A pie in the face of terror
Question: What do you call 10,000 New Yorkers smashed under the World Trade Center?
Answer: A good start.
And so it begins.
I started writing this column only eight hours or so after the destruction of the World Trade Center and the west wing of the Pentagon. Literally, the dust had not settled—yet jokes about the disaster were already popping up on the Internet.
This came to me as a bit of a surprise. As far as I’m concerned, few things are as unfunny as what happened in America last Tuesday.
As I write, I feel the anxiety churning in my stomach. I worry about what America’s enemies might do next. I worry even more about what America might do next. Indeed, the events of this week could set off a chain of events that spells the end of us all.
Are the people who find humour in this tragedy sick? Are they insensitive? Do they fail to grasp the utter unfunnyness of the situation? In most cases, I think the answers are no, not really, and no.
Everyday people make jokes about disasters because it helps keep us sane. As Mel Brooks once said, “humour is just another defense against the universe.” Don’t be fooled by the superficial insensitivity of the jokes you might be hearing. Chances are that most of these folks need to laugh at this situation as much as others need to cry, or be angry.
Most of us use grim humour to cope with life’s dark side. Some of us just use it more frequently than others. And with less tact. And sooner. Steve Allen once said that “comedy equals tragedy plus time.” How much time? That depends on you.
However, gallows humour is a coping strategy that is not without its perils. Few things can provoke the wrath of others more quickly than the wrong joke—or the wrong laugh—at the wrong time.
I had this illustrated for me Tuesday night, when I was watching the TV coverage of the disaster with a friend. Unbelievably, my friend snickered at things I thought were awful, such as the terrifying footage of people jumping from the towers, or the screams of those who witnessed the planes hitting the World Trade Center.
Hearing her laugh, I was overwhelmed by anger. That she could look at these images, and find amusement where I was almost moved to tears—it just infuriated me. What the fuck was wrong with her? I made a harsh comment about how this was not funny.
The snickering stopped. I could see she felt ashamed.
I silently chastised myself. I knew I had misunderstood her laughter. She wasn’t laughing because she truly thought it was funny. She found amusement—however irrational—on the TV screen because, well, she needed that laugh. I apologised for my outburst.
A moment later a Trade Center evacuee appeared on the screen. He commented that one of the people near him during the long trip down the stairs kept laughing, and he thought this was very strange.
The universe disturbs us, and the universe frightens us. So we make jokes about the great tragedies in our world. Usually stupid, tasteless, and terribly hurtful if heard by the wrong people at the wrong time—yet for many, an indispensable part of the healing process.
For many, these jokes live on in our memories with the tragedies that inspired them. Almost everyone who remembers the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster remembers this one:
Question: What does NASA stand for?
Answer: Needs Another Seven Astronauts.
Was it funny? Sure it was. It’s certainly a lot more clever than the latest version of the same joke:
Question: What does WTC stand for?
Answer: What Trade Center?
Most tragedy jokes are pretty much the same. The joke I opened this column with isn’t new, either. The punch line will work any time any large group of people is killed, in any disaster, anywhere. But in all of its forms, it provides the same laugh, and it assuages the same pain.
As I finish this column, three days have passed since disaster struck in the USA, and the tragedy continues to unfold. At this point, dozens of jokes about this attack have been posted online, and there will likely be dozens more in the coming days. The close cousins known as comedy and tragedy have intertwined, and they are dancing their delicate dance. They look so alike—both swathed in the rags of the dead—that sometimes it’s difficult to tell them apart.
And so, as we conclude that unforgettable week in which “Jump” and “It’s Raining Men” became smash hits on Wall Street, I will leave you with the most tasteless World Trade Center joke I’ve seen so far:
Question: Why didn’t Superman stop the planes from hitting the World Trade Center?
Answer: Because he’s a quadriplegic.
I must admit, I laughed at that one. And the laughter felt good. •
Originally published in The Peak, September 17 2001. I think it deserves its place in the pantheon of articles, written in the days following 9/11, that strove for profundity and perhaps didn’t quite succeed.
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