You Must Be Joking: The Sociological Critique of Humour and Comic Media

Abstract

Citation: LOCKYER, S. and PICKERING, M., 2008 This is the pre-peer-reviewed version of the following article: LOCKYER, S. and PICKERING, M., 2008. You must be joking: the sociological critique of humour and comic media. Sociology Compass, 2 (3), pp. 808-820, which has been published in final form at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120185463/abstract 2 You Must Be Joking: The Sociological Critique of Humour and Comic Media AbstractRecent work in the sociological critique of humour and comic media has challenged the notion that humour is an absolute good. In this article we review some of the most interesting work that takes humour seriously and addresses the difficult topic of whether there are ethical limits to humour and media comedy. We outline three main reasons for taking humour seriously and review some of the ways in which humour has been studied sociologically through a consideration of how British 'alternative' comedy directed the work of those interested in the limits of humour in relation to gender, race and ethnicity. We also summarise some of the most controversial examples of contemporary media comedy -the comedic performances and personae of Sacha Baron Cohen (Ali G and Borat) and the Danish cartoons of the Holy Prophet Muhammad -in order to illustrate the importance of the critical analysis of humour and how the ethics of humour can be applied to comic media.

Critical Comedy: Satire, Absurdity and Ireland's Economic Crash

“…Comedy is of course part of popular culture and its uses and appreciation could be understood as a sort of 'cultural capital' in Bourdieu's sense. This would also indicate that comedy is amongst the cultural repertoire for constructing group boundaries, which is typically achieved by flattering the in-group and ridiculing the out-group (Lockyer & Pickering, 2008). However, the particular tendency of political satire we will analyse is that it appeals very generally to an Irish audience, and also ridicules Irish people in general.…”

“…(David McSavage in Ingle, 2011) Rather than criticise these claims to critique, I would like to suggest that these claims are in fact true. There is no denying that Anglophone comedy has been transformed as the 1980s gave rise to explicitly critical comedians (Lockyer and Pickering, 2008), and latterly in Ireland during the late 1990s. More importantly, comedy is critical; there is no sense in arguing that comedy is the opiate of the masses or justifies the status quo or legitimates cultural orthodoxy.…”

“…Whilst the whole cultural position of comedy is provided by the caveat, 'only a joke' (Lockyer and Pickering, 2008) these years saw the established of satire as significant. The best single illustration of this is the insertion of a bailout sketch on The Late, Late Show as described in our introduction, which we shall return to now.…”

Negotiating the educational spaces of urban multiculture: Skills, competencies and college life

“…Some students indicated that joking and stereotyping like this was possible because they speak 'on the same level' (2nd group discussion, Uplands College), talk 'in the same manner, humour, everything' (2nd group discussion, Uplands College). They were skilfully aware of how joking tanks when the balance of power feels unequal and individuals do not feel 'on the same level' (Lockyer and Pickering, 2008). This highlights the need for careful interactions as students figure out how well they 'know know' (Uplands College, 2nd group discussion) the people they are with and how well a joke will go down with them.…”

Politically incorrect participatory media: Racist nationalism on r/ImGoingToHellForThis

“…Theorists of humor argue that humor provides affective release associated with feelings of superiority over others (Boxman-Shabtai and Shifman, 2013). Racist humor in particular can legitimate the expression of bigotry (Lockyer and Pickering, 2008;Malmqvist, 2015), venting otherwise socially unacceptable sentiments. Thus, the incongruous juxtapositions that form the grammar of jokes-and that r/ImGoingToHellForThis users deploy visually-can both provide affective release and sustain social relations (Billig, 2005).…”