5.3: It’s Still Funny Though- A Defense of Moderate Comic Immoralism
“If you lose one sense, your other senses are enhanced. That’s why people with no sense of humor have a heightened sense of self-importance.” 47
A joke that is morally repugnant can still be funny. In fact, some jokes are funny precisely because they are morally repugnant. It doesn’t take being a philosopher to understand this. All it takes is a visit to the comedy club, or a night out with some jokesters. Still, philosophers have taken this belief that appears fairly obvious and argued that it is untrue because, well, that is precisely what philosophers do. In response to these challenges, I will do what any sensible person would and dedicate an entire textbook chapter to the vindication of a claim that is indisputable: Jokes can be funny because they are immoral.
Before I dive into my argument, allow me to make some distinctions as any good philosopher would. One could argue every joke that contains immoral content is made funnier in virtue of its immorality. This view is called strong comic immoralism. I do not defend this view, not least of all because it is indefensible. In the words of Noël Carroll, “no one on this side of Satan” endorses strong comic immoralism (Carroll, 48). 48 All it takes to show that strong comic immoralism is wrong is one immoral joke that is either made less amusing – or at least, is not made more amusing – because of its immorality. Clearly, there are some immoral jokes that are made less funny because of how distasteful they are. Perhaps you have been the butt of such a joke. (Lord knows I have been). The mean-spiritedness, lewdness, or insensitivity of these jokes at least sometimes make them less amusing.
In this chapter, I defend a version of moderate comic immoralism. According to this view, sometimes jokes are made funnier because they are immoral. Moderate comic immoralism, on its face, is much more plausible, intuitive, and defensible than strong comic immoralism. All that is required to show that moderate comic immoralism is true is a single instance in which a joke is made funnier because it is immoral. Since I am an overachiever, I will provide two examples in which jokes are made more amusing because they are immoral and explain why their amusement is enhanced specifically by their immorality. In due course, I anticipate some objections to moderate comic immoralism and put them to rest. By the end of this chapter, you will be able to justify your belief in what you already knew to be true about the relationship between immorality and funniness. You’re welcome.
Racism and Cannibalism and Pedophilia, Oh My!
When I refer to an “immoral joke,” I do not mean that the joke itself has done something blameworthy, like murder someone or make out with her best friend’s brother. All I mean, as most people do when they call a joke immoral, is that the joke contains immoral content. Another way of putting this is that immoral jokes are not themselves immoral, but are about immoral things which elicit visceral reactions from us much of the time. If an example of such a joke does not readily come to mind, you’re in luck. Feast your eyes on this:
Picky Eater
Q: What is a racist cannibal’s favorite food?
A: Crackers.
Hopefully, we all accept that racism – i.e. arbitrarily privileging members of one’s own race – is morally reprehensible. Likewise, I hope we all accept that cannibalism – i.e. eating members of one’s own species – is unacceptable, at least in those cases involving homo sapiens who have not consented to being eaten. (Yes, I had to make that clarification. Remember that this is a publication for those who are or aspire to be pedantic, philosophical types). Picky Eater is, therefore, immoral in the sense that it relies on racism and cannibalism – two immoral things – to make sense.
Is Picky Eater funny, though? And if it is, to what extent is it funny because it is immoral? In response to the first question, I am fairly confident that Picky Eater is funny. After all, I included it in this chapter. Allow me to now unfunnily explain why you find this joke funny. You might latch onto the incongruity of a racy pejorative being used in the punchline of the joke that doubles both as a word for a kind of food and a word for white people. Maybe you find it particularly amusing that a racist is so committed to prejudicially favoring white people over other races that he or she makes a fuss about killing and eating anyone who isn’t white. Or you might think highly of yourself for being neither a cannibal nor a racist, and delight in the fact that you are morally superior to the joke’s subject in this respect. Perhaps thinking of cannibalism or racism makes you uncomfortable, and you find amusement in the joke to help alleviate some of your discomfort. 49
In any case, you will find Picky Eater funny in large part because it is immoral. At the very least, you will find the joke funnier than it would be sans immorality. To really drive this point home, let’s rewrite the joke so it contains no immoral content and see what happens:
Salt Lover
Q: What is a salt lover’s favorite food?
