Dark humor
What makes us laugh when faced with the unlaughable? Black comedy is the audacious art of finding humor in life's darkest corners, challenging our comfort zones and confronting the gravest taboos. It's a style that dares to provoke discomfort, serious thought, and amusement all at once, inviting us to explore the boundaries of what society deems acceptable for laughter. Black comedy is a distinct style that deliberately tackles taboo and painful subjects, often blurring the lines between humor and discomfort. Its formal recognition emerged from Surrealist theory, but the practice of dark humor has deep historical and psychological roots, serving as a powerful coping mechanism. Engaging with black comedy can reveal surprising insights into human resilience, social critique, and even cognitive traits like intelligence and emotional stability.
AI Summary
What makes us laugh when faced with the unlaughable? Black comedy is the audacious art of finding humor in life's darkest corners, challenging our comfort zones and confronting the gravest taboos. It's a style that dares to provoke discomfort, serious thought, and amusement all at once, inviting us to explore the boundaries of what society deems acceptable for laughter.
- Black comedy is a distinct style that deliberately tackles taboo and painful subjects, often blurring the lines between humor and discomfort.
- Its formal recognition emerged from Surrealist theory, but the practice of dark humor has deep historical and psychological roots, serving as a powerful coping mechanism.
- Engaging with black comedy can reveal surprising insights into human resilience, social critique, and even cognitive traits like intelligence and emotional stability.
What is Black Comedy?
At its heart, black comedy—also known as dark humor, gallows humor, or morbid humor—is about making light of subjects typically considered off-limits. We're talking about topics usually deemed serious, painful, or downright taboo, from death and disease to war and suffering.
Unlike 'blue comedy' which focuses on sex or bodily functions, black comedy delves into the darker side of human experience. While all dark humor is a form of black comedy, 'gallows humor' is a more specific term, often referring to humor born directly from dire, life-threatening situations or death itself. It's humor that dances on the edge of the grotesque.
Believe it or not, this provocative style isn't new. Literary critics trace its lineage back to ancient Greece, with playwrights like Aristophanes already weaving dark, cynical threads into their comedies thousands of years ago. It seems humanity has always had a fascination with finding light in the shadows.
The Birth of a Term
The specific term 'black humor' — or 'humour noir' as it was originally called — was coined in 1935 by the French Surrealist theorist, André Breton. He was deeply fascinated by the power of the subconscious and the irrational, and saw something profound in this type of comedy.
Breton's inspiration came from interpreting the writings of the Irish satirist, Jonathan Swift. He recognized a unique form of comedy and satire where laughter sprung from deep cynicism and skepticism, often revolving around the grim realities of death and despair. Swift's razor-sharp wit was clearly ahead of its time.
In his seminal 1940 work, 'Anthology of Black Humor,' Breton formally credited Swift as the originator, highlighting works like 'A Modest Proposal'—where Swift satirically suggests the impoverished Irish sell their children as food to the wealthy. This chillingly absurd idea perfectly encapsulates black humor's power to shock and make a serious point.
Breton’s anthology showcased various forms, from humor born of a victim's plight (gallows humor in its purest form) to comedy that mocks the victim, trivializing their suffering to critique societal indifference, much like the controversial writings of the Marquis de Sade.
A Darkly Comic History
Black comedy isn't just found in books. Legend has it that the Christian martyr Saint Lawrence, while being roasted alive on a grill, quipped to his executioners, 'Turn me over, I'm done on this side.' A truly dark joke in the face of unimaginable suffering, earning him the unofficial title of patron saint of comedians.
In America, the concept gained wider attention with Bruce Jay Friedman's 1965 anthology, 'Black Humor.' This book helped define a new literary genre, bringing authors like Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, and Thomas Pynchon to the forefront as masters of the macabre laugh.
Other notable writers such as Evelyn Waugh, Roald Dahl, and even musicians like Warren Zevon, have been celebrated for their contributions to black comedy, proving that the style spans genres and mediums. It's a pervasive undercurrent in creative expression.
Even stand-up comedians like Lenny Bruce, initially labeled as using 'sick comedy' in the late 1950s for his confrontational and taboo-breaking routines, later found their work reclassified under the broader, more academic umbrella of black comedy. It was simply a different way of understanding the same provocative truth.
Why We Laugh in the Dark
So, why do we engage with such humor? Sigmund Freud, in his 1927 essay 'Humor,' offered an intriguing perspective. He argued that humor allows the ego to refuse to be distressed by reality's provocations, insisting it can't be affected by external traumas. It transforms pain into a source of pleasure.
This 'relieving' aspect is powerful, but context is everything. As scholar Paul Lewis noted, whether a dark joke truly offers solace can depend on who is telling it — the person facing the threat, or an observer. The same joke can be empowering or deeply insensitive based on its source.
Black comedy also serves a vital social function. It can strengthen the morale of the oppressed, allowing them to collectively process and even mock their plight. Conversely, it can undermine the morale of oppressors by exposing their vulnerabilities or absurdities. As Wylie Sypher put it, 'to be able to laugh at evil and error means we have surmounted them.'
This kind of humor is a natural human instinct, seen in expressions like the German 'Galgenhumor' (gallows humor) or the French 'rire jaune' (literally 'yellow laughter,' implying a forced or grim chuckle). It's a universal language for navigating discomfort.
In professions where individuals routinely face dark or tragic subject matter — think police officers, firefighters, military personnel, doctors, or funeral directors — black comedy is an acknowledged coping mechanism. It provides a vital pressure release, but always with the understanding that such jokes are best shared among those who truly understand the context.
