The Tyranny of Humour

what charming fascists, those Vorticists

That's probably a whole other thread!

im not sure i understand this thread but i guess i am part of the problem here

I think part of the problem is that NV was "begging the question" a bit.

Banter is not humour; banter is what people have when they lack a sense of humour. Banter is a catch-all word for idiocy that warns the rest of us that Here Be Lads. Banter is Soccer AM. It is Andy Gray. It is middle-aged men on Top Gear pretending that they are edgy outsiders by mocking society's weakest, then going home to Chipping Norton where they live two doors down from the Prime Minister. It is an English stag do in Dublin or Amsterdam with matching T-shirts. It is cruelty unleavened by wit but which is excused because it is a bit like wit, if you look at it from a certain angle. It what is left when humour has died, and just the rotting, stinking carcass remains, bearing a resemblance to the living being but lacking all that made it good. Banter is the Dunning-Kruger effect writ large. If you like banter, you are an idiot.

I have just written a tirade complaining about the price of stadium gig tickets, and now I'm agreeing with an Op/Ed column in the freaking TORYGRAPH.

Today is the day that i finally achieved Old Man Waving Can At Clouds status and there is nothing I can do about it.

Cane.

Though, being me, waving a copy of Ege Bamyasi at the clouds would be just as likely.

Didn't Eva Wiseman write (more or less) the same thing in the Observer a few weeks ago?

the banter backlash has been under way for a while i think, but there are...class dimensions that need to be unpicked.

but banter is only part of what NV was talking about.

Oh, I could say something about the class dimensions of the Bullingdon Banterers and the sheer depths of their sexism once you scratch the surface of their paternalism, but I won't go there.

the banter backlash has been under way for a while i think, but there are...class dimensions that need to be unpicked.

Don't think so, you see it among posh boys as much as working class lads. It's a particularly male thing though.

Tend to see it as 'posh lads' tbh.

surely Barney Ronay did this backlash (not that fascinatingly but he did it)

come to think of it I think Harry Pearson weighed in also

though 'weighed' is not the word for light comic floater HP

"BANTA" has become a Thing amongst footballers and football fans in recent times. Not many posh lads there.

actually HP strikes me as another case of humour not being tyrannical -- his Guardian column is pure humour, not really serious at all, just play, and has often been the best thing in the sport section

yeah banter is def a homosocial thing throughout all classes, thinking about it

I would argue that Matt is right, there aren't class distinctions that need to be unpicked - there are *intellectual* dimensions that need to be unpicked. The intellectual people (though mostly men) of all classes are capable of true wit, the less intellectual are not and so need to fill the chasm where the wit should be with their banter.

The only reason why it seems to be posh lads is because the posh lads are more visible as they have the more visible jobs - you read their words in magazines and hear them on TV. Obviously if you are a painter and decorator and the only place your banter is heard is down your local on a Saturday night people aren't going to be so aware of it.

I should add here (before someone shouts at me) that what I meant wasn't that women aren't capable of wit, it's that women's humour whoever they are is less cruel, so the differences between the humour of intellectual women and non-intellectual women are not so obvious.

Um. I don't know that it's that women's humour is less *cruel* - you've never heard two women giving ~female cleb X~ a once-over? But it seems somehow less competitive, and less based on sexually humiliating the person one is being humourous *with*? Actually, I don't even know that that's true, either. It's just a different power dynamic.

I have wondered why, for a long time, why, when women do sexually loaded "banter" about men, it tends to be a lot funnier and less "offensive" to me than men doing the same thing. If this is just my inherent prejudice, or if there is something in the power dynamic that renders it subversive rather than just grotesque.

But this is another topic. I hate this reductive "men drive like this, women drive like that" stereotypes, they wind me up so much.

Hm, by posh lads, I meant young upper class men taking on the darts/footy/zoo manner, for what psychological or social reason is a different matter.

