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

sentiments, develop and perpetuate stereotypes, relieve awkward or tense situations’. 95
Hence, jokes about political figures show the mood of the population. In authoritarian
regimes, political jokes will emerge through unofficial channels, expressing the feelings
of a part of society, and underlining the faults and incompetence of those in power,
which makes political jokes ‘a tribunal through which to pass judgements on society
where other ways of doing so are closed to them’. 96 Their position as public figures
holding power makes them a good target for jokes, and highlights their failings and
mistakes.
‘Political jokes are the citizens’ response to the state’s efforts to standardise
their thinking and to frighten them into withholding criticism and dissent’, 97 and
through these jokes, citizens freely express their way of thinking about those who hold
power. Politicians are not necessarily more ridiculous than other people, but ‘it is the
combination of power without expertise that makes their stupidity more dangerous and
more risible than that of other people’. 98 Political jokes are a way to ‘take revenge’,
pointing to what the state refuses to recognise, and making fun of serious topics which
seem laughable and ridiculous. George Orwell pointed out that ‘every joke is a tiny
revolution’, 99 a contradiction of the speeches allowed by the state.
Wondering whether political jokes appear more frequently in free countries or in
those in which freedom is limited, Christie Davies claims that in free societies, humour
is less necessary as a mean of opposition, while in authoritarian societies, the act of
humour will be a means of insurrection. It is more difficult to laugh at the stupidity of
95
R. Stephenson quoted by Paton, ‘The comedian as portrayer…’, p. 211.
96
Benton, ‘The origins of the…’, p. 33.
97
Ibid., p. 35.
98
Davies, Jokes and their Relation…, p. 95.
99
George Orwell. ‘Funny but not vulgar’, in The Complete Works of George Orwell, ed. by Peter
Davison, 20 vols (London: Secker & Warburg. 1998), 16, pp. 482-487 ( p. 483).
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