One current culture war in North American society concernsrough humor. I say “rough,” because I want to be neutral as to whether instances of it are alsooffensive, since whether this or that instance of it is offensive is one of the things at issue.

粗暴的幽默是一个广阔的帐篷。但它的笑话、小品、文字、漫画等都有一个共同点:它们在处理文化敏感问题时，会碰到或违反禁忌，比如使用某些词汇的禁忌，或谈论或嘲笑某些事情的禁忌。

Now unlike many, I don’t want to defendor反对粗俗的幽默，至少在这个博客里不要。Rather, I want to excavate two background theories people seem to have in mind, however inchoately, whenthey攻击或反对它。

Let’s start with an example of rough humor (content warning!) to which the two theoriesmightapply; then we’ll get to the theories themselves. (This joke is also one Josh discussed in our recentepisode on humorwith guestJeff Israel，本文就是对此的回应。)

Dave Chappelle, in his recent Netflix special “Sticks and Stones他在亚特兰大对现场观众说:Discussing Kevin Hart’s decade-old homophobic comments that got him canceled from the hosting the Oscars, Chappelle says (and imagine this with his characteristic explosive, wide-eyed delivery):

I’m not gonna repeat what he said...’cause this is Atlanta. [PAUSE for laughs] You know what I mean. I’m sure there’s a lot of gay men here tonight…with their wives.

The audience goes crazy.

你当然可能会反对，但这个笑话至少让人印象深刻。简而言之，它触及了亚特兰大、他的观众、未出柜的同性恋男子和与他们结婚的妇女，以及(更微妙的)南方恐同症的后果。我无法定义“机智”，但这也算。

但是它有什么害处吗?

答案将取决于这个笑话的效果。这就引出了我们的两个理论。

Theory 1: Blowing Off Steam

This theory says that—whatever cultural, religious, racial, sexual etc. tensions are present in a given society—those tensions cause psychological strains in individuals. These strains make it hard for people from different groups to relate to one another. For example, when there are greater tensions afoot over an issue like gay marriage, communication across boundaries of orientation puts more strain on individuals. As communications break down, tensions get worse in a vicious cycle, leading to more mutual suspicion, etc. between groups.

With that in the background, Blowing Off Steam says that rough humoreases those strains. Rough humor puts the things we’re tense about front and center, bats them around playfully, and makes them less scary. So individuals who witness said rough humor will be a bit more able to interact comfortably, and with greater humanity, toward people from other groups.

Applied to Chappelle’s joke, Blowing Off Steam predicts that straight and gay people who witness such rough humor will be at leastslightlymore likely to interact comfortably and kindly than they were before (other things equal, many qualifiers, etc.). Of course, one joke alone won’t make a noticeable difference, but a night of rough humor could help.

Theory 2: Reinforcement

然而，不管你怎么看，查普利的笑话确实是在调侃亚特兰大的同性恋(其他事情也一样，但至少是这样)。强化理论强调，人们目睹的事情做得越多，他们就越有可能自己去做。所以，考虑到查普利完美的时机和古怪的性格，也许他可以逃脱惩罚。But this theory predicts that audience members (say, straight audience members) who hear such jokes will bemorelikely to make jokes about gay people themselves. But not being as skilled as Chappelle, they will butcher the jokes and say hurtful, homophobic things.

TheReinforcementtheory, therefore, implies that there’s at least one thing bad about Chappelle’s joke: by whatever small amount, it does something toincrease伤害同性恋者的笑话的发生率。

Not surprisingly, it seems that people who oppose or like to “call out” humor that’s “offensive” (like the “outrage junkies” Laurarefers to) are more likely to have this theory in the background, while defenders of rough humor probably like the Blowing Off Steam theory.

So those are the two theories. Of course, this is just a blog, so I haven’t developed them in detail, and note we could develop analogous theories about mosh pits at concerts or karate lessons for kids. I also set aside whether Chappelle’s joke is somehowintrinsicallyharmful. Still, with all that said, I want to emphasize two things.

First, the two theories really do make different predictions: the Blowing Off Steam theory predicts (given various intermediate factors) a reduction in tensions between distinct social groups as a result of rough humor; theReinforcementtheory predicts an increase.

Second,we have no idea—with respect to Chappelle’s particular joke or many others—which(if either) theory is true!

We really just don’t know. Of course, many peopleactlike they know. Hence the culture war. But both theories areprima facieplausible. And to make matters worse, one theory might be true of some instances of rough humor, while the other is true of other instances, and both theories could identify real psychological mechanisms that pull in opposite directions at different or even the same time.And of course there might be more or less robustindividualdifferences.

So we need more evidence. But how would an empirical study of that even work? How could such a study control for the subtle nuances of context and comedic delivery? It will, at least, be hard, and we don’t know the answer(s) yet.

So I think we’re in one of those human circumstances, where there’s a question that’s obviously important, but it’s extremely hard to know the answer. And I think our relative ignorance is actuallyfueling由于人们在缺乏实际知识的情况下争论得最激烈，所以关于粗鲁幽默是否“无礼”的文化之战就开始了。

这篇博客的主要观点是:“这就是我们的困境。”但考虑到所有这些，你可能会想，当我们遇到像查普利这样的粗鲁幽默提供者时，我们实际上应该怎么做?我的直觉告诉我:“去吧，享受这些笑话。”我倾向于(坦白地说)发泄情绪。坦白地说，我喜欢粗俗的幽默。但我必须承认，我实际上并没有足够的知识来支持这个大胆的回答。我只知道问题。我唯一的建议(现在)就是承认你也不知道。

Image by Anja fromPixabay