trauma///laughter

we laugh, we cry

[femlaugh]

Another method of critiquing the power relations at play here is through an economic lens: where predominantly male comedians can earn revenue through telling misogynist jokes about rape, predominantly female or trans survivors of sexual violence can experience financial jeopardy through unemployment (due to PTSD symptoms, working with their assaulter, etc.) or unwanted pregnancy.

[femlaugh]

What turns an insult into a joke?

[femlaugh]

Published online May 21, the Onion's article, "Date Rapist Tossing His Mortarboard Into Air 3 Rows In Front Of You" is a nuanced exposition of the omnipresence of rapists on college and university campuses. 

In its handling of power structures, the article is definitively progressive. Blame for the date rapists' ease of success lays firmly on the "top ranking university officials" mentioned, who are implicated as actively covering up the student's history of abuse. The Onion succinctly pinpoints the lack of community resiliency factors present in most university systems, which leads to survivors of sexual assault being more severely compromised by the aftereffects of their trauma. The article highlights the need for institutional systems of support for survivors of sexual assault.

Here, the reader's (potentially spiteful) laughter is being directed towards the current system of covering up sexual assaults on campus. Much of the satirical humour here stems from the juxtaposition of the date rapist's quotes with the serious details of his abusive history provided in the bulk of the article. The rapist is presented as without regret, which perhaps links us back to Joseph Joubert's theory of a traumatized laughter being "a feeling over an ugly thing unworthy of pity."

But of course, this is presuming the politics of the reader. Would a date rapist experience the same laughter from this article that a survivor would? The Onion challenges us to consider this, as they situate the reader in the headline, and again in the body of the text, as sitting three rows behind the date rapist himself. Is it meant to be funny to a rapist? Perhaps this is the most elegant twist of humour: a joke through which survivors of assault can find cold comfort and community, but in which perpetrators find only shame. 

The one question that remains, as it does across all Onion articles, is, "who wrote this?" Just as the joke changes depending on the reader's identity, the author ought to be accountable for their own positioning as well. With a less-than-solid reputation for sensitivity, the Onion could do well to let us know whose work we're reading.

[femlaugh]

Political comedian Bill Maher, host of Real Time with Bill Maher and renowned irritating lefty, made something of a feminist rape joke in his opening monologue on May 16th. 

In a bit on newly-drafted gay football player Michael Sam's reaction to the announcement that he'd been chosen to play for the St. Louis Rams, Maher quipped that Sam's future league-mates were surprised to see him kiss his boyfriend on national television; not because of the same-sex relationship, but because football players aren't used to witnessing consensual kisses. 

Maher (who does not have a sparkling-clean feminist record) gets one thing right with this joke - his laughter, and the laughter of his audience, is directed not at survivors of sexual assault, but at at perpetrators themselves. In a general sense, this is not a bad joke. 

More specifically, however, it falls flat. "Football players," while not totally inaccurate, is a cop out from actually naming names of players or teams where allegations or arrests have been made. Futhermore, Maher skirts around any further exploration of why these football players may be likely to mistreat women (maybe they are undervalued?). 

Overall, the joke was not worthless. It may have gotten people to reflect on how many instances of sexual violence occur among men involved with sports, but if so then the credit goes to the audience for their effort, not to Maher's lazy humour.

Of course, since he shied away from any discussion of rape, this was more of a "non-consensual kiss joke," and maybe that's the problem. Maher was on the right track with this one, and I'd be interested in seeing what he could do with some more follow-through. 

[femlaugh]

The relationship between laughter and sorrow has historically been discussed in two ways. The strategic method put forth by John Calvin, a French theologian, divides these emotions between the laugher and the target of laughter. He accepted "laughter at the tears of our enemies" as a holy act, as long as the laughers were respectfully temperate in their expression (27).

Alternately, Joseph Joubert wrote of the possibility of communicating both joy and sorrow through laughter. He claimed that the choreography of the body in laughter resembled an expression of sorrow too closely to ignore. This particular attention to the body, its uses and formations, becomes complicated when we consider the multiple uses of the mouth itself.

