengthens their bonds, their self-image at the expense of the other. One clip for example shows American soldiers learning Iraqi kids to chant ‘Fuck Iraq’.82 The children obviously do not know the
meaning of these words and play along with the ‘game’. The soldiers laugh hysterically at the sight of these children singing these words. Another clip shows how an American soldier in
77 Ibidem.
78 Richard Grayson, ‘Gallows humor from the trenches of World War 1’ (6-9-2013), available at:
https://theconversation.com/gallows-humour-from-the-trenches-of-world-war-i-17900, accessed on: 19-1-2014. 79 See Appendix A.
80 Isabel Ermida, ‘Together of apart: targeting, offence and group dynamics in humor’, JoLIE 2 (2009) 93. 81 H. Tajfel, J.C. Turner, ‘The social identity theory of inter-group behavior’, in: S. Worchel, L. W. Austin, Psychology of Intergroup Relations (Chicago 1986).
82 ‘Soldiers learn Iraqi kids to speak English’ (15-7-2008), available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=AITtczJpMXY, accessed on: 19-1-2014.
a back of a truck, throwing a grenade in a herd of sheep that is passing by.83 After the
explosion you can hear them laughing. In both cases, the laughter of the soldiers is an extreme example of Schadenfreude; they do not see the Iraqi people as their equal and humor is a way to maintain their own superiority with regard to the Iraqi people.
Conclusion
There are many opinions and explanations concerning humor, jokes and laughter. This chapter has examined five humor theories: the incongruity theory, the superiority theory, the relief theory, the conflict theory, and the cohesive theory. Philosophers were the first scholars who created a theory about humor: the superiority theory. Psychologists then focused on the individual effect of humor on people. Only after the 1970s we can speak of a serious emergence of a sociological interest in humor.84 Most recent research by sociologists and
anthropologists focuses on the social relationships and social functions of humor. Today, it has been generally accepted that humor is an important means of communication and it should be kept in mind that functions of humor are not fixed at all, but are dependent on the type of relation, social context and content of the joke. The ambiguity of humor should be stressed, for it can have different meanings. It can be a combination of solidarity and hierarchy, inclusion and exclusion and aggression and friendliness. 85
Neither of the described theories can grasp humor completely, but used together they form a good overview of the many aspects of humor. The question is if the current humor studies explain all instances of humor, even when there is no reason to laugh? Although a few studies have touched upon humor in cases of repression and the relation of gallows humor to death, this thesis will look directly at the functions of humor of victims in cases of repression, mass violence and genocide.
83 ‘US Soldier Throws Flash-Bang Grenade at Farmer and his Sheep’ (21-8-2008), available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNCIovx0c0Q, accessed on: 19-1-2014.
84 Kuipers, ‘The sociology of humor’, 365. 85 Kuipers, ‘Goede humor, slechte smaak’, 22-23.
Chapter 2. The functions of humor in authoritarian regimes
‘In the world of Communism there was a joke for every aspect of the people’s lives and every event’.86
Daily life in a dictatorship seems to be the opposite of funny, yet humor in authoritarian regimes did exist. The quote above by Ben Lewis suggests that during the Soviet-Union, people joked about almost everything. This chapter analyzes the political jokes and satire in authoritarian regimes and its different functions for the citizens.
This chapter focuses on humor for citizens during the rule of Stalin in the Soviet Union (1922-1952), humor among non-Jewish citizens of the Third Reich Germany (1933-1945), and more recent, the humor in North Korea and China, where people still live under authoritarian rule. This chapter will focus on two kinds of humor: political jokes and satire. First some background information on the case studies will be given in contrast to the role of political jokes and satire in democratic regimes. Than follows a comparative study on the topics of mainly German and Russian political jokes. Finally, four possible functions of humor in authoritarian regimes will be given, based on the existing scholarly debate.
2.1 Political jokes in authoritarian regimes
In authoritarian regimes one party or one person gains control over every aspect of daily life, including the individual mind.Tools of control are a single party, informers, a secret police and propaganda, all programmed to build a cult of personality around the voice of the leader.
