No Laughing Matter

Posted by admin on Oct 8, 2007 in Issues & Ideas | 0 comments

Kitsch is a complex thing. It has been understood as describing objects considered to be in poor taste because of their excessive garishness or sentimentality, but it can also describe things that are appreciated in an ironic or knowing way. Basically, it is the reduction of a thing down to a caricature that can be easily mocked or easily accepted.

In our sometimes complex world, this oversimplification has some appeal. These two extremes of responding, in our eagerness to write off or endorse things as kitsch, exemplify the trouble with comedy in religious communities. American playwright Wilson Mizner said that you could usually judge a fellow by what he laughs at. This type of judgment is most prevalent in the midst of religious communities; especially religious university communities where students are trying to figure out what the world is, what their place is in it, and just what they hold to be sacred. People’s humour in Christian communities varies, from prudish to out right prurience. In a religious context, having very different ideas about humour has higher stakes since there is a possibility of joking about a religious matter that someone considers sacred. One person’s hilarity is another’s blasphemy.

In many ways humour defines the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion for social groups. It is hard to spend time with people who constantly mock what you value, do not appreciate your sense of humour or find it offensive. People tend to be friends with those who share their sense of humour, or at least with those who get where it’s coming from. In a community like ours, one that is explicit about putting a community ethic over an individual one (read: Responsibilities of Membership), this is all the more challenging. Inclusion is given a greater degree of moral weight though in no way simplified.

Irony has a dubious role to play at Trinity Western University since Christians have a propensity to take themselves too seriously. This has two distinct manifestations: the first is displayed in a lack of humour and distrust of irony. When I arrived, I could not figure out what spooked me about the place and then realized that many students had no sense of irony – which gave them a “Stepford” like countenance. For those of us ready to write off such a response as ridiculous, imagine my surprise when I experienced it in the midst of this very newspaper. A few years ago, a friend of mine wrote in a satirical letter which was read completely straight and responded to with all due apology and earnestness. For the more literalist among us irony is perceived as a deviation from the true—a laughing about matters that for the most part should be taken “seriously.”

The second manifestation is seen in oh-so-wise cynical disdain being couched in irony and mockery. Those purporting to be more mature and worldly with their cynicism, take themselves very seriously. It is the dark witticism of the despairing and disengaged. We are a generation of peanut gallery critics, ever ready to ridicule the earnest efforts of others, or call the hopeful and eager naïve, unthinking and childish.

A better way of dealing with humour is found in Charles Dickens’ novels and the very funny stand-up comedy of Eddie Izzard. Dickens’ novels seriously engage the social ills of his time but manage to do so hilariously and with a comedy that rightly draws attention to wrong-doing, but with generosity. Most importantly, he uses comedy to engage with the complexity of his time. Eddie Izzard is a British transvestite with better insight into the quirks of Christian history than most Christians. His comedy routines engage topics like genocide, Nazism, the Reformation, the Inquisition, the Crusades and even the current state of Anglicanism. Though he might be perceived as somewhat irreverent, his comedy has a poignancy that stems from the seriousness with which he takes his subject matter. Laughter itself should be poignant.