Making a Big Apple Crumble:Bill EllisChapter Two: The Latent Period Page 3
The Latent Period (September 11-17, 2001).Informants have often commented that jokes about disastrous events sprang up almost immediately after the event, although folklorists have found it difficult to document these until they emerged as a cycle. Internet-mediated message boards therefore prove to be an unexpectedly valuable data base for folklorists, because they record these early attempts at humor in permanent, searchable form, along with the contemporary reactions that they provoke. Further, the reactions to these failed jokes allow us to infer the social factors that temporarily suppress humor, as well as those looking ahead to a time when humor will function therapeutically. Examination of the attempts made to post jokes during the seven days including and following the terrorist attacks confirms the prediction that public attempts at humor would be severely sanctioned. In virtually every case, the first reaction to the attempted joke was rage, usually expressed in highly aggressive language, always obscene and usually incorporating threats of violence. An interesting and unexpected observation, however, is that such reactions were often countered by others who defended the use of humor, often explicitly citing previous cycles of disaster humor as precedents. In a report on the therapeutic potentials of humor, Healingwell.com reporter Adam Marcus observed a similar bind during the week immediately following the September 11 attacks. Television humorists such as David Letterman and Jay Leno spontaneously suspended live broadcasts, and while the Comedy Channel remained on the air through this period, the network screened only re-runs, carefully chosen as not to refer openly to disasters or to imply criticism of President Bush. When Leno and his NBC colleague Conan O'Brian resumed live shows on September 18, their comic monologues were replaced with heartfelt, personal narratives of shock and support for the nation's plight. Marcus also consulted Chicago-area psychologist Ed Dunkelblau, who had just held a series of debriefing sessions to help groups develop ways to cope with the emotions provoked by the attacks. Dunkelblau noted that examples of "public humor" had been very scarce, but among private, among intimate groups of family and friends he had seen more attempts to make jokes. "It's a safer, more trusted laughter," he said. "What we know is that in order for something to be perceived as funny, the audience has to be in play mode. If not, nothing will seem funny" (Marcus 2001). Nevertheless, even among trusted circles, many people found themselves deeply ambivalent about humor. One semi-anonymous New-Yorker who recorded his reactions, like many others, in a daily online journal, commented on this paradox as early as September 13, two days after the attacks:
I spent the day going "Oh my God, I hope Jen is okay" and "Oh my God, I hope Dave is okay," and for once in my life my emotions weren't so concerned with the general populous as it was with two of my best friends in the whole world. I can laugh about stupid teenagers in trenchcoats blasting away at chicks with metal fishies on their car without regret,8 or make jokes about Aaliyah not being able to "pick herself up and try again"9 and not feel bad about it, because they have no relevance to my life. I can't go back and edit my mind and say "oh, you're evil for thinking that" because I'm not ... the only way I've ever been able to deal with something on a scale like that has been to make bad jokes about it, and hope that my friends know that they're just bad jokes. I can't remember having malicious intent in my whole life, but I can't keep myself from making stupid jokes and I hate myself for it (Whatever-Dude 2001). Interestingly, "Whatever-Dude" alludes to two previous media disasters that had inspired black humor, and recognizes that black humor is not evil but a normal way in which he and others have dealt with such tragedies. In the end, he hopes that his friends' familiarity with the genre will help them see that jokes are a way of coming, rather than as a reflection of "malicious intent." Significantly, though, in the end, this observer simply cannot explain why jokes were so necessary at this stage: he only knows that he feels compelled to make them, even though he himself recognizes as "stupid." This observer does not record the actual "bad jokes" he made, but a number of message boards that specialized in humor, particularly alt.humor and alt.tasteless.jokes, give us a taste of what these semi-improvised "stupid" jokes were like. Such messages boards provided a regular "play space" for participants and so were logical "safe haven" for such jokes to be recorded. In fact, one item was posted on alt.humor barely two hours after the towers collapsed:
What does World Trade Centre Stand for- However, so intense was the shock of the attacks that even such message boards proved not to be safe havens after all. The reaction to this post was polarized, with a number of persons responding, within seconds, with angry, violent, and obscene attacks on the contributor:
You sick fuck
Why dont you shut your ignorant fucking mouth. If thousands of innocent people in your country died, and you cracked jokes, I hope somebody would have the common decency to take a block of solid metal and crack your fucking skull open.
