Healing Factor

There's a phrase I've been noticing a lot more lately.  I have no doubt that it has in fact existed with roughly the same frequency since my childhood and that it is my awareness that has changed.  It's a seemingly innocuous phrase, one that shows up a million times in real life, television, movies, books, and beyond.  It generally follows an exchange in which person A gets frustrated because of something person B said while attempting to be humorous.  At which point, person B utters the accursed thing, dribbling like bile from their lips, pooling about their feet, a pile of ichor that I am forced to drink down.  Each sip makes me want more and more to rage, and it's getting harder to ignore.  I apologize to those of you who came here to read something and were forced, in the process of reading, to see this.

"It's just a joke."

Pardon my French...

There are variants - usually involving one's level of seriousness or something - but that right there is the core of it.  This is a phrase brought out when someone has just been informed that their attempt at being funny backfired because they tried to use an offensive subject matter.  It is a sorry-not-sorry.  It is a silencing technique, the unspoken threat being that people don't have a right to be offended if comedy and laughter were the intended result.

There are a lot of reasons why it's a problematic phrase, and with my focus for this time around, I can't do justice to all of them.  So, por ejemplo, check out this blog post for some extra helpful information.  Or, hey, do some Googling.  There's all kinds of stuff out there, and it's the only reason I see stuff more now.  It's what the Internet is for.

If you're feeling a little too-long-didn't-read about that link, then fine, allow me to do my best.  Just because your joke is ironic or, indeed, a joke does not remove the offense.  When you say something racist, it's just racist, no matter the coating.  If you make a women-kitchen-sandwich-laundry joke, you're still in the danger zone.  And yes, copy-pasting that joke about Justin Bieber going to lady-jail  is kinda transphobic, even if your gay friend posted it because, hey, anyone can be transphobic.

Not... quite what I meant, Rosie.

Now, I say all that to say this.  Everyone is not a comedian.  You are most likely not paid to be a funny person.  Comedians are comedians.  That is an important distinction to make before we move forward, and while obvious, I feel it's paramount.  Because it damn sure feels like a lot of people are trying to make the axiom true regardless of its impossibility.  Some people simply do not have a talent for humor.  And yet, everyone wants to make jokes.  Hell, I went to seminary, a school for training religious leaders, and the amount of funny people I met was pretty much standard for anywhere else ever.  People like to be funny.

But I'm starting to get paranoid that it's getting out of hand.  Did seriousness become a crime?  It's something I've been aware of for a while now.  In classes and rehearsals and just hanging out, it seems as though trying to enjoy anything in a purely serious way is verboten.  Movies, music, performance, whatever - the minute you try to lose levity, you become an insufferable wanker who can't take a joke.

Don't get me wrong, I love to laugh.  I love stand-up and irreverant comedies and blue humor and stupid YouTube videos, the whole lot.  I am not by any means a humorless dullard.  And indeed I think I took to these things more when it started to become clear to me that my contemplative, meditative side was not so welcome out in the open.  I learned to be funnier, to quip faster, all that, and for the most part I think that served me pretty well.

Things came to a head, as is the pattern, over the last year or so.  I had become particularly taken with a blog called Stuff Christian Culture Likes.  It was a shockingly accurate portrayal of all the things that are seemingly universal in Christendom, and it had an irrevernace that I was drawn to.  I also started to follow the Facebook group, joining in on conversations, mocking Mark Driscoll, wondering about the ethics of tithing booths, and more.  It was great, for a time.

Then things went... weird.  I started to become more aware of the way the community operated.  If a tweet was posted, there was a decent chance that person would find out pretty soon.  Same for comment sections in blog posts.  The person who runs the site and group, Stephanie Drury, has been accused of being a sort of queen bee with drones, and while that's a harsh statement, the imagery of swarming does have a sort of relevance.  And then there was an event that spiraled so out-of-control so fast I don't even know how to properly catalogue it anymore.  A trans person said something against SCCL and became the latest target to end up in their sights, getting misgendered amongst other things.  It got uglier as the day wore on, and merely watching the sparks fly on Twitter wore me out.  I was now aware of the dark side of things, and the group was never as exciting for me again.

I knew that those who frequented SCCL tended to do so out of a shared experience of religious abuse, and that humor was their way of dealing with it.  It was their place to go and heal, to point at evangelism and conservativism and say "how silly" in order to help themselves reach a better place.  I am so behind that, 100%.

No proper caption, just wanted to post this.  Feel free to make your own!

But there are times when humor gets out of hand, when it comes at the expense of someone who already experiences some measure of oppression or depression or anxiety on a daily basis.  And that little "it's just a joke" becomes a dark thing, a haunted thing that reveals a lack of empathy.  Humor is a beautiful thing, but it is not the only thing.  We have been clinging to it so desperately that we have allowed it to become mishapen and monstrous, to become a weapon instead of a gift.  And when its darker side is pointed out, we only hug it all the closer and scream "no, it's just a joke" because we can't bear to think that we might lose our humor.  It's as if it's all we have left.

And it most certainly is not.  It took me so long to finally admit, but it's not the only thing.  And for me, it's not even my favorite thing.  It's not what heals me.  It may be for others, and they should consider themselves blessed, because laughter is a holy and sacred thing.

But that's not me.  I like meditation and sadness and weirdness and a wealth of other things.  Just last week, I was raving about the game Spec Ops: The Line.  It's basically a horror game, except the monster is man, and by extension, you.  Halfway through the game, you do A Very Bad Thing, and then at the end, you get yelled at for doing it and for not putting the controller down and walking away.  I like texts that force me to think, that push me outside of the box and then leave me hanging.  I love movies that start nowhere and go nowhere.  Those are the things I need, that I breathe and live by, and the sooner I realized that, the easier it was to realize that I didn't need shock humor and rape jokes, and the sooner I was able to find my center.

By leaving behind the idea that laughter is the be-all-end-all, I was able to live a little bit fuller.  So, I dunno, maybe give that a try next time someone calls you out on your offensive joke instead of defending it?

Just a thought.