In the question doc
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
published: 04 October 2016
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01495
Edited by:
Vinai Norasakkunkit,
Gonzaga University, USA
Reviewed by:
Jenn-Yeu Chen,
National Taiwan Normal University,
Taiwan
Chris Sinha,
Hunan University, UK
*Correspondence:
Feng Jiang
fengjiang0205@gmail.com
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Cultural Psychology,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Psychology
Received: 04 May 2016
Accepted: 16 September 2016
Published: 04 October 2016
Citation:
Yue X, Jiang F, Lu S and
Hiranandani N (2016) To Be or Not To
Be Humorous? Cross Cultural
Perspectives on Humor.
Front. Psychol. 7:1495.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01495
To Be or Not To Be Humorous? Cross
Cultural Perspectives on Humor
Xiaodong Yue1, Feng Jiang2*, Su Lu3 and Neelam Hiranandani1
1 Department of Social Science, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2 Department of Organization and
Human Resources Management, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, China, 3 Department of Human
Resources Management, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China
Humor seems to manifest differently in Western and Eastern cultures, although little
is known about how culture shapes humor perceptions. The authors suggest that
Westerners regard humor as a common and positive disposition; the Chinese regard
humor as a special disposition particular to humorists, with controversial aspects. In
Study 1, Hong Kong participants primed with Western culture evaluate humor more
positively than they do when primed with Chinese culture. In Study 2a, Canadians
evaluate humor as being more important in comparison with Chinese participants. In
Study 2b, Canadians expect ordinary people to possess humor, while Chinese expect
specialized comedians to be humorous. The implications and limitations are discussed.
Keywords: Chinese, humor perception, humor evaluation, cultural priming, Western
INTRODUCTION
On December 14, 2008, an Iraqi journalist startled attendees at a press conference at the prime
minister’s palace in Baghdad, Iraq, by throwing a shoe at U.S. President George W. Bush. After
the incident, Bush joked: “If you want the facts, it’s a size 10” (BBC, 2008). A few weeks later, on
February 2, 2009, a student threw a shoe at Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao as he was giving a speech at
the University of Cambridge. The student was removed from the lecture hall, but Premier Wen was
not amused: “this despicable behavior will do nothing to hold back the friendship of the Chinese
and British people” (China View, 2009). Two leaders, Western and Chinese, and two vastly di�erent
reactions to an unexpected insult, one humorous and one serious: the incidents highlight culturally
di�erent attitudes toward humor, the subject of this article.
Humor is a broad and multifaceted concept. The Oxford English dictionary defines humor
as “the faculty of observing what is ludicrous or amusing or of expressing it; jocose imagination
or treatment of a subject” (SOED, third edition). Humor encompasses amusement and comic
reactions (Simpson and Weiner, 1989), psychological cognitive appraisals comprising perceptions
of playful incongruity, mirthful emotions, and vocal-behavioral expressions of laughter (Martin,
2007, p. 10). Although humor is a universal human experience, people of di�erent societies
perceive and use humor di�erently (Martin, 2007; Yue, 2010). In the context of cross-cultural
di�erences between Westerners and the Chinese, Judge Wu said: “Whereas Westerners are
seriously humorous, Chinese people are humorously serious” (quoted in Kao, 1974, p. xviii).
Styles of humor are categorized as self-enhancing, a�liative, self-defeating, and aggressive
(Kuiper et al., 2004; Martin, 2007). The four humor types have been investigated across cultures to
show that both Westerners and Easterners are saddened and repelled by aggressive humor (Kuiper
et al., 2010). North Americans react positively to self-enhancing humor, while Easterners do not
(Kuiper et al., 2004; Chen and Martin, 2005). The cultural di�erences are attributed to the Western
individualistic versus Eastern collectivistic cultural distinctions. In other words, Easterners have a
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Yue et al. Culture and Humor
collectivistic orientation that blurs the distinction between self
and others so that they have weaker perceptions regarding self-
oriented (self-enhancing) and other-oriented (a�liative) humor.
In general, Western individuals tolerate and use humor more
than Chinese individuals do (e.g., Liao, 1998; Chen and Martin,
2007; Davis, 2011; Yue, 2011). Research has focused on specific
humor styles but not on general perceptions of humor. The shoe-
throwing incidents that sparked such diverse reactions inspired
us to examine how people from di�erent cultural backgrounds
view humor in general, rather than focusing on the specific
styles. We propose that Westerners will see humor as a positive
disposition that enhances self-actualization and interpersonal
relationships, and that everyone possesses the popular trait (e.g.,
Maslow, 1968; Martin, 2007). In contrast, the Chinese will view
humor as a controversial disposition in social interactions and
a personality trait possessed largely by specialists in humor-
related fields (e.g., Lin, 1974; Yue, 2010, 2011; Davis, 2011; Xu,
2011). Next we present a detailed description of the two views on
humor.
The Western View on Humor
Westerners tend to take humor as a natural feature of life
and to use it wherever and whenever possible (Apte, 1985). In
fact, Westerners have valued humor since the era of Plato and
Aristotle as a natural expression of amusement, fun, and delight
in social interactions (Grant, 1924/1970). The 19th and early 20th
centuries are thought to be the beginning of a golden age of
humor, particularly for American society (Bier, 1968; Blair and
Hill, 1978):
Humor is ubiquitous in American society and nothing escapes
from becoming its target. Humor in its numerous techniques
and forms is directed at the population through all conceivable
channels – newsprint, magazines, books, visual and plastic
arts, comedy performances, and amateur joke-telling contests,
as well as many types of artifacts such as T-shirts, watches,
bumper stickers, greeting cards, sculptures, toys, and so forth
(Apte, 1985, p. 30).
Freud (1928) posited that humor is an e�ective defense
mechanism against negative emotions. On one hand, laughter
releases excess nervous energy; on the other hand, humor
provides alternative perspectives about fear, sadness, or anger in
the face of incongruous or amusing components (Martin, 2007).
Early 20th century Western psychologists argued that humor and
laughter enhance human health (e.g., Sully, 1902; McDougall,
1922), promote creativity (e.g., Guilford, 1950; Richards, 1990),
and strengthen coping and optimism (e.g., Walsh, 1928).
Western research shows that humor could be an indispensable
“panacea” in daily life to facilitate coping (e.g., Lefcourt et al.,
1995; Kuiper and Martin, 1998; Moran and Massam, 1999;
Lefcourt, 2001), promote impression management (e.g., Mettee
et al., 1971), and enhance interpersonal attraction (e.g., Fraley
and Aron, 2004). In addition, Westerners tend to regard humor
as a core trait of self-actualization (Maslow, 1968; Mintz, 1983;
Mindess et al., 1985) and an essential characteristic of creativity
(Guilford, 1950; Sternberg, 1985).
Moreover, in the West, individuals who engage in humorous
behavior are often perceived as positive and attractive (Bressler
et al., 2006). Westerners tend to rate humor as an ideal and
critical personal characteristic for dating or romantic partners
(Hansen and Hicks, 1980; Regan and Joshi, 2003). Beyond
romantic a�liations, Westerners have positive perceptions about
humorous individuals. For example, a study in organizational
contexts revealed that subordinates view humorous supervisors
as more motivating, confident, friendly, intelligent, and pleasant
leaders (Decker, 1987; Priest and Swain, 2002). Similarly, in
competitive sports contexts, players wanted to play for a
humorous coach and perceived the coach as competent (Grisa�e
et al., 2003). In short, in Western society, people who have a
sense of humor are positively perceived as more extroverted and
socially desirable; in contrast, those who lack a sense of humor
draw negative perceptions (Allport, 1961; Cann and Calhoun,
2001; Priest and Swain, 2002).
As such, it is no surprise that President Bush joked about
the size of the shoe that was thrown at him. True to Western
perceptions of humor, he demonstrated wit and charisma in the
face of an embarrassing situation.
The Chinese View on Humor
In China, humor was first documented about 2,000 years ago
(Yue, 2010; Chey, 2011; Davis, 2011). The Chinese term huaji is
regarded as an alternative word for humor meaning wit, irony,
and sarcasm (Chen, 1985; Liao, 2003). The earliest form of
Chinese humor could be pai shuo, which means small talk or
jokes (see Yue, 2010, for a review). In the 1920s, Lin Yu-tang
(1895–1976), a well-known writer and scholar, used the Chinese
character youmo as the Chinese version of humor. Since then,
youmo has widely represented wit, irony, and hilarity (Lin, 1974).
Although humor has a long past, for the past 2000 years it
has been devalued under Confucianism (Lin, 1974; Yue, 2010,
2011; Xu, 2011). Lin (1974) used the term Confucian Puritanism
to depict how humor was despised:
Confucian decorum put a damper on light, humorous
writing, as well as on all imaginative literature, except poetry.
Drama and the novel were despised as unworthy of a
respectable scholar’s occupation…… This puritanical, austere
public attitude has persisted to this day (Lin, 1974, p. xxxi).
As such, the Confucian way of a gentleman requires restraint
from laughter to demonstrate dignity and social formality
(Yue, 2010; Xu, 2011). The Confucian doctrine of moderation
advocates against hilarious laughter because it expresses extreme
emotion (Liao, 1998). The Confucian orthodox literary writings
forbade humorous expressions as being beneath proper literature
(Lin, 1974; Yue, 2010; Qian, 2011). Confucius even said “a man
has to be serious to be respected” (Liao, 2007). As a result, the
Chinese feel that they should laugh only at certain times, in
conjunction with certain subjects, and only with certain people
(Yue, 2011).
If they chose to laugh, Chinese people were advised to laugh
gently. Chinese women were advised to cover their mouths with
their hands (Lin, 1934). In short, owing to Confucian concerns
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Yue et al. Culture and Humor
for maintaining proper social order and hierarchy, proper
humor is “a form of private, moderate, good-natured, tasteful,
and didactically useful mirth” (Xu, 2011, p. 70). Consequently,
Chinese people have long scorned public humor. Confucian
moralists feared that once humorous writing styles spread,
life would lose its seriousness, and sophistry would overturn
orthodoxy (Yue, 2010, 2011; Sample, 2011).