With particular reference to trauma, survivors may engage in a laughter which expresses "a feeling over an ugly thing unworthy of pity," when deriding their abusers (29). This reference to "a feeling" may not necessarily allude to sorrow per se, but a negative emotion is certainly implied.

[femlaugh]

"An infinite spectrum of nuances - tones, timbres, accents, resonances - unfold in laughter. And yet we do not quite have a vocabulary to talk about laughter. Language has grown poorer and poorer, and insists on imposing the same word ("laughter") on laughs that - ontologically, aesthetically, ethically - often find themselves at opposite ends of the laughing spectrum."

- Anca Parvulescu, Laughter: Notes on a passion

[femlaugh]

Billig refers to 'ridicule' as a demeaning form of laughter that serves a necessary social function. He attempts to counter the trend of ideological positivism in psychological humour theory by arguing that ridicule, though typically considered a divisive and negative form of humour, serves to discipline minor social foibles through embarrassment.

This framework is useful as an introduction to a negative humour/laughter that serves a valid social purpose. Billig sets a precedent for humours and laughters that produce positive social effects by employing necessarily cruel content. Again, I propose that ridicule working downwards (the abused party as punchline) ought to be differentiated from ridicule working upwards (abusers as punchline). The language of 'progressive' and 'regressive' humour still applies here.

[femlaugh]

Michael Billig presents two very broad ways of characterizing humour. These are presented in dichotomies: negative vs. positive humour, and rebellious vs. disciplinary humour. 

The first set is defined as being either an aggressive humour that separates, divides, and excludes, or one that encourages group solidarity (22). This is an insufficient distinction, as it ignores the possibility of an aggressive humour/laughter that works against the dominant social order - encouraging group solidarity by excluding the population that seeks to do harm. 

The distinction between the second set, rebellious and disciplinary humour, is drawn less clearly. Disciplinary humour would function to embarrass those who break social norms or expectations, and is described by Billig as being a 'conservative' use, whereas rebellious laughter would seek to dismantle those same social norms, expectations, and hierarchies. 

This is an overly simplistic categorization for my project, as it relies too heavily on an exact definition of 'social norms.' Sexual assault and rape exist simultaneously as normative and counter-normative. With some estimates suggesting one of every three women will be a target of sexual aggression in her lifetime, a significant amount of men, and a huge amount of trans* people, it would seem that dealing with sexual violence on a personal level, or supporting a friend who has been aggressed is a lived norm for millions of people. Still, sexual assault and rape are illegal in North America, a ban which enforces the conception of sexual consent as the norm, and any breach of that consent as being deviant and therefore deserving of punishment. 

Instead of qualifying feminist trauma humour as being a form of "disciplinary rebellion," (an ambiguous and confusing term) I am looking for language that distinguishes between progressive and regressive trauma humour. 

Briefly, a progressive humour/laughter about trauma prioritizes the comfort of survivors by shaming, ridiculing, and 'making strange' the behaviour of sexual aggressors, while a regressive trauma humour would take the form of a typical rape joke, in that it prefers the comfort and group cohesion of potential and actual sexual aggressors.

My language choice of 'progressive' and 'regressive' is preliminary and tentative, of course, as I navigate through my initial readings.

[femlaugh]

Here I will be looking at the relationship between trauma stemming from sexual violence, and humour/laughter as a mechanism for healing, surviving, and community bonding.

I am interested in exploring laughter as a non-erotic event, in opposition to theories put forth by several feminist scholars, including Hélène Cisoux. I tentatively suggest that labelling feminist laughter in response to trauma as 'erotic' is an uncomfortable descriptor for the type of work that is being done (in other words it gives me weird feelings that I need more time to figure out).

I also want to discuss the political leverage a feminist theory of laughter and humour can wield, what this type of laughter can do within the current Canadian/American social context, and how it is currently being used (by whom, on which platforms, garnering what kinds of response).

This is a space for me to collect my thoughts, document research and readings, and offer preliminary analysis and critique of mediated instances and examples. It will hopefully become background for my master's thesis starting in 2015, and will likely change significantly between now and then!

Questions, suggestions, and opinions are welcome.