Page 68 - The Language of Humour

‘MY MOTHER-IN-LAW…’ 55
to listen to someone called Tracey explain how this makes her feel about
her identity, to sense that language can be a powerful manipulator of
attitudes.
In the previous extension activity you may have found jokes about
gays, blacks, ugly women, women in general, all fat people, people with
disabilities. There are many examples to support the theory that the
butts of humour are often social groups who have less power and
prestige.
Does this mean that those who laugh at the jokes agree that they are
inferior or a threat? The stance of the tellee influences the response to
this type of humour. Many people feel that racist jokes, for example, are
offensive and do not laugh. But defence can come from surprising
quarters. Roy Chubby Brown is known for his ‘unremitting filth’ and is
censored to the extent that his act is never broadcast on television:

Somebody told me not to go and see Schindler’s List without a
box of tissues. Schindler’s List? I couldn’t find anything to wank
over in Schindler’s List

Although it is not a joke about the Holocaust, many people would find
it offensive to combine a reference to the Final Solution with a gag
about masturbation. Yet Harold Jacobson says: ‘I, a Jew, feel more
threatened by those who would wipe out ethnic jokes than by those who
unthinkingly make them.’ Certainly comedians like Bernard Manning
claim not to be racist. Jacobson also suggests that the humour and
laughter at a Manning performance is a self-reflective laughter about
racism and sexism itself. This brings in an evaluation of the intention of
the joke teller. An apparently sexist joke like ‘Why do women have
small feet? So they can get closer to the sink.’, can sometimes be told
with an element of mocking allusion to that very genre. However this
does not guarantee that the tellee perceives the joke in the way it was
intended. Johnny Speight discovered that his own ironic portrayal of Alf
Garnett in Til Death Us Do Part was also enjoyed by people who held
the racist attitudes expressed by the character; in other words the irony
was not perceived.

Activity with text
Identify the butts in the following two extracts. How is the humour
constructed? Is it possible to comment on the stance, or intention, of the