Our woke world can’t take a joke, and it’s no laughing matter

Perhaps the single greatest social mistake the West has made in recent years is to accept that humour should take a back seat to kindness. In the name of sympathetic kindness we have deprived ourselves of something much more important: a way to reach each other across the divide of our differences. In short, to build empathy.

Researchers believe that laughter has acted as the social glue which allowed us to come together into increasingly complex societies. It promotes co-operation, can dampen aggression and overcome conflict. In fact, laughter has been such a successful evolutionary strategy that we learnt to find it sexy. The more you laugh, the more you … well, let’s just say it’s a popular selection criterion on dating apps these days.

Not always a laughing matter: comedian Dave Chapelle was cancelled for making a point. Credit: Scott Strazzante/San Francisco Chronicle via AP

We could sure use a tool that dampens aggression and overcomes conflict right now, as wars rage around the world, fraying social cohesion in Australia. In particular, we could use a bit of that warm, ribbing, teasing humour that made Australia arguably the world’s most successfully integrated multicultural society. The fire under our melting pot was laughter.

As Australia grows more diverse, both by migration and identification, we need more than ever to joke our way together. The bigger the pot, the more fire we need. And yet, at exactly the moment we need it most, laughter has never been more out of vogue.

To find out how this ends, look to any other anglophone country. The United States, where they still can’t figure out irony, sometimes looks to be on the brink of civil war. The United Kingdom, which once had a vibrant comedy culture, is reduced to Keep Calm and Drink Tea memes. Social tension in Britain is escalating. In the place of jokes, they literally have lists of the things you must not find funny.

Russian-British political commentator and comedian Konstantin Kisin has been handed such a list. Kisin was performing on the UK comedy circuit when he was asked to sign a contract before appearing, unpaid, at a charity event. The contract stipulated that “all topics must be presented in a way that is respectful and kind”. The contract went on to warn that the organiser had a no-tolerance policy on “racism, sexism, classism, ageism, ableism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia or anti-religion or anti-atheism”.

But of course, what an “ism”, “anti”, or “ia” is, these days, is up to a militia of offence-takers who scour speech on their own and other’s behalf. A list of unkindnesses like the one in the contract recognises no distinction between the individual and the idea.

Being able to lampoon ideas is vital. Ideas kill, or at least people kill for them. They are resistant to argument, but vulnerable to humour. Laughter can kill ideas. It was crucial to the fall of the Soviet Union. Sure, some people might feel offended when their ideas are lampooned. After all, there is nothing more unkind to an emperor than telling him he has no clothes.

Comedians such as Dave Chappelle have pushed back against explicit and implicit lists of restrictions by developing a new type of comedy set, which deliberately breaks taboos while weaving something I like to think of as a “stand-up opinion article”. The “comedy” is often not funny, as such.

Chappelle, in particular, tends to begin a set with some awkward jokes with ambiguous intent – they feel a little bit offensive, maybe off-key, seemingly just there for cheap laughs. Then, in the course of a set, which can at first appear to jump randomly from one thought to the next, he takes the audience on a logical journey, arriving finally at a conclusion that takes your breath away – not necessarily from laughing.

Chappelle was “cancelled” – whatever that word now means – for “jokes” about trans people. In fact, his Netflix hit The Closer finishes on a devastating point: in the eagerness to embrace diversity, his thesis goes, the losers are black people, who have been pushed aside once again by white people, this time sporting a spicy sexual identity.

Russians have had plenty of opportunity to perfect the little jokes that create a chink of freedom and begin to destabilise a regime. In word and even in music. The composer Shostakovich famously snuck coded messages of dissent into his music, mocking Stalin’s antisemitism by threading phrases of Jewish folk tunes into compositions that made their way past the censors. Performed in the presence of the clueless secret police, these satires and codas let others know they weren’t alone in hating the regime that oppressed them.

Konstantin Kisin, having left that environment, has little time for the subterfuges of Shostakovich or Chappelle: he wants to exercise the free speech for which the West prides itself. That has made him a darling of the right, as he pokes fun at repressive “woke” shibboleths. He is in Australia right now, speaking at events hosted by the Centre for Independent Studies.

Konstantin Kisin, a performer for whom comedy is too serious to be taken – or delivered – lightly.Credit: YouTube

It is worth watching what will happen because, in this tour, we’ll find out if the right can still take a joke itself. Kisin has recently begun to take aim at what he calls the “woke right”, essentially the Trumpist set who hate “elites” so much that they have joined the far left in hating their own country. In particular, Kisin has mocked aspects of Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin from the perspective of someone who’s lived in the country and speaks the autocrat’s language.

This will be a great test of whether humour can be resurrected, or whether we are now only able to laugh at each other and not ourselves. If the right can still laugh at itself, perhaps the progressives, too, can eek out the odd giggle. It’s a bit urgent at this point, I’d say. If we lose humour, the joke will be on all of us.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director at award-winning campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.