87 In the Soviet-Union, citizens were to be transformed into the ideal Soviet citizen, of whom
an active participation in society was expected. In 1961 the program of the Communist Party stated that ‘Communist ideas and Communist deeds should blend organically in the behavior of every person and in the activities of all collectives and organizations’.88 In Nazi Germany,
Hitler wanted to create the ideal, racially perfect citizen and through Nazification and
Gleichschaltung everyone was supposed to get in line with the Nazi ideology. There were
Nazi organizations for all layers of society, from the ‘Hitler Youth’ to the ‘National Socialist Corps of Auto mechanics’ and artists were forced to join the Reich Chamber of Culture.89 86 Ben Lewis, Hammer and Tickle: a history of Communism told through communist jokes (Londen 2008) 12. 87 Leonard Freedman, ‘Wit as a political weapon: satirists and censors’, Social research 1 (2012) 88.
88 Seth Graham, ‘A cultural analysis of the Russio-Soviet Anekdot’, dissertation University of Pittsburgh, Faculty of Arts and Sciences (2003) 157.
From the 1970s and 80s onwards, the attention from scholars turned from the ‘history from above’, studying ideology and leadership, to the authoritarian society, focusing on the people and their housing, food etc. This ‘revisionism’ was kick started by Sheila Fitzgerald and in Everyday Stalinism: ordinary life in extraordinary times, Fitzpatrick focuses on daily life, social mobility and social identity in the Stalin years.90 Sources like interviews and
diaries gained more attention and are nowadays considered crucial in understanding and gaining more insight in how people lived in authoritarian societies.
It is not surprising that in this recent trend scholars have looked at political jokes as well. Jokes are part of the folklore of a country. Jokes were genuinely people’s humor, an authentic folk humor, for they were totally excluded from the mass media; they were ‘whispered jokes’ that could not be published in the countries where they were told. According to Samer Shehata, ‘there are a number of reasons why the joke is particularly suited to environments of political repression. First, because political jokes are oral, censorship proves to be extremely difficult if not impossible. Second, by its very nature the joke is impersonal and the joke teller, in this way, is distanced from the content of the joke; the joke teller merely serves the purpose of transmission.’ Jokes are anonymous texts without a fixed content or an author with a potentially knowable motive or purpose.91
It is generally accepted that political jokes are a widespread phenomenon, but they do not speak for the whole society. Giselinde Kuipers argued that ‘Dutch jokes do not reflect the mentality of Dutch society as a whole; they mainly reflect the worldviews of those who like and tell jokes most.’92 Shehata agrees: ‘Political jokes (…) do not provide us with exact
measurements of beliefs and attitudes. We can never know exactly how popular the ideas or criticisms expressed in a particular joke are.93 But they can provide a great insight in the
authoritarian regime. Especially political jokes in the Soviet Union, Anekdoty, because there are just so many of them: ‘Every day there was a new joke. No one knew where they came from or who invented them, but everyone told them.’94 Several decades or repression equals a
lot of good jokes. It is even said that ‘you can tell the whole history of Communism in jokes’95.
90 Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: ordinary life in extraordinary times: Soviet Russia during the 1930s (New York 1999).
91 Christie Davies, ‘Humor is not a strategy in war’, Journal of European studies 31 (2001) 397.
92 Giselinde Kuipers, ‘The sociology of humor’, in: Victor Raskin, The primer of humor research (Mouton de Gruyter 2008) 317.
93 Samer Shehata, ‘The politics of laughter: Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak in Egyptian political jokes’, Folklore 1 (1992) 77.
94 Quote by Ernst Rohl, in: Ben Lewis, Hammer and tickle, 10.
95 Quote by Lazar Sherezevsky,in: Ben Lewis, ‘Comedy or Terror’, Financial Times (3-6-2008), available at: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/22055964-2de6-11dd-b92a-000077b07658.html#axzz2Sn888e82 accessed on
31-5-In the Soviet Union, telling political jokes was seen as an act of civil disobedience, or even as a counter-revolutionary action.96 The political police prosecuted joke-tellers under a
clause in the criminal code, article 58 paragraph 10, for ‘anti-Soviet propaganda.’ It was forbidden to tell jokes, listen to jokes or to write them down.97 A refugee in the United States
after World War II told of an acquaintance sentenced to three years for pushing a Party worker and saying: ‘I have no time because I have to fulfill the 5 year plan’.98
Jokes were generally told in the private sphere, among people one could trust. According to Ben Lewis ‘at night, after work, when they sat around the kitchen table with their friends, when they had parties, when they met in a bar, people whiled away the hours telling Communist jokes.’99 It was difficult whom to trust, as the following joke illustrates
perfectly:
Two Gulag inmates are talking about why they got put away. “I’m here for laziness”, says one.
“What do you mean? Did you fail to turn up for work?”, asks the other.
