What are our jokes about?

Times change and our jokes change with them. Stirlitz and Brezhnev, Armenian radio and “new Russians” – other characters have replaced the heroes of the past. However, according to the feeling, we have become less joking today. How many of us can easily remember the last time we heard a good joke? “Jokes in our everyday communication have really become fewer,” says clinical psychologist Sergei Enikolopov. “The internet has played an important role in this. After all, the beauty of an anecdote is in its freshness and originality – what is the point of telling a joke that our interlocutor himself could have read on the Web the day before? In addition, the Comedy Club and other similar TV projects have replaced the former form of “live” jokes.

And yet we continue to joke, because a funny anecdote helps us to establish contact with the interlocutor, win him over or defuse the situation. In addition, jokes are good for our own peace of mind. “Humor performs the same function that dreams do for an individual or myths do for an entire society: it shows the preoccupation of our consciousness with what we cannot rationally express,” explains psychoanalyst Moussa Nabati. “The anecdote reveals our deepest fears and at the same time offers a positive solution – through laughter.” So what kind of fears embody the features of the heroes of popular jokes?

“Other”

If in Soviet times many were amused by jokes about the Chukchi, today (especially from the TV screen) they often joke about representatives of neighboring states who come to work in Russia. “We meet these people every day,” says Sergey Enikolopov. “And many perceive their traits (different from ours) as a threat to their usual way of life.” We laugh at the “strangeness” of those who are close, but at the same time do not coincide with us. “This allows us to project onto the “other” those traits that we are least likely to accept in ourselves,” the psychologist continues. – Jokes that make fun of the “others” should, in fact, show that we are better. Such jokes perform several functions at once: on the one hand, they increase (in comparison with someone else) our self-esteem, and on the other hand, they help to defend our identity, separating “us” from “them”.

Naive Tajiks, tight-fisted Ukrainians, “hot Estonian guys” – psychologists and psychoanalysts see such labels as a manifestation of our contradictory attitude towards strangers, based both on curiosity and interest in the unlike, and on fear and rejection of it. “We talk about ‘others’ and when we joke about politicians and power. After all, we also see in them, first of all, those who are neither the same as us, nor completely different, and this causes us concern, because it distorts the boundaries of our identity, – Sergey Enikolopov concludes. “It’s reflected in the humor.”

Blondes

Jokes about them, having practically become a commonplace, nevertheless, have retained record popularity for several years. Why do so many want to see fair-haired women frankly stupid, helpless, incapable of elementary logic? “This is a veiled manifestation of sexism, that is, the assertion of the superiority of one sex over the other, a manifestation of an unconscious need to justify one’s idea of ​​the social inequality of men and women,” Sergey Enikolopov believes. “This can be seen as a sign of men’s rejection of the current trend of feminization of society, and their negative reaction to the growing number of successful women among us.” “In the jokes about blondes, today there is a return of misogyny that has been repressed from the public consciousness,” agrees Musa Nabati. “After being banned in the feminist era, it has found a new, more cautious expression, pretending to focus only on a certain type of woman.”

The substitution turned out to be so convincing that the women themselves believed in it, agreeing to see the “stupid blonde” as a scapegoat. “Such jokes have a double benefit,” continues Musa Nabati. “For men, they allow them to regain their advantage over the female sex, and for women they help to vent feelings of rivalry and jealousy.”

Jealousy here is related to the fact that light hair color was considered by our ancestors as a sign of beauty. Then there were photo models from magazines – and the blonde turned into a standard erotic ideal. “Mockery at blondes,” Sergey Enikolopov clarifies, “is to some extent our mockery of the current society and the stereotypes that it imposes on us.”

mother-in-law

This epic female figure first became central to Jewish humorous folklore as the mother of a boy. After that, she acquired more general features, acting either as a mother-in-law or as a mother-in-law. What reproaches are made to her in our jokes? First of all, she is accused of imperiousness and importunity. “A mother-in-law or mother-in-law was perceived as a serious threat to a young family in the era of communal apartments, when different generations had to live side by side in a limited space for many years, which could not but cause conflicts,” notes Sergey Enikolopov. “Today, such jokes primarily reflect our desire to protect ourselves from any powerful influence of those who are older than us in age or higher in status on our adult life. When telling a joke about an unceremonious mother-in-law, we can mean both our boss and our neighbor.

From the point of view of psychoanalysts, this heroine of jokes embodies all the shortcomings of a mother who is unable to come to terms with the psychological independence of her child. At the same time, such jokes are told, of course, not by the mother-in-law or mother-in-law themselves. And these jokes speak more about children than about their mothers. “First of all, they are about the inability of grown children to do without parental patterns of behavior, to become truly adults,” says Musa Nabati. “Laughter helps break this obsolete bond-fusion between mother and child.”

But why then do they laugh at the mother-in-law, at the mother-in-law, and not at the mother? “It is always easier to criticize someone else’s mother than one’s own,” explains the psychoanalyst. “Such an anecdote makes it possible to get even with your feelings without directly naming the characters.” Which can ultimately benefit family relationships. Musa Nabati recalls that our humor also carries the possibility of catharsis: “It allows us to defuse internal aggression, thereby getting rid of it. And that, in turn, makes the relationship more peaceful.”