Crisis Comedy
By Michael P. Branch
Things aren’t so bad, really. I’ve been in quarantine for eight months with two teenagers, an experience that has featured endearing moments straight out of a Frank Capra film, but has at times compelled me to get in touch with my inner Jack Torrance. As the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 approaches a quarter million, I’m already nostalgic for June, when I published an essay in which I wrote movingly of the 100,000th American to succumb to the disease. Calls for a reckoning with our nation’s failed ambition to achieve racial equality have driven people to the streets, where some have been teargassed simply for exercising their first amendment rights. Meanwhile, global climate change—the greatest existential threat humanity has ever faced—proceeds apace, with some leaders insisting blindly that this looming catastrophe is a “hoax.” As I write this, we’re still sorting through the aftermath of a divisive and tumultuous presidential election. And the one thing keeping me sane—hiking the hills of northern Nevada’s spectacular, ecotonal montane-desert landscape—has until recently been rendered impossible by a month of choking smoke drifting this way from the apocalypse that is the worst wildfire season in California history.
It goes without saying that all this makes me want to tell you a few jokes.
1. What do you call an introverted teenager? A quaranteen.
2. Why did the chicken cross the road? Because the chicken behind it didn’t know how to social distance properly.
3. Dark humor is like racial equality. Not everyone gets it.
4. How many climate change deniers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? What are you talking about? This bulb is fine!
5. Only you can stop forest fires, because Smokey the Bear has been furloughed.
You may or may not find these jokes funny, but for me each one offers a small, powerful observation about the problems I see around me—each delivers a searing bit of social commentary packaged in a way that also provides the momentary relief of a smile or chuckle. More than anything else, I’ve found that living through this challenging time has been marked by a struggle to hold on to my sense of humor. What can humor do for us during a period of great personal, national, or global difficulty?
To begin with, humor is universal to the human experience. Cultures existing in different times and places have shown wide variation in almost every aspect of communal life: how they eat, worship, or play, how they celebrate birth, marriage, or death. Despite these meaningful differences, no one has yet identified a culture that lacks humor, and many evolutionary biologists and cognitive psychologists posit that this is so because humor is fundamental to who we are as a species. Comedy isn’t simply a form of escapism or a superficial relief from our difficulties; the evidence suggests that humor is a survival mechanism that has been selected for over millennia.
There is, in fact, a substantial body of scientific evidence demonstrating the myriad ways in which humor benefits us, both individually and collectively. In addition to having positive emotional and psychological effects that help us to cope with the many challenges life presents, humor has physiological benefits as well. Laughing raises the heart rate and pulmonary ventilation, increases brain activity and alertness, stimulates the production of endorphins from the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, reduces the perception of pain, and enhances relaxation. Comedy also nurtures empathy because the appreciation of humor requires flexibility, acceptance, and often the capacity to forgive both ourselves and others. And humor has the power to bring people together, helping us to reexamine and rebuild our shared values and sense of common purpose, especially in times of turmoil. Humor can function as a social glue, creating cohesion where there might otherwise be conflict, and it is an effective way to communicate ideas while also providing pleasure—something we could all use a little more of these days. Like love, like hope, humor is fundamental to our humanity.
In the spring of 1871, Mark Twain wrote this to his publisher: “Do you know that for seven weeks I have not had my natural rest but have been a night-and-day sick-nurse to my wife? And am still—and shall be for two or three weeks longer—and yet must turn in now and write a damned humorous article.” Because I too do a great deal of humor writing, I have new sympathy for Twain, not only because he struggled with the illness and loss of his loved ones, but also because he was regularly forced to navigate that demanding modulation from the chaos, fatigue, and suffering of the real world to his important work as a humorist—work that lifted us up, even when he was down. It has never been more difficult for me to write humor than it has during the past eight months, but it has also never felt more vital, meaningful, and necessary.
Laughing in the face of trauma is not the moral equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns, because humor is a powerful agent of both resistance and resilience. As the work of many gifted political satirists of our own day makes clear, comedy is an effective means of exposing flaws in our culture’s values and practices. It can also function as a crucial mode of self-reflection and self-protection. The comic is a life-giving force, because comedy engenders resilience and helps us combat despair. I believe that the craft of humor is an essential element of the art of survival, because laughter is a tool for nurturing the hope without which our struggles would be excruciating.
So here is my final thought. Humor does have the power to strengthen our resolve. But to merit its grace we must also resolve not to lose our sense of humor, even—and especially—during these troubled times. For me, humor is a life raft amid the torrent of troubles we are experiencing in this remarkable moment: it may not be much, but I simply cannot afford to let go of it. And, speaking of resolve, yesterday I saw a book on how we can resolve 50% of our current problems. I bought two.
Photo/Eryn J. Branch.
Michael P. Branch, who is Foundation Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, has published nine books and more than 250 essays, articles, and reviews. His trilogy of humorous writing about life in the high desert includes the books Raising Wild (2016), Rants from the Hill (2017), and How to Cuss in Western (2018). Mike’s current book project, which is about the jackalope, will be published by Pegasus Books.
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