Gav if you were here I'd knock your ass down.
After what just happened today & you have the gall to post crap like this you sick bastard. Why don't you go down the street & see if there some puppies or kittens to kick around?! Predictably, this attitude was challenged by another, more tolerant point of view that defined humor as an acceptable response to disaster.
Oh, as if this kind of stuff doesn't show up immediately after every tragedy that ever was. Not that I'm necessarily condoning it, but it *does* seem to be a "natural" human reaction. Nobody's forcing you to laugh at it.
I didn't think this was funny but I am not angry for your attempt because the only new jokes ever created usually stem from tragedy In fact, one of these improvised attempts did later circulate modestly as "What does WTC stand for? --What Trade Center?" However, even though the concept of humor found defenders, the joke being offered did not, and while another person attempted to add improvised items to this thread,12 these provoked no further discussion, nor did the thread lead to a communal sharing and discussion of the jokes themselves. It is clear that even in a space reserved for irreverent joking and tolerant of humor in general, participants simply were not yet in "play mode." A similar dynamic prevailed in alt.tasteless.jokes the next day, when a British member offered an improvised joke in a thread titled "New New York Joke."
What are New Yorkers least favourite flavour of crisp/chips at the moment? Like the previous example, this too provoked an angry, obscene response.
New New York Joke !! Ya know...it's the sick fucks like you that piss me off.
...And thank *you* for reposting the joke in its entirety. Real bright.
Whoops...sorry about that...I found the joke tasteless and downright rude, should have taken it out, but was rather pissed at the time... As with the alt.humor thread, two observers defended the right of people to use humor in general:
it's only a joke dude.
Hey, calm down mate. If we're not going to find something funny in everything, then we're all going to go insane. I think its humour which keeps us from that brink. The second commentator, however, added significantly, "Although, I must say, I don't actually get it." And in fact, another participant had to come in and explain the pun for Americans:
"Plain" as in Ready Salted, flavour of crisps (chips to our US chums), crisps with just salt on them. Plain/plane. Geddit? And later on in the thread, yet another reader had to ask to have the joke explained, a clear sign that even if the participants were by this time willing to consider humor, this item was simply too esoteric to be funny. The joke relied too heavily on British slang and foodways to translate well globally, a factor that we will see affecting even the more successful jokes that emerged later in the United Kingdom. On September 17, the end of the latency period, a list of proposed WTC jokes was distributed to alt.tasteless.jokes and to other similar lists. This included 45 items plus a "top ten" list of "good things about the WTC Attack."13 The appearance of this list on a message board devoted to "tasteless jokes" was hardly surprising. Indeed, the idea of a "canonical" list of WTC jokes supports John Dorst's idea that such a genre essentially consists of a cycle, not a group of individual jokes that happen to appear close together. He comments that in such a genre, "the seriality (replacement of a unit by an infinite series of equivalents) that is the hallmark of the current commodity structure is staged or modelled" (1990: 185). That is, even if the list is not strictly "infinite," the fact that the viewer is presented with a large number of possibly funny jokes to choose from essentially validates the market economy that the terrorist attacks threatened. What is interesting, then, is that the list provoked so little comment and that so few of the items made the transition from lists to private circulation by e-mail. People expected the jokes to appear in this kind of virtual marketplace; they just weren't buying. Many of the items were obviously recycled jokes from previous disaster cycles, notably the Challenger jokes:
What was the last thing going through Mr. Jones head sitting in 90th floor of the WTC The 91st floor."14
What color were the pilots eyes?
Where do Americans go on vacation? Others attempted to find ironic coincidences in the event:
What's the area code of the World Trade Center?
The FBI has just identified the man who trained the hijackers: The list included a few items that were subsequently found circulating during Internet discussions, though it is not clear whether this list got them into circulation or simply recorded their prior circulation as oral jokes:
Who are the fastest readers in the world?
What's the difference between Wembley and New York?
