Leticia Neria PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

True humour: humour as social complaint
The incongruity in these three comic books might work as a tool to introduce humour,
although this is not the only strategy. Incongruity as a trigger to cause hilarity is not
enough to generate discussion of political or social topics. In order to unveil political
discontent or to know how the social imaginary at the time viewed the authorities, or
society itself, it is necessary that incongruity be linked to an outcome of humour. We
can explain this with an example. When we have a narrative that is interrupted by a
comment out of context, and that comment refers to and criticises a political figure, then
there is a second intention beyond simply generating hilarity. Following Freud, the joke
is a means of aggression. 53 Following Bergson, it highlights their faults and provides a
corrective. 54 In an episode of La Familia Burrón, Regino Burrón, the head of the
family, arrives late to a working appointment because he was busy somewhere else.
Once he arrives, his client tells him: ‘Por lo visto usted es una persona pobre pero le
gusta levantarse como político, a medio día’. 55 The comment is discordant since it is not
related to the story. It emerges in order to criticise Regino’s delay, but instead of just
saying ‘Regino, you are late’, the woman decides to compare him to Mexican
politicians, who, in the social imaginary, are lazy and wake up after midday. The
incongruity here is linked to the faults of politicians: their laziness. This is not the only
element belonging to the universe of humour in this brief example, though the purpose
of mentioning it is to show that incongruity as a mechanism of humour is linked to other
elements from the language of humour when we are analysing political content.
53 Freud, El chiste y su relación…, p. 100, and Sigmund Freud, ‘El humor. 1927 [1928]’, in Obras
Completas de Sigmund Freud. Freud Total 2.0, trans. by Luis López-Ballesteros y de Torres, 2nd edn
(Argentina: Ediciones Nueva Hélade, 2002) [On CD-ROM] (para. 7 of 14)
54 Bergson, p. 197-198.
55 La Familia Burrón, 17224, p.12.
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