Though humor has thrived in China since the downfall of
the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), Chinese people are still heavily
influenced by cultural biases against public humor that are
deeply rooted in Confucianism (Davis, 2011; Xu, 2011). For
example, humor has been consistently omitted from the list of
qualities required for being a typical and creative Chinese thinker
(Rudowicz and Yue, 2000, 2003; Rudowicz, 2003; Yue et al., 2006;
Yue, 2011). Loud laughter tends to make Chinese people feel
nervous and uncomfortable (Liao, 1998). In addition, Chinese
students tend to consider themselves as being less humorous than
Canadian students, and they tend to use less humor to cope with
stress (Chen and Martin, 2005). Similarly, American students
rated sexual and aggressive jokes as funnier than Singaporean
Chinese students who preferred harmless humor (Nevo et al.,
2001). Those findings support the claim that Chinese prefer a
“thoughtful smile” to “hilarious laughter” (Lin, 1974). Thus, it
is no surprise that Premier Wen would respond sternly to the
shoe-throwing incident to keep his dignity.
Consistent with those observations, Yue (2011) systematically
reviewed Chinese perceptions and identified three Chinese
ambivalences toward humor. First, the Chinese tend to value
humor but devalue humor as a trait of self. Chinese traditional
social norms value seriousness, so Chinese people tend to
fear that being humorous will jeopardize their social status.
For instance, although Chinese undergraduates self-reported
that humor is important in everyday life, they reported that
they were not humorous themselves (Yue et al., 2006; Yue,
2011). Second, as Yue (2011) explained, being humorous
is inappropriate for orthodox Chinese because Confucianism
has equated humor with intellectual shallowness and social
informality (Yue, 2010). For example, Chinese students do not
rank humor as characteristic of an ideal Chinese personality
(Rudowicz and Yue, 2003; Yue et al., 2006). Chen (1985) argued
that Chinese jokes have always focused on “denial humor” that
criticizes reality and “complimentary humor” that praises reality,
in contrast with the “pure humor” that makes people laugh in
Western jokes. Third, the Chinese tend to believe that humor is
important but only for professional entertainers with exclusive
expertise and special talent.
Although the four styles of humor have been examined cross-
culturally, few empirical studies have examined cross-cultural
di�erences on general humor perceptions (e.g., Nevo et al.,
2001; Jiang et al., 2011). Jiang et al. (2011) found that Chinese
undergraduates tended to associate humor with unpleasant
adjectives and seriousness with pleasant adjectives; the opposite
was true for American undergraduates. Such a finding indicates
that Westerners and Chinese may hold di�erent views toward
humor in general. In addition, little work has been done to
provide a comprehensive picture of the cultural di�erences
on humor perception. Therefore, we conducted two studies
to systematically verify the proposed dichotomy between the
Western and Chinese view on humor.
OVERVIEW OF THE RESEARCH
Two studies were conducted to examine Western versus Chinese
views on humor. In Study 1, Hong Kong Chinese participants
(bicultural samples) were first primed with either Western culture
icons or Chinese culture icons. Then they were asked to use
adjectives from a list to describe a humorous person. We expected
the priming with Western culture icons would cause Hong Kong
participants to assign significantly more positive adjectives, while
the priming with Chinese culture icons would have the opposite
e�ect. In Study 2a, participants from Canada and China were
asked to rate the importance of humor, self-humor, and sense
of humor. We expected that the Chinese would give significantly
lower ratings to all three. In Study 2b, participants from Canada
and China were asked to identify the names and occupations
of up to three humorous persons. We expected that Canadian
participants would nominate significantly more ordinary people
than Chinese participants, and Chinese participants would
nominate significantly more humor-relevant specialists such as
comedians and cartoonists. Taken together, we hoped to find
consistent findings for the proposed dichotomy between Western
and Chinese views on humor.
STUDY 1
We conducted Study 1 as a between subject design by priming
Chinese and Western cultural di�erences. Bicultural Hong Kong
people are considered appropriate for cultural priming studies.
(For details, see Hong et al., 2000). Our purpose was to determine
whether study participants exposed to pictures associated with
Chinese or Western culture would be induced to perceive
di�erent qualities in a humorous person.
Method
Participants and Design
Ninety-six Hong Kong college students (31 men, 65 women)
were recruited. They averaged 24.01 years old (SD = 3.78 years).
Participants were randomly assigned to two experimental
groups: the Chinese picture-priming condition or the Western
picture-priming condition. Following the priming (about 15 s),
participants were asked to judge a humorous person by choosing
from a list of 40 adjectives (Zhang et al., 1998). Oral instructions
were given in Chinese and English and were counterbalanced
across the priming condition to reduce potential language
biases (e.g., Meier and Cheng, 2004). After the experiment, all
participants were debriefed, thanked, and dismissed.
