Use humour to undermine authority

Humour has been used throughout history to give hope to the subjugated, rile oppressors, and encourage resistance. It can be a powerful weapon, psychologically cutting an oppressor down to size and undermining their social legitimacy — no wonder anti-Nazi jokes were banned during the Third Reich. Humour can also nourish resistance, showing that despite bitter odds, the spirit is unbreakable — hence Antonin Obrdlik’s observation, “gallows humor is an index of strength . . . on the part of oppressed peoples.”

Sigmund Freud identified three kinds of humour: body humour, mind humour, and spirit humour. All three can be used to undermine power and buoy the spirits of the oppressed.

Bodies are funny because they are uncontrollable: Even the powerful fart, hiccup, and fall, and we can subvert their authority by pointing that out. Pictures of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe tripping went viral on the internet, and his futile efforts to control the situation by demanding photographers delete images that had already gone worldwide only fueled the hilarity. Seeing the powerful try and fail to wield absolute control makes us laugh.

Effective humour delivers an audience the justice they crave.

Mind humour is useful when freedom of speech is restricted, or direct confrontation with authority is made illegal. Satire, irony, wordplay, puns, and double entendre can communicate at multiple levels, subtly signalling an insult or joke to one audience but being difficult to pin down as offensive or illegal (and thus difficult to punish) by those in power. Plus, we laugh with pleasure at the sheer cleverness of a creative wordplay. The subversive power of such forms of humour was on full display in a recent decision by Chinese officials to ban puns and wordplay in news media.

Spirit humour, finally, refers to our joy in seeing an underdog triumph, particularly if they use the oppressor’s own weapon against them. A great example of this is Anna Gensler’s Instagram art project Instagranniepants. Tired of being the victim of online sexual harassment, Gensler started incorporating the harassing messages she received into funny naked caricatures she drew of the harassers, and posting the results online, where they quickly became a popular comic meme.

Troublemaking figures like the trickster, fool, and clown can also be used to unsettle authority figures and reclaim a sense of agency in the face of suffocating institutional strictures. Tricksters have a long tradition of ignoring social rules, mischievously deceiving authority figures, and turning serious activities into fun. Their position outside the expectations of “normal” society means they can flip oppression simply by playfully refusing its mechanisms of control, and often they can express ideas others are afraid to voice.

Effective humour delivers the audience the justice they crave, so setting up the premise of a superior or conceited character on a pedestal, who is then fodder for the “fool” to disrupt, is important. The pleasure that people experience witnessing a disruption of power they aren’t sure they can achieve themselves can either be a release valve, providing the only safe way to defy authority, or serve as a model, motivating the public to seek justice in the real world.

The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA) is a great contemporary example of trickster humour in action. CIRCA has shown up at protest marches throughout Europe to undermine the macho posturing of police (as well as some of the more aggro protesters) and generally add a carnivalesque, anti-authoritarian atmosphere. At an anti-war protest at a UK army recruitment office, for example, CIRCA members used feather dusters to “clean” soldiers and police cars, and clever mimicry to parrot officers’ walks and gestures, leaving even the officers struggling not to laugh. Once police had removed them from the building, the recruitment office closed early, so the clowns put a “sign up here” table outside the door and began signing people up to the clown army, instead of the regular army.

Finally, we’re more likely to remember something — and share it — if it makes us laugh. We are hardwired to be more likely to post something funny on social media than something newsy and informative. “Social Justice Comedian” Negin Farsad’s comic ads satirizing Muslim stereotypes went viral on the internet, garnering hundreds of thousands of views. (See the whole story of the campaign in the 2012 comedy documentary *The Muslims Are Coming!

Originally published in Beautiful Rising.