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‘Humour is Serious’ as a Geopolitical Speech Act: IMDb Film Reviews of Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator

2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 19; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14650045.2013.829819

1557-3028

Juha Ridanpää,

Humor Studies and Applications

Abstract Humour is a manifold cultural institution through which society and space become politicised. In this paper, the political nature of humour is discussed by dissecting the IMDb film reviews of Sacha Baron Cohen's comedy, The Dictator (2012), a parody of democracy in which the topics of racism, political incorrectness and sexism, as well as their relationship to the discourses of Neo-Orientalism and the Global War on Terrorism, are present. The reviews are perceived as speech acts, which establish broader interpretative patterns through which audience may approach the questions related to the serious and political aspects of humour. The analysis focuses on how the 'humour is serious' claim and similar arguments are expressed in order to condemn or support the use of 'immature' and sophomoric humour within the context of politically sensitive issues. Similarly, the paper scrutinises how IMDb functions as a stage on which opportunity for political participation becomes accessible. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Eeva-Kaisa Prokkola and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and advice on this paper. Notes 1. J. Dittmer, Popular Culture, Geopolitics, and Identity (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2010); J. Dittmer and K. Dodds, 'Popular Geopolitics Past and Future: Fandom, Identities and Audiences', Geopolitics 13/3 (2008); G. Ó Tuathail, Critical Geopolitics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1996); J. Sharp, 'Hegemony, Popular Culture and Geopolitics: The Reader's Digest and the Construction of Danger', Political Geography 15/6-7 (1996). 2. See D. Hammett, 'Resistance, Power and Geopolitics in Zimbabwe', Area 43/2 (2011); D. Purcell, M. Brown, and M. Gokmen, 'Achmed the Dead Terrorist and Humor in Popular Geopolitics', GeoJournal 75/4 (2010); J. Ridanpää, 'Geopolitics of Humour: The Muhammed Cartoon and the Kaltio Comic Strip Episode in Finland', Geopolitics 14/4 (2009); J. Dittmer, 'Humour at the Model United Nations: The Role of Laughter in Constituting Geopolitical Assemblages', Geopolitics 18/3 (2013). 3. See M. Kuus, 'Švejkian Geopolitics: Subversive Obedience in Central Europe', Geopolitics 13/2 (2008); J. Palmer, Taking Humour Seriously (London: Routledge 1994). 4. See, e.g., P. D. Bougen, 'Joking Apart: The Serious Side to the Accountant Stereotype', Accounting, Organizations and Society 19/3 (1994); K. Dodds and P. Kirby, 'It's Not a Laughing Matter: Critical Geopolitics, Humour and Unlaughter', Geopolitics 18/1 (2013); E. Zandberg, 'Critical Laughter: Humor, Popular Culture and Israeli Holocaust Commemoration', Media, Culture & Society 28/4 (2006). 5. Cf. L. G. Perks, 'Polysemic Scaffolding: Explicating Discursive Clashes in Chapelle's Show', Communication, Culture and Critique 3/2 (2010). 6. A. Sev'er and S. 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Suleiman (ed.), Arabic Sociolinguistics (Richmond: Curzon Press Ltd. 1994) pp. 155–176. 19. J. Ridanpää, 'The Media and the Irony of Politically Serious Situations: Consequences of the Muhammed Cartoons in Finland', Media, Culture & Society 34/2 (2012) pp. 131–145. 20. Purcell, Brown, and Gokmen (note 2). 21. T. Atluri, 'Lighten Up?! Humour, Race, and Da Off Colour Joke of Ali G', Media, Culture and Society 31/2 (2011) p. 212. 22. See Sev'er and Ungar (note 6). 23. D. Alderman and E. J. Popke, 'Humor and Film in the Geography Classroom: Learning from Michael Moore's TV Nation', Journal of Geography 101/6 (2002) pp. 228–239. 24. Dodds and Kirby (note 4). 25. See Hammett (note 2); J. Ridanpää, 'Laughing at Northernness: Postcolonialism and Metafictive Irony in the Imaginative Geography', Social & Cultural Geography 8/6 (2007) 907–928; J. Ridanpää, 'A Masculinist Northern Wilderness and the Emancipatory Potential of Literary Irony', Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 17/3 (2010) 319–335. 