Forget Sentiments, What Purpose Does Dark Humour Serve?

This is a question I often ask myself.

Whether we are aware of it or not, whether we seek it or not, humour has always served a purpose. There is more to it than tickling the funny bone in us, bringing forth a volley of purely physical joy-inducing convulsions. Performative/performance humour, practiced by comics and writers, has always done something, sometimes literary and sometimes cognitive, sometimes direct and sometimes abstract - something we often can’t do without. At what point in our evolution did the human psyche feel the need for a funny bone? This is a question I often ask myself.

Over the last few years, I have doubled down on observing the placement and effect of humour in speech, both personal and political. As a writer of satire which is directed at the ridiculousness of groups, cultures and nation-states, it is my duty and my obsession to wonder why we respond strongly/differently to a form of speech, such as, political satire in times of political excess. The answer to this question comes very early on to any writer of such a form of literature. A writer uses satire to undermine the excesses and authoritarianism in people, structures, and institutions. When a personal/political theory takes itself too seriously and bans all criticism and ridicule, it is often and only by theatre and humour that such an antagonistic seriousness can be undermined. Think of it as tickling the brooding giant. As such, my efforts through the practice of writing and through this essay have been to get to the philosophical inquiry of the phenomenon of humour itself - the core nature of humour as performance and humour as satire.

Historically, humour has served a purpose and this has been observed in one form or another. Humour performs the fantastic role of undermining the human tendency to inflate its ego (which leads to brutishness, and authoritarianism), that of undermining political systems leaning towards authoritarianism/excesses declaring everything unfunny, disallowing discontent and dissent, and/or that of giving comedic relief to the lower and middle class - again helping undermine those in power, by killing the apparent monster in our heads. This is also perhaps why the rich brood so much. The idea behind sarcasm and satire here is that (which also works so well) once we can ridicule someone in power, we can cut to size the behemoth of their daunting image in our heads. This is a very important step in reclaiming our power, in taking the power away from those who hoard.

Whether looked at through a lens of evolution, or creationism, humour as a mechanism that exists in humans, finds in us a divine purpose, and without it, we would be incomplete. Hence, the need for humour in humans is nonnegotiable. When you are faced with a narcissist whose behaviour directly affects your wellbeing, or an untouchable patriarch, the right sarcasm from the right person with just the appropriate power dynamic might slowly and surely undermine the absurdity of their self centred-ness. If not that, at least the narcissist’s victim might find in themselves the resolve to not take them too seriously and see the mortality/ridiculousness of their behaviour. Sarcasm as a response to brutes, serves a purpose for the very same reason. It kicks from under them a certain pedestal.

A certain argument can be made that even dark humour serves to help individuals deal with trauma. The other day, I was watching a video of two people talking - both with extreme trauma and disabilities, and between the two of them, they were making what could be called dark jokes about each other’s predicament. They both understood what they were doing. There, dark humour helped deal with the enormity of their condition, the seriousness of their predicament. Here, it made sense, in a way bringing laughter and healing to them. I could see how dark humour could have a role to play in interpersonal relationships, and in those places where the context of people sharing the joke is similar. Add to that some limit of courtesy, and perhaps dark humour could actually have a role to play. Dark humour, as a performance by a stand-up comedian could extend its usage/purpose by humour-ising darkly a common, shared predicament of the people.

However, much like most of the entertainment in the modern world, the contemporary performance dark humour, shelled out for public consumption, is vestigial, parasitic, self-centered, done solely for its own benefit, and serves no purpose to the world, only ever serving to enable the performer, who is more often than not, precariously fragile himself.

There are people scouring the internet for news that they can capitalise on. Now imagine, your sibling passes away in some tragic manner - and it makes the news, and a few hours later, you find a comedian make a dark joke about it. Or, with these dead baby jokes which are aimed at particular deaths, imagine someone’s infant died. Do you think they would ever crack into a giggle if a joke is made about their dead baby’s dismembered body parts floating in a tub? And yet, disconnected from the subject of the trauma itself, the stage is set, hundreds if not thousands of miles away, where a crowd of wine-sipping individuals are guffawing with laughter at a joke made out of a tragedy that has nothing to do with them, that will never affect them.

Pray tell, dear reader, what stake do they have in this? About the comic himself, what dignity or bravery does he show by doing this, as opposed to humour and satire directed at power structures and nation states? What comedic relief does it bring to the audience? And if it does, if it does indeed make them laugh, and ease the troubles of their heart, what kind of people are these? The word is predatory.

