personal humor ethnography

From: Gary D Shank (shank@duq.edu)
Date: Sat Jan 26 2002 - 15:44:22 PST


i'm a little nervouse sending this along because i feel that i am
betraying my comrades somewhat even though i am not identifying them, but
i want to add some concrete ethnographic meat to the bones of some of this
discussion. if you find the group i describe patriarchic and
exclusionary, then it is the fault of my telling and not the being of the
group, i can assure you...

gary
shank@duq.edu

I'd like to take our discussion of humor out of the abstract and into a
more concrete, ethnographic direction. This will probably be a bit long,
and please forgive me in advance for omitting key details. All names will
be altered to preserve anonymity, of course. There will also likely be a
number of cultural references that not everyone will be familiar with, as
well. I'll try to clarify without revealing identity details.

One of the most interesting communities of practice I have ever
experienced came to me out of the blue. Somewhere around ten years ago, I
get an email message from a person whose name I recognized but whom I have
never met or corresponded with. This person, let's call him Ray, sent me
an invitation to join a private, clandestine email list. I had 24 hours
to accept or refuse. If I refused, I was asked not to tell anyone that I
had been asked to join. By anyone, he meant anyone on the Usenet group
that we both read and sometimes wrote messages to. For those of you who
are familiar with Usenet, it was one of the rec. groups that dealt with a
certain kind of music. I won't say exactly what kind of music, but a
number of the people who wrote lived in the San Francisco bay area.

When I joined, this private list had about 30 members. Over the years, it
has maintained this size, more or less. Ray and another member, whom we
can call Rufus, founded the list and they had sole power of inviting new
members. Of course, any member could nominate a person for membership,
but nominations were always informal -- you know, I think Billy Bob would
make a good member, that sort of thing.

The criteria for membership were simple -- you had to love music and you
had to be funny. Newsgroup posts were scrutinized for posters who were
consistently clever and witty. Once the person achieved a decent track
record, all the time without even knowing that he or she was being
observed, they just might get invited to join.

By being a member of this group, I have been privileged in getting a
really interesting and sophisticated education into the role of humor in
human community. No where are the 'rules' for this group written down,
but every member knows them --

7 Racist humor is totally off limits. To my knowledge, no one in the
group is a member of a minority group, but I have no way of knowing that
for sure. In all the years I have been a member, no one has told a racist
joke or made a purportedly witty remark grounded in racist concepts.
7 Ethnic humor is complex. For instance, a good number of our group are
Jewish. Years ago, Walter wrote to tell us that he had been counting, and
that the following joke had been sent to him online 100 times. The joke?
"How do you frustrate a Jew? Offer him free ham." From that moment on,
every joke dealing with Jewish ethnic issues was labelled as a 'freeham'
joke. Then, every tired joke that was passed along from the Internet was
labeled freeham, and then shortened to ham. So, if I was going to pass
along a joke about flying saucer aliens performing rectal probes on the
members of the Bush White House, I would label the message as 'UFO ham'
and everyone would know what it was. There is a sense in which a ham joke
is not really worthy of the group's standards, but you are sending it
along to keep everyone informed of where the humor winds are blowing, so
to speak. Going back to the ethnic issue, I am expected not to be hurtful
and at the same time to be not very thin-skinned. I am one of two native
hillbillies on the list, and so I am always on the lookout for good
hillbilly humor. A favorite -- "What has 43 teeth and is a quarter mile
long? The beer line at the West Virginia State Fair." But there is a
line to be drawn as well. I can tell a ham joke if it is really funny,
but to go on to talk about, and elaborate on, ethnic stereotypes is
hurtful. I would not be officially corrected, but I might find that folks
are not chatting and commenting on my posts for awhile. Messages get sent
in all kinds of subtle waysI
7 Sex is always funny, so there is lots of sexual humor. Much of it is
self-deprecating, and none of it is political. The best ribald material
is situationally grounded. Here is the most famous example. One of our
members, say Ted, was attacked by a lamebrain on the main list (not our
private list). Ted was attacked for not knowing music to the satisfaction
of the poster -- a time honored Usenet tradition. In a fit of pure
illiterate venom, he accused Ted of being the product of 'hiney sex'
between his mother and father. Hiney Sex got abbreviated as HS, and for
then on, every post to or about Ted had to have an ObHS reference, or
obligatory hiney sex reference. The more stupid the better -- tell Ted I
just got back (obhs reference) from Cleveland.
7 Gender is an interesting issue as well. There have always been a number
of women who have belonged to the group, and they have played an integral
role as women. Betty is a lesbian, having told us in case we might want
to work that fact into our teasings of her. No one ever did -- being a
lesbian is neither especially funny or especially serious to us, I guess.
Mary is gorgeous and everyone flirts with her and she loves to flirt back.
Once, there was a long thread on masturbation for some reason, and she
sent a message to complain about the boys hogging the topic. I wrote back
and asked her -- How could you masturbate? What would you hold onto? The
bedpost, she tells me! But I would never write a message like that to
Doris. Her funny bone is tickled by politics, much more than mine. In
short, we donUt dodge gender, but we donUt dwell on it either.
7 Much of the discussion is serious. This group has expanded my musical
horizon, thanks mainly to Georgio the former college DJ. Right now, as I
am writing this message, I am listening to Medeski, Martin, & Wood.
Sitting beside the CD Last Chance to Trance Dance is Radiohead's Kid A.
Next to that is Anonymous 4, Phish, and moe. All of this music I owe to
these guys. Reggie also keeps us abreast not only of truly weird web
sites like http://www.eugenemirman.com and 'all your base are belong to
us', but also innovative art and cultural sites.
7 The glue that holds the group together is genuine human warmth. Jerry
nearly died two years ago from leukemia complications -- he went into the
hospital weighing 95 pounds with a 5 pound spleen. He needed five quarts
of blood, and they decided to remove his spleen even though the operation
was surely going to be fatal. He was in a coma for 2 weeks, during which
his left eye became fixed and dilated. Several group members kept vigil
and one of them stayed with him and nursed him back to health. Jerry had
the poor sense to tell us afterwards that he hallucinated the presence of
several of us during his coma, including one person who was helping out as
an IV stand. Birthdays are always celebrated online -- my specialty is in
coming up with some weird and cool saint for a patron saint.

Here is the point to this long ramble -- genuine humor is warm,
respectful, and cohesive. The more a community understands itself and
accepts its members for who and what they are, the fewer taboos we need.
But we are able to keep this delicate balance by being private and
selective. As groups grow in numbers, and access to groups becomes easier
and easier, then there is less time and available energy to maintain the
good will you need to avoid having taboos.

gary
shank@duq.edu



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