Dark humour, i.e. humour engaging with sinister or distressing topics, is often at the centre of complex legal cases regarding freedom of expression and its limits. On the one hand, this type of humour is safeguarded in principle by international free speech standards, which should also apply to expressions that “offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population” (as emphasised by the European Court of Human Rights in Handyside v. United Kingdom). On the other hand, jokes about terrorism, natural disasters or other highly sensitive subjects are frequently taken to court under charges such as incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence. Even within the same judicial system, the courts’ approach to these cases is often unpredictable, and would arguably benefit from a more nuanced perspective on dark humour as a form of expression. While acknowledging the inherently subjective nature of humour interpretation, this article proposes an indicative distinction between three basic genres of dark humour, or three potential outcomes of the interpretive process—namely ‘disparaging’, ‘sarcastic’, and ‘taboo-breaking’ dark humour. This theoretical framework is subsequently illustrated through the analysis of relevant legal cases from different jurisdictions, including the European Court of Human Rights and domestic courts from Spain, Italy, Belgium, Scotland and Canada. In conclusion, moving beyond the specific case of dark humour, this article outlines the potential benefits of a closer dialogue between humour research and judicial practice.

Humour is an important component of social cognition. The last few years of cognitive research of schizophrenia provided a considerable amount of empirical evidence about social cognitive impairments in this serious neurodevelopmental disorder. The aim of this study is to investigate verbal humour comprehension and its cognitive background in a group of schizophrenic patients with normal intelligence. Results showed that patients were practically unable to understand verbal jokes, Gricean implicatures, and second-order Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks, when compared with healthy subjects. As the statistical analysis shows, verbal joke comprehension of patients living with schizophrenia significantly correlated with the comprehension of the linguistic incongruity of the Gricean implicatures and with verbal intelligence. On the other hand, smooth handling of verbal jokes did not significantly depend on the comprehension of second-order ToM and did not correlate with the comprehension of the intended meaning of the speaker’s utterance in the Gricean implicatures’ tasks.

For critical educators working towards social justice and activism, it is imperative to promote a thoughtful and purposeful examination of the privileges that spring from institutionalised practices, and the ways belief systems may deny the normalcy of views or experiences of others. By employing critical discourse analysis and framing funny videos as part of larger, cultural “mirror” that reflects widely-held values and beliefs within local, institutional and societal domains, this paper identifies specific humorous videos and lines of inquiry that have supported educators in recognising their own complicity in promoting a narrow definition of normativity, along varying and intersecting planes, including white privilege, the privilege of being a heritage speaker of English, privileged gendered behaviours, heteronormativity, and the myth of meritocracy, among others. By using online humorous video clips as a springboard for reflection and discussion, this paper describes an illumination of the ways humorous media may have been given a “free pass” and allowed it to remain un-interrogated, even though it may be quietly and insidiously perpetuating damaging perspectives. Deconstructing these layered messages embedded in humorous video clips can be useful in helping (future) educators understand their own positionality and the ways these insights may positively impact their instructional practices in ways that promote equity and work against oppressive institutional practices.

The article analyses the tradition of critical cartoons in Argentina using the lens of Freud’s conception of humour. After the end of the military dictatorship in Argentina in 1983 Rudy and Daniel Paz created a new style that came to be known as “ethical humour”. In their daily cartoon on the first page of the newspaper Página 12 they commented on the worst news of the day employing what Freud referred to as the humorous distance. The article proposes a historicised appraisal of humour through an elaboration of the connection between the beginnings of the comic genre and psychoanalysis. I argue that the tiny images in the daily newspapers served as chronicles, in the Benjaminian sense, of those dimensions of social life that tend to go unnoticed by historians; they offered a microscopic, childlike humour as a means of grasping social realities. Graphic humour in these political cartoons and comics in Argentina performs multiple functions: criticizing, conferring voices, generating distance, and helping to live, whilst preserving a profoundly humane dimension.

This essay offers an experiential account of the development of “rebel clowning” as a practice that emerged in the context of the anti-globalisation movements in the UK, bringing together the ancient art of clowning and more recent practices of non-violent direct action. The essay traces the legacies of rebel clowning, outlines the tactics and strategies that comprise its humour, and analyses key activist moments in its trajectory in the first decade of the 21st century. By inserting the logic of clowning into the activist realm, the essay argues, the tired binary between protester and authority, or activists and their opponents, is shaken and cheerfully disrupted.

Book review of Schmidt, S. (2014). Seriously Funny: Mexican Political Jokes as Social Resistance . Translated by Schmidt, A. Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press. 296 pp.

This paper introduces the Disaster Picture-Diary political cartoons of Asakura Yūzō which appear in the Japanese regional newspaper Fukushima Minpō. After the so-called 3.11 disaster’s triple blow of earthquake, tsunami, and multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns in 2011, intense public and media interest and debates erupted over: how to help the victims; how to rebuild; what to do about the ongoing nuclear problem; and what should be the future of direction the nation. Yet, cartoonists in national daily newspapers failed to get involved in much of this debate. They basically continued on as they had done before the disaster merely lightly mocking politicians, their eyes closed to wider problems. In contrast, Asakura’s cartoons which began in the wake of 3.11 in the disaster affected region, broke away from this mainstream form of cartoon discourse to comment on a much greater variety of post-3.11 issues using a much more diverse range of drawing styles. In this sense, though still seemingly restrained to an outside observer from a country with a more aggressive satirical cartooning, for Asakura it is definitely a case of “anything goes”. This paper gives an overview of the disaster, and mainstream political cartooning before and after 3.11. It then introduces examples of Asakura’s Disaster Picture-Diary political cartoons, contrasting them with mainstream national cartoons to underscore how his work differs. In concluding, a number of reasons for these differences are provisionally forwarded.

In the vernacular ideology of humour there are definite ideas about where the limits of joke acceptability lie. In practice, many joke performances seem to go beyond those limits and yet arouse little if any opposition. This paper considers the role that limits play in humour through case studies of two successful practical joke performances. I argue that the performance and appreciation of jokes consists in the playful transgression of limits, but not just those that happen to be contentious in a particular socio-political moment. Even in an apparently innocuous and widely supported joke there are indications of hypothetical disagreement that index awareness of transgression. The acceptability of specific jokes is socially constructed in very context-specific ways that transmute limits without obliterating them. The reception of practical jokes suggests that awareness of limits is ever-present, even in jokes that are completely successful.

This paper examines the phenomenon of humorous Internet memes within the context of news and political culture, sometimes referred to as LOLitics. LOLitics are a category of digital texts created by ordinary individuals that, like most political humour, are usually responses to news events or gaffes committed by political figures. The analysis situates LOLitics as popular culture products that exist within the intersection between pleasure-driven ‘play’ and (arguably) genuine political discourse. LOLitics are prominent due to their spreadability and replicability, and the amount of texts being produced has visibly risen over the last election cycle. Internet memes have become one of the default ways to respond to particular situations online, and this certainly reflects the reaction towards news and political culture. The 2012 US Presidential election is applied as a case study in examining the significance of these Internet memes to everyday citizen discourse, and the relationships between ordinary citizens, the mainstream media, and politics. The results argue that humorous viral texts, both visual and verbal, reveal the potential power that ordinary people have in setting the agenda for newsmakers, and to communicate political criticism through popular culture.