Stop saying comedy ‘punches down’
Julian Adorney
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One of the most pervasive ideas in our culture is that comedy is either “punching up” (taking aim at the rich and powerful) or “punching down” (making jokes about people less privileged in some way than the comedian). For many, punching up is acceptable, but everyone from Dave Chappelle to Bill Burr to Jerry Seinfeld has been condemned by various segments of the too-online crowd for “punching down.”
However, the whole idea of comedy as “punching” (up or down) is misguided.
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For one thing, being the butt of a joke is nothing like being punched in the face. As a former addict who has dealt with a fair amount of abuse in my past, I’m an unwilling poster child for the “don’t punch down” movement, the sort of semi-marginalized person who is allegedly too frail to deal with jokes from wealthy comedians about things such as abuse and addiction. But I’ve heard a lot of these jokes. Some were funnier than others, and some occasionally stung. None of them was equivalent to being punched in the mouth.
Indeed, one thing lost in conflating jokes with violence is that comedy can be tremendously healing. I was on suicide watch for a period in my mid-20s. Afterward, I had an existential crisis. My brain had just tried to kill me, and I was terrified that it would do so again. One of the ways that I got through this crisis was by learning to laugh about it. I watched that The Office episode in which Michael Scott almost kills himself doing a demonstration on suicide. I watched Burr make fun of his suicidal thoughts. Egos and pain hate to be laughed at, and by laughing at my mental illness, I helped develop the strength to come out of my existential crisis. After all, it’s hard to be scared of something you’re laughing at.
Psychologists have long understood that humor can be a coping mechanism. Dr. Heather S. Lonczak sums up the research in Positive Psychology: “For people who experience stressful jobs or complicated family dynamics, dark humor often serves as an important protective mechanism.” She notes that healthcare workers who deal with chronic stress on a regular basis use humor to cope. Humor was even used by Holocaust victims to lessen their pain. “During the Holocaust,” Lonczak notes, “victims reported using humor in ghettos, concentration, and death camps to better cope with extreme trauma and adversity.”
Humor, even dark humor, can have profound mental health benefits. The same cannot be said of a punch.
Another danger in referring to jokes as “punching down” or “punching up” is that it encourages us to conflate speech with violence. This is dangerous because the conflation of words and violence can go both ways. We can end up banning relatively harmless (or even psychologically helpful) jokes the same way we ban physical assault. But we can also create a culture in which people think responding to speech with actual violence is acceptable. After all, if comedy really is “punching,” then perhaps we are justified in meeting the offending comedian with violence. Nearly 20% of Generation Z already believe that a student group on campus would be justified in using violence to shut down a speaker they disagree with, and comedians are getting attacked onstage. The conflation of comedy with violence has real-world consequences.
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But perhaps the biggest tragedy of this kind of overblown discourse is that it communicates to already marginalized people that they are deeply fragile. After all, if mere jokes can cause them physical harm, then what can’t hurt them? This is a deeply disempowering message because it encourages people to live in fear and discourages them from developing the emotional resilience that’s necessary to overcome many of life’s challenges. Or as Mark Manson, bestselling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***, puts it, “Discomfort and upsetting ideas are what make you better. Confronting things that upset you helps you overcome them and yourself.”
People who tell comedians not to punch down have good intentions. But for a lot of folks who have dealt with some kind of trauma, more coddling is the last thing we need.
Julian Adorney (@Julian_Liberty) is a writer and marketing consultant with fee.org and contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He has previously written for National Review, the Federalist, and other outlets.