The Situation: On Humor

The Situation on Tuesday argued for intentionally slowing down.

Today I want to talk about humor and to urge people to get in touch with their inner clowns. I have seldom been more serious about anything. 

The other night, I was up late—unable to sleep—and I received a WhatsApp message from Elizabeth Tsurkov.

Tsurkov, an Israeli-Russian graduate student at Princeton who has done important scholarship on Syria and Iraq, was recently freed after two years being held hostage in Iraq by an Iranian-backed terrorist group. She is currently recovering from the brutal torture she suffered at its hands.

She wrote me because she has been catching up on all the things she missed while in captivity, and that evening she had found my most recent campaigns of hooliganism at the Russian embassy and my #GetReadyWithMe make-up videos.

“I just discovered your insta page 🤣,” she wrote.

She then sent me a long audiogram, part of which I have transcribed here with her permission. It is the only funny story I have ever heard about being tortured by terrorists:

You know, I think sense of humor is such a powerful thing. It really helped me while in captivity, . . . particularly during the first part—the torture part. Because, obviously, it was horrific, but there were quite hilarious instances, because the the captors were very, very stupid. So there [would] constantly be these like hilarious moments with them that . . . I would kind of replay in my mind to while alone, to kind of escape from the overall bleak situation.

I'll give you one example: You know how in movies, [the] interrogators [sometimes] smoke into the face of the person they're interrogating? [O]ne of the guys did the same to me, but he did it like, consistently, with an electronic cigarette that smell[ed] like strawberry.

So it was, like, very not intimidating, and also quite a pleasant smell.

A lot of people think my antics at the Russian embassy, the make-up videos, the dog shirts, and the improvised monologues I do on my morning livestream shows are beneath the dignity of a Washington think tank scholar.

I accept the criticism. Yes, it is beneath the dignity of my station in life—all of it. And that is precisely the point.

I want to say a few words in defense of silliness in the face of authoritarianism—be it laughing at the strawberry-scented vapes of your torturers or littering in front of the Russian embassy or putting on makeup with self-conscious incompetence while talking about the scandalous inappropriateness of Trump’s cabinet nominations.

The other day, I found myself at the “No Kings” demonstration in Washington, D.C., walking down Pennsylvania Avenue behind two dinosaurs, pictured above. I felt no cognitive dissonance. I was not ashamed to be in the company of inflatable dinosaurs. I was proud. I was one with the dinosaurs. I have no idea what their politics are. But they are my people. They are willing to make themselves ridiculous to shame authoritarianism. They are laughing at the people who blow strawberry vape in the faces of innocents.

It is worth thinking about why the inflatable dinosaur has become, along with the sandwich-throwing guy, the iconic image of the anti-ICE protest.

The dinosaur, after all, does not mean anything. There is nothing about an inflatable costume animal that carries political content. It is simply a refusal to engage something menacing on the terms of being menaced. 

But that is everything.

The dinosaur costume says: I cannot stop you from abusing your office. I cannot stop you from acting in a terrifying fashion. I cannot stop you from blowing smoke in my face. I cannot stop you from being an agent of authoritarianism. You have the power to do these things.

But I can laugh at you. I can refuse to be terrified. I can interpret the smoke you blow in my face as smelling like strawberries and giggle about it. I can turn your displays of hyper-masculine machismo into something mockable. 

I cannot stop you from arresting me for playing the imperial march from Star Wars at National Guardsmen. I can, however, make you seem absurd for arresting me for playing the imperial march from Star Wars.

By being willing to beclown myself, I can make people laugh at you. The dinosaur costume insists that the protestor has the power to make the armed government agent into something ridiculous.

It is not an accident that in the Harry Potter books, the spell that stops a particular fearful demon works by imagining that demon as something funny. Nor is it an accident that the charm is called the "Riddikulus" charm. J.K. Rowling is not a popular woman these days, but this is a deep observation about the nature of fear—and the role of humor in defeating it. A terrorist torturer blowing strawberry vape in your face and thinking himself engaged in some manly exercise of intimidation is too funny to fear too much.

Or so Elizabeth tells me.

Part of making the authoritarians ridiculous is being willing to be ridiculous yourself. You can yell and scream all day about the horrors of what ICE is doing, and those who find such brutalization energizing will rejoice in your anguish. But make the ICE officers seem silly by donning an inflatable costume and running around waving your dino butt, and you drag down the terror to your own level of inanity. 

And that is power. 

In Portland, they call it “tactical frivolity.”

I realized this for the first time when I started doing light protests at the Russian embassy. It was not actually the Ukrainian flag we projected onto the embassy that grabbed people’s attention. It was, rather, the fact that Russians responded to the flag by chasing it around the face of the embassy with their own spotlight:

Over the years, I have tried never to forget that the reaction a protest provokes is ultimately more powerful than the protest itself. Today, when I project on the Russian embassy, the Russians use spotlights in the shape of a “Z” and a “V”—symbols of Russian militarism roughly approximate to getting the German embassy to project a swastika on its own walls. Their reactions say so much more than I could ever say with my own voice. If I am willing to make myself ridiculous—and I am; oh, I really really am—I can taunt them into showing Washington a small glimpse of their true face.

But it only works if you are willing not to take yourself too seriously—if you are willing not to be too dignified. The Russians aren’t afraid of a think tank panel, and I say that as someone who proudly hosts many think tank panels. ICE officers aren’t afraid of what the guy or girl in the dinosaur costume might say about their conduct in an op-ed, and I say that as someone who has written more than my share of op-eds. And I venture the guess, without knowing the man, that Elizabeth’s interrogator wasn’t afraid of the arguments she might make to him—though Elizabeth is an extremely eloquent and knowledgeable interlocutor.

But there is something that all authoritarians fear, and that is being laughed at. Authoritarians of all types take themselves extremely seriously. They have to. Because if authority doesn’t take itself seriously, why should anyone else accede to it?

So the first step to confronting authority and eroding it is refusing to engage it on the terms it demands—to refuse to take it seriously. This is the role of humor. 

Let me put it bluntly: If you are not mocking The Situation, The Situation is dominating you.

And if you are not willing to make yourself a little bit silly in order to mock The Situation, you are not serious enough about the problem.

The Situation continues tomorrow—so, please, get serious about being silly.