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Key points
- People recognize that gentle, playful banter differs from aggressive, malicious jokes meant to cause pain.
- Sometimes, however, a lack of familiarity results in confusion: Who decides, and what should the response be?
- Scholars Thomas Wilk and Steven Gimbel discuss when the “I was only joking” defense is and isn’t justified.
The following is the last of a three-part interview with philosophers Drs. Thomas Wilk and Steven Gimbel on the ethical and moral considerations surrounding humor. For part one, click here. Part two can be found here.
When someone gets in trouble for saying something they should not have, they will often respond with “I was only joking” to get themselves off the hook. Why do we think joking absolves us of moral blame?
The response “I was only joking” is such a classic and contentious one, and we can explain why. Jokes are a form of playful speech, not intended to communicate facts. When you tell the one about the pirate with the steering wheel on the front of his pants, you don’t mean for the listener to really believe this actually happened.
We hear jokes differently than other speech because they are doing something different from other speech. It’s similar to children’s play-fighting—no one thinks the playful wrestling comes from a real disagreement, and the mock punches don’t lead to hard feelings or retribution. It’s all in good fun. Likewise, even a harsh, tendentious joke can be divorced from its usual commitments and consequences if the audience understands it as a joke, as a sort of artistic performance removed from the real world.
However, play-fighting is risky because one participant might suddenly feel a line has been crossed, that it is now in the real world, and then the playful detachment vanishes. (Hang on…my kids are screaming in the other room.) Joking carries the same risk. If the audience doesn’t perceive the speaker as “only joking,” then the speaker faces the usual consequences of their words: that is, the condemnation that would come from not joking at all but saying it straight.
The issue with saying “I was only joking” is that the interpretation is not solely up to the speaker—the audience makes a judgment concerning whether the joke was meant to just be clever or to communicate something, and the joker can be held morally responsible if the joke was meant as more than just a joke. The speaker’s claim is only one piece of evidence in that interpretation.
The audience’s judgment, its interpretation of what was said, is influenced by the speaker’s “joke capital,” as we discussed in the prior post. Joke capital includes factors like who the speaker is, their social position, their history with the audience, and other contextual elements. If the audience believes the speaker has enough joke capital, they’re more likely to accept the joke as playful. Without sufficient joke capital, the audience might not buy the “only joking” defense, and the speaker could be held accountable for any harm caused.
When, if ever, should we insert ourselves if we hear what might be an inappropriate joke? Are the “rules” different when dealing with friends and family as opposed to acquaintances or strangers? What about criticizing professional humorists?
Just because you see something unethical does not instantly transform you into a morality cop. Sometimes you are justified in intervening, and sometimes, even though you witnessed something wrong, you still need to butt out and mind your own business. Theorists of humor ethics have often overlooked the distinction between morally assessing a joke and determining when it’s appropriate to intervene. We believe this distinction is crucial.
For instance, you have greater standing to call out your friends and family for inappropriate jokes than you do with a random stranger in a bar because of the trust that exists in your personal relationships. However, you might lack standing to intervene when you overhear two friends joking in a private setting. Just as you wouldn’t intervene in a spousal dispute at a nearby restaurant table, stepping in uninvited to be a drive-by marriage counselor, so, too, you shouldn’t necessarily call out someone for off-color jokes they’ve told to a friend. The privacy of the relationship deserves some amount of respect that gets balanced against the possibly problematic speech (Wilk, 2017).
Does that stranger have enough joke capital to be telling that joke to that person? You don’t know. When can you demand an accounting? Sometimes, but not always.
The case of professional comedians adds another layer of complexity. The public nature of their joking gives the audience more standing to ethically critique their material, yet it may occur in a venue designed for exactly that sort of speech—an adult-only club or a satellite radio channel dedicated to that sort of humor. Because comedy is one way of speaking truth to power, working comics, when on-stage, receive a moral permissibility beyond what we grant to normal people telling jokes out of respect for the social good they can do.
So, the key is understanding your ethical standing in each situation. While it’s important to address harmful jokes, it’s also important to recognize when you have the standing to do so and when it might be more appropriate to steer clear. A failure to do this risks our devolving into a censorious society where many of the benefits of humor are lost to the fear of reprimand. We hope it’s not too late.
© John Charles Simon
References
Wilk, Thomas. (2017). Trust, Communities, and the Standing to Hold Accountable. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, 27(2), E-1.
