Is Abuse Ever Funny?
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
The subject of abuse has long existed in comedy. A quintessential example of this is the cult classic The Honeymooners (1955–1956), where the character Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) repeatedly threatens to hit his wife Alice Kramden (Pert Kelton/Audrey Meadows). "One of these days, Alice," he says, to a laugh track, "Pow! Right in the kisser!" The implication is that one day his wife will frustrate him so deeply that he will punch her in the face.
The Honeymooners isn't an anomaly. There have been countless other examples in the cultural zeitgeist (see Bewitched, King of Queens, etc.) that often frame the prospect of abuse, or abuse itself, as a punchline to a joke. The humor from these properties comes from our society's willingness to laugh in the face of this trauma.
As we have progressed, however, this type of humor has started to come increasingly under fire. "To rationalize a punch in "the kisser" is to deny a crime," bemoaned an NYT Opinion piece in 1987, arguing that such humor normalized and affirmed real-world behavior. Critics who oppose this type of humor aren't just claiming these jokes aren't funny but that this humor does genuine harm to our society.
The divide between those who do and do not find these types of jokes funny reveals an interesting fault-line, not only in the world of humor, but how we perceive the nature of harm itself, and where we consider the limits of our empathy to be.
A recent example of a comedian laughing at potential abuse comes from Dave Chappelle's 2021 special The Closer. This special was controversial for many reasons (transphobia, misogyny, anti-Semitism, etc.), but something that did not receive too much attention was a joke he made near the beginning of his set about a preacher molesting a child, saying: "Last time I can remember feeling dirty like that, man I must have been a little boy. I was being molested by a preacher. But don't feel bad for me. I liked it."
This joke highlights a popular theory of how comedy is supposed to work — incongruity theory, or how some object or event we perceive violates our normal expectations. In the Chappelle example, the expectation is that this character will be scarred from being molested by the preacher, but the reality is that he enjoyed it (let's put a pin on the morality of this framing for now). Dave Chappelle is trying to get us to laugh at this incongruity between what we are supposed to be feeling in this situation (i.e., awkwardness, shame, etc.) and the recognition that everything is allegedly "okay" (i.e., this character is not in any danger).
Incongruity, though, isn't the only reason that we laugh. We do so for a variety of different reasons. Sometimes we laugh out of social obligation or due to immense stress (see Tanganyika laughter epidemic). We laugh when we are playing or having fun, or when we learn that some problem is not as serious as we first imagined (see Benign Violation Theory). Other times we laugh out of a sense of superiority to others, where we gain an almost visceral satisfaction in making fun of them.
This last point is where Dave Chappelle’s molestation joke also comes into play. We are not only laughing at the incongruity but at the taboo nature of the subject itself. It’s in the same vein as telling a racist joke or using ableist language such as the r-word. We are not normally meant to delight in mocking people in horrible situations, and this joke allows some viewers to transgress that boundary— to revel in the high we get from punching at a target.
In many comedic properties, we find a lot of jokes where the punchline is that abuse has happened — a subject that normally demands reverence and tact, but in these circumstances, is treated with glee. For example, the Netflix show Big Mouth (2017 — present) has two characters — Andrew Glouberman (John Mulaney) and "Jay" Bilzerian (Jason Mantzoukas) — who come from abusive homes. Often a punchline to a joke is that their parents and siblings do horrible things to them. Take this joke where Jay learns that his house was being fumigated while he was asleep.
Man: Holy shit there's a kid in there.
Woman: What? The whole family should be on spring break.
Jay: They Home Alone’d me? Hah! Classic Bilzerian move. Did they, uh…did they say when they’d be back.
That's it. That's the punchline. The neglect is the joke.
In this subgenre of humor, abuse does not always come from family members. Another common trope in TV is the abusive roommate trope, where a naive ingenue finds themselves sharing a living space with someone who routinely takes advantage of them. We, as the viewer, are meant to find this exchange amusing. The character Titus Andromedon (Tituss Burgess) from the Netflix show Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015–2019) is a great example. Titus repeatedly tries to get the protagonist Kimmy Schmidt (Ellie Kemper) to give him money or do chores on his behalf. We are meant to laugh at the cruelty of these interactions and see them as funny. We aren't meant to be horrified by his toxicity because that would pressure Kimmy to remove Titus from her life, and it would be hard to perceive him as light and fun in that situation.
Cruelty is a huge part of humor, in general, and everyone takes part in it in some capacity. If you have ever found amusement in a homophobic politician getting caught with a male escort, a COVID-denier catching COVID, or a "horrible" person getting their comeuppance in some way, then you have been susceptible to this type of humor. You are taking pleasure in the fact that a bad thing has happened to someone who has violated your morality, and how you, forever briefly, feel superior to them.
