Weaponized Humour

By Jordan Barrera

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Karyn Buxman believes satire is empowering. Humour, she says, can be a tool and a weapon.

Buxman shows people how humour can be used to take back control of a situation. She is the former president of the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor, which teaches members to use humour in a healthy way. She is now a public speaker and an author.

She believes humour allows for emotional detachment from a situation. Humour is, for most, based on pain and discomfort.

“For some people who feel disempowered or oppressed and stressed out by everything that’s going on, to be able to laugh at it more or less says, ‘You know what? You don’t got me, I got you,’” Buxman says.

She says humour can help cope with different levels of stress. From everyday events like a traffic jam, to more taxing issues, like troubling political decisions, humour can be useful.

Emerald Bensadoun, the satirical news editor of The Eyeopener, says satire is both a constructive and humorous outlet. Laughter, she says, can help shed stress from personal and world issues and find new ways to analyze a topic.

“You can use it to explain a truth that you wouldn’t necessarily be able to do in a regular style of reporting,” she says. “I hope that our readers learn that it’s okay to laugh at things and that you can poke fun without being offensive.”

Bensadoun says people tend to be overly serious. She says satire is a way to venture new territory and show new perspectives through comedy.

Buxman sees comedy as a way to create healthy emotional distance. She says one reason a person may not find something funny is emotional attachment to the topic. The humour may be lost on a viewer if they cannot emotionally detach. They may even be annoyed by the material.

Peter McGraw is an associate marketing professor at the University of Colorado. He is also the co-author of The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny. His book explores “Benign Violation Theory,” a concept of humour. According to the theory, when an unpleasant situation is seen as harmless, it becomes humorous. McGraw believes that for anything to be funny, it must consist of both elements.

McGraw used comedian Tig Notaro as an example. She performed a set about her cancer diagnosis, which was well received. McGraw says what made the audience okay with laughing at her set was that she kept saying it was okay. Without her assurance, he believes the set would not have landed.

“Making jokes about things that are tragic in your life can change how bad that thing is. When you think of that thing as less bad, it makes it easier to make jokes about it,” McGraw says.

Rod Martin, a retired university professor, specializes in the psychology of humour. He explored this topic in his book, The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative Approach. Martin says there is a difference between humours. He says self-deprecating humour can be based in self-worth, while other forms of humour can come from self-hatred. He cites Gordon Allport, who writes that the ability to laugh at one’s own flaws can lead to a path of improvement.

Buxman says to “listen behind the laughter,” since humour is often used as a tool to express emotion.

When someone makes a joke about dark topics, such as suicide, Buxman says the teller can retract the comment when they don’t get the right reaction. In these instances, they may lie and say they were only kidding.

“That’s just somebody throwing in a little bait to see if anyone cares,” she says.

Buxman says nurses generally joke about morbid topics like death or dismemberment because it is part of their daily lives. The same material may be unfunny or shocking to a technician.

Buxman says comedians and people who regularly use humour are better able to emotionally detach. When the humour doesn’t reflect a person’s usual behaviour, she says that's when something deeper is not right.

“If you’re using humour and that’s not authentic to who you are, then others who know you would sense that,” she says.