A: Crackers.
Picky Eater has been purged of its immorality in Salt Lover, but so too has the joke been absolved of much of what makes it funny. If you did find this sad excuse for a joke somewhat amusing, it is likely because “it’s so bad that it’s funny.” Barring some sort of extraordinary delivery, Salt Lover does not have a strong punchline that subverts expectations and tickles the funny bone. And I suspect that the only way to revise the joke so that it is recognizable but funnier is by introducing immoral content. Though morally unproblematic, Salt Lover is not really that funny. When we revise it so that it produces notes of racism and cannibalism, though, it becomes funnier, as evidenced by Picky Eater. Thus, jokes can be made more amusing at least in part because they rely on moral transgressions.
At this point, someone might wonder whether it makes sense at all to think that people can truly find immorality amusing. After all, we lament and condemn immoral actions… So why would we find jokes that rely on immorality funny rather than disappointing? Well, it’s because forbidden fruit is sometimes the sweetest. Everyone knows this. Tell children that they are not allowed to press the big, red button, and their temptation to press it will skyrocket. Knowing that something is off-limits can sometimes make that very same thing more attractive to us. Surely, you have found yourself at a funeral or some comparably grave occasion where someone in attendance does something foolish and you find it difficult to restrain your laughter precisely because you know you shouldn’t laugh. This is why, I suspect, we find some immoral jokes so funny – they rely on taboos, which make them seductive and amusing. Consider the following joke:
The Nun
Q: How do you get a nun to lose her virginity?
A: Dress her up as an altar boy.
This joke is more, shall we say, provocative than Picky Eater. Among other problematic things, it relies on sexual violence and the insidious social contagion that has infamously plagued the Catholic Church – two indisputably egregious atrocities – to make sense. You might especially take issue with The Nun because it seems to make light of rape and pedophilia, and for this reason lacks taste. And it could be argued that jokes like The Nun, especially when delivered in a certain way, are particularly harmful to those who have survived sexual violence, molestation, and spiritual abuse. Provided that The Nun is the type of joke that wrongly harms others and is indicative of insensitivity toward vulnerable people, you might even believe that it is wrong to tell it or to laugh at it. But does this mean that the joke isn’t funny?
Two Things Can Be True at Once
For some reason, the era of YouTube and social media has welcomed the popularization of prank videos. In particular, people like making and watching videos where practical jokes are played on fast food employees. Take, for example, the coning phenomenon. Coning happens when someone orders an ice cream cone at a drive through restaurant and picks up the ice cream cone from its top rather than its base. 170 Workers at the drive-through window have, historically, reacted amusingly to “being coned.” Thousands of people have made videos documenting a variation on this prank to much positive reception on the internet. Others have made videos where they prank fast food workers by pretending to faint at the drive-through window, or by snatching food away from employees without paying them.
Some will leave comments on these prank videos saying something to the effect of, “This isn’t funny,” probably because fast food employees work very hard for little pay and regularly deal with difficult customers. Pranking them for clout on the internet seems to add insult to injury. Despite this, declaring that these videos aren’t funny seems dishonest at best and aesthetically authoritarian at worst. The fact of the matter is that these videos accrue tens of millions of views and hundreds of thousands of likes. People clearly find these types of pranks funny, and it at least seems conceivable that they’re not mistaken to believe that they actually are. Whether or not people should find amusement in a prank or joke is distinct from whether or not people actually do. It is entirely consistent to claim that people find prank videos of the kind mentioned above funny and that it is regrettable that they do.