This reality is where the "punching up" vs. "punching down" debate comes from. People are not fighting over whether or not we should direct mean-spiritedness at all in comedy, but which person or group we should target. Some argue that when crafting cruel jokes, comedians should reserve their ire only at groups and people that are more privileged (i.e., "punching up"). In contrast, others claim that they have a right to target any category of people, including those most hurt in our society. Critics pejoratively refer to this action as "punching down." There are nuances, of course, but this is the divide in a nutshell.
The problem with the "I should be able to joke about whatever I want" crowd is that, when it comes to portraying abuse humorously, it is often very difficult to do. While not impossible (more on this later), this challenge is because evolving norms require us to empathize with abuse victims, and talking about abuse empathetically means recognizing the pain and horror surrounding it.
This dilemma is highlighted in Hannah Gadsby's special Nannette, where she talks about how using traumatic events in her set often has her papering over her own pain for the amusement of others. Earlier in the special, she jokes about how she was flirting with a girl, only for her boyfriend to get defensive. The punchline is a bit of self-deprecating humor. The girl says, "whoa, stop it! It's a girl," and this is enough to get the guy to back off because he "doesn't hit women." Yet, that presentation wasn't the whole truth. As she goes on to say later:
“Do you remember that story about a young man who almost beat me up…In order to balance the tension in that story. I couldn’t tell that story as it actually happened. Because I couldn’t tell the part of the story where that man realized his mistake and he came back. And he said, ‘oh no I get it. You’re a lady f@ggot. I’m allowed to beat the shit out of you,’ and he did. He beat the shit out of me and nobody stopped him. ”
When we start to tell abusive stories as they happened, it makes it very difficult to find them funny.
Another example of this is the show Kevin Can F**k Himself (2021). The series is about a woman named Allison Devine-McRoberts (Annie Murphy), who is in an abusive relationship. All the scenes with her husband are framed as a classic sitcom like The Honeymooners or King of Queens. When she isn't with him, we move to a single-camera setup. The show tonally shifts to a psychological drama that reflects her own inner turmoil. The sitcom scenes are no longer perceived as funny, but reframed in a new, horrifying light— a move that forces the viewer to recontextualize similar sitcoms and question if they were ever truly funny.
And this brings us to the ultimate problem of what often happens when we use abuse itself as a punchline — it is frequently dehumanizing. If you have any empathy for the group being targeted, as new norms tell us we should, these jokes don't come off as funny at all but cruel.
When you trivialize abuse and turn the act itself into a punchline, what you are asking your audience to do is remove their empathy for the victims of that act. The Dave Chappelle joke about molestation asks the viewer to set aside everything they have heard about molestation victims in real life to laugh at them. Big Mouth is asking us to set aside how horrifying Jay's living experience is so we can appreciate the joke. The humor problematically becomes an excuse to dehumanize others.
All this being said, I'm afraid I actually have to disagree with the sentiment that you can "never" talk about abuse in comedy. The show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015–2019) manages to tackle abuse quite effectively, and it is, first and foremost, a comedy. However, the way this property tackles this subject matter is by giving us deep empathy for the protagonist Rebecca Bunch (Rachel Bloom), and how that abuse has impacted her life. It's not that we are never laughing at Rebecca's antics, but we are doing so from a place of understanding and compassion. She is a well-rounded character who also happens to be "crazy." The show goes out of its way to tell the viewer that the abuse she suffered was not okay, while also destigmatizing her mental illness Borderline Personality Disorder.
You don't need to be an abuse victim to make these kinds of jokes, but it quite frankly requires work to do this type of humor effectively. The ability to broach this subject without lived experience is the mark of a very skilled comedian—someone who has put the time and research to understand something beyond a surface-level perspective. It's frustrating to see many comedians complain about how "they can't make certain jokes anymore" when they are just not putting in the work to update their humor. The subjective line concerning who you can target unempathetically in a joke has changed (and is continuing to shift), and rather than accept this fact, they are weirdly doubling down on the way things used to be.
But comedy is always changing. We are less than a decade removed from the idea that "acting" black, gay, or some other marginalized identity is somehow funny (and some people have still not moved on from this). The country's standup scene arguably had its start in Blackfaced Minstrelsy. The reality that this "humor" is no longer acceptable is a good thing because it means our collective empathy for Black people has (somewhat) expanded — something I think few would openly dismiss.
The line has shifted, and it's a comedian's job to stand directly on top of it. When it comes to the subject of abuse in comedy, it's not as simple as "yes" or "no," but how. Do you have empathy for the victim of that action, or are you making them into a dehumanizing caricature?
Because one of these is no laughing matter.