Materials and Procedures
Priming
We used 26 priming pictures, 13 for each culture (Figures 1
and 2), from priming materials developed by Ng and Lai (2009)
and based on the work of Hong et al. (2000). Moreover, the
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while Westerners value it (Kuiper et al., 2010). The di�erent
cultural views may lead to cultural biases. For instance, Chinese
children tend to see humor as aggressive and disruptive (Chen
et al., 1992). Consequently, Americans and Chinese who try to
communicate cross culturally many find that cultural variations
regarding humor may disrupt their communications.
Third, we are not saying that Chinese people lack humor.
On the contrary, abundant evidence shows that humor has been
common and popular throughout Chinese history (Xiao, 1996).
Instead, we argue that Confucian biases have caused public
humor to be more “in deeds than in words, more practiced than
preached” in China (Kao, 1974, p. xxii). Thus, before a Chinese
leader such as Wen Jiabao could joke about an embarrassing
situation, the general Chinese population must first see humor
as positive and desirable. They must go beyond Confucian
puritanism that frowns on humor and instead learn to value,
appreciate, and use humor whenever and wherever possible
(Chen and Martin, 2005; Yue, 2010, 2011).
As Lin Yutang said, “the secret of humor is to be natural and
to be oneself, to face oneself in the mirror and to tear down the
hypocritical disguise” (Qian, 2011, p. 211). After all, the ability
to laugh at ourselves comes from broad-minded detachment
regarding our own imperfections. And this remains to be further
examined in later studies.
Limitations and Future Directions
The current study has several inherent limitations that should
be noted. First, Hong Kong Chinese, not Mainland Chinese,
participated in Study 2. As Hong Kong is highly westernized,
the students may not perfectly represent Chinese society. The
findings may lend credence to the expectation that Mainland
Chinese will show even greater di�erences with Westerners.
Consequently, future investigations should replicate the current
findings with more Mainland Chinese samples. Second, although
the results of Study 2a are consistent with what we found in
Studies 1 and 2b, it still bears the contamination of culture-related
response biases (e.g., Chen et al., 1995; Heine et al., 2002). As
we know, people from di�erent cultures tend to use di�erent
referents in their self-reported values. Thus, Canadians in the
current research evaluated humor in comparison with other
Canadians, whereas Chinese evaluated humor in comparison
with other Chinese. In addition, Chinese are more likely than
Canadians to use the midpoint on self-reported scales (e.g.,
Markus and Kitayama, 1991; Chen et al., 1995). For future
investigations, it would be necessary to measure participants’
evaluation on both humor and seriousness. In doing so, we
can examine the di�erences of rating patterns instead of direct
rating scores between Chinese and Canadians. In other words,
it allows us to investigate whether Canadian participants would
rate humor as being more important to them than being
serious, while the opposite pattern would be true for Chinese
participants. Third, the nomination method (Study 2b) helped to
validate the two contrasting views of humor between the West
and the East, but social media influences and entertainment
development could be confounding factors (e.g., Buijzen and
Valkenburg, 2004). Therefore, future studies should control
for interfering factors. Fourth, all samples were confined to
university students. For broader generalization, future studies
should recruit participants of various ages and from various
backgrounds.
CONCLUSION
The current research provides new evidence and a broader
perspective for studying cultural di�erences regarding humor
perception. Westerners view humor as a commonly owned trait
and as a positive disposition for self-actualization. In contrast, the
Chinese consider humor to be restricted to humor professionals
and less desirable for social interactions. Two studies employing
priming paradigm, questionnaire measurement, and nomination
technique presented in this paper reveal the dichotomy. We hope
that these findings stimulate future studies that venture further
into the frontier area of humor.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
All authors conceptualized the manuscript, XY and FJ wrote the
first complete draft, XY and SL contributed additional writing, FJ,
SL, and NH contributed data collection and analysis, all authors
edited the manuscript and approved the final version.
FUNDING
The current work was supported by Research grant of City
University of Hong Kong (No. 7004315) awarded to XY, and
National Natural Science Foundation of China awarded to FJ
(No.71401190) and SL (No.71401036).
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We would like to thanks Mr. Chun Wing Lai for helping data
collection.
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Conflict of Interest Statement: The authors declare that the research was
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No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these
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Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 10 October 2016 | Volume 7 | Article 1495
https://nautil.us/issue/30/identity/identity-is-an-inside-joke
Identity Is an Inside Joke
Why you laugh with your friends.
By Zach St. George
Illustration by Robin Davey
November 26, 2015
I got one for you: It’s 1990, and there’s this group of 27 people who go to a six-week law
enforcement leadership course in Ottawa. The first day, the newly elected class president
announces that at the start of class each day, he wants someone to tell a joke. The president is
from Newfoundland, and so he leads by example—basically, a Newfoundlander finds a genie in
a bottle and is granted two wishes. His first wish is to be on a beach on Tahiti, which the genie
grants immediately. For his second wish, he says, “I don’t want to work no more.” Instantly, he
finds himself on the streets of Sydney, Nova Scotia, a town known among Canadians for its high
rate of unemployment. Everybody laughs. This is a pretty funny joke.
