WASHINGTON -- What's so funny?
Ask a hundred people that question and you'll probably get just as many answers. Ask women, according to researchers at Stanford University, and you'll likely receive responses that differ substantially from those of men. Scientists at Stanford's medical school recently told The Associated Press that women are more likely to enjoy a good gag or witty anecdote, in part because they tend to expect less from a joke.
The research team cites the different reactions as further -- albeit unsurprising -- evidence "that men and women often perceive the world differently."
What would happen, though, if we substituted "blacks" and "Asians" for "men" and "women"? Or "Italians" and "Arabs"?
Ethnic groups are also likely to see the world differently, which makes the question of what is funny even dicier and less predictable, and reduces the odds of a joke's potential success. Paul Beatty discusses such differences in "Hokum," his forthcoming anthology of African-American humor.
During his early childhood in a mostly white California neighborhood, Beatty often found himself the butt of racially themed humor. When he moved to a mostly black neighborhood in Los Angeles, he encountered similar jokes but noted that they "had a different tone than the ones told in the old neighborhood. They were lyrical, united (the) joker and listener rather than divided."
While Beatty seems to be aiming for a similar effect, early responses to the book suggest that differences in perception between joker and audience continue to loom large.
As first reported in Publishers Weekly, media outlets have canceled interviews with Beatty, institutions have revoked invitations for him to speak, and an editor of an African-American glossy has phoned Beatty's publisher and registered strong objections. The cause of the furor is not the contents of the book but its cover. A smile-shaped watermelon rind, the sole image on the front of "Hokum," apparently strikes some as intolerably offensive.
Beatty has refused to change it. In a statement, he notes that reaction to the cover reflects a widespread notion that blackness is an "offensive trait." Its power to offend, in his view, "has shaped black American humor from its minstrel beginnings."
I've known and admired Beatty for years, but I think he overplays the connection to minstrelsy, in which blacks didn't get substantially involved until after the Civil War. At the same time, he underplays the longevity of the black humor tradition, which dates back to the earliest days of Africans in America. As early as 1795, a white traveler suggested, "The blacks are the great humorists of the nation. ... Climate, music, kind treatment act upon them like electricity."
Still, I sympathize with Beatty, who says changing the cover would be "cowardly." To my eyes, the cover of "Hokum" is clever, effective and downright subtle compared to many examples of modern humor.
Beatty hopes his collection will "offend political, linguistic and social sensibilities," but that's harder than ever to do. "Race is the Place," a worthwhile documentary that will first air Nov. 22 on PBS, features a number of performers with similar aims. They include Culture Clash, a Latino comedy troupe, and Barry Shabaka Henley, an African-American actor and performance artist. Both acts employ a confrontational style that, like Beatty's material, is designed to arouse strong reactions.
"We're out there to shock the audience ... and provoke thought," the members of Culture Clash announce in the documentary. Among their routines is a riveting piece about a group of young Asian-American car enthusiasts who use the N-word as a term of endearment.
The youths' use of the slur is "so wrong and so incorrect," says Clash member Richard Montoya, "but it's so not my job to put a filter on that."
Henley's funny but chilling monologue about a Klansman makes even more frequent use of the epithet, and the performer offers no apology. "I think this word is such a powerful historical cult thing in our world," he says, "that to ignore it or pretend it doesn't exist is worse than using it every other word."
I'm with Henley. I see no role for the N-word in polite conversation, but it's often difficult to provide necessary context in discussions about art, humor and history by resorting to deletions and ineffective euphemisms, as I am forced to do here. It's curious that more than 30 years after Archie Bunker's caustic humor brought just about every ethnic slur imaginable into our living room, the N-word remains mostly exiled to cable television. It must be that perception thing again.
