Tanmay Bhat debacle: Taking humour too far

How far is too far? How much is too much?

A sense of self deprecating humour is considered an ideal quality in a leader. Alongside gratitude, humour is a transpersonal or almost spiritual attitude to be cherished in an individual's personality.

In the context of the Sachin Tendulkar-Lata Mangeshkar 'civil war', what happened to such a viewpoint?
The discourse has been around freedom of expression and hurting sentiments. Around 'liberal' thought and exercising control. Humour as an elevating quality? Whoever heard of that!

Humour is understood as the quality of being amusing or comic, especially as expressed in literature or speech. Then again, as per Wikipedia, humour (in Commonwealth English) and humor (in American English) is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. If your cognitive experiences have built up an individual as an icon, can you then bring yourself to accept as comic any word or reference which refers to that 'icon' in terms of anything less than adoration? Building icons is a matter of faith. Faith and cognition do not match.

But then, neither do cognition and rationality. As beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, so does humour lie in the receiver of the experience. It would then seem that humour is a quality of perception. Literature is replete with instances of how humour helped people survive in the most adverse situations, such as the Holocaust. Humour at its best helps build relief and lift defense levels. It may enable optimal adaptation in the handling of stressors.
So why does a word or an act that sends some into hearty guffaws disgust others? Why was it that at the age of ten, I could not be amused by a scene in which a comedian was shown to slip on a banana peel and fall? While many in the audience laughed and clapped, I squirmed. It could be because my cognition brought home to me that people who fall on their back on a hard road hurt themselves. It could be that my cognition led me to think that when someone falls down, the person has to be helped to get up and spoken to reassuringly, to be saved from embarrassment of so public an incident. The ones who laughed obviously had no such thought.

I also cannot remember laughing or being amused by the exaggerated antics of an obese actor who was called names by her neighbours and made to walk in a deliberately waddling style so as to invite attention to her body and her weight.

Phew, how dull can I get? What prevents me from joining the guffaws? What is the difference between humour and humiliation?

So there will always be those whose cognitive perceptions will not allow them to be amused, such as the 'hilarious' joke which goes, 'I am the master of my home with the permission of my wife' (I can't remember when I was amused by that one). There will also be those whose overriding admiration for an icon will prevent them from perceiving any human-like qualities that may induce laughter about them. And lest we forget, there will always be the third group, which will lie in wait to play mischief with the reactions of both the above groups.

Those who script scenes of humour have the opportunity to give a thought about what they are presenting and the possible impact of the same. Stand-up comics rarely have this luxury. In an unequal, hierarchical social milieu, such artistes may well be at the mercy of viewer perception.

However, the threat of using humour to humiliate is all too real. Inequality breeds the humour of superiority, of sarcasm, even subtle irony. Those who indulge in this think they are clever and those who are able to follow it also think they are clever. Very clever. It is not uncommon for those who have 'understood' a joke to look pityingly at someone who asks for it to be explained.

Then again, aggressive humour finds place in the public speaking and entertainment scene today... the person involved is simply not concerned with how others are taking it. Then there is humour which is intended to threaten or psychologically harm others and is often used by bullies.

In the final analysis, it would be best to remember the old adage that words are like arrows and once released, they can never be taken back. How much is too much and how far is too far will remain a subjective perception of the viewer.

The writer is professor and chairperson at the Centre for Lifelong Learning, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS)