Anyone even with a marginal use of the internet or other internet-based technologies would know well that humour, and particularly political humour now invades their private and public space mediated by technology instantly.
You are more likely than not to receive cartoons, memes or other content with humour via Face Book, Twitter, Instagram more publicly or through Messenger, WhatsApp or Telegram more privately. Even in the specific case of Sri Lanka, whatever the political and social upheavals people might experience daily, humour continues unabated as a relentless political commentary. But there is inadequate recognition of humour and its political potential among scholars and political commentators.
In his 2019 publication, ‘Humour’ Terry Eagleton says, “A good many studies of humour begin with the shamefaced acknowledgement that to analyse a joke is to kill it dead.” Many people fail to understand that humour and writing about humour are two different things, a difference that Eagleton understood well. In Sri Lankan scholarship too, humour in general and political humour in particular are ill-understood. This is despite the rather long history of humour in Sri Lankan society.
Many people would be familiar with the narratives of Mahadana Mutta and Andare. In these stories, in general, people who were targeted often are those endowed with power and authority. In the case of Mahadana Mutta, the target was himself as a man who was supposedly endowed with wisdom but was instead dim-witted. In the case of Andare, it was often about outsmarting the king and Andare’s own neighbours all who thought they could outsmart him.
Ritual practice
Humour has been an important aspect of Sinhala ritual practice also for a considerable period. Lorna Rhodes writing in the early 1980s with reference to Sinhala exorcist rituals points out that humour is a central aspect of these practices. Similarly, Bruce Kapfererin a 1979 essay has said, “comedy and humour, legitimately enacted within particular episodes of a ritual, are regular features of large publicly performed rituals to propitiate malign demons in the south of Sri Lanka.”
Beyond the ritual domain, traditional Sinhala theatrical genre, kolam also can be seen as an important repository of humour, which is meant for collective entertainment. In more recent times, forums of humour have expanded significantly to include political yarns, films, theatre as well as cartoons.
The latest entry into this field are internet memes with humorous content that tend to circulate much more freely and easily than any previous incarnation of humour. The focus of this essay is on political humour and memes.
But what does political humour do in a society? Gregor Benton in his 1993 essay, ‘The Origins of the Political Joke’ says political ‘jokes’ are integral to modem dictatorships across ideological positions, that emanate from “acute tension and inhibition” in society.
As far as he is concerned, regressive conditions and restrictions on freedom of expression and thought closely linked to dictatorial societies provide the genesis for political humour. He also suggests that irrespective of the specificities of local conditions, these jokes present a universal quality. At the same time, because political jokes referring to regimes or powerful people within governmental structures are quite likely to be anti-systemic, they would tend circulate in domains beyond official media.
Dissatisfaction
Though Benton’s ideas make sense at a general level when trying to understand political humour, most of us would know from experience they also need fine-tuning. For instance, it is not only in dictatorial conditions that political humour appears. But we can understand political humour wherever they appear as citizens’ attempts at rebelling against the state’s actions in standardising their thinking, inserting fear into to their day-to-day life or in general as people’s attempts at expressing their dissatisfaction in situations where more open forms of dissent are controlled. Beyond this however, political humour can also function as a broader tool of dissent aimed at regimes as well as oppositional politics.
It is in this general context we have to situate political humour in general as well as their mimetic versions. Humorous memes generally amalgamate words and images though equally as often, they may consist only of words or only of images.
In this sense, memes are both cultural products and political tools that are not autonomous texts. That is, like most texts, including political commentaries or cartoons, memes generate sense and draw meaning from the socio-political situations they emerge out of.
In the context of contemporary life, the importance of political memes come from the fact that they are easy to create and even easier to circulate due to the relatively enhanced and democratized access to the internet and relevant technologies for creation and circulation. This was not the case with earlier forms of public political humour be they cartoons, films, yarns or anything else.
For instance, the availability of free meme-makers online has ensured that almost anyone with access to the internet can create a meme based on his or her political persuasion and then readily circulate it to hundreds or even thousands of people. Each meme has the potential to be even more widely circulated by others depending on their political preferences.
Given the multiple and often amateurish authors at work, this also means that the visual, linguistic and taste quality of these cultural-political products would vary considerably as opposed to a genre like cartoons which tended to be produced by professionals.
Influential
In trying to contextualise the power of humorous political memes, it is useful to first accept that humour is not something trivial. As Alison Ross has argued in her 2005 book, The Language of Humour, “humour is influential” irrespective of the fact if we are referring to political satire or simple jokes. This is because humour in this situation is tools for “establishing friendships and excluding others.”
Targeting and ridiculing a specific politician or his practices and what he stands for invariably excludes his support base too. In the same sense, those who share it and engage with it in public or private, would be bound by a political ideology the criticisms generated by the meme represent. Those who do not share them or have negative commentaries to make, mark the other end of the political spectrum.
It seems to me, political memes, like the earlier incarnations of political humour such as cartoons and yarns can be understood as a form of resistance.
But memes are more a resistance of the future even though that future is already well established and present today itself. What I mean by ‘future’ here is a situation where political liberties might be severely restricted as a norm rather than as an exception when ‘resistance’ in general will also have to be re-crafted from something open to something that is more covert, but consistent.
That is, resistance to politics -- be that of the state or other hegemonic political actors -- when open and democratic spaces for dissent would continue to shrink as has been the case in South Asia as well as many other parts of the world.
Given the political meme’s ability to camouflage authorship and circulate openly and freely but well within comfort zones of anonymity, it is clearly the safest form of resistance and discourse today and in time to come.
Blurb: In the context of contemporary life, the importance of political memes come from the fact that they are easy to create and even easier to circulate due to the relatively enhanced and democratized access to the internet and relevant technologies for creation and circulation