Dark humor: some laugh, some cry
Sunday, Dec 19th, 2010
When a man falls to his death off a 30-foot cliff into a river, it’s not funny.
When a man, who happens to own the multi-million dollar Segway Incorporated, falls to his death steering a Segway off a 30-foot cliff and into a river, it’s not funny either.
It’s hilarious.
As if it wasn’t embarrassing enough to die on humanity’s most ridiculous mode of transportation. The man owned Segway Incorporated. At least he’s not alive to feel the humiliation.
At least he died doing something he believed in …
Ha!
The eulogist will have a fun job spinning that one. To paraphrase one of my favorite lyricists: I’m choking on the irony. That’s what dark humor is: choking. You’re too busy gasping for air to notice anything tragic in the room. Some laugh, some cry. Those who laugh immunize themselves. Those who cry fail to understand. Allow me to illustrate this point.
Very recently, I came across a person who failed to understand dark humor. My friend Jon and I were making a purchase at a convenience store. As the cashier was scanning items, we were casually shooting the breeze with your typical, run-of-the-mill, funny-ways-kittens-could-bite-it jokes.
When Jon mentioned that kittens were conveniently sized to fit in blenders, the woman at the register shot us a look of disgust.
“I don’t think that’s very funny,” she said in a disdainful tone.
Jon and I looked at each other and made a tacit exchange of words:
Cat person.
I then took the joke further and remarked that, although kittens were conveniently sized to fit in blenders, it was inconvenient that there was no button on the microwave for kittens.
There’s some background info here …
My kitten Penny has traditionally served as a comedic device for dark humor joke telling in our house. I refer to Penny as a ‘kitten’ even though Penny is a full grown cat because I like how ‘kitten’ sounds in contrast with dangerous objects. For instance: kittens and knives, kittens and bazookas, kittens and bulldozers, et cetera. The word ‘cat’ doesn’t have the same effect. (Try it: cats and knives, cats and bazookas, cats and bulldozers, et cetera. It doesn’t quite have the same effect).
So Penny will always be a kitten in my heart just as every man will forever be a happy smiling little boy in the heart of his mother (It’s a term of endearment, for all the wrong reasons.).
Penny is much like a human child to me. The only difference is that a human child of mine might one day choose my nursing home. In light of this, I discipline Penny differently than I would a human child.
The other day I woke up to find my kitchen floor lined with Purina Cat Chow. The greedy little kitten had somehow gotten on top of the refrigerator and knocked the bag off, spilling heart-shaped morsels of dry cat food all over the linoleum flooring. I’m not one for kitten shenanigans in the morning (which conveniently rhymes with ‘flooring’). So I pick Penny up by the neck skin (as cat mothers often do to their young), look deep into his feline eyes and say:
“Penny, do you know what happens to kittens when they do bad things?”
I pause and let the words permeate. I wait for Penny’s eyes to dilate with fear. They grow huge. Then I whisper very gently into one of his pointed ears:
“They die …”
Relax. The cat can’t understand English.
I wish he did.
Relax. I don’t show my affection for Penny in words, I show it in action.
I very consistently replenish his water and food bowl every other week. I’ve never once forgotten.
Are you relaxed? If you are relaxed, you’re understanding dark humor.
You’re relaxed because hilarity is just beside sorrow on the color wheel of human emotion. It is very easy to make a transition from one to the other. Go too far and you’ve crossed into madness. When you find yourself joking about how the only thing funnier than a dead baby is a dead baby in a clown suit, you’ve gone too far. When your joke involves asking the question:
What is blue and yellow and found at the bottom of a pool?
And then giving the answer:
A baby with slashed floaties.
You’ve gone too far. Or when you begin a joke with:
What’s red and yellow and floats on top of the pool?
And end with:
Floaties with a slashed baby.
Then you’ve gone much too far. As a rule of thumb dead babies, in any context, are too far. Kittens are well within reason. Dogs are off limits. Retarded people are sort of in a gray area.
Dark humor defined
The essence of dark humor lies in that place between sorrow and hilarity. Those who cannot comfort themselves are bound in sorrow. They have no weapons against the universe, which is a vast cosmic conspiracy.
Laughter is self-inoculation. Laughter is a shield against the universe.
“Laughter is mankind’s greatest defense.”
That phrase has been floating around in my head for some time. I once thought Mark Twain said it. Turns out, I said it. Yeah. So put that in your quote books.[1] [2]
“My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.”
There’s one you will find in a quote book. George Bernard Shaw said it. Whoever that is. But the best example I’ve found of dark humor can’t be found in a quote book but on a tombstone, of all places. An English professor once told me that the poet John Donne requested the following words to be engraved upon his tombstone:
John Donne is …
Done.
That’s dark humor.
I fanatically researched whether this was true but found no confirming evidence. Regardless, I’d like to run with the idea and hereby request, by way of blog, the following words engraved upon my tombstone:
Chris Scott is …
Not.
The only exception is if I die in a Segway accident. That’s a death-joke funny enough to not need embellishment via epitaph.
Dark humor in pop culture
Even death can be funny.
“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”
There is a scene near the end of the most recent Harry Potter movie, The Deathly Hallows Part 1, which illustrates this well. Get this: a cute little house elf named Dobby is dying in the arms of his beloved master and friend, Harry Potter. Just after Dobby utters his last words and breathes his last breath, Harry Potter sobs with the house elf’s lifeless corpse in his arms while his friend Luna Lovegood kneels beside him, struggling to find words of comfort for Harry.
“We should close his eyes, don’t you think?” Luna says.
*Luna closes Dobby’s eyelids with her fingertips.*
“There. Now he could be sleeping,” she says.
That line put me in stitches. I nearly fell off my chair in the movie theater.
I remember turning to my left and seeing my cousin tearing up a storm with a mess of dirty tissues in her lap. I looked at others seated around me in the theater and didn’t see as much as a smirk. I looked back at the screen and Harry Potter was still bawling away, completely oblivious to Luna’s outrageously funny remark.
I guess it takes a certain personality type to appreciate dark humor.
Some laugh, some cry.
As for me, I choose laughter. What advantage can tears bring? I’ll keep my face dry, thank you.
- [1] Quoting himself on a website that is essentially about himself, Chris Scott has reached a new height of narcissism. ↩
- [2] Whimsically implementing technologically impressive linked footnotes on the website essentially about himself, Chris Scott has once again reached a new height of narcissism. ↩
Quiet the cricket sounds and leave a comment
A glowy picture of my dog
A glowy picture of my other dog
