Freud\'s Theory of Jokes --

Freud's Theory of Jokes -- triangulation, seduction, and the Colbert Report

According to Sigmund Freud's theory of triangulation, most jokes serve both a personal and a social purpose. Telling a joke requires three people and thus affirms a mutual personal and social relationship. The first person, the teller, enters into a kind of collusion with the third person, a listener, and the second, silent understood person in the triangular dynamic is the object or 'butt' of the humor.

To illustrate the personal and social functions of jokes, Freud cities the example of a dirty joke, where the teller releases his or her frustrated sexual energy over a forbidden object, like a pretty woman, and the teller and the listener engage in a kind of mastery over the butt of the joke, who may or may not hear what the jester is saying to the listener. "Smut is thus originally directed towards women and may be equated with attempts at seduction. If a man in the company of men enjoys telling or listening to smut, the original situation, which owing to social inhibitions that at the same time cannot be realized is at the same time imagined a person who laughs at smut that he hears is laughing as though he were a spectator to an act of sexual aggression" (Freud 115-116). Viewed as such, a joke that makes a woman the sexual 'butt' of a joke, is kind of a verbal rape, or at least an aggressive assault, like when a man physically pinches a woman's behind.

Does Freud's triangulated theory of joking apply to an explicitly political work of comedy like that of "The Colbert Report," a contemporary television satire, where the object of the joke is not personally known to the individual telling or listening to the joke? In televised humor, although the teller and the listener are not in the same room, the teller assumes some knowledge of the listener's point-of-view, by anticipating the collective viewing audience's likely reaction. The viewing audience becomes a kind of single, listening ear. The teller of the joke, Colbert, assumes a false persona of a hot-headed radio talk show host with a 'wink' and rages against real-life media personalities, o show the absurdity of conservative obsessions and fears, like the conservative fear of the liberal presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The fact that Clinton is female makes her an additional object of hatred and fear.

In one of Colbert's recent shows on the "Colbert Report" the comedian turns the hidden aggression felt by much of the right-wing press against Hillary against itself. "I'm sure you're alarmed at the big news out of Washington...Hilary Clinton has stopped using her maiden name...What Hillary is she?" Colbert pretends to be outraged, and the presumed liberal listening audiences laughs as the commentator notes not only are: "the other 17 candidates" not "dropping their maiden names" but they are not getting adequate media attention for bad hair days, as has Clinton. Even liberal members of the media fall into the trap of judging female politicians by their appearance. Colbert quotes commentator Chris Matthew raving about Hillary's "pearls" which make her look like "Grace Kelly! Dynamite." Matthew's clip is from a real-life, supposedly serious news broadcast and Colbert's audience laughs at the absurdity of making Hillary's name, clothing, and hair the focus of so-called reputable journalism.