26. R. Carter-White, 'Towards a Spatial Historiography of the Holocaust: Resistance, Film, and the Prisoner Uprising at Sobibor Death Camp', Political Geography 33/1 (2013) 21–30; Dittmer and Dodds (note 1). 27. J. L. Austin, How to do things with Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1962). 28. L. Bialasiewicz, D. Campbell, S. Elden, S. Graham, A. Jeffrey, and A. Williams, 'Performing Security: The Imaginative Geographies of Current US Strategy', Political Geography 26/4 (2007) pp. 405–422; S. Dalby, 'Calling 911: Geopolitics, Security and America's New War', Geopolitics 8/3 (2003) 61–86; R. Sullivan, Geography Speaks: Performative Aspects of Geography (Farnham: Ashgate 2011) pp. 123–150. 29. E. L. Schieffelin, 'Problematizing Performance', in F. Hughes-Freeland (ed.), Ritual, Performance, Media (London: Routledge 1998) pp. 194–207. 30. Palmer (note 3). 31. H. Haverkate, 'A Speech Act Analysis of Irony', Journal of Pragmatics 14/1 (1990) p. 77. According to Haverkate, irony can be used as a mitigating device, as a special form of politeness which helps communication in cases where interpersonal distance is involved, especially when the message is in some way negatively charged. 32. Bialasiewicz et al. (note 28) p. 408. 33. M. Müller, 'Reconsidering the Concept of Discourse for the Field of Critical Geopolitics: Towards Discourse as Language and Practice', Political Geography 27/3 (2008) pp. 322–338. 34. M. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Tavistock 1972) p. 49; J. Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of 'Sex' (London: Routledge 1993) p. 2. 35. S. Carter and D. P. McCormack, 'Film, Geopolitics and the Affective Logics of Intervention', Political Geography 25/2 (2006) pp. 232–233. 36. R. Kahn and D. Kellner, 'New Media and Internet Activism: From the 'Battle of Seattle' to Blogging', New Media and Society 6/1 (2004) pp. 87–95. 37. Purcell, Brown, and Gokmen (note 2). 38. For instance in Middle Eastern countries access to worldwide media has been restricted by state government and, interestingly, there have been several arguments that the recent 'wave of liberty' in the Muslim countries of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula has been in direct correlation to the increasing usage of information technologies. In the Egyptian revolution, social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, had key roles in how resistance was arranged in practice. D. F. Eickelman and J. W. Anderson, New Media in the Muslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press 2003); J. Jarvis, 'Facebook, Twitter, and the Egyptian Revolution', The Faster Times, 30 Sep. 2011. 39. P. Brereton and E. Culloty, 'Post-9/11 Counterterrorism in Popular Culture: The Spectacle and Reception of The Bourne Ultimatum and 24', Critical Studies on Terrorism 5/3 (2012) pp. 483–497; K. Dodds, 'Screening Terror: Hollywood, the United States and the Construction of Danger', Critical Studies on Terrorism 1/2 (2008) pp. 227–243. 40. K. Dodds, 'Popular Geopolitics and Audience Dispositions: James Bond and the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 31/2 (2006) pp. 116–130. 41. Ibid., p. 119. 42. J. Dittmer, 'American Exceptionalism, Visual Effects, and the Post-9/11 Cinematic Superhero Boom', Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29 (2011) pp. 114–130. 43. See I. K. Bore, 'Reviewing Romcom: (100) IMDb Users and (500) Days of Summer', Journal of Audience and Receptions Studies 8/2 (2011) pp. 144–164. 44. E. W. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (London: Routledge 1978). 45. D. Gregory, Colonial Present (Malden: Blackwell 2004). 46. For a discussion on 'banal neoimperialism', see S. Flusty, J. Dittmer, E. Gilbert, and M. Kuus, 'Interventions in banal neoimperialism', Political Geography 27/6 (2008) pp. 617–629. 47. See extensive study on the political dimensions of Baron Cohen's earlier work: R. Saunders, The Many Faces of Sacha Baron Cohen: Politics, Parody and the Battle over Borat (Lanham: Lexington Books 2008). 