Monday, August 30, 2010

Learning to laugh...at anything

Do read this excellent piece by Mitali Saran in The Caravan. I especially enjoyed this bit (and agreed with it most vigorously):
But are there things so wrenching that you cannot joke about them — starvation, for instance, or loss, or violence? These are issues that engage the emotions at a visceral level. You could argue that India wrestles with the kind of terrible, serious problems that it would be tasteless to make fun of. Yet, that is the root of black — and gallows — humour. It is possible to be genuinely anguished by starvation and still smile when someone says, 'How many Ethiopians can you fit in a bathtub? None, they keep slipping down the drain.' (Too far from home? Replace Ethiopian with the starving Indian of your choice. There are lots to choose from.)

It is possible to tell a joke about a dead guy, or about an axe murderer. It is seen as more acceptable for a Dalit to make fun of a Brahmin; but it should also be possible for the joke to go the other way. It is possible to do these things when the cool eye puts the warm heart on hold, temporarily, and can see inherently funny paradoxes. It isn’t a permanent condition; it’s not the death of compassion; it’s not because of a fundamental lack of empathy.
I can't count the number of times I've had to roll my eyes when someone says, "Humour is fine, but it shouldn't be offensive or tasteless." This is such a banal suggestion. Whether something is in bad taste or not is, by its very nature, subjective - there are no measures for such things. Some people have an extraordinarily high threshold for black humour or “tasteless comedy”, others get hurt very easily and are eager to proclaim it from every rooftop. (Which in itself is fine - all of us have the right to feel offended or hurt. We even have the right to not be offended but still not find a joke particularly funny. The trouble starts when we try to ensure punitive measures against the thing that has so wounded our feelings.) If you were to stick the label "Bad Taste" on anything that offended a sizable number of people, you’d be left with hardly anything that isn’t “in bad taste”.

The idea that it's okay - even desirable - to laugh at jokes about one's most sacred cows reminds me of an incident from a couple of years ago. Never thought I'd put it up here, but well, it seems like a good context. My maasis - my mother's cousins, both in their sixties now - were in Delhi and they were all sitting around talking about old times. The conversation soon turned to my aunts' recently deceased parents, very dear to them both; soft, misty-eyed recollections gradually made way for bawdy anecdotes, all narrated in rustic, quickfire Punjabi. It reached a crescendo when my aunts recalled their father grumbling lightly about his wife's bout with Parkinson's Disease in her last years. "Jab usse hilna tha, tab toh kabhi hildi nahin thi," he told his own daughters.

The English translation, "She never shook when she should have", doesn't convey anything of the superb lewdness of the Punjabi version, which caused one of the most memorable spontaneous outpourings of laughter I've ever experienced. It took a couple of minutes for everyone to finish catching their breath and wiping their eyes. Then my maasis went back to talking about the abiding love between their parents and remembering how well their dad had looked after their mom in her final days. It was a very nicely spent afternoon.

14 comments:

  1. What a lovely anecdote, and a brilliant line.

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  2. That anecdote indeed captures your point.. and that's the thing with Punjabis, they're so happy to have fun made of them, they can't understand how the rest of the world can't take it too :D

    This post is rather co-incidental, because I had the chance to watch two English comedians poke fun at Mumbai and Indians yesterday.. Call me intolerant, but I thought they were funny and very observant (considering that it was a first visit for both, and they had been here for less than a couple of days), BUT I'd have laughed louder if it was an Indian making the same joke.. don't know why.

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  3. Very nice post and the piece by Saran as well.

    I think someone like Russell Peters gets away with everything he says about Indians (except for those rare Aishwarya Rai moments) because of his skin color - of course a lot of his observations also hit the right spot because he has experienced them first hand in his own family. Have you seen his acts?

    For some reason, people are becoming increasingly intolerant about making fun of sacred cows. Finding things that are in Bad Taste (reminds me of that crazy Peter Jackson movie), and declaring their contempt for such things, seems to be the favorite pastime of many.