That thing about intellectual 'wit' and lower class 'banter' I'm not sure is the case either. Certainly there is enough wit, wryness, sardonic and deprecating understatement in all classes, in fact put in those terms it's often seen to be located in working class undermining of authority and upper class attitudes.

Banter seems to be more of conversational froth, tending nowhere and to nothing. At its best banter is light-hearted back-and-forth between friends, usually based on certain cliches about each other's behaviour and known areas of mild difference. It can grease the wheels of conversation, true, although I tend to find it tedious. Humour is often a component, but doesn't need to be, because the main thing is the light-heartedness.

At its worst it's become a noisy badge of 'lads together', the 'just a bit of fun' crowd (and little else, and 'just a bit' is about right).

I have never experienced any humour, with a man, based on him trying to sexually humiliate me.

That would be strange.

Fizzles, the distinction being made was surely clever wit vs dumb banter, in all classes

and in light of WCC's post, the 'lads together' thing shd be extended to it being a defensive/aggressive badge of belonging no matter what the group. Humour or wit isn't limited to that group. xpost

Sorry, you're correct, pinefox. But I probably wouldn't have used the term 'intellectual' I think.

Argh, that was clumsily constructed. Being funny with? Being funny *at*? Like, the objects of "banter", it is definitely about the humiliation of the object. But I suppose the point is bonding with a man in a homosocial way, over the humiliation of the Other, where the Other usually = "women" or other targets of that kind of oneupmanship.

I think people, together, sometimes like laughing at other people, who are not there, or whom maybe they don't like that much

In my own particular experience, that does not have any gendered dimension, eg there is no particular tendency to laugh at women more than men, or to laugh at either on any sexual basis - this sounds likely to be vulgar and not so nice.

Pinefox, you live in such a lovely dream world, I wish I lived in that world, too.

But laughing at people who are not there or who are not part of the bantering group or The Other isn't what I would consider banter? In my experience, banter is between people of similar social standing, is to the face, and there's an implied light-heartedness to it. The expected response is an equally light-hearted ( but superficially cruel) insult straight back, not hand-wringing about how "my friends and colleagues don't like me"...

obvs there are problems where there are big differences in power/ privilege levels or where an equal response wouldn't be tolerated ( add your own examples here ) but that's no longer truly banter, its bullying / harassment etc

When you are bantering across a power gradient of something like gender or race or class, where the Privileged Person believes that there *is* no power structure and sexism or racism etc. is "a solved problem" and no longer really an issue, therefore just available for the humour box - while the other person is someone for whom structural racism or sexism is a real thing that exists and affects their lives in material ways on a regular basis. This is hugely problematic.

Also, in cases where it's perfectly *obvious* even to the privileged person that said structures exist, and they are doing it specifically to be bullying, but with the "hey but it's just banter, what's the matter, haven't you got a sense of humour?"

I'm getting so tired of saying this in a hundred different ways, though.

I would argue that Matt is right, there aren't class distinctions that need to be unpicked - there are *intellectual* dimensions that need to be unpicked. The intellectual people (though mostly men) of all classes are capable of true wit, the less intellectual are not and so need to fill the chasm where the wit should be with their banter.

Don't think so, I've met lots of very intelligent people who are completely witless and/or bludgeoningly and unthinkingly offensive, as well as people who would never trouble the inside of any academic institution who are regularly hilarious. This is the sort of reaching that lefties do when they try and convince themselves that people are right-wing because they're *less intelligent*. The dividing line isn't intelligence or intellectual capacity at all, it's emotional/social awareness and empathy.

^^ otm

wit shows intelligence

I think

It shows a kind of intelligence, but not really one confined to "the intellectual people of all classes".

I think 'intellectual' may have been meant to mean 'people with wit, ie a certain intelligence'? rather than people who read a lot or anything

sounds like 'bantering across a power gradient' means 'openly mocking people less privileged than you, to their faces'

I don't think I know anyone who does this

in my opinion 'banter' is more about perceptions of masculinity and sexuality rather than class or intelligence.

y'know, "it was only banter" is a good enough reason to ban "banter"
I do think a little competitive teasing between consenting adults can be fun though.

