Two Protesters Walk into a Bar: Humor and Resistance in Today’s Social Movements

 

By

 

Aysel Vazirova

 

and

 

K. A. Cosby

 

On May 31, despite a police crackdown in Istanbul, Turkey, a group of protesters fighting to save a park in the city’s downtown refused to concede defeat. Instead they used every tool at their disposal—including humor—to resist a government they saw as increasingly ignoring their will. These first activists were joined by others across the country with their own concerns about the government. One protester, drawing a connection between the demonstrations and the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) recent ban on the sale of alcohol between the hours of 10:00 pm and 6:00 am, spray-painted the following statement on the side of a wall: “You banned alcohol. The people sobered up!!” 

Another protester took aim at the police’s use of tear gas, stating in a placard, “As kids we chased pesticide trucks. Our generation is immune to toxic gas.”

Humor has great potential for resistance and political activism, undercutting or exposing flawed governmental narratives. Hannah Arendt wrote in On Violence, “the greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.” The protesters in Turkey have sought to overturn the symbolic power of the government by deconstructing its discourses through humor and satire.

 But these protesters are not alone. Recent events in Eurasia, Brazil and the Middle East provide examples of how social and political movements have drawn on humor for resistance. Brazilian protests against poor public services were supported by a popular video (currently with 2.4 million views) mocking the government’s efforts to promote Brazil as a prospering country in the lead-up to the World Cup. Egyptian revolutionaries used youtube and twitter to satirize Hosni Mubarak when he refused to step down from the presidency. Syrian revolutionaries have used satirical webpages as a method of resisting the Assad regime. 

A series of web broadcasts in Russia have taken on Vladimir Putin’s government of in verse. The creators of Grazhdanin Poet (Citizen Poet) have railed against the second sentencing of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and drawn parallels between the 2012 Russian protests against Putin’s re-election and the Arab Spring. The broadcasts, some of which have garnered over two million views, have developed a broad-based following among Russians, who are unhappy with their country’s entrenched authoritarianism.

China, where online dissent and political satire are closely monitored and censored, has had a dramatic increase in online viewers of the Daily Show. The New Yorker recently reported that “in the last few years ordinary men and women have banded together to subtitle and post clips as fast as they can.” Political and “undesirable” content in China is often blocked by the government, so the consumption of even the Daily Show can be considered subversive.

In many authoritarian countries the creators of political humor have been targeted in the same manner as journalists. In fact, a well timed joke can land a political satirist in prison. In 2009 two Azerbaijani bloggers, Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizada, were arrested for making a satirical youtube video of a donkey holding a press conference—a send up of corruption charges that the country’s government paid excessive prices for the import of donkeys. 

More recently Egyptian satirist Bassem Youseff, who is often known as Egypt’s John Stewart, was summoned to court in April for insulting the president Muhammad Morsy. Though the case was thrown out by the judge, it shows how humor can threaten a government by exposing the cracks in its carefully crafted image.

A joke from the former Communist East Germany wittily shows how dangerous humor can be to authoritarian and totalitarian societies. According to the joke, Erich Honecker, General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party in the German Democratic Republic, and Erich Mielke, the former head of the State Security Service “were talking about their hobbies. Honecker said, ‘I collect all the jokes about me that are going around.’ Mielke replied, ‘Man, Erich, we have practically the same hobby! I collect the people who are telling the jokes!’”

Humor in the public sphere has a profound democratizing potential: a good joke can make a blogger or Facebook/Twitter user and the issue they address popular within hours and command the support of thousands without any reliance upon external funding, or media connections, thus extending the reach of a political activist independent of the support and agenda of power holders.

In some countries the expanding reach of political humor is occurring against the backdrop of the weakening appeal of the traditional political opposition. During the mass protests in Russia and Turkey, parliamentary opposition parties were sharply criticized for their inability to facilitate change.  The biting humor of the protestors, in many cases, expressed the people’s frustration with the usual suspects on the political landscape.  One picture by a Gezi Park protester widely circulated online features the leaders of the two largest opposition parties, Kilicdaroglu and Bahceli reads, “We’re not here for you. We’re here because you couldn’t do it.”

Humor as resistance, however, is not just found in authoritarian countries, but has also been a part of political struggle in the United States. The language of political satire finds supporters in times when the traditional mechanisms of democratic political engagement struggle with the maladies of corruption, dependence on special interests, cronyism and the erosion of public trust. As more and more Americans have become disillusioned by their elected officials, they have drawn on satirical television shows like the Daily Show and the Colbert Report for the expression of their frustration and mobilization for political action. In 2010, the two shows joined forces to gather 200,000 people for the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, targeting the vitriolic discourse of cable news shows and extremist politicians.

It should not be overlooked that despite its heavy reliance on modern technology and global internet culture, contemporary political humor is filled with references to local traditions of political and social satire. Egypt’s current political satire relies on a well-established tradition of comedy movies that address corruption and other social ills. The Russian series of Grazhdanin Poet emulates Russian classical literature to mockingly address current political repressions. Turkey's political satire harkens back to the political cartoons created in the early 20th century by Ottoman artists.

 The outcome of political humor has been debated among specialists with some coming down on the side of political humor’s inability to mobilize large groups to take action. Others have noted that it can become one of many tools of resistance. They further argue that humor is able to confront narratives a government gives of its own legitimacy and authority to exert power.

Political humor liberates public discontent from the shackles of worn-out and compromised political rhetoric.  Through the mockery of the narratives, lexicon and images of political actors, humor creates a new language based on the inversion of meanings and values. Steven Colbert provides a vivid example of the ridicule of overly patriotic rhetoric, while Turkish cartoonists offer a wide range of satirical lines targeting the AKP’s constant reference to religious values.

As the strength of social media and their ability to disseminate videos and texts created by groups opposing those in power grows, we should witness its increasing use by activists for political satire. But at the same time, we should expect that governments will target online satirists more, seeking to limit their ability to mobilize groups of disaffected citizens. As opposed to direct political criticism, humor uses silences, gaps and the mimicry of official discourses to provide an elusive adversary for power-holders seeking to strengthen control over the public sphere.

Irony and satire seem to provide a new language for political participation—one that is steadily and profoundly changing how and by whom politics is conducted?

In response to these changes, authoritarian governments already monitor social media postings and some countries have written legislation on the defamation of public officials in social media outlets.  As this happens, we may see a transformation of how humor and satire are included in resistance.

The questions that remain are: will that change result in more radical or more guarded humor?  Will humor continue as a strong mobilizing force or be rendered a harmless outlet for political frustrations?