And just so you know, Marie Curie, Nicolaus Copernicus and Frédéric Chopin aren't just brilliant dead famous people who could very well appear in the inevitable Bill and Ted reboot -- they also happened to be Polish. Additionally, a global study on education performed in 2014 concluded that Poland has the tenth best education system in the world, while the U.S. was at number fourteen. So where do we get this stereotype that Poles are not intelligent, especially when all evidence points to precisely the contrary?
Here's where it gets dark. According to some, it started in Nazi Germany as a way to justify the eradication of the Polish race. These jokes then spread to Soviet Russia, who also wished to conquer Poland and who shared Hitler's belief that the key to effective propaganda was to tell big lies rather than small ones. Eventually these jokes made their way to the U.S. at a time when there happened to be a lot of backlash against Eastern European immigrants.
As this relates to previous lectures, despite the fact that this type of joke has been used to nurture an "us vs. them" mentality for centuries in various cultures around the world, in these types of situations where one group of people is attempting to assert dominance over another, stereotypes can also be considered through the lens of postmodernity because they get repeated so often that people eventually accept these artificial constructs as reality. Similarly, jokes such as these obviously do not draw from common truths; rather, their primary purpose is to maintain and reinforce societal power structures through their willful manipulation of the truth.
This is sometimes referred to as "superiority theory," and it is generally traced back to a seventeenth century English philosopher named Thomas Hobbes, who argued that laughter often occurs with the sudden recognition of one's superiority over others. To paraphrase: "Ha, ha. You are inferior, therefore by comparison, I am not. You stupid, silly person! May my boisterous laughter present a reminder to us both as to how much better I am than you!" Obviously, this kind of humor can also project from a falsely inflated realization of one's own self worth, as Hobbes also noted that, "Much laughter at the defects of others is a sign of pusillanimity." Basically, he believed that we laugh at others to mask our own inadequacies and to maintain these delusions of superiority.
This also explains why stupid characters commonly appear in comedic films. Dumb and Dumber made people feel smart and smarter. Dumb and Dumberer gave audiences the added bonus of feeling well-educated in the rules of grammar. When we see people doing things on screen that we know are foolish, we give ourselves a little pat on the back for being better than that. These characters are designed to give audiences a way to feel superior without necessarily feeling bad about it, and it works because of the emotional distance that comedy allows.
Most scholars, philosophers and psychologists who have researched the matter tend to to agree that there are basically two kinds of humor, just as there are essentially two ends of the political spectrum. That is, comedy can be either progressive, in the sense that it forces us to reexamine our own beliefs and allows us to move forward toward a more comprehensive understanding of ourselves and our culture, or it can be reactionary in that it is used as a weapon with which to wield power over others in order to maintain the hierarchies of the status quo. A basic litmus test is to ask yourself who or what is the butt of the joke.
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| Scene from Idiocracy, one of the options from week two. |
To put it another way, humor that makes fun of aspects of ourselves or the culture in which we are immersed ultimately seeks to offer a new perspective of that which is already familiar, which in turn allows us to address these faults and make progress toward something better. On the other hand, jokes that are aimed at an outside group generally only serve to reinforce existing stereotypes, and they are therefore reactionary in that they fundamentally seek to either maintain the status quo, or worse yet, regress to a perceived golden age in which certain privileges were afforded to some at the expense of others.
Sometimes, however, stereotypes can also be used ironically, which adds a whole other dimension to their politics. We must remember, though, that irony depends upon context and can therefore yield different interpretations to different people. Is this racist or making fun of racism? It kind of depends on who you ask.
As we have discussed in previous weeks, comedy is often used to define an inside group as such. This can either happen through a shared realization within that group as delivered though a joke (i.e. "We are an inside group because we all see humor in this element of ourselves or in the culture we share"), or it can happen by marking the boundaries between the inside group and the outside "other" (as in, "We are an inside group because we're not those other people who are the targets of our jokes").
Last week, we discussed the heteronormative patriarchy of modern American culture, but for this week's lecture, I'd like to expand that term somewhat and note that we very much live in a white, protestant, heteronormative patriarchy that is ruled by the wealthy elite. That isn't to say that as a straight, white male, I get a check from the government every month along with a personalized note that reminds me to keep up the good work, but I do recognize that I will never be able to fully empathize with the experience of facing systemic discrimination based upon the characteristics with which I was born. If you think about it, that would be like someone hating you or denying you certain opportunities solely on the basis of your eye color or the length of your second toe. We are all just human beings -- no more, no less.
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| These eggs need to chill. |
Stereotypes are typically drawn on broad and fallacious assumptions, and most discriminatory humor is built upon and only serves to reinforce such beliefs. However, I think that there is also a practical reason why such jokes are so popular, and it has to do with the basic math behind the joke. By that, I mean that a joke has to maintain a reasonable balance between set-up and punchline. For example, if you spend ten minutes setting up a joke, it had better be damn funny by the time you get to the end. On the other hand, a lot of racist and sexist jokes rely on stereotypes as a sort of shorthand for the setup. In a typical joke about a blonde woman, for example, the underlying assumption is that she completely lacks common sense, and knowing this in advance makes for a shorter journey to the punchline. In the same respect, in a joke about Polish people, it is assumed that the audience aligns with the notion that Polish people are also quite stupid, at least relative to themselves, so the exposition portion of the joke is shorter.
By using these stereotypes as shorthand, the payoff of the joke can therefore get away with being considerably less funny than if it were to have taken longer to set up. As a result, these jokes tend to get repeated by those who lack the ability to elicit laughter from anything more complex, which speaks volumes both of the teller of such jokes, as well as their intended audience. Frankly, jokes that rely on stereotypes are typically lazy and cheap. The exception, as previously discussed, is when their point is to expose these stereotypes as being ridiculous. Sometimes by treating a stereotype ironically, the inherent flaws behind it can be exposed to ridicule. However, as King notes in this week's reading, there is a very thin line between reinforcing a stereotype and making fun of the people who believe it.
This week's movies all deal with issues of race in various capacities. They are Blazing Saddles, Harlem Nights, and Up in Smoke. As you are watching them, I want you to think about how racial stereotypes are used, reinforced, exaggerated and challenged, as well as who or what are the targets of the jokes. Also consider whether you find the material to be progressive, reactionary or both, and what stance does the movie seem to take regarding issues of race in American culture? Once you have done this week's reading (King chapter four, second half, pg. 143-169) and read the student blog posts for context, please answer the following screening question:
How does [the film you chose to watch] address issues of race and discrimination, and what, ultimately, do the filmmakers seem to be saying about these topics?
The following students are exempt from answering this week's screening question, as they are assigned blog posts:
Taylor Russo - Biography (Steve Martin)
Brittany Schmidlin - Biography (The Coen Brothers)
Jenna Schultz - Review of Reviews (The Jerk)
Terry Snyder - Review of Reviews (The Hudsucker Proxy)
Kristen St. John - Biography (Carl Reiner)
Alexa Stanford - Biography (Stanley Kramer)
James Szafran - Review of Reviews (It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World)
I have received many of your proposals for your final projects, and they all sound like great ideas. I look forward to reading your papers and seeing your short films. However, there are some of you who have not yet emailed your proposals to me. Please do so at some point this week. It is really in your own best interest to do so, because I can tell you if you're on the right track or not and even offer some suggestions if necessary.
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