"It's a bird!" Still, the list had minimal impact, suggesting two things. First, it appeared during an unusually intense latency period, in which most Americans were not yet prepared to engage in the satire and cleverness of traditional cycle jokes. Second, by recycling older patterns, this list failed to express the most widely held emotions of Americans, and so they did not address the need to find humorous patterns strong enough to encompass this shock. Indeed, some of the jokes openly expressed contempt for these emotions, making it unlikely that they would spread:
How many Americans died in the WTC yesterday [sic]?
What's the difference between the attack on New York and the Oklahoma City Bombing?-- The discussions during the September 11-17 period made it clear that while many participants found any effort at humor distasteful, many others agreed that it was an inevitable, healthy response to disaster. This dynamic is hardly surprising: "Trying to laugh too close to the tragedy feels disrespectful," commented psychologist Ed Dunkelblau, adding, "but people need an opportunity to release" (Marcus 2001). But the necessary release did not come until a week had passed, and, as we shall see, did not become truly national until several weeks later. Indeed, many found nothing intrinsically wrong with the attempt to construct jokes during this period. There is no reason to believe that these people were callous, indifferent, un-American, or inured to mass destruction; in fact, there is considerable evidence, as I argued in "Model," that "it is the absence of humor that is socially deviant" (2001). This is not to say that the latent period produced no viable verbal humor. A second advantage of searchable message board files is that one can see how jokes that proved successful during the second week after the attacks actually appeared a few days before the risible moment. In some cases, their first appearances came on the high-context message boards discussed above that were devoted to topical humor. But increasingly other message boards, not specifically humor-related, played a role in discussing and circulating these items, as did private e-mail. Still, in the week following the attacks, the most popular items circulating on the Internet were other forms of narrative that affirmed patriotism or commented on the event with no humorous intent. Among these were statements of sympathy, particularly from non-Americans, personal narratives about involvement in the attacks, and a persistent level of rumors attempting to assign guilt for the events. All of these narrative responses functioned to express shock and find meaning in the event. The nascent forms of humor too served this function, but they were not as widely accepted or appreciated. One observer's comment makes this clear.
Someone made a joke today, and I didn't laugh (What's the difference between Christmas and Afganistan... Christmas will be there next year) nor found it remotely funny. Some people have very short memories. In fact, as we will see, this item became one the standards in the most widely circulated list of "Osama jokes," but these did not break into circulation until early October and did not become widespread in circulation until nearly a month after this observation. But most of the jokes told during the latent period were seen (like this one) as simply not funny. A vocabulary and a grammar had yet to emerge that would create a "play mode" that would allow such jokes to spread. For this reason, experimental joking during the latent period largely remained in the high-context, self-aware humor conduits such as alt.tasteless.jokes. At the end of this period, however, Bill Maher, star of ABC's comic show "Politically Incorrect," made a telling prediction to a National Public Radio reporter. "It will not be that long before people are laughing," he said, "because we're going to want to ridicule our government for being so inept at protecting us -- which is their job, after all. We're mad at the terrorists, we're mad at the airlines. There's a lot of places where exaggeration, sarcasm, belittlement, all the tools of humor are going to come into play as a weapon in our arsenal to recover from this, and that is appropriate" (Marcus 2001). Maher's willingness to engage in humor, however, was premature in many people's minds. On the September 17 edition of "Politically Incorrect," he engaged in some banter with a panelist who questioned President Bush's characterization of the al-Qaida terrorists as "cowards." "These are warriors," the panelist said, noting that, like it or not, many factions dislike the American political agenda and lifestyle. "Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly," Maher responded, adding sardonically, "We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly." A firestorm of hostile editorials followed, claiming that such comments had expressed admiration for America's enemies and insulted our armed forces as "cowards." Two of