This practice of dark humouring in our present times has been popularised by selling it as something necessary in our quest for a free world and free speech, and people are hence often shamed for not having a sense of humour if they do not “get” dark humour or find it unfunny. This chronic affinity to dark humour in our present times, especially and particularly in young men, seems to have developed as a reaction to the woke culture’s restrictions on speech that may be seen as triggering or insensitive, but has now gone too far. The truth of this situation is, this kind of humour is not humorous at all. In fact, this kind of humour which does very little to alleviate the pain of any party, is anti-humour, and does, always, induce pain to the people on whose backs this humour is made. This kind of humour fails to serve its primary purpose, both by practice and by history, and a person doing such a thing is either an idiot, or a brute.

I am telling you, as a writer of satire and having in the past been obsessed with turning every single speech into a clammy cauldron of sarcasm, that it is a disease. Back in college, when I was known for being snarky with my retorts, I loved the feeling. It started out, of course, with pointing out the absurdity in speech and before I knew it, I was making a “funny” remark out of everything. It was a disease of unrestricted impulses. And it was simply not funny; it was hurtful, and people were afraid of opening their mouths in front of me, lest I turned it into content - the only difference being that the content of those days was simply off social media. So much for free speech.

I truly believe that humour has persevered with the human race because it serves a purpose, which is both healing and emancipatory. Now you might wonder why dark humour has persisted then, and even popularised today. I think the reason is this - it continues and perseveres in our time because our world is filled with hollow industries which live for themselves and not for the human race, and not for each other. Such hollow self-serving industries always crumble violently, taking their world down with themselves. We are all living in a bubble inside a bubble inside a bubble, where the poor are not paid enough and the rich are paid too much, creating worlds of simulation in between where inflation goes to party. Our connections to each other have been severed by capitalist excesses, by door-deliveries and zomatoes which has somehow convinced us that we do not need each other because the means of production have been hidden from us to enable chronic consumption with no thought given to how things work in an increasingly complicated world, increasingly heading towards more and more inequality.

Now I dont know many dark humorists in flesh. Those I knew, I found to be hollow and hence unworthy of company. But there is one thing I can tell for sure: such dark humour brat comedians are very insecure and touchy in real life and the truth of their character is usually shown by a simple conversation which challenges their justification of such humour.

Modern dark humour, in my opinion as a fan of comedy, and as a writer of satire, is that it is simply self serving, ghastly, nasty, escapist, disgusting, and power enabling. It takes from the world and doesn’t give anything in return, and gives to those who could do with some deficit. This much is obvious to me, because most dark humourists of today (they are not really anything so I am using the term ‘humorist’ for the lack of a better term) are also hardcore right-wing, police loving (which is why it’s hilarious when they get arrested), policing loving, and in the case of India, Kashmir hating, often making jokes at the expense of the minorities, the dispossessed, the occupied, and the policed, furthering the caricaturising of the pain of people, and enabling the comedic-ElonMuskesque-fascism of 21st century.

For Kashmiri men who have grown to become fans of dark humour of the west, of the likes of India’s Got Latent, which is a cheap copy of an already cheap show, I ask you this: If dark humour is so democratic and such a marker of free speech, and if dark humour is such an antidote to fragility of human ego/snowflakes, how would you feel if a joke is made on the expense of a woman whose child was disappeared by the military, a woman who has been running barefoot year after year to find her child who disappeared 22 years ago? Do you think now would be a good time to make that joke? After all, hasn’t the tragedy somehow watered down with time? I want your sincere answer to this. If this makes you uneasy, then do tell me why a joke at the expense of grave tragedy of someone halfway across the world makes you want to laugh, and why you want to defend such speech. Do you think dark comedy will help this woman with catharsis? Do you think there is any world where “where is your son?” will be a funny thing to say? Do you even know what funny is?

Sometimes, most times, you can’t be a good person and laugh at dark jokes like these.

Dark humour does serve a purpose - it is self-serving.

Dark humour is anti-humour. Dark humour is cognitive dissonance. Degrading disgusting humour, which serves no purpose for the people, only ingratiates the comedian, who, under this practice achieves an almost godlike reputation. What bravery does the “artist” here exhibit in making a dark joke at some grieving person’s expense? Tell me, why should we praise such talent? Only a spoilt world like ours, a capitalist hell, disconnected from reality, living off fake utility, can afford to carry on a practice which serves no purpose for the upliftment of the humankind.