“We can’t talk about comedy without talking about psychology,” said Trevor Noah, comedian and former “The Daily Show” host in a conversation with psychotherapist Esther Perel at South by Southwest 2024. Comedy, a generally undervalued and under-appreciated genre of storytelling, “robs pain of power,” in Noah’s opinion. But why? How does this translate into a world where anyone with access to a cell phone can make us laugh at any place and any time?
Ironically, comedy is no joke. Noah explained that comedy is both how the Joker regains dignity while Batman beats him, and how Chaplin reminded the world that Hilter was no god, but rather just a man. It’s what Perel refers to as “the ultimate freedom.”
Comedy is just one side of the coin, though. The other is context. During their conversation, Noah and Perel delve into the topic of humor, particularly what it means in an age where context is practically nonexistent. Noah continued to return to a metaphor that near-perfectly described the role of comedy in our lives: it’s a “seduction exercise.” If you go out with a person, get to know them, go back to their place and remove each other’s clothes one piece at a time, there is context in that intimate experience. Someone suddenly appearing in your room and telling you they want to have sex is a different experience altogether — full intimacy and zero context. Joking around with a friend and sharing the intimacy of humor is undoubtedly different from the millionth TikTok of someone you’ve never met attempting to share this raw and delicate experience with you. After all, humor is “the closest you can get to a person without touching them” according to Perel. And what is the effect of everyone being able to touch one another at any time from all corners of the earth? The very thing causing us to question whether or not our species is getting more sensitive — offense.
Noah used this opportunity to share a story about his mother, who once became offended after a song she’d heard in church was used in a commercial for a burger chain. After angrily reaching out, Noah’s mother was sent a letter in return, informing her that the song did not actually originate in the church and was instead adopted by it just as it had been adopted by the burger chain. She was no longer offended after receiving this letter — the context of the situation had eliminated her offense.
After discussing the lack of context and the sudden vulnerability of the internet that has caused us to find offense in illogical places, Perel and Noah shifted the conversation to a potential solution for this problem: listening. Listening, as Perel stated, is not a passive action, but an active one. You “listen with your voice, your eyes, your smile.” And the more we listen to the people around us, the better off we all are. Here, the conversation circled back to technology, as Noah discussed the damaging effects of unlimited contact with the people we already know; we have very little need to interact with or listen to the people that we don’t know. And how are we supposed to learn from one another if we live our lives only interacting with people who confirm our biases?
As the role of technology in our lives expands, our personal social networks, ironically, seem to be shrinking. And, although offense is often a justified reaction to certain jokes, if we don’t learn to open our minds and our ears, we may find ourselves even deeper down the rabbit hole of snap judgments and immediate offense with zero context. After all, as Perel explained, “you were offended. That doesn’t mean it was offensive.”
TV Beat Editor Olivia Tarling can be reached at tarling@umich.edu.