The humourous attitude, according to Sigmund Freud, can either be directed towards the subject’s own self or towards other people, bringing a yield of pleasure to the person who adopts it, as well as the non-participating onlooker. However, Simon Critchley argues that laughing at oneself is better than laughing at others as humour is a self-mocking ridicule.
Additionally, Critchley uses nuclear family dynamics to refer to the concept of humour, equating one’s ‘super-ego’ with the characteristics of a naive child who lacks parental discipline, and that humour gives us a sense of childlike elevation. This comparison reminded me of a scene from Pen15, a show where Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle play fictionalised versions of their 13-year-old selves.
In the following clip, Maya struggles to articulate a humourous insult at her bully/crush, Brandt. Her lack of parental prohibition allows her childlike super-ego to take full control of what she says, but she takes this too far by making a joke at the expense of his late father. The humour of the situation comes not from Brandt’s dad being dead but instead derives from Maya’s lack of social awareness as the lowbrow nature of her joke and the humour that it brings her is largely due to her childishness and immaturity. She does not care about the limits or boundaries of what she should or should not say as she is more focused on embarrassing Brandt in order to make herself feel better and gain the upper hand over him. Her inability to understand the weight of what she said and that joking about death is cruel and mean-spirited rather than funny, combined with the contrasting reactions of her school peers also adds to the joke’s appeal, as the unexpected nature of what Maya said causes everyone around her to silently stare in shock whilst she and Anna obnoxiously laugh in Brandt’s face.
This clip supports Critchley’s argument by demonstrating how laughing at oneself is more ethical than laughing at others as one knows their own personal boundaries of what they consider worth joking about.
Content Warning: ableist language