It's such a surprise that a straight white male doesn't know anyone who ever bullies anyone, isn't it?

And on the whole "consenting" part, fair enough, but I'm really sick of, well, straight white males getting to define who consents and who doesn't.

Oh god this thread just makes me unhappy and I should stay the fuck off it, it's not good for me to engage with this stuff.

What are the working definitions of "wit" and "banter" here, please? I mean, typically you hear the two words together as the phrase "witty banter" to describe Buffy or Gilmore Girls or something.

xp to wcc

ah, sorry it makes you unhappy - not the intention at all!

re consent : don't you think consent and trust can exist, and within those boundaries the rules of acceptable behaviour can (not should, but can) change?

I would hate to think that my wife and I shouldn't affectionately tease each other! (and in that context "you lazy bastard" can mean "I love you" given the right tone and non-verbals)

you're onto something tho, WCC, even if it isn't where i started the thread from.

the salon savagery of something like les liasons dangereuses is a part of banter, but the school classroom hooting and bullying of the sacrificial victim is another pole of it. some people will excuse one because it's "witty" and yet the intention in both cases is to wound, socially or emotionally. there's another kind of banter which is of the "friends and equals engaged in horseplay" variety i guess. the problem is the same word applied indiscriminately to different activities. and the word becoming an excuse for those who want to engage in the savagery but pretend oh so disingenuously that what they're doing is playful.

my notions of "public humour" don't really impact on this, which is older and darker maybe.

"Banter" doesn't always have to be oppressive. It can also be used for bonding - friends teasing each other - totally consensual and not directed negatively against anyone who isn't involved in it.

"you lazy bastard" can mean "I love you"

Now, this *is* interesting coz there is def a nationality component here. In terms of using insults affectionately, which may be considered "teasing" by some, it is more common and more commonly accepted in Australia, than the UK, and more common and more commonly accepted in the UK than the US.

I'm mindful of this quote from "Bodyline" now.

Although it can be when it is used in the sense "it's only banter - can't you take a joke". It's a word that can be used in lots of different ways

xp to myself

To take a specific example, The Tyranny of Humour, wrt banter, was very much a part of the power/privilege style bullying at a supermarket I worked in. Laughter or even 'light-heartedness' can also be directed at people, trivialising things they take seriously or are important to them. Further that banter/light-hearted back and forth can be withheld in a very tangible way from people who you do not wish to include.

This sort of behaviour was the preserve of bosses and longer-term people, and often used at the expense of people who didn't quite fit in or were new. The fact that it isn't quite bullying as such, doesn't mean that its effect is not the same.

This happens everywhere all the time, of course, but this seemed a particular tangible and exemplary version of how banter can work, often works in fact. The laughter of humour generally should, ideally perhaps, be seen as inclusive, as 'funny' beyond the immediate group and thus making people laugh who are not part of that group. Not sure it quite ever works like that, but 'banter' certainly doesn't work like that.

Recognising that you have established consent for banter with your wife is v v different from the kinds of places where these forms of harmful "banter" are used.

One does not have consent for this kind of banter in the workplace, with strangers on internet forums, in public newspapers, on the air of radio and television.

Conflating the two is really kind of disingenuous because "I like bantering with my wife" is not really what we're talking about.

"strangers on internet forums" is pretty problematic, without condoning obvious bullying. a lot of us here are strangers in one sense but feel a degree of familiarity with each others personae as well

*can't you take a joke* nearly always comes across as "it's my right to be derogatory to you and have you not mind" though.

there is the closely related *can dish it out but can't take it* where the person who had been accused of *not taking a joke* then makes a similar comment at the original "joker"'s expense only for the "joker" to be hurt by it.

i dunno "dish it out but can't take it" has broader applications than that