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Q&A /asmagazine/ en Should I be laughing at this? /asmagazine/2023/08/10/should-i-be-laughing <span>Should I be laughing at this?</span> <span><span>Anonymous (not verified)</span></span> <span><time datetime="2023-08-10T13:55:37-06:00" title="Thursday, August 10, 2023 - 13:55">Thu, 08/10/2023 - 13:55</time> </span> <div> <div class="imageMediaStyle focal_image_wide"> <img loading="lazy" src="/asmagazine/sites/default/files/styles/focal_image_wide/public/article-thumbnail/screenshot_2023-08-10_at_1.57.58_pm.png?h=f13fbffc&itok=eDutyAJG" width="1200" height="800" alt="/asmagazine/2023/08/10/should-i-be-laughing"> </div> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-categories" itemprop="about"> <span class="visually-hidden">Categories:</span> <div class="ucb-article-category-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-folder-open"></i> </div> <a href="/asmagazine/taxonomy/term/30"> News </a> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-tags" itemprop="keywords"> <span class="visually-hidden">Tags:</span> <div class="ucb-article-tag-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-tags"></i> </div> <a href="/asmagazine/taxonomy/term/1241" hreflang="en">Division of Arts and Humanities</a> <a href="/asmagazine/taxonomy/term/732" hreflang="en">Graduate students</a> <a href="/asmagazine/taxonomy/term/1218" hreflang="en">PhD student</a> <a href="/asmagazine/taxonomy/term/578" hreflang="en">Philosophy</a> <a href="/asmagazine/taxonomy/term/1219" hreflang="en">Q&A</a> <a href="/asmagazine/taxonomy/term/686" hreflang="en">Research</a> </div> <a href="/asmagazine/rachel-sauer">Rachel Sauer</a> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default 3"> <div class="ucb-article-text" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><p class="lead"><em>In a recent defense of strong comic immoralism, ��ϳԹ� philosophy student Connor Kianpour argues for the aesthetic value of immoral humor</em></p><hr><p>A priest and a rabbi walk into a bar and … have a lovely evening of conversation and libation, because we’re not supposed to tell those kinds of jokes, right?</p><p>You know the ones: the jokes we laugh at and then immediately look around to check whether anyone saw us laughing. The jokes that are just <em>wrong</em>, that maybe indicate we’re terrible people for laughing. The jokes that dare not speak their name, that there’s just no defending.</p><p>Or is there?</p><p>In a <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jaac/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jaac/kpad025/7175040?redirectedFrom=fulltext" rel="nofollow">recently published defense of strong comic immoralism</a>, Connor Kianpour, a PhD student in the ��ϳԹ� Department of Philosophy who studies the philosophy of humor, argues that strong comic immoralism—that is, the view that humor involving a moral defect that is aesthetically enhanced by that defect—is true. This does not mean that immoral jokes are always <em>OK</em> to tell, he emphasizes, but it does mean that people are not mistaken for finding them funny. </p><div class="feature-layout-callout feature-layout-callout-large"><div class="ucb-callout-content"><div> <div class="imageMediaStyle medium_750px_50_display_size_"> <img loading="lazy" src="/asmagazine/sites/default/files/styles/medium_750px_50_display_size_/public/article-image/connorkianpour.jpg?itok=nBPDjJHN" width="750" height="563" alt="Connor"> </div> <p>In a recently published analysis of strong comic immoralism, Connor Kianpour, a PhD student in the CU Department of Philosophy, argues that immoral jokes may not be OK to tell, but people aren't wrong for laughing at them.</p></div></div></div><p>He further argues that laughing at strong comic immoralism does not mean accepting that all immorality in all art makes art better, or that morally defective jokes are always more funny than jokes without moral defects. The argument is just that immoral jokes are funny in ways that “clean” jokes are not.</p><p>He recently elaborated on the philosophy of humor and the intellectual value of studying the humor that we’re not sure we should laugh at.</p><p><strong>Question: Humor and philosophy don’t immediately seem like natural partners; how did you arrive at this intersection?</strong></p><p><strong>Kianpour</strong>: In terms of how I got interested in philosophical questions about humor, the first thing is: I have a funny dad. He loves bathroom humor and I’ve always appreciated that. As a philosopher, I also recognized that there is a similar sort of thing that happens in people when they realize that an argument works and when they realize that a joke is successful. There’s a sort of recognition, an <em>aha</em> moment, when you get a joke and when you get an argument and I always found that really fascinating. </p><p>I also noticed there are a lot of comedians—George Carlin comes to mind—who seem to approach comedy from a philosophical perspective. They use jokes to indirectly construct and build arguments about attitudes that people should have about certain practices and the way that the world is.</p><p>I started really looking into questions about humor, what it is, what makes things funny. A lot of philosophers have had a lot to say about humor, but one thing missing from all of these discussions was a defense of strong comic immoralism. In the late 20<sup>th</sup> century, the consensus in philosophy seemed to be that moral defects in jokes make them less funny. But in “In Praise of Immoral Art,” (author) Daniel Jacobson takes the position that moral defects in jokes can sometimes make jokes funnier. I am of the mind that moral defects in jokes might <em>always</em> make them funnier, and I think there’s been a silence on this position that strikes me as utterly plausible.</p><p><strong>Question: But as a society we don’t always sit comfortably with immoral humor. For a lot of people, there’s the sense that, “If I laugh at this, I’m a bad person.”</strong></p><p><strong>Kianpour</strong>: There are two ways to analyze that kind of quandary. On one hand, it’s important that we uphold a distinction between moral value and aesthetic value. It could be the case that by laughing at an immoral joke maybe you are a worse person, but it doesn’t mean that by laughing at an immoral joke you were wrong to think it was funny. That’s at least one thing to keep in mind—it’s possible for us to live in this space where something could be aesthetically very virtuous, but morally not so. </p><p>A good example of this is <em>Lolita</em> by Vladimir Nabokov. Many people recognize the book is a literary masterpiece, but