“No, I was sitting with a friend telling jokes all night, and I thought, at the end, I’ll go to bed, I can report him to the police in the morning.”
“And why was that so lazy?” “He did it the same evening.” 100
The following North Korean joke touches upon the same subject of the Gulag joke; it expresses the same insecurity and danger in society that anyone can report anyone to the secret police.
Two men are talking on a Pyongyang subway train: “How are you, comrade?”
“Fine, how are you doing?”
“Comrade, by any chance, do you work for the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Have you worked for the Central Committee before?” “No, I haven’t.”
“Then, are any of your family members working for the Central Committee?”
2013.
96 Emil Draitser, ‘Soviet underground jokes as a means of popular entertainment’, Journal of popular culture 1 (1989) 123.
97 Ben Lewis, Hammer and Tickle: a history of Communism told through communist jokes (London 2007) 70. 98 Elliott Oring, ‘Risky business: political jokes under repressive regimes’, Western Folklore 3 (2004) 212. 99 Ben Lewis, Hammer and Tickle, 12.
“Nope.”
“Then, get away from me! You’re standing on my foot!”101
This joke clearly illustrates how careful someone must be to joke around strangers, which in this case has been taken to the extreme; the subject in the joke is so afraid to be betrayed he does not even dare to ask someone to get of his foot.
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea or North Korea has been one of the world's most secretive and tight controlled societies and is one of the few countries still under nominally communist rule.102 Despite this brutal reign, North Korea and especially its leaders
are the butt of a lot of Western jokes, mostly because of the absurd rules and propaganda. There is a popular, satirical internet blog called ‘Kim Jong Il looking at things’, which is a collection of pictures of the North-Korean leader looking at things during his many state trips around the country, for example machines in factories, paintings, computers, statistics etc.103
It is easy for outsiders to joke about the absurdity of the very repressive society in North-Korea but what about North-North-Koreans themselves? Foreigners that went to North-North-Korea state how surprised they are when they noticed people laughing: ‘I witnessed vast amounts of human normalcy in the most abnormal society on earth. When I waved to teenage girls, they giggled.’104 According to another journalist, jokes make fun of the Japanese, love and
marriage, but never of Kim Jong Il, famine or death camps. People could still be sent to labor camps, even for telling a joke. Satellite photos showed that Kim Jong Un is actually expanding the biggest labor camp, camp Kwanliso 16. Amnesty International estimated that in 2011, 20.000 people were sentenced to forced labor in this camp.105 Censorship reaches far
and the internet is censored by ‘Red Star’ a state-run operating system that includes government-sanctioned websites and censors social networks such as Facebook and
101 Luisetta Mudie, Sarah Jackson-Han ‘Political humor from North Korea’, Radio Free Asia (10-9-2008), available at: http://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/koreanjokes-09102008183510.html, accessed on 31-5-2013.
102‘North Korea profile’, BBC news (21-5-2013), available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-15256929, accessed on 21-5-2013.
103 Anonymous blog, ‘Kim Jong Il looking at Things’, available at:
http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com/ and, ‘Kim Jong Un looking at Things’, available at: http://kimjongunlookingatthings.tumblr.com/, both last accessed at 31-5-2013.
104 Michael Malice, ’My week in North-Korea’ (23-7-2013), available at:
http://reason.com/archives/2013/07/23/my-week-in-north-korea/print accessed on: 19-1-2014. 105 ‘Noord-Korea breidt groot strafkamp verder uit’ (5-12-2013), available at:
http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/9024/Noord-Korea/article/detail/3556498/2013/12/05/Noord-Korea-breidt-groot-strafkamp-verder-uit.dhtml, accessed on 20-1-2014.
Twitter.106 According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, North-Korea is second on the
list of most censored countries.107
Although foreign journalists probably never heard political jokes in North-Korea, they did exist. They were collected from defectors and refugees in South-Korea and China, but originated in North Korea.108 Just like political jokes from the Soviet Union, these jokes
reveal an element of North Korean daily life hidden from the outside world.
Political jokes also existed in Germany during Hitler’s rule from 1933 – 1945 and several studies have collected these Flusterwitze right after the war. Rudolph Herzog argues that ‘jokes from the early years of the Third Reich amounted to little more than harmless teasing of the regime and could be told in public without fear of reprisals.’109 The noticeable
improvement of the economy and the youthful optimism the Nazis spread obscured the dark side of the regime.110 Generally, jokes reflected a skeptical mood, but were not very critical.