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  4. ...BUT I'd have laughed louder if it was an Indian making the same joke.. don't know why

    The Soul of Alec Smart: nothing unusual about feeling that way. In the situation you mention, it's very natural to wonder if the two Englishmen would have poked fun at themselves with the same aplomb. In my view, good self-deprecating humour is inherently funnier, partly because it's so much more difficult to achieve and comes less naturally to most of us.

    Captain Subtext: no, haven't seen Peters at all - have read a bit about him, which of course isn't the same thing.

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  5. A brilliant anecdote indeed! :D

    And, Peters does get away with a lot! :P I saw one of his acts where he was talking about Bollywood and I wasn't too happy then, mostly because I love Bollywood and I was like, oh, one of those NRI-poking-fun-at-Indian-things types. But once I had time to digest it, it was quite funy! :P

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  6. It is seen as more acceptable for a Dalit to make fun of a Brahmin; but it should also be possible for the joke to go the other way

    I'm reminded of Stepin Fetchit's extraordinary performances in John Ford's movies. I've heard that his movies are not widely circulated or shown on network these days!

    It's interesting that Americans today have a problem with the Stepin Fetchit stereotype but no problems whatsoever with the Sidney Poitier stereotype! It's probably because Poitier represents the "mythical black" - a strawman of sorts who is very dear to the liberals whereas Fetchit is uncomfortably perceptive about the realities of black America.

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  7. If you haven't seen any acts of Peters, you are missing something .... that guy is insane, and falls very much in the genre mentioned in this post ... u can start off by some of his Youtube clips.

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  8. I wonder what would be the correct response to "I am offended." I do not think "You need to just chill" is a correct response; it is patronizing.
    I think even "I do not give a damn" is better than that. Even better, I believe, is to try to encourage everybody to be more open, and explain why someone finds something offensive and, on the other hand, why someone finds it necessary to offend in a particular way.

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  9. ...I do not think "You need to just chill" is a correct response; it is patronizing.

    Rahul: I agree. I hate it when someone says that to me, and I wish people would stop using that line altogether; after all, anyone can be on the receiving end of it depending on the situation. But I'm not sure there needs to be a "correct response" to someone who is offended; the best thing might just be to look the other way or change the subject. Explaining "why someone finds something offensive" or "why someone finds it necessary to offend in a particular way" might not be very useful one way or the other.

    (Besides which, let's not forget that very often people take offence when there hasn't been a deliberate attempt to offend. And conversely, some people don't get offended even when someone is trying very hard to bait them. I can think of dozens of examples of both cases just from my blog comments over the years!)

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  10. Jai, I agree, that no response can be the best response. Actually I was trying to extrapolate to a sociological theory to fit all interactions like Mohammad's cartoons Hussain's paintings etc. :)
    This post is meant for humor so lets just leave it at that.

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  11. Nice anecdote. As a woman married to a Punjabi I can totally picture your maasis saying this and laughing!

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  12. Actually I was trying to extrapolate to a sociological theory to fit all interactions like Mohammad's cartoons Hussain's paintings etc. :)
    This post is meant for humor so lets just leave it at that.


    Rahul: come on, now you're the one being patronising! The tone of the post may be light, but as far as I'm concerned this is a very serious subject. So why don't you go ahead and explain that sociological theory anyway?

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  13. The homicidal librarian Jorge, from "The Name of the Rose", conspires gruesome murders to prevent Aristotle's book on Comedy from being revealed. He believed humor's ability to undermine the Devil would make God irrelevant!

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  14. Jai, The "sociological theory" part was in jest. But I was indeed trying to offer something on how the offense should be dealt with, when it is a big deal to those who are offended, like for eg. in religious matters . The patronizing was not intended , but what I meant was that in most of the jokes, the offense is not that big a deal to the person who is offended, so a non response is okay.
    In other matters, like the example of Mohammed's paintings etc., I am of the opinion that though the freedom of expression should be protected at all costs, just waving the freedom of expression in the face of the offended is not enough.There is need for acknowledging the offense and offering a dialog.

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