This is also a good move by the Newfie class president. These people come from different
cultures and different economic backgrounds. They have different religions, most but not all of
them are cops, most but not all of them are Canadian, and most but not all of them are male. The
Newfie joke does a couple things. First, it shows who he is. He’s a guy who can laugh at himself.
He’s not a prick. Second, it gives all these people from all these different backgrounds at least
one thing they can all laugh about. They’re all employed. The class starts to figure out who it is
one joke at a time.
“The judgment of whether something is funny or not is spontaneous, automatic, almost a
reflex,” writes Dutch sociologist Giselinde Kuipers. “Sense of humor thus lies very close to self-
image.” Humor also takes on the shape of the teller’s surroundings: age, gender, class, and clan.
Shared humor implies shared identity, shared ways of confronting reality. When we don’t get a
joke, we feel left out; when we get a joke, or better yet, tell the joke that everyone roars at, we
belong. “If you’re both laughing, it means you see the world in the same way,” says Peter
McGraw, psychologist and co-author of The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes
Things Funny.
In the gamut of humor, from the offensive to the simply dull, we find the boundaries of our own
group. We’re bounded by things we don’t find funny. McGraw calls the meat in this unfunny
sandwich “benign violation,” or “things that are wrong yet okay, things that make sense yet don’t
make sense.” On the one side is humor that doesn’t go far enough. Consider the purported
“world’s funniest joke”: Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He
doesn’t seem to be breathing and his eyes are rolled back into his head. The other guy whips out
his phone and calls 911. He gasps, “My friend is dead! What can I do?” The operator says “Calm
down. I can help. First, let’s make sure that he’s dead.” There is a silence, then a shot is heard.
Back on the phone, the guy says, “OK, now what?”
British scientist Richard Wiseman discovered this funniest joke by soliciting jokes online, and
then asking which ones were funniest. In one year, people gave almost 2 million reviews, and
submitted more than 40,000 jokes of their own. You’d think in a pool that big there would be
something funnier. But cognitive neuroscientist Scott Weems points out that Wiseman’s study
was pinched in a couple ways. The main problem was that Wiseman rejected a lot of jokes that
he deemed too dirty, sexist, or racist to distribute under his name. In the end, Weems writes in
his book Ha: The Science of When We Laugh and Why, the 911 joke got the most votes because
it was well shy of what he calls the “provocation threshold”—social and moral boundaries. It
offends nobody, but it also doesn’t particularly impress most people. It wouldn’t have done much
good in the law enforcement course.
On the other side of McGraw’s benign violation are the things that violate and fail at being
harmless. At the end of the second week of class, an instructor in the course gets up and tells this
joke: someone calls a lawyer’s office, and he gets the secretary. The secretary tells him that the
lawyer’s dead. They hang up. A second later, this person calls again, asking for the lawyer.
Again, the secretary tells him that the lawyer is dead. Then he calls again. Finally, the secretary
asks the caller why he keeps calling when he already knows the lawyer’s dead. The caller says,
“I just like to hear you say it!” Only two people laugh, and then there is a silent moment.
The guy’s delivery isn’t good, notes Jenepher Lennox-Terrion, a doctoral candidate in
communications sitting at the back of the class. That’s the first problem. Second, the joke relies
on an assumed common hatred of lawyers that may or may not exist. Third, one of the members
of class, along with being a cop, is a lawyer. The real problem here is the relative standing of the
http://nautil.us/issue/30/identity/drums-lies-and-audiotape
lawyer-cop and the joke-teller: The lawyer-cop is well known in class, and is well liked, while
the instructor is new, and is not. “Insiders, who share a common social identity, can often take
liberties that others cannot,” Lennox Terrion explains. “When someone from outside puts down a
high status, well-liked member, that won’t be well-received.” You have to know your audience.
The instructor, in thinking himself part of the group, has misjudged his own identity.
In her book Good Humor, Bad Taste: Sociology of a Joke, Kuipers investigates a specific kind of
humor, of the type also favored by the Canadian cops: the short humorous anecdote leading to a
punchline. This type of joke is popular in the Netherlands. There’s even a special word in Dutch
for the genre—mop—and there was a popular TV show, Moppentoppers, where contestants
competed to tell the best joke. It’s also a type of humor specific to a certain type of person; if you
know somebody likes moppen, you could make some specific inferences about them (and their
friends). Kuipers’ research supported the anecdotal evidence, which was that men like the
moppen more than women, and that among these men, the less educated they were, the more
they liked them. Although the Dutch tend to believe they live in a classless society, Kuipers
writes that her interviews with dozens of self-identified moppentoppers made clear to her the
depth of the cultural divide, as well as her place on one side of it.
“If I told the interviewees that the educated, like my university colleagues, didn’t tell many
[moppen], they were quite surprised,” Kuipers writes. “They derived from this that university
employees didn’t like humor or that they were boring and serious.” As one 49-year-old janitor
told her, “Maybe laughing a bit more would do them good.” Her highly educated colleagues
were equally bewildered by the moppentoppers. “If I run into someone at a party who’s really
into jokes, then I try to escape,” a 40-year-old marketing researcher told her. “There’s no way
you can have a conversation with somebody like that.”
