Laughing at the Pain

            It has occurred to me that in our culture there is a distinct link between humor and bullying. Or, rather, a lot of out humor comes from one form of bullying or another – and it just might be that this leads to bullying for the sake of humor.

            Let’s start with the most obvious one: slapstick. This is a type of humor based entirely around pain being caused to other people in humorous ways – such as accidentally getting struck from behind by someone carrying a long plank and getting pushed headfirst into a bucket of whitewash. Although a more modern version would be the videos of people accidentally hurting themselves that make up a large portion of the viral photos on the internet. We watch these things, and we laugh, believing it is harmless – either it was staged, and no one was really hurt, or it was some hurt to someone in the past and it wouldn’t have been posted on the internet if it wasn’t okay to laugh at them.

            Is it so harmless, though? We are witnessing pain, and laughing. More than that, we go on to share it with others – family, friends, children – and encourage them to laugh as well. It seems to me that this could very well desensitize people to the pain of others, and even encourage violence – because it’s funny. Especially when it happens to someone we think deserves it.

            Teasing is another one – it’s very common for people to playfully tease those they are close with. Again, it’s often harmless – or at least meant to be. But sometimes it goes too far. Sometimes the person being teased doesn’t even mention they’ve been hurt, so no one knows that it’s gone too far. Other times, the person says something and proceeds to get teased for having been hurt. We cause pain or embarrassment, then we laugh. It might not be so bad if we kept it to ourselves, but we then pass it on to the most impressionable people around us, who carry it on and spread it. Causing pain in certain ways then becomes synonymous with amusement, and leads to bullying.

            We can see more examples in the comedies we watch. We have shows that normalize making fun of certain cultures. How often do you see nerds being made fun of for being weird? How often do you see jocks being made fun of for being stupid? How often do you see mental illnesses being used for comic relief? And we take all of that back out into the world and spread it around – because it’s funny, and if it’s funny, it can’t really be bullying, can it? Meanwhile mental illness is stigmatized and people find themselves ostracised because of their interests.

            I think we all need to take a very good look at the things we find funny and consider, why are we laughing? More than that, we need to consider the harm that might be caused by passing this specific sense of humor on to younger generations – keeping in mind that they won’t necessarily understand the subtleties of the joke.

            Above all, we need to ask, is this humor, or is it bullying?

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