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The corrective social function of performative comedy demonstrated on two instances

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Robin Tapley at Thompson Rivers University
Robin Tapley
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Abstract

I argue that performative comedy can be used to apply the corrective social function of humour to achieve a new awareness in people regarding social issues, in this case racism. Comedians are usually marginalized in some way. Some sort of Otherness characterizes their view of the world. Standing in the margins gives comics a unique view of the world, and in particular, a special view of what made them other. Performative comedy is comedians performing their marginalization. They, by being marginalized, are socially licenced to subvert and critique social norms. When they perform these subversions for us, and make us laugh, usually at ourselves, our laughter is revelatory. What is revealed is that subverted or critiqued norm. To see this social ill through the comic's eyes is revelatory. We see with new eyes. Our laughter signals the change to new thinking, the corrected thinking. Laughter is special in that we only laugh at comedy we think is true in some sense.
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Vol.:(0123456789)
SN Soc Sci (2021) 1:76
https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-021-00074-0
ORIGINAL PAPER
The corrective social function ofperformative comedy
demonstrated ontwo instances
RobinTapley1
Received: 9 August 2020 / Accepted: 31 January 2021 / Published online: 1 March 2021
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG part of Springer Nature 2021
Abstract
I argue that performative comedy can be used to apply the corrective social function
of humour to achieve a new awareness in people regarding social issues, in this case
racism. Comedians are usually marginalized in some way. Some sort of Otherness
characterizes their view of the world. Standing in the margins gives comics a unique
view of the world, and in particular, a special view of what made them other. Per-
formative comedy is comedians performing their marginalization. They, by being
marginalized, are socially licenced to subvert and critique social norms. When they
perform these subversions for us, and make us laugh, usually at ourselves, our laugh-
ter is revelatory. What is revealed is that subverted or critiqued norm. To see this
social ill through the comic’s eyes is revelatory. We see with new eyes. Our laughter
signals the change to new thinking, the corrected thinking. Laughter is special in
that we only laugh at comedy we think is true in some sense.
Keywords Performative comedy· Comedy· Humour· Marginality· Corrective
humour· Social function· Function of humour
Introduction
Humour, laughing, and comedy are inherently social. We rarely laugh alone. Moreo-
ver, humour and laughing are uniquely human. While humour and comedy serve
many functions and show up in our lives in many ways, I want to focus on one
particular function of comedy: the corrective social function. It is well known in
humour studies that humour can serve to correct someone’s behaviour. A jest made
in good fun about someone’s bad acts will likely bring the person to heel and do it
more quickly and with better results than a serious remark. I am talking, however,
about using a corrective function on a social level for social problems. I am suggest-
ing that we might employ this corrective function of comedy on social ills such as
* Robin Tapley
rtapley@tru.ca
1 Thompson Rivers University, Philosophy, Kamloops, BC, Canada
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
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