Incongruity and Spontaneity

 “It is part of the mainstream of American humor, precisely because there is no one who sees the absurd anymore than the person who has lived closest to it” (Ellison, 153). Ellison is specifically referring to being Black in America and how “we couldn’t escape” (154). His descriptions of why humor generates from the irrational resonates because it’s what we have been observing all semester. Specifically, when authors refer to specific parts of their identity that are oppressed or violated by American society, the humor is particular salient because it feels valid and real. In many ways, Ellison is speaking about irony especially when he says, “So that double knowledge of knowing the reality of a society that had the power to treat you as though you were actually inferior, but knowing within yourself that you were not, you were thrown into a position in which you were either going to develop a sense of humor or you were going to die of frustration, of a sense of the irrational” (154). This concept is reminiscent of Orange’s comments about Native Americans in There There because it reveals the glaring ironies in our history as well as our current state. Furthermore, he says, “because of the structuring of the American experience, one does not have to go out and seek to become comic” (Ellison, 154). Again, irony innately exists in the foundation of America which makes humor a natural result of these incongruities, absurdities, and uncertainties, specifically for underrepresented identities and in Ellison’s case for Black Americans. 

In relation to Gurba’s article in Time, Ellison’s quote, “some of the absurd situations are painful, but it is precisely because they are so painful that they have to be comic” (155) seems relevant. Gurba writes, “sometimes rape seems like the sickest practical joke ever invented” explaining how a traumatic event can be “humorous”. Gurba goes on to write, “Humor, however, disrupts stasis. Humor is a form of action. It requires spontaneity, and that’s what’s missing from the pious scripts about sexual assault that bother me.” Just as Ellison describes the uncertainty of American humor, Gurba defends that survivors can use spontaneity and uncertainty to “really be alive”.  

My friends and I often talk about why it feels different when we as women joke about our gender versus when men do it. My roommate is an engineering major and she'll often crack jokes about how being a women in STEM with her male engineering friends. However, there is one boy who will make the same kind of jokes, which land differently, which I think has to do with his lack of lived experience and also in a patriarchal society a man making jokes about a woman is not spontaneous, incongruous, or uncertain.