The Yuck Is on Me

November 11th, 2007 Posted in The People, Sociology of Jokes

I lack a context. I want to share a joke with you but I do not have a sociology of the joke and I do not want to go off topic. It is like lacking the nuanced word in your own language to describe a phenomenon. I can not make the thing exist for you if I do not have the concept.

For example, my girlfriend is a lovable little fly but such a thing only exists in France where it is called la petite mouche. In the USA no fly is ever an object of love. I really don’t know French and my local translator, an American woman, no longer talks to me since I called her fly-baby in intimate circumstances, but my impression is that the term can also suggest a small beauty spot or a delicate speckling of snot.

So to tell a joke on a blog that focuses on things sociological I have to find a missing link. Follow me on this detour and be assured, friends, this is no joke.

First the joke itself is too narrow, a small babbling brook instead of the broad river and the great lake to the ocean. A sample of the larger idea of water. So we skip at once to the comic-tragic axis with its associated light-heavy, serene-furious, happy-sad mutually exclusive categories, which suggest shared mood–a social togetherness of feeling. The joke is one of the ways to set a shared feeling! Mood indigo, mood for love, moody. The herd is stirring–getting ready to bolt. Watch out, cowboy, stampede ahead.

Looks like we have another function, a mood function, like the switch that turns on the electric light. We seek the forms and processes–the ways and people who alter shared mood. Is this a universal in all social situations? I do not know or care. If you see it, mark it.

Note: Mind or mood altering drugs? No, I do not want to go there. Stop pestering!

We want to crack (as in making gasoline) off the professionals. This is the first level for a sociological description and analysis. The comedian, the comic, the trickster, the clown, the jester, all are jobs of work. They are historical forms and part of the larger entertainment institution–theater with actors and performing artists, and story tellers, poet-bards, novelists, scriptwriters, and so on. The forms shift, the function remains.

Shared mood is only one of many outcomes and influences. They project ideas and ideologies, critiques, cover-ups, distractions. They construct and reconstruct culture within us as we watch. There is a unity of functions but not of content. The institution is like a hammer. It can build, alter or destroy. The question of effect is problematic, open. The joke may not be funny.

Sociology is like spelunking. You push through a cave entrance and slowly negotiate almost impossible transits and in an unexpected and lucky moment find the light of your torch reaching out into a gigantic magical space.

But the blog medium like a haiku does not permit dallying. This dramatic place is open for us. We can return.

Two small notes:

1) The joker is wild. There is an obvious dark side. Objectively it might seem a single cloth but from the viewpoint of the victim this happy place might not be benign. The sweet puppy can become a vicious attack dog. You get a hint of it in physical humor–the clumsy person, the slip and fall on the banana peel, the errors. When we watch the clown we know that the falls are simulated, the actors physically trained and skilled. If the antic were real we would be horrified (most of us) and would rush to the aid of the victim. But then there are the so-called jokes of bullies, that require a real victim–a butt who is hurt, humiliated, shamed. You can see again why sociology can not be a hard science. The intervention of our moral sense blocks an assured objectivity. This dilemma turns up in every sector of social life.

2) The formal order, the established forms that carry out a particular function–the comic actor influencing shared mood and culture–shares its stage with a host of alternates that continue to reside, mainly hidden, among the people. Lovers, gatherings of friends, associates, in parties and get togethers generate the shift in mood for themselves It is usually not a conscious, planned and organized action. The setting and need and feeling unleash it. The quip, the wit, the turn of a phrase, the welling up of the mood. It is part of us.

An example: the groups of soldiers, students, workers negotiate a serious test together. When it is over they joke, babble, laugh–comic relief. A man and a woman going out together for the first time are guarded, defensive, reserved. They move toward greater intimacy, sometimes, through shared laughter.

Question: How does a person without a sense of humor find a lover?

Answer: He always travels with a funny friend and laughs on cue.

OK. That’s it. On our next post–the humongous joke and the story attached to it.

P.S. My regards to Maurice and friends. All in fun.