Perhaps most fascinating is a 2017 study published in 'Cognitive Processing.' It suggested that people who appreciate dark humor might possess higher IQs, show lower aggression, and be more effective at resisting negative feelings. So, next time you chuckle at a dark joke, you might just be exercising your brain!
Article
Dark humor
A cemetery with a "Dead End" sign, creating a play on words
Dark humor, also known as dark comedy, black comedy, black humor, bleak comedy, gallows humor or morbid humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discuss, aiming to provoke discomfort, serious thought, and amusement for their audience.
Dark humor differs from blue comedy—which focuses more on topics such as nudity, sex, and body fluids—and from obscenity. Additionally, whereas the term dark humor is a relatively broad term covering humor relating to many serious subjects, gallows humor tends to be used more specifically in relation to death, or situations that are reminiscent of dying. Dark humor can occasionally be related to the grotesque genre. Literary critics have associated black comedy and black humor with authors as early as the ancient Greeks with Aristophanes.
Etymology
Dark humor
The term black humor (from the French humour noir) was coined by the Surrealist theorist André Breton in 1935 while interpreting the writings of Jonathan Swift. Breton's preference was to identify some of Swift's writings as a subgenre of comedy and satire in which laughter arises from cynicism and skepticism, often relying on topics such as death.
Breton coined the term for his 1940 book Anthology of Black Humor (Anthologie de l'humour noir), in which he credited Jonathan Swift as the originator of black humor and gallows humor (particularly in his pieces Directions to Servants (1731), A Modest Proposal (1729), Meditation Upon a Broomstick (1710), and in a few aphorisms). In his book, Breton included excerpts from 45 other writers, including both examples in which the wit arises from a victim with which the audience empathizes, as is more typical in the tradition of gallows humor, and examples in which the comedy is used to mock the victim. In the last cases, the victim's suffering is trivialized, which leads to sympathizing with the victimizer, as analogously found in the social commentary and social criticism of the writings of, for instance, the Marquis de Sade.
History
Dark humor
Christian martyr Saint Lawrence became the patron saint of comedians because he made a dark joke during his own execution. He was sentenced to death via being burned alive on a rotisserie, during which he is said to have quipped, "Turn me over. I'm done on this side." He is also the patron saint of chefs because of this.
Great Britain and the United States
Among the first American writers who employed black comedy in their works were Nathanael West and Vladimir Nabokov. The concept of black humor first came to nationwide attention after the publication of a 1965 mass-market paperback titled Black Humor, edited by Bruce Jay Friedman. The paperback was one of the first American anthologies devoted to the concept of black humor as a literary genre. With the paperback, Friedman labeled as "black humorists" a variety of authors, such as J. P. Donleavy, Edward Albee, Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Vladimir Nabokov, Bruce Jay Friedman himself, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
Among the recent writers suggested as black humorists by journalists and literary critics are Roald Dahl, Kurt Vonnegut, Warren Zevon, Christopher Durang, Philip Roth, and Veikko Huovinen. Evelyn Waugh has been called "the first contemporary writer to produce the sustained black comic novel." The motive for applying the label black humorist to the writers cited above is that they have written novels, poems, stories, plays, and songs in which profound or horrific events were portrayed in a comic manner. Lenny Bruce, who since the late 1950s has been labeled as using "sick comedy" by mainstream journalists, has also been labeled with "black comedy".
Nature and functions
Dark humor
An 1825 New York newspaper used a gallows humor "story" of a criminal whose last wish before being beheaded was to go nine-pin bowling, using his own severed head on his final roll, and taking delight in having achieved a strike.
Sigmund Freud, in his 1927 essay Humor (Der Humor), although not mentioning 'black humor' specifically, cites a literal instance of gallows humor before writing: "The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure." Some other sociologists elaborated this concept further. Paul Lewis warns that this "relieving" aspect of gallows jokes depends on the context of the joke: whether the joke is being told by the threatened person themselves or by someone else.
Black comedy has the social effect of strengthening the morale of the oppressed and undermines the morale of the oppressors. According to Wylie Sypher, "to be able to laugh at evil and error means we have surmounted them."
Black comedy is a natural human instinct and examples of it can be found in stories from antiquity. Its use was widespread in middle Europe, from where it was imported to the United States. It is rendered with the German expression Galgenhumor (cynical last words before getting hanged). The concept of gallows humor is comparable to the French expression rire jaune (lit. yellow laughing), which also has a Germanic equivalent in the Belgian Dutch expression groen lachen (lit. green laughing).
Italian comedian Daniele Luttazzi discussed gallows humor focusing on the particular type of laughter that it arouses (risata verde or groen lachen), and said that grotesque satire, as opposed to ironic satire, is the one that most often arouses this kind of laughter. In the Weimar era Kabaretts, this genre was particularly common, and according to Luttazzi, Karl Valentin and Karl Kraus were the major masters of it.
Black comedy is common in professions and environments where workers routinely have to deal with dark subject matter. This includes police officers, firefighters, ambulance crews, military personnel, journalists, lawyers, and funeral directors, where it is an acknowledged coping mechanism. It has been encouraged within these professions to make note of the context in which these jokes are told, as outsiders may not react the way that those with mutual knowledge do.
A 2017 study published in the journal Cognitive Processing concludes that people who appreciate dark humor "may have higher IQs, show lower aggression, and resist negative feelings more effectively than people who turn up their noses at it."