Humor and Wealth

We’ve been taught for so long that talking about money is a big no-no. But how do we talk about the 12.1% poverty rate in America? With it clearly in the teens, there’s still an issue we need to discuss. Humor is an attempt to get us talking. I laughed at the funny parts in Trading Places, but I was left with an overall theme: disparity of wealth. With homeless people living out on the streets, it’s hard to ignore the problem. So how will humor help?

“We were so poor, one time someone asked why we were kicking a tin can down the street and we told them that we were moving.”

Like Gordon wrote, humor can have an educational impact without offending anyone. In the joke above, we get a sense of that reality. While it’s funny and draws a laugh, the educational message here is that people really do live in terrible conditions that could compare to a tiny, old tin can. Humor allows you a break from the illusion of perfection and tell you that it doesn’t actually exist. Not everyone lives in New York City with a butler and a constant food source. People are struggling to get their food and decide where their next warm bed is located.

“We were so poor we would go to KFC and lick other people’s fingers.”

There is a grotesque problem in America that people are trying to ignore by rejecting the reality of its existence. Humor is able to throw that back into your face. Society is left with feelings of intense guilt because we get the joke. In the joke above, it’s hard to ignore the fact that this is making a statement about the lack of money for food. One of the theories that Morreall mentions is the relief theory of humor. It’s stated that, “laughter functions only as a release of excess nervous energy” (p. 16). So what are we nervous about here? That we eat while others starve. On the other hand, this theory can also be due to the guilt we face from not being able to solve this problem. Maybe we’re thinking, “Can anything truly be done?” Maybe that’s where our guilt stems from – we are laughing to release the guilt we feel from being helpless. We want to provide assistance, but we are one of few and the less-wealthy are of many. We laugh as a way to relieve our guilt and nerves.

“I worked myself up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.”

So why do we laugh at this joke if it doesn’t seem to make sense? The incongruity theory states, “human experience works with learned patterns” (p. 10). In America, we’ve all learned about the “American Dream.” It basically guarantees that if you get a job and work, you’ll be able to afford that white picket fence. Yet, this joke causes warning signs to pop up. Someone working up to a state of extreme poverty? Impossible, right? Wrong. You have people who have amazing, well-paid jobs that suddenly lose them and are thrown into poverty. Then you also have some people who work so hard at their job, but they never get promoted to help their growing debts. It’s incongruent to us that someone can’t reach the dream we’re all so fond of, so we laugh to make sense of it all.

Still, overall, it seems wealth has pretty much fit every theory. It really got me thinking about all the poverty rates. Even with humor, we may laugh, but are we really changing?