From Humour to Hostility: How Comedy Has Changed

We laugh when someone is demeaned, but it is not really humour.

Kapil Sharma is about to make a comeback with The Kapil Sharma Show on Sony TV in April. While that may bring a smile to many of your faces, it makes me shudder. Why? For the simple reason that Comedy Nights, if you ask me, was sexist and misogynistic.

But his show is not the only problem, what really scares me is the fact that the idea of humour seems to be changing.

Sexist, racist and homophobic jokes have become so inherent in our culture and daily speech that most times we do not even think about how our casual jokes demean people.

Tragedy is Not Comedy

It’s not fun when someone is being degraded! These days, it looks like we can only laugh when someone is humiliated. Is our culture so petty that we enjoy hearing someone being belittled? It’s certainly not alright to equate tragedy with comedy, even if it is directed at someone else.

Hostile Humour

Jokes are supposed to be funny, not hostile. Anything that is hurtful is violence in one form or the other. While distinguishing between contentious jokes and non-contentious jokes, Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis very aptly described what hostile humour is.

Hostile humour is not really humour, but anger in disguise.

So anything that belittles, embarrasses, shames or degrades anyone is not humour but hatred.

Humour Based on Stereotypes

Jokes that are based on prejudices and that’s the worst kind of humour. The Santa Banta jokes that all of us enjoy are based on the notion that all Sikhs are naive and imbecilic. But appreciating and forwarding these jokes is not only hostility towards Sikhs but it also belittles them. For example,

Banta sent an SMS to his pregnant wife. Less than a minute later, the report came on his phone and he started dancing. The report said, ‘delivered’.

The Kapil Sharma Show  is based on the outrageous notion that women are subordinate to men, making his jokes utterly sexist.

How Does It Affect Us?

You might say that it is okay to pull someone’s leg for a few laughs, and these jokes should be taken in the right spirit. But consider this – sexist jokes actually encourage sexist behaviour. A research project led by Western Carolina University pointed out that exposure to sexist humour can lead to hostile feelings and discrimination against women.

So, when Shin Chan talks to his mom in an aggressive manner, or when he is seen enjoying luscious pictures of women, it is assumed by the children of that age that it is totally okay to behave like this.

What Is Humour, Really?

Humour is one of the most serious tools we have for dealing with impossible situations.

Erica Jong

Humour is something that can lighten up our mood after a long and tiring day. It also helps criticise the ills of the society WITHOUT degrading anyone.

Satire, irony and observational humour are types of humour just that point out the absurdity of the situation without any hostility.

RK Laxman, who most of us know for his hilarious cartoon, The Common Man, is the perfect example of observational humour. He had a knack for criticising society and making people think about sensitive issues without needing to offend anyone.

Johnathan Swift’s, A Modest Proposal, was satire at its best. Proposing cannibalism to ensure that there were no poor children left to die opened up our eyes to a broader problem of heartless attitudes towards the poor, and encouraged us to change our entire outlook towards society.

Charlie Chaplin used slapstick comedy to ridicule the insensitive growth of industrialisation, imperialism and economic depression.

What we really need now is to be funny without being insulting. We need cartoons like Tom and Jerry and Powerpuff Girls that had the knack of making us roll on the floor in laughter, even when we grew up. We want stand-up comics like Aditi Mittal or Tanmay Bhat, who can hold a mirror to the ills of the society and make us strive for a better one. What we desperately need are television shows like Office Office and Sarabhai vs Sarabhai that were enjoyable even with the whole family. What we need is humour, not hostility.