Blog 15_Humorists

Humour plays a vital role in our everyday life; it provides us entertainment. According to Alain de Botton in his 2004 book Status Anxiety, another purpose of humorists, aside from entertainment, is to “convey with impunity messages that might be dangerous or impossible to state directly.” However, in my opinion, conveying messages that may be risky to say directly is not the aim of humorists; their aim is merely to entertain, and sometimes while they do so, they unintentionally instil awareness in their audience.

There are a few types of humour where there are hardly any messages contained; these include certain cartoons or jokes. Children’s cartoons such as the Powerpuff Girls and Scooby-Doo make no contribution to rectifying society; these flying girls and talking dogs are produced solely for laughters. Jokes such as knock-knock jokes and yo mama jokes do not convey any special messages either.

When we turn on our televisions, we come across many stand-up comedians. They tackle racism, sexism, and many other social aspects. When they take on subjects like these, they do not have a corrective purpose in mind; they are merely taking what is commonplace to their audience and discussing it in a humorous attempt for entertainment. For example, Russell Peters, a popular contemporary stand-up comedian, always applies extreme stereotypes in his shows, while imitating different accents, particularly the Chinese and the Indian accents. In one of many occasions, he mentions his Indian father responded to three gay Indian guys on the television gay pride parade and he talks about how there is a population crisis in India now and that they “could use a couple of homos”; his sole purpose was to amuse his audience. However, while Russell Peters entertains his audience, he unintentionally raises awareness of the cultural differences in regards to homosexuality and the population crisis in India. He does not provide solutions as to how to solve these issues in society because that is not important in his gig.

In modern day society, there are many different forms of humour, such as short skits or television series, that directly makes fun of pop culture and society. MADtv is an American sketch comedy television series that parodies popular television shows, movies, music, and other pop culture. In one short skit, MadTV presents Steve Jobs and his new product iPhone. The audience were astounded and fascinated by the functions of an iPhone until there was too much for them to believe, so they began to call the iPhone witchcraft and Steve Jobs a witch. Humorists of this type do not wish to incite a revolt or radical change, but they ridicule society for acting foolish or gullible, which makes the audience more aware of their thoughtlessness or naivete.

There is really only one type of humorists whose primary goal is correct society: the satirists. Satirists shine a new light on a certain issue in order to “correct” society. The most noted satire would be Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, where he proposes to sell and eat Irish babies to help the economic and social life. Jonathan Swift’s purpose was to point out the injustices of the British treatment to the Irish. Satirists are harder to find these days because people are only attracted to amusement. The contemporary satirists would have to include their ideas subtly and ornate their ideas with seemingly plain humour.

I do not disagree with Alain de Botton in his idea that another chief aim of humorists is to convey messages that are dangerous to express directly, because that is true in some cases, such as with satirists. However, most humorists use society simply as a backdrop for their jokes because the audience enjoys humour that is commonplace and familiar. As humorists base their ideas on society, people grow more aware of certain issues in society but no actions would ever be taken to change them for the better. Humorists do serve a vital function in society, just not for correcting it.