the show's sponsors promptly cancelled their advertising for the show, citing nationwide complaints from consumers. ABC responded with a statement supporting Maher's freedom of speech rights, though it admitted that exercising them "can oftentimes arouse intense emotions, especially during such a sensitive time" (Limbacher et al. 2001). The show was cancelled at the end of the spring season, however, and many observers credited this fracas with reducing ABC's support for the controversial show. Nevertheless, my early drafts of Model, circulating among colleagues at the same time, already were stressing that a first wave of jokes would certainly emerge, founded "on denial, displaced anger, and desire to find and assign blame" (2001). Such an intense rage and urge to lash out on many fronts made the first attempts at humor strategically dangerous, since it was easy (as in Maher's case) to equate humor with disloyalty. Nevertheless, this groundswell of anger provided the grammar necessary for humor to emerge explosively during the second week after the attacks. continue
Page Notes8.A reference to the mass murder at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado on April 20, 1999, in which two students wearing trenchcoats, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, killed thirteen people including Cassie Bernal, who allegedly expressed her faith in God just before being shot. Bernal's testimony became a staple of evangelical Christian responses to this tragedy. Interestingly, the Columbine tragedy seems not to have generated a cycle of jokes, though one item, a parody of the "MasterCard" advertisement, did circulate widely. See n. 31. 9. The allusion is to one of the recently deceased singer Aaliyah Haughton's most popular songs, "Try Again," from the Romeo Must Die Soundtrack. Aaliyah was killed in a plane crash on August 26, 2001. Among the jokes that circulated after her death was this one: Pilot: The engine won't restart. Aaliyah: "Try Again." (For a time available on a page titled "Aaliyah Haughton Jokes" at www.deathsucks.com, a website devoted to topical jokes about recently deceased celebrities.) 10. Pacific Standard Time is three hours earlier than Eastern Standard Time, so this item was posted at 12:59:29 PM EST, about an hour and a half after the collapse of the second Tower. 11.For variants, see Smyth 1986: 244, Simons 1986: 266-67, Oring 1987: 280, Ellis 1991: 112. 12. 1) New york, New york.. so good they hit it twice.... 2) See American buildings, up REAL close with America Airlines... 3) "Dear Mr President, I work in a big multi-storey building, I am unhappy coz the air conditioning smells like aviation fuel. Your disgruntled Bobby Joe." 4) Is it a leap year? If you work on the 59th floor of the world trade building it is!! (All 11 September 2001 10:31:07 PST) 13. Another version of this list, shortened to 20 items plus the "top ten" list, was spammed (sent anonymously and without solicitation) to a large number of lists on September 23 under headings like "Heartwarming story from Ground Zero WTC." This list too had minimal impact on the tradition. 14. Cf. "What was the last thing that went through Christa McAuliffe's mind? The control panel" (Smyth 1986: 245, Simons 1986: 273, Oring 1987: 280, Ellis 1991: 114). 15.Cf. "Did you hear Christa McAuliffe had blue eyes. One blew right, one blew left" (Smyth 1986: 244, Oring 1987: 280, Bronner 1988: 130, Ellis 1991: 113). 16. Cf. "Where does the crew of the Challenger take their vacation? All over Florida" (Smyth 1986: 244, Oring 1987: 280, Bronner 1988: 130, Ellis 1991: 113-14). 17. A famous American stock car racer who died on February 18, 2001, when he accidentally crashed his car into a wall during the Daytona 500 race. 18. Cf. "The taliban's are now officially THE FASTEST READERS in the world! 200 stories in 3 minutes...." (uk.music.rave: October 18, 2001 14:43:43 PST). 19. Wembley Stadium, built in 1923 as Great Britain's national football stadium, was dominated by a Roman-inspired colonnade dominated by two massive Twin Towers. The stadium, declared obsolete, was closed in 2000 and marked for demolition, but a sentimental crusade by British architecture-lovers and football fans led to several delays of the Twin Towers' destruction. As of June 1, 2002, the towers were still erect, though surrounded by heavy demolition equipment. On September 30, Christie Davies heard an oral variant of this from a Liverpool informant: "Radio instruction to hijacker 'No, you fool, I said Wembley ' " (e-mail, 01 October 2001 20:30:24). 20. [Subject heading: It's A Bird, It's A Plane...] "...no, you Afghan fuck, it's a Tomahawk Cruise Missle." (alt.usa-sucks: October 09, 2001 11:53:13 PST). [Next message in thread]: "Oh fuck, it is a plane"(October 09, 2001 15:35:07 PST ). At some later date, this became: "Famous Afghan Last Words... 'It's a bird!' 'It's a plane!' 'It's.... Oh fuck, it IS a plane!'" ("Asylum Dedication").
Newfolk :: NDiF :: Archive
:: Issue 6 :: |