Are jokes in the face of crises ever tasteful? Or, are we brainwashed to believe that it’s ok?
Why is it that, in Jan 1986, so many found humor in Space Shuttle jokes, claiming it was “OK” because it’s a release…but now at 9/11, no jokes would be accepted. COuld it be that it all starts with the stupid DJs telling us when it’s ok to laugh at tragedy?
Even David Lettermen he had nothing funny to say at 9/11.
(Moderator, I see this moving to IMHO…, sorry!)
To me, it’s always disgraceful to make such jokes. I swear I just don’t understand human (or inhumane) behavior!
People deal with things in different ways. Sometimes the best jokes are funny because you just know you shouldn’t be laughing. You do anyway and tension is released.
Jokes about things like 9/11 or the Space Shuttle are IMO kind of ok if you have either nothing what-so-ever to do with the event and don’t know anybody who does, or you are extremely close to the event. Where it can be a bit dodgy is if you go telling a joke only to find that one of the people you’re telling it to has been affected by the event - not good.
Without laughter the world would not be nice to live in
This thread reminds me of a scene in an Aussie TV series called “The Secret Life of Us”. One characters girlfriend has recently been hit by a car and killed. The guy is having a hard time coming to grips with everything, going through the usual grieving process, blaming himself etc. Anyway, he’s sitting in a bar with a friend and he’s going on about how she was crossing the road because of him, and it’s his fault etc etc.
His friend gets all angry and serious, and says “she wasn’t crossing the road because of you! Do you know why she was crossing the road?” [big pregnant pause]
“To get to the other side”
Followed by embarressed I-can’t-believe-you-said-that smirks.
Followed by big relief of tension and hysterical laughter.
You had to be there really, but my point is that it’s an example (fictional of course) of someone using sick humour to deal with a tragedy and to encourage the realisation that it’s not the end of the world, and that it’s ok to laugh.
People deal with tragedy in many different ways. Dark humor is coping mechanism for some people. An example: my friend’s little brother killed himself in a particularly messy fashion. Gruesome puns and other forms of dark humor basically kept her sane for the first week or so. She desperately needed that little bit of levity. She knew that a lot of people would find these jokes appalling so she tried to keep them quiet in public. But she knew that I wouldn’t judge her so I got to hear a lot of them.
There’s nothing wrong with using humor to cope. If your personal method of grieving doesn’t involve humor there’s nothing wrong with that either. What is wrong is if one person decides that their way is the only right or decent way to grieve.
I do that sometimes. It helps me to relieve some of the tension involved.
As I was walking over the Brooklyn Bridge leaving lower Manhattan on 9/11/01, I commented to my boss (who was walking with me):
And I wasn’t really trying to make light of the situation, it was rather, my way of trying to deflect some of the anger and raw emotion that I (and no doubt others) were feeling that day.
Actually we had a whole thread of levity here in the days after… it was Onion-esque parody headlines. Here are some highlights from the thread that ran to 394 posts:
“Morgan Stanley Files Lawsuit Against Fire, Gravity”
“Pentagon Vows to Build New, Bigger Hexagon”
"Bush Declares Sep 11 “A Day That Will Live In Imfany”
“Nuclear Weapons Not an Option, But Boy Would It Be Fun, Powell Tells Press”
“Oliver Stone Formulates Single-Plane Theory”
etc etc.
In fact the Onion did some of their very best work (IMHO) in relation to the WTC, as did The Daily Show (a satirucal news show, in case you don’t get cable) They had these ads for their “crisis coverage” that cleaimed their coverage would offer, “More Serious Looks, More Meaningful Pauses” or soemthing like that.
The fact is, even very tragic devents have some absurd angles to them. And some days you’d have to laugh or else you would cry.
well, it depends…if it’s your tragedy, the world will say “oh. lighten up, it could be worse” …itf it is your witty comment, you will be branded as a devil from the abyss…don’t use letterman as a guide…he probably remembers what happened to other tv personalities who made witticisms to lighten up the situation. c.f. tex antoine.
I believe it has to do with the type of disaster that happens. The Challenger explosion involved a people that very few of us could relate to, not many folks get to go up in a space shuttle. The “there is no way that could ever happen to me” syndrome. But with 9/11, we saw everyday folks like us losing their lives. When things are personal, they become less funny.
