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Cultural Politics of Humor in (De)Normalizing Islamophobic Stereotypes

2014; Pluto Journals; Volume: 2; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.13169/islastudj.2.1.0059

2325-839X

Zara Maria Zimbardo,

Hispanic-African Historical Relations

This paper offers an examination of the role of humor in both normalizing Islamophobic representations as Other and in creatively challenging them.The first section traces historic connections of ways dominant culture in the United States portrays targeted groups as both full of irrational anger and lacking a sense of humor or the ability to "get" or "take" jokes.In the perpetuation of dehumanizing stereotypes, this discourse of negation undermines core aspects of being seen as fully human, as humor is a fundamental communication realm of bonding and generating shared symbolic and social meaning within different cultural contexts.Against this backdrop, the more specific level of denial of humor functions to dismiss socio-political causes for anger at injustice, discrimination and violence, pathologizing the targeted group for not being able to share laughter at jokes that normalize their oppression.This power dynamic serves to invisibilize context, psychologize structural issues, and delegitimize resistance.The following sections turn to uses of humor and political comedy to strategically surface, explicitly challenge and subvert Islamophobic stereotypes since the start of the War on Terror.From the Axis of Evil Comedy troupe, to The Daily Show's satirical Muslim version of The Cosby Show to the recent appropriation of Newsweek's "Muslim Rage" cover and the subsequent mocking transformation through social media that followed attaching a wide range of hilarious humanizing images and tweets to the #MuslimRage hashtag, diverse comic strategies have worked to expose dehumanizing stereotypes in a time of war and made them "uninhabitable."By holding up mirrors to mainstream narratives of the monolithic Muslim Other, both Muslims and non-Muslim allies have used techniques of humor to create punchlines that open shared understandings of the underlying assumptions of dominant frames, and destabilize them through making those assumptions visible, and laughable.Drawing from cultural studies, humor studies and media studies, this paper incorporates scholarship on audience response, popular culture, theories of humor, and interviews.How does humor bring into a sharp focus what the blurry lens of Islamophobic tropes distort and universalize?As stereotypes work to make particular contexts, histories, diverse identities and structural inequity invisible, political humor works to make them visible, and their stereotypical distortions laughable.Anthropologist Mary Douglas, in her essay, "Jokes", poses, "We must ask what are the social conditions for a joke to be both perceived and permitted" (Mukerji & Schedson 1991:298).Jokes and audience reception reveal unique dimensions of the social, cultural and political context in which shared laughter occurs.This paper seeks to contribute recognition and analysis of forms of emergent and proliferating comedy since the start of the War on Terror, that have specifically arisen in direct response to mainstream Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism.Many of these entrenched stereotypes have a longer history pre-dating 9/11/01, in film, news media, colonial literature and the American national imaginary.The main focus of this research is based in dynamics within the United States, though in our globalized world and media environment, a number of the examples have international reach and significance.Of the dehumanizing Islamophobic stereotypes that perpetuate seemingly unbridgeable, untranslatable gulfs in the militaristic framework of "us vs. them," the stereotype of humorlessness supports and upholds the others, as irrational, rage-filled, violent and unrelatable.The axis of humor in the recurrent "clash of civilizations" discourse in media and popular culture, reinforces core War On Terror narratives that "Islam is incompatible with democracy," as a parallel discourse of "Islam is incompatible with comedy" has concurrently circulated.Edward Said utilized the term "thought-stopping headlines" (Said 1997) to point out the phenomenon of intentionally created visceral fear in the journalistic enterprise of "covering Islam."As a counter to thought-stopping headlines, thought-provoking punchlines engage in warfare by humorous means.Moving into the Orange Alert spotlight, many comedians have crafted performances against a backdrop of tragedy.Challenging the distorted lens through which the mainstream media views the Muslim Other, forms of humor bring into sharp focus human faces, while blurring the line between "us vs. them."As a prism to understand conflict, change and social tensions, humor and comedy may serve as a "restoration of reason" and "means of undoing otherness" (Bilici 2010: 207), and wedge open space in which critical thinking can gain a foothold.Comedy and humor may be used in order to break tension, to create a sense of community, to build solidarity through in-group inclusion and out-group exclusion, as a method of coping with injustice or trauma, as a survival tactic, as a form of political resistance, for therapeutic ends, and for social commentary and critique.This research examines various rhetorical devices and socio-historical connections in the diverse, comic undoing of Muslim otherness.The framework of cultural studies scholar Stuart Hall informs the understanding of the key processes of stereotyping as reducing, essentializing, naturalizing and fixing "difference."Stereotyping deploys a strategy of "splitting" the normal and acceptable from the abnormal and unacceptable, it tends to occur where there are gross inequalities of power and thus serves to maintain the social and symbolic order (Hall