Humor

And what about political humour?
I often used it in my writings, decades ago. I don’t think that political humour is a sign of emancipatory progressiveness. Humour unmasks the hypocrisy of those in power. But then, never forget this – I learned this in my studies of Stalinism, but it also applies to all societies – that those in power also have their own mode of humour which brutally makes fun of the stupidity of ordinary people. And then you have a third mode of humour, which is more ambiguous and problematic. At first, I thought this was specific to the socialist society I had lived in, but then when I spoke to people from other post-socialist societies in Eastern Europe, I learned that it’s the same in all of them. There was a rumour that the secret police had a special department that produced jokes: jokes against the regime. Those in power understood that people needed an outlet for their fury and frustrations and it’s better for them to laugh at the regime than to rebel against it. So, you offer laughter to the people, as a way of keeping them content. So in this sense I brutally disagree with the idea that humour is, as such, necessarily emancipatory.question asked to Zizek at fantasticman.com.