Kuipers isn’t exempt from these boundaries. She struggles to talk to the moppentoppers; they, in
turn, don’t want to share their jokes with her. “I had to go to great lengths to convince people
that I was hard enough to hear certain jokes,” she writes. The jokes reflect an identity that
Kuipers doesn’t share, both as an academic and as a woman. The moppen are usually told in a
like-minded group. Recited to a solitary outsider, they lose context, even becoming embarrassing
to the moppentoppers; it is painful to tell a joke knowing that it won’t be funny. “The interviews
had a very specific tinge: older men telling dirty jokes to a much younger woman,” she says.
“Sometimes that was awkward for both parties.”
Jokes throw the boundaries of perceived gender identities, in particular, into sharp relief. In his
well-known 2007 column, “Why Women Aren’t Funny,” late Vanity Fair columnist and
provocateur Christopher Hitchens asks, “Why are men, taken on average and as a whole, funnier
than women?” The explanation, he posits, is basically that men are attracted to women’s bodies,
and therefore, evolutionarily, women didn’t need to develop as good a sense of humor as men,
who have to rely on their wit alone to get laid. In the following months, many women wrote in to
point out the false assumption behind Hitchens’ argument—that his sense of humor was
somehow broadly representative of both men and women in general. As Robin Schiff of Los
Angeles explained in a letter to the editor, “We are funny—but only behind your backs! […]”
Hitchens, she’s saying, isn’t in the club.
In other words, humor isn’t just about the joke. There’s an audience, too. The supposed un-
funniness of women should be seen as a symptom of a male-centric society, writes Rebecca
Krefting, which is why many publicly funny women employ what she calls “charged humor.”
This humor carries a message, meant to change perceptions by knowingly pushing the
boundaries of one or more dominant groups. “Despite collective desire to imagine we have
achieved gender parity, charged humor and our consumption of it (or not) give us away,”
Krefting writes in her book All Joking Aside: American Humor and Its Discontents. But you
have to make it with the audience before you tell them off. Amy Schumer, Sarah Silverman, and
Aziz Ansari all use charged humor, but also hit themes that are broad enough to catch many
people in the benign-violation sweet spot. “It’s a careful dance that comics have to do,” Krefting
says, “where they’ve already earned the respect of their audience, that they’re not going to lose
them along the way.”
The gender role narrative as told by jokes is eminently adaptable to specific audiences. In one
study, Limor Shifman, an Israeli professor of communication, followed a certain type of English-
language joke in which men and women are like computers. They have names like “girlfriend
3.4” and “boyfriend 5.0,” and then they get upgraded to “husband 1.0” and “wife 1.0.” The set-
up is that someone is trying to troubleshoot all the bad stuff that came with the upgrade—“the
new program began unexpected child processing,” “wife 1.0 installed itself onto all other
programs and now monitors all other system activity,” and “husband 1.0 uninstalled romance
9.5.” Sometimes the jokes are from the man’s point of view, sometimes from the woman’s but
they basically riff on the simplest stereotypes—men like sports and don’t like feelings and
women like shopping and do like feelings.
Shifman gathered as many instances of these types of jokes as she could find on the Internet. She
then picked several hundred of these at random and sorted them into a list of the basic variations
on the form. She translated the key bits of these jokes into the nine most popular languages on
the Internet, after English: Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, French, German, Portuguese, Arabic,
Korean, and Italian. Using these translations, she searched again, and came up with hundreds or
thousands of URLs containing jokes of this type. As these jokes spread across the Internet and
are translated, she found, they are transformed. In Japan, the jokes are overwhelmingly on the
wives, while in Korea they’re largely on the husbands. In Portuguese, the jokes become more
sexually explicit. In Chinese, a mother-in-law is often thrown into the mix. “People need to
localize the joke,” Shifman says. “They don’t only translate it, they add those local spices to
make it their own.”
When jokes can’t be un-localized, they fail. In a second study, when Shifman started with 100
popular English-language (mostly American) jokes, she found far more of them on websites with
languages spoken in Europe or the Americas. She found few of them on Chinese and Arabic
websites, and even fewer on Japanese and Korean websites—the greater the geographical,
cultural, and linguistic distance from the United States, the more the jokes seem to defy
translation. Jokes about American politics and American regional differences—jokes about a
specific identity—don’t do well abroad.
Jokes that are popular globally, by contrast, hewed to broad themes, namely money and gender
stereotypes; wife 1.0 goes shopping, it seems, is something everyone can laugh at. But there’s
also something stale about that kind of joke. To reach the lowest common denominator, it needs
to distance itself from specific identities, and loses much of its humor. Like Wisemans’ “world’s
funniest,” or the kind of gag you often find in Garfield, Guinness World Record holder for the
world’s most widely syndicated comic strip. There was a classic Garfield in the newspaper this
weekend: Jon and Garfield are at the counter, and there’s a buzzing noise coming from Jon’s
pocket. “That’s just my phone,” he says. “I have it set on ‘vibrate.’ ” But wait! “Isn’t that your
phone?” says Garfield. The angle widens, and indeed, there is Jon’s phone on the counter beside
Garfield. Jon’s eyes get big, and he runs screaming off-panel. “Aren’t you going to answer your
bee?” Garfield says.
