Deliberately failed humor

Withholding signs of appreciation following an attempt at humor or even verbally attacking the teller of a bad joke, as in many of the examples from the previous section, are clearly ways of maintaining group boundaries. Another way to do this is through the deliberate construction of humor that will succeed for in-group members, but fail for outsiders. This kind of humor might be called aggressive or cruel teasing, ridicule, or even bullying. In fact, teasing and bullying are often treated simultaneously, in both academic and popular accounts (e.g. see Mills and Carwile 2009 and citations therein). Even the target of bullying may at times find the line between them to be blurry. In the introduction to his memoir on growing up with Asperger’s, for instance, Jesse Saperstein (2010) describes the harassment that took place in his high school biology class: “On a good day, the bullying was tolerable and even humorous” (p. xii). However, it is clear that being laughed at can be a painful and psychologically damaging event (Klages and Wirth 2014).

Smith (2009), who directly addresses the phenomenon of humor designed to fail for its target, “argue[s] that these cases constitute both harassment and humor” (p. 162). Billig’s (2005) notion of “unlaughter” forms the basis of Smith’s observations. “Unlaughter” is a term coined by Billig that describes many of the situations in the previous section, where hearers provide “a display of not laugh-ing when laughter might otherwise be expected, hoped for or demanded” (p. 192).

Smith (2009) extends this notion beyond humor that is intended to amuse all

present, to humor that is intended to fail for some hearers. The following account of a practical joke is provided by Smith to illustrate this. The joke was reported by one of the women who worked in the office, a casting agency with a staff of eight.

Brian had been tricked into calling a funeral home and asking for “Myra Mains”

(my remains):

Example 7.13

Brian slams down the phone, angry and upset. He swings his chair around, to where Jennifer and Katie are standing and giggling, and says in a loud and bitter voice: “Very funny, guys!”

Jennifer responds by saying: “It was her idea!”

Katie laughs uncontrollably, and says, “Myra Mains! Myra Mains! Ha! Ha!” Jen-nifer and the two other casting agency workers present continue laughing uncon-trollably. By the end of the day, everyone in the office has approached Brian and said “Myra Mains, Myra Mains, on line seven for you.” Brian reacts predictably by pouting all day.

(Ladd 1995, cited in Smith 2009: 159)

At first, this might appear to be simply an instance in which the humor prefer-ences of Brian differed from those of his co-workers. Note, however, that Brian is described as having reacted “predictably.” In fact, he was not popular in the office, and the women who worked there found him to be particularly abrasive.

As Smith reports,

[t]hey thought he was egotistical, shunned teamwork, and inappropriately tried to domi-nate the women in the office, even though he was younger than they were and had only worked there for around three months. According to the collector, the humiliation wrought by the joke was meant to show him that he was not well liked by the others in the office.

(2009: 160) Thus, it is clear not only that the failure of the joke (for Brian) was intentional, but further that it was calculated to distress him. By responding angrily and not taking the joke well, Brian lived up to his co-workers’ expectations of him, rein-forced their solidarity, and almost certainly absolved the jokers (in their minds) of any responsibility for his feelings.

Reports of this type of socially divisive, calculated-to-fail humor seem to most often involve already-marginalized individuals, suggesting that this type of (failed) humor may be more commonly used once these individuals have become marginalized. Taylor (2011), for example, provides numerous examples in her

Deliberately failed humor       161

report of the teasing that adolescents use to target overweight peers. Here is just one anecdote:

Example 7.14

[O]ne overweight female informant explained that she has several large friends who get teased for being fat. In particular, one of her “really big” friends was teased frequently, mostly by boys who would say the following to her: “You’re like the empire state building, just extra large,” “You hippo!,” and “Get away from the vending machine!”

(Taylor 2011: 186)

It seems possible that such patently exclusionary and cruel humor would be less likely to be directed toward an accepted group member, and that perhaps more covert techniques of exclusion are used initially. It is also true, however, that this phenomenon is under-researched and little is known about the process that occurs that allows some individuals to feel that this type of behavior is accept-able. In any case, it is clear that creating humor that will purposely fail for certain people is one technique by which the marginal status of outsiders, once estab-lished, is maintained.

And, as Brian’s experience illustrated, adults are far from immune to this type of behavior. Watts (2007) explored the experiences of women in civil engineering jobs, focusing specifically on the uses of humor in that highly male-dominated profession. She found that the constant joking that was designed to exclude and denigrate the female workers was not only irritating to those workers, but also exhausting. For example, when one pregnant engineer went to a site, she encountered the following treatment:

Example 7.15

I remember going on site and saying I’ve got my MICE (Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers) and the foreman at the time said the only letters you should have after your name are MUM and I thought thank you! I mean that is the sort of comment you get and they make a joke of it and everybody laughs but he really meant it and a lot of the jibes that women take on site are more like couched in a joke but it is there all the time.

(Watts 2007: 64)

Because jokes are normally supposed to be all in good fun, it becomes difficult for the victim of a deliberately cruel and humiliating joke like this to object in a productive manner. The situation creates a challenge similar to that of the victims

of covert racism or sexism. The difference is that in these cases, the target may not be absolutely certain that his or her treatment was attributable to prejudice, which makes an appropriate and useful response difficult. In the case of deliber-ately failed humor, the victim status of the target is clear, but an objection only reinforces marginalization, and playing along is difficult to feign. Thus this type of (failed) joking creates a vicious cycle wherein the target responds negatively, amusing the jokers, which further increases the amount of teasing directed at that person. In a study of joking among electrical repair workers (Lundberg 1969), Hafler, a low-status employee found himself caught in such a cycle. Of the three examples given of deliberately unfunny jokes that targeted him, it is reported that in two instances he simply ignored the men’s talk, while in the third, in which he had been tricked into wrestling with a piece of incorrectly-sized equipment for several minutes, he retired to the bathroom once the prank was revealed.

Even though his responses were not highly emotional or dramatic, like Brian’s in the first example, his obvious discomfort and lack of laughter were enough to encourage his colleagues to continue to taunt him in this way. Once this status is achieved, it may be very difficult to shake.

7.4 Summary

I began this chapter by reviewing literature that has demonstrated how, despite the common understanding of a sense of humor as a deeply personal, often idio-syncratic character trait, our humor preferences are socially constructed. The strong influence that others exert on our humor tastes helps to delineate and maintain group boundaries. The failure of humor, perhaps even more so, con-tributes to the drawing of these lines between what are considered in- and out-group members. This led us to a consideration of how the failure of humor might affect any social action it was also intended to accomplish. The social actions were broadly divided between humor for solidarity and humor that was intended to achieve some change in the hearer’s behavior. The latter was considered from top-down and bottom-up humor. That is, humor that comes from those in power and that is often intended for restrictive social control purposes and that which comes from below, and which is often considered subversive. Analysis suggested that although a few failures of humor that is intended primarily to increase soli-darity will not result in an individual’s being ostracized from a group, continued use of humor that goes against group norms, even if it is meant in good fun, may been seen as meriting exclusion. When humor is intended to change behavior, the result of its failure was shown to be dependent on a number of factors, most important being the topic of the humor, the speaker’s status, and the

Summary       163

ship between the speaker and audience. In general, however, it was suggested that the power of humor to effect change is greater when the humor is top-down, rather than bottom-up. Finally, the use of humor that is shared with the express purpose of failing for some hearers, specifically as a means of (further) marginal-izing them, was discussed. This type of humor yet again demonstrates the critical role of humor in social boundary-marking.