48. Lockyer and Pickering (note 8) p. 816. The negative portrayal of Kazakhstan's national identity was considered an insult and the government of President Nazarbayev threatened Baron Cohen with legal action. Baron Cohen responded to these threats, but in the person of Borat. The manner of how a fictional person is able to establish a mass-mediated geopolitical dialogue with administrative organs has been considered unique. R. Saunders, 'In Defense of Kazakshilik: Kazakhstan's War on Sacha Baron Cohen', Identities: Global Issues in Culture and Power 14/3 (2007) pp. 225–255. 49. G. Zhussipbek, 'The Resurrection of Orientalism? The Case of Central Asian States: Attempt To Explore The Intellectual Background of "Borat" Movie and "Nasha Russia"', USAK Yearbook of International Politics and Law 3 (2010) 521–525. 50. 'The Dictator shortened after censorship in Uzbekistan', Uznews.net, 25 May 2012, available at . 51. 'The Dictator Banned 2 Weeks after Premiere in Kazakhstan. In Pakistan, Only the Censored Version Has Been Released', Tengri News, 1 June 2012, available at ; '"The Dictator" Movie Not Banned in Kazakhstan, Instead "Disappears"', Caravanistan. A Silk Road Travel Guide, 1 July 2010, available at . 52. '"The Dictator" Banned in Tajikistan', RIA Novosti, 18 May 2012, available at . 53. L. Harding, 'Tajikistan Bans The Dictator', The Guardian, 18 May 2012. 54. J. Phelan, '"The Dictator,"' Sacha Baron Cohen Spoof, Banned in Tajikistan (VIDEO)', Global Post, 18 May 2012, available at . 55. Ó Tuathail (note 1). 56. E. Reynolds, 'Has the BBC Banned Comic Sacha Baron Cohen's Dictator Character from Its Shows?', Daily Mail, 3 May 2012, available at . 57. J. J. Anisiobi and S. Bull, 'Sacha Baron Cohen BANNED from the Oscars over Plans for The Dictator Red Carpet Stunt', Daily Mail, 23 Feb. 2012, available at . 58. Although the informed nationality of a reviewer (e.g., Saudi Arabia) can be understood as a performative component which situates a written review into a certain political framework, to avoid making any hasty politically charged over-simplifications, informed nationality is not taken into account as an explanatory factor here. As for instance the 2,106 mosques (in 2011) in the United States can exemplify, the nationality of a reviewer does not necessarily indicate anything about one's political stance. In addition, as a research material, it is obvious that IMDb with its pseudonymous nature makes its own specific limitations. As Dittmer notes, the information concerning posters' subjectivities remains usually unknown and embodied reactions that would occur during face-to-face encounters do not become present. Dittmer, 'American Exceptionalism' (note 42) p. 124. 59. M. Billig, 'Comic Racism and Violence', in S. Lockyer and M. Billig (eds.), Beyond a Joke: The Limits of Humour (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2005) pp. 25–44. 60. The 1972 Munich Summer Olympics was overshadowed by an unfortunate episode, known as the 'Munich massacre', in which nine Israeli athletes, coaches and officers were kidnapped and killed. 61. Similarly there was a controversy surrounding Baron Cohen's former TV show Ali G which was characterised by the difficulty of identifying the objects and subjects of parody, since the character himself is a complicated, layered mix of ethnic stereotypes, performed by an actor who himself is an educated Jewish white man. Locker and Pickering (note 8) p. 815. 62. See more of Edward Said's categorical distinction between 'manifest Orientalism', 'latent Orientalism' and 'unconscious Orientalism', in Said (note 44) p. 206. 63. L. Hutcheon, Irony's Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony (London: Routledge 1994).pp. 40–43. 64. L. Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction (New York: Routledge 1992); Hutcheon, Irony's Edge (note 63). 65. Ridanpää, 'A Masculinist Northern wilderness' (note 25). 66. K. Barbe, Irony in Context (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company 1995) pp. 4–5. 67. J. Staiger, Perverse Spectators: The Practices of film Reception (New York: New York University Press 2000) p. 37. 68. Ibid., pp. 31–32. 69. Dittmer, Popular Culture (note 1). 70. Ó Tuathail (note 1); Dittmer and Dodds (note 1). 71. Carter and McCormack (note 35) p. 231. 72. Dodds and Kirby (note 4). 73. L. van Zoonen, 'Audience Reactions to Hollywood Politics', Media, Culture & Society 29/4 (2007) p. 545. 74. B. J. Muller and J. H. W. Measor, ''Theatres of War': Visual Technologies and Identities in the Iraq Wars', Geopolitics 16/2 (2011) pp. 389–409.