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

Conclusion
This research has shown how humour is a language through which ideas are
communicated. Humour can be a means to express ‘serious’ issues. When our critical
thought is strong enough to cope, humour can be the perfect language to discuss
harmful or dangerous topics such as repression, abuse and injustice. To use humour
does not promise that the statements presented will be accepted, or that we will be
pleased with them, but at least they have a better chance of not being rejected by our
critical thought. In the Mexico of Echeverría, films and comics used humour to
highlight social reality, and they became a good means of disclosing those thoughts that
could not be discussed openly. ‘Serious’ criticism in other media, such as newspapers,
was foreclosed. Laughter does not change reality, and comedians do not tend to lead
revolutions, so the authorities proved more tolerant of humour as a means of expression.
Even so, these media did help express social opposition, kept it on the agenda, and for
that we can say that they formed part of the public record. In a regime in which criticism
was tolerated according to the whim of the authorities, jokes inserted into films and
comics were some of the few avenues through which topics could be discussed. Both
the authorities and certain sections of society found themselves target of barbed wit
which contained messages which were lost on no one.
This thesis connected three distinct fields of analysis: humour, visual culture
(comics and films) and the authoritarian regime of Luis Echeverría Álvarez. The
principal goal was to determine how humour was used to express political and social
dissent through comics and films, what topics and issues they addressed, and the reason
why they used this language. We came to understand humour as a language, and comics