All of this is to say that two things can be true at once. A joke like The Nun might be wildly inappropriate, crass, and harmful. We might have grounds to sanction someone who makes such a joke, and appropriately demand an apology from them for making it. We might even hold people accountable for laughing at such a joke. But people might still find the joke to be funny. Someone can rightfully acknowledge that Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita – a novel about a “love affair” between a thirty-somethingyear-old man and a child – is salacious, vile, and oftentimes downright obscene, but still a triumphant literary masterpiece.
Jokes that make light of serious issues like racism, sexism, or pedophilia are uncontroversially controversial. Antisemitic jokes are similarly contentious. Ted Cohen, a Jewish philosopher, once said that he has “come to realize that if there is a problem with such jokes, the problem is compounded exactly by the fact that they are funny. Face that fact. And then let us talk about it.” 50 To accept that a joke is funny is not to concede that it is without fault. According to Cohen, the opposite might be true. By having an honest discussion about what makes immoral jokes so funny, we might be able to move ourselves toward mitigating the regrettable harms engendered by them. Perhaps those who immoral jokes are about will toughen up, or those who think they are without fault for making them will thaw their icy hearts. Either way, productive conversations about the ethics of laughter and amusement rely on recognizing that some immoral jokes are just funny.
Jokes like The Nun, even if we have reasons against saying or enjoying them, can still be funny precisely because they are immoral. Rob the joke of its immoral features and you sap it of at least some of what makes it funny, much like what happened in the case of Picky Eater once it was rewritten to be Salt Lover. Moderate comic immoralism is, thus, as obvious as the fact that we cannot live without oxygen, or that I am writing what you are reading in a haze of procrastination. Even if moderate comic immoralism is true (which it is), there are separate questions to answer about the morality of telling jokes. For instance, whether or not depriving a joke of its amusement value in the interest of showing consideration for others is right or wrong, praiseworthy or blameworthy is a distinct, though perhaps related, issue.
Moderate Comic Immoralism is True (Reprise)
I have – to my mind, convincingly – argued that moderate comic immoralism is true. This position does not commit us to the view that immorality always makes jokes funnier, but more modestly claims that immorality can make jokes funnier. We see this not only in Picky Eater and The Nun, but in much of the world of humor. Racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ageist, ableist, classist, and xenophobic jokes are everywhere, whether we like it or not. And they can be funny specifically because they are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ageist, ableist, classist, or xenophobic, whether we like it or not. Granted, that a joke is, for instance, sexist is not alone what it takes to make it funny. Perhaps this is because such a joke does not appropriately subvert expectations, or it is delivered with malice that renders it sinister rather than jovial. But the sexism on which a misogynistic joke depends can, and often does, contribute to its funniness.
Moderate comic immoralism makes a lot of good sense. In addition to possessing much intuitive plausibility on its own, it has the benefit of being consistent with other 172 philosophical views in the study of humor. For example, moderate comic immoralism is consistent with moderate comic moralism, or the view that immoral content sometimes makes jokes less funny. Caustically directing racially charged epithets at specific people during a stand-up comedy set may, but does not always, represent such an instance. It is also consistent with moderate comic amoralism, or the view that immoral content sometimes has no bearing on whether a joke is amusing or not. You might hear a joke that is laced with foul language and realize that you can tell it, while preserving the amusement value of the joke, to your younger sibling once you omit the vulgarities. Moreover, a moderate comic immoralist can subscribe to any of the available theories of humor: Superiority theory, relief theory, incongruity theory, cleverness theory, or antitheory. It neither requires nor forbids adherence to any of these theories. All it requires is the possession of two senses: common sense, and a sense of humor. In conclusion, moderate comic immoralism is right and people who deny this are wrong. And they’re probably humorless jerks, too.
Footnotes
46 I would like to thank this textbook chapter’s most formidable and constructive hecklers: Andrew I. Cohen, Vanessa
47 Source unknown, but clearly said by a genius.
48
49 Consult the earlier chapters of this book to find sustained articulations and defenses of different theories of humor, such as incongruity theory, superiority theory, and relief theory.
50 Cohen, T. (1999). Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 84.
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