ABSTRACT
Laughter, and the humorous speech or behaviour that provoke it, are universal, yet perhaps not universally welcomed by all, owing to the range of motivation, target and effect, among cultures and among individuals. Humour ranges from the farcical to the implicit, and it may provoke a range of reactions. Much has been written about the translatability of play on words and cultural differences, but here we will focus on the translation of satirical, critical writing, which may not appear to present great linguistic or cultural challenges, but which needs careful handling with regard to tone. Absurdity and irony are points on the wide spectrum of humour and play a pivotal role in public and literary discourse. Absurdity and irony are funny: we don’t necessarily laugh out loud, but we
smile wryly and nod wisely as we recognise the truths of stupidity, negligence and sheer wickedness expressed in a funny story. Humour is subject to broad and fickle definitions. Ostensibly, humour induces laughter, but as Billig shows, laughter is not always ‘good’ and may be designed to ridicule its target (2005: 2). Billig explores three main approaches to a theory of laughter, each of which may be said to reflect common sense reality. He argues that one of the theories at the basis of humour, first formulated by Hobbes, is superiority, including self-mockery (ibid.: 52), an attitude that is not always welcomed in a world of equality and political correctness, but is the basis of much satire. Billig suggests that mockery that disparages or degrades others, may have the effect of discipline (ibid.: 39). A second theory is that of incongruity: we laugh at things that are unexpected, either verbally or visually, where similarities are unlikely in the context, and where dissimilarities coincide. Incongruity, like mockery, is a useful weapon in satire directed against those in authority. On hearing or reading the joke or the jibe, we recognise the disjuncture between the situation as it should be and the absurdity of reality. Billig’s third theory of laughter is release: human beings feel relaxed, unstressed and happy when they laugh (2005: 5). The very physiology of laughing and the relaxation of the muscles and nervous system experienced in the process were believed in Victorian Britain to have good effects on health (ibid.: 90-91). Yet humour can be cruel, and if individuals or groups want to criticise authority, that cruelty is a crucial part of political and social practice. It is almost certain
that these theories or categories exist in parallel, integrated in a complex web of human ways of dealing with the sometimes unpleasant realities of life. Billig begins his account of laughter with an evaluation of positive and
negative humour. There are those who believe that humour is and must be positive. This might include the approach found in authoritarian regimes that do not allow ribbing of their great and good, showing only a positive, cheerful face to the general public. Yet in these regimes, there is usually a butt of jokes, an ‘Aunt Sally’. This target is often the Other, that which is outside, opposite and opposed to Self, implicitly different, implicitly either dominant or dominated. The Chinese have never been averse to laughter, and the universal tools of satire, absurdity and irony have always been an integral part of Chinese literary history and culture. Chan notes the ‘spate of so-called condemnation novels’ (谴责小说) of late nineteenth-century satirists in China (1998: 66). Jest is one of the tools of change and progress, and not least of rebellion. Billig notes that Francis Bacon believed that ‘religion, matters of state,
great persons should be exempt from jest’ (2005: 14), and we have only to look at the era of Mao in China to see that, while the leadership figures were supposed to be beyond criticism or satire, stereotypical figures of Japanese and Americans, and the domestic ‘class enemies’ (landlords and capitalists) were reckoned to be justifiable targets. During periods of heavy censorship and top-down guidance of literary endeavour, the objects of lampoon and critical innuendo have been ‘Other’, but the art of satire has remained. At the time of writing, in a period of relative liberalism, writers are aiming their darts at the time-honoured domestic targets of hypocrisy, bureaucracy, corruption and inefficiency. The butt of humour may be the helpless, the disabled, the unintelligent and
the rural, to whom the humorist feels superior, or, on the other hand, someone who is ostensibly superior. As we shall see from the examples below, the anomalies of the inferior/superior distinction have been expertly used by Chinese writers: so often, the apparently superior official or intellectual is mocked by the apparently inferior narrator or protagonist, to both comic and critical effect. The very suggestion that the protagonist of a story is ‘helpless’ or ‘stupid’ alerts the reader to the probability that what follows may be implicit, but hard-hitting criticism of authority. There have been suggestions that humour helps to maintain social order –
mockery is criticism and censure, and while authoritarian leaders may not like their subjects to laugh, the laughter helps to maintain equilibrium. We do not like to be laughed at, and mockery will act as a disincentive to undesirable behaviour. Nowhere is this more manifest than in the great political and social satires of the world: Vanity Fair, The Scholars, Don Quixote, Candide. The reason for the use of amusing irony to criticise, particularly in political terms, is avoidance of the risk involved in outright condemnation. Yet this notion has also been linked to the relief theory. Satire is a time-honoured tool of dissent, and it is alive and kicking in China today. Link has pointed out that it may be more diplomatic for a regime to treat satire as humour, rather than
Chinese literature
as serious criticism, on account of its ‘safety valve’ effect (Link 2012). It is to their even greater detriment that hyper-sensitive leaders and regimes censor humour.