Ha.
It’s the beginning of the third week at officer training class and everyone’s really good buddies
by now. They’re taking courses on how to talk to the media, on project management, on
presentation skills and leadership techniques, as well as things like social etiquette and table
manners. It’s the start of class, and a member of class gets up, and he tells a joke about a dream
he had—“I was speaking to St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, and he told me that if I wanted to come
in there’s some things I’d have to do. He said, ‘To pay your penance, you’re going to have to
spend your life in heaven with this woman,’ and out of this cave came the worst looking hag
you’ve ever seen. St. Peter pointed to her and said, ‘Latch onto her son, she’s yours.’ Then I saw
[another member of the class] walking along with the most beautiful woman on his arm, so I
went over to St. Peter and said, ‘Hey, what’s the score? I know [said member of class] is a lady’s
man [aside to the class: ‘He is you know’], but how come he got her and I got this hag?’ And St.
Peter responded, ‘Hey, she’s got to pay her penance too, you know.” The class starts laughing,
really laughing, and then it breaks into applause.
This is the best reception any joke has gotten so far. It’s also the first time the person telling the
pre-class joke has actually named another member of the class and made them the butt of the
joke. As Kuipers writes in a collection of essays about the 2006 riots over Dutch cartoons
depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad, “Humor and laughter are directly connected with the
drawing of social boundaries: laughing at someone is among the strongest markers of social
exclusion in human connection.” But ridicule can actually reinforce a group when the target is
confident in their in-group status. In laughing along, the target of the joke shows that he’s a good
sport, thereby completing the ritual. By laughing together at each other and at themselves, the
students show their membership. “Well-liked leaders tend to be most picked on,” Lennox
Terrion says. “If someone considered weaker status was picked on, that wouldn’t have been
funny. It didn’t really happen.”
The buddy-buddy put-downs started in the first minutes of class, even before the class
president’s Newfie joke, when the course director, by way of welcoming the female officer,
called the two male officers she was sitting next to ugly. All of them laughed. On the third day,
someone not from Newfoundland made a Newfie joke, both reaffirming the class president’s
ability to laugh at himself and legitimizing Newfoundland jokes as a consistent hit. Things
developed from there. “The second week appeared to mark the beginning of more ‘uninvited’
direct putdowns,” notes Lennox-Terrion. These putdowns focus “on the backgrounds and
imputed traits and motives of individuals.” The cops begin to banter, and from banter grows
friendship. Bit by bit, the boundaries are pushed farther out, and as they do, a common identity
forms.
In the fourth week, one of the pre-class jokes, about a blind lumberyard assistant, is dirty and
seems to violate the group norm of not making fun of potentially stigmatizing attributes (which,
in the context of the male-dominated class, included being female). The joke is sexist and
inappropriate for the classroom, as several of the class members later tell Terrion in private
interviews. But the class bursts out laughing, shouting, howling, slapping the table. The guy who
told the joke knows he doesn’t have to worry. It’s four weeks in and the class members know
each other well by now. The joke is a small violation, deeper into offensive territory than
previous jokes, but is treated as harmless. Students request it be retold twice more over the
course of the class.
The group’s sense of humor became its defining feature, says Lennox Terrion, a feature
cultivated right to the end. A few days before the class members graduated, they had a fancy
dinner together. They showed up looking nice, ready to put their new skills at the dining room to
the test. Later that night, she says, many of them would get screaming drunk. The next morning
they’d each give presentations on one aspect of what they’d learned. Soon after that, they’d all
go their separate ways. There was a lot of hugging, Lennox Terrion says, a feeling of euphoria
that reminds her of picking her kids from summer camp—“ ‘You’re my best friend forever!’
Even though you don’t necessarily follow up after that.” At their request, she gave a speech
during the dinner, although she says she can’t remember what it was about. It was well received,
but was overshadowed when, right after, somebody stood up to tell a joke.
Zach St. George is a freelance reporter based in California, writing about science and the
environment. Follow him on Twitter @ZachStGeorge.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-10-15/cancel-culture-comedy-history-chappelle
Op-Ed: ‘Cancel culture’ has always been a
problem for comedy
Dave Chappelle’s Netflix special “The Closer” adds to a long history of controversial comedy.
(Mathieu Bitton / Netflix)
BY KLIPH NESTEROFF
Los Angeles Times- OCT. 15, 2021 3:03 AM PT
Is freedom of speech evaporating from the world of comedy? We hear a familiar mantra
whenever someone like Dave Chappelle comes under fire: You can’t joke about anything
anymore. PC police. Cancel culture. People are too sensitive. But does this premise hold up to
scrutiny? Studying history, it seems clear comedians have more freedom of speech today, not
less.