However, in the early Hitler era, there was some political criticism. Comedian Werner Finck was famous for his political jokes and for what he did not say. Finck knew that if his criticism of the regime became too explicit, Nazis would ban his act and sent him to a concentration camp. He adopted a number of tricks to conceal critical political messages in a harmless, humoristic package. But the audience always knew what he meant and laughed because they were able to read between the lines. In a way he practiced self-censorship in order to survive the regime.111 An example of a joke:
A guy goes to the dentist, who says, “Open your mouth, please”. The guy answers, “No way, I do not even know you.”112
The joke is a reference to the dangers of speaking one’s mind under a repressive regime with spies everywhere. Although he was arrested a couple of times, Finck survived the war.
106 Caitlin Dewey, ‘A rare glimpse of North Korea’s version of Facebook’, The Washington Post (13-3-2013), available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/03/13/a-rare-glimpse-of-north-koreas-version-of-facebook/, accessed on 31-5-2013.
107 ’10 Most censored countries’ (2-5-2012), available at: http://www.cpj.org/reports/2012/05/10-most-censored-countries.php, accessed on 31-5-2013.
108 Luisetta Mudie, Sarah Jackson-Han ‘Political humor from North Korea’, Radio Free Asia (10-9-2008), available at: http://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/koreanjokes-09102008183510.html, accessed on 31-5-2013.
109 Rudolph Herzog, Dead Funny: telling jokes in Hitler’s Germany, 38. 110 Ibidem, 37.
111 Ibidem, 60. 112 Ibidem, 61.
After the outbreak of the war, the general mood began to change, and with the start of the Allied bombing of German cities, humor became dark and sarcastic.113 Most arrests for
telling jokes occurred in the later times of the war, after the tide had turned and Germany was slowly losing the war. The best-known case is the arrest and death of a priest, allegedly for telling an anti-Nazi joke. In Nazi-Germany, telling a joke in the last years of the war would mean you were a traitor. You were set as an example for the rest of the population and execution followed. Still, these individual cases are in sharp contrast with the Soviet Union, where from the beginning of Stalin’s rule, thousands of people were sentenced to the Gulag for telling jokes. Communists believed in redemption and in the Gulag these people would learn to become the perfect, obedient Soviet citizen. The Nazis, on the other hand, considered most of mankind beyond repair.114 Position and attitude were everything, the average person
might get away with a slap on the wrist, but a professional comic could end up in a concentration camp. Only at the end of the war, the death toll sharply increased.
In Communist China, during Mao’s regime from 1945 until 1976, there was hardly any place for political jokes or satire. Before Mao’s rise to power, if Chinese people wanted to hear political jokes they would go to teahouses and watch Xiangsheng; a traditional Chinese performance in the form of a dialogue between two comedians. In the 1950’s comedians were forced to praise Chinese politics and provide harmless entertainment.115
Today, serious censorship still exists and according to a rapport of Freedom House, who ranked the Chinese press as not free, ‘state control over the news media in China is achieved through a complex combination of party monitoring of news content, legal restrictions on journalists, and financial incentives for self-censorship.’116 The internet is
highly censored as well. People are still sentenced to labor camps for telling political jokes that can be interpreted as an attack against the regime.117 The Chinese government is very
anxious to repress humor, and ironically, it failed to recognize a highly satirical article of The
Onion, in which North-Korean president Kim Jong Un was elected the sexiest man alive.118
Harmless entertainment is still encouraged and very striking is a popular Chinese play
113 Ibidem, 8.
114 Lewis, Hammer and Tickle, 103.
115 Ginger Huang, ‘Weibo’s Premier Sino-Satirists’ (19-3-2013), available at:
http://www.theworldofchinese.com/article/weibos-premier-sino-satirists/, accessed on 20-1-2014. 116 ‘Freedom House: new report details China censorship mechanisms’, available at:
http://www.freedomhouse.org/article/freedom-house-new-report-details-china-censorship-mechanisms? page=70&release=329, accessed on 31-5-2013.
117 Andrew Jacobs, ‘Chinese Woman Imprisoned for Twitter Message’, The New York Times (18-11-2010), available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/world/asia/19beijing.html, accessed on 20-1-2014. 118 Scott Simon, ‘Sexiest Man Alive Gets “The Onion” Taken Seriously’ (1-12-2012), available at: http://www.npr.org/2012/12/01/166293306/the-onion-so-funny-it-makes-us-cry, accessed on 20-1-2014.