At the start of the 20th century, ethnic minorities objected to the way they were portrayed
onstage. Instead of airing grievances on the yet-to-be-invented internet, many delivered their
objections in person.
Irish and Italian immigrants were vocal at the turn of the century. Vaudeville comic Walter Kelly
received “a letter threatening his life if he did not immediately cut out several Italian stories in
his act,” and an Irish betterment organization called the Clan na Gael pelted comedians with eggs
for perceived slights against the Irish.
A newspaper editorial in Kansas feared this would inspire other groups to do the same: “If the
well-known and almost indispensable Irish policeman is to be abolished from the stage by decree
of the Clan-na-gael, what is to hinder the ‘Afro-American’ societies from following suit and
threatening dire consequences on the heads of players who represent the stage type of negro?”
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-10-07/dave-chappelle-special-transphobic-comments-netflix-backlash
That’s precisely what happened. African Americans, Native Americans and American Jews all
staged protests in the early 20th century. In 1903, the Topeka Capital predicted the death of
comedy: “The final upshot [of protest is] to strip comedy of its most engaging and popular
features. If the raid should extend to all sorts of people caricatured in the theater and in print,
then good-bye to comedy.”
Indeed, jokes concerning politics, religion and sex were taboo for most of the century. Even the
most casual carnal reference could result in arrest. The legendary Mae West wrote a number of
popular stage comedies, and for her efforts she was convicted of obscenity in 1927 — and
sentenced to 10 days in a prison workhouse.
The debate concerning stereotypes was especially fierce when the television became a household
appliance in the 1950s. TV executive Bob Wood explained why CBS and NBC were purging
stereotypes from programming in 1956: “We deleted any material which we consider derogatory
to any minority group — that’s on a common sense and public relations basis.”
The Wilmington Morning News sounded the death knell: “There isn’t much laughter any more
— because there’s no way to speak in any light fashion about any group of people anywhere.”
Some comedians intentionally provoked their detractors out of spite. “From now on I’m going to
use as much dialect material as possible in my guest appearances,” said comedian Danny
Thomas, claiming he was sick of “over-sensitive groups” that were “too thin-skinned.”
Comedians resented interference — yet if it meant advancing their career, they went along with
it. “The Tonight Show” was created in 1954 and became an important stand-up showcase. For
seven decades, comedians have willingly eliminated the F-word without screaming about
censorship or accusing hosts such as Johnny Carson of tyranny.
The obscenity laws used to prosecute Mae West and Lenny Bruce were deemed unconstitutional
in the late 1960s, chipped away by the courts. Freedom of expression flourished as obscenity
laws were overturned at the start of the ’70s.
But police didn’t always abide by the new standard. “Blazing Saddles,” a Mel Brooks
film released in 1974, was co-written by Richard Pryor. While it was playing in theaters, Pryor
was arrested in Richmond, Va., for using the same language onstage one could hear in the film.
His manager was told a warrant had been issued for “disorderly conduct.” Pryor turned himself
in and was released after posting a $500 bond.
In the same decade, Sears pulled its sponsorship of “Three’s Company” due to religious
pressure, George Carlin was arrested after cussing and “Welcome Back, Kotter” was banned in
Boston over fears it would trigger disorder. In the 1980s, comedy team Bowley and Wilson were
arrested for flatulence humor. In the 1990s, Andrew Dice Clay canceled a show fearing he’d
be arrested on an obscenity charge in Texas. All of this occurred long before the words and
phrases “millennial,” “safe space” or “retweet” came along.
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/mae-west-arrest-onstage-lewdness-made-star-article-1.787845
https://www.vulture.com/2016/02/on-richard-pryor-and-the-modernization-of-comedy.html
https://www.vulture.com/2016/02/on-richard-pryor-and-the-modernization-of-comedy.html
http://mediacoalition.org/files/Rev-Donald-Wildmon-1
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/05/the-7-dirty-words-turn-40-but-theyre-still-dirty/257374/
https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2014/09/11/throwback-thursday-john-travolta-safe-boston/
https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2014/09/11/throwback-thursday-john-travolta-safe-boston/
https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2014/09/11/throwback-thursday-john-travolta-safe-boston/
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-08-25-ca-1005-story.html
Comedians have far more freedom today. Subject matter involving sex, religion, politics or
profanity does not result in jail time. The tug of war between censorship and free speech has
been part of comedy for its entire existence. It is likely to continue.
Kliph Nesteroff is the author of “The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History
of American Comedy.”
Read the article and then compose two paragraphs. In the first paragraph, summarize the policy for someone who has not read it. In the second paragraph, respond to the policy. Do you agree with the policy as you’ve summarized it? Completely? In part? Why? Are you concerned about working with integrity? Why or why not? Compose your paragraphs carefully. The summary paragraph in particular should demonstrate that you can employ evidence using clear signal phrases with strong verbs; quote and paraphrase appropriately; comment effectively on each quotation; and cite correctly.