Black comedy

The term black humor (from the French humour noir) was coined by the Surrealist theorist André Breton in 1935 while interpreting the writings of Jonathan Swift. Breton's preference was to identify some of Swift's writings as a subgenre of comedy and satire{{cite web |url=http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/black+humor |title=black humor – Hutchinson encyclopedia article about black humor |publisher=Encyclopedia.farlex.com |access-date=24 June 2010 |archive-date=11 May 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110511105047/http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/black+humor |url-status=dead }} in which laughter arises from cynicism and skepticism,Real, Hermann Josef (2005) [https://books.google.com/books?id=L7jEg8rQZoUC The reception of Jonathan Swift in Europe], p.90 quote: {{blockquote|At least, Swift's text is preserved, and so is a prefatory note by the French writer André Breton, which emphasizes Swift's importance as the originator of black humor, of laughter that arises from cynicism and scepticism.}} often relying on topics such as death.Thomas Leclair (1975) [https://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=589E4DCAE3AB2134D7AA2D9EBD790497.inst3_3a?docId=95258188 Death and Black Humor] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230118125110/https://www.gale.com/databases/questia?docId=95258188 |date=18 January 2023 }} in Critique, Vol. 17, 1975{{cite journal|last=Rowe|first=W. Woodin|year=1974| journal=The Slavic and East European Journal|title=Observations on Black Humor in Gogol' and Nabokov|volume=18|issue=4|pages=392–399|jstor=306869|doi=10.2307/306869}}

Breton coined the term for his 1940 book Anthology of Black Humor (Anthologie de l'humour noir), in which he credited Jonathan Swift as the originator of black humor and gallows humor (particularly in his pieces Directions to Servants (1731), A Modest Proposal (1729), Meditation Upon a Broomstick (1710), and in a few aphorisms).{{cite news | url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/feb/21/anthology-of-black-humour | location=London | work=The Guardian | first=Nicholas | last=Lezard | author-link=Nicholas Lezard | title=From the sublime to the surreal | date=21 February 2009 | access-date=11 December 2016 | archive-date=16 November 2018 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181116075232/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/feb/21/anthology-of-black-humour | url-status=live }}André Breton introduction to Swift in Anthology of Black Humor, quote: {{blockquote|When it comes to black humor, everything designates him as the true initiator. In fact, it is impossible to coordinate the fugitive traces of this kind of humor before him, not even in Heraclitus and the Cynics or in the works of Elizabethan dramatic poets. [...] historically justify his being presented as the first black humorist. Contrary to what Voltaire might have said, Swift was in no sense a "perfected Rabelais." He shared to the smallest possible degree Rabelais's taste for innocent, heavy-handed jokes and his constant drunken good humor. [...] a man who grasped things by reason and never by feeling, and who enclosed himself in skepticism; [...] Swift can rightfully be considered the inventor of "savage" or "gallows" humor.}} In his book, Breton also included excerpts from 45 other writers, including both examples in which the wit arises from a victim with which the audience empathizes, as is more typical in the tradition of gallows humor, and examples in which the comedy is used to mock the victim. In the last cases, the victim's suffering is trivialized, which leads to sympathizing with the victimizer, as analogously found in the social commentary and social criticism of the writings of (for instance) Sade.

{{Globalize section|date=February 2023|U.S.A}}

Among the first American writers who employed black comedy in their works were Nathanael West and Vladimir Nabokov.Merriam-Webster, Inc (1995) [https://books.google.com/books?id=eKNK1YwHcQ4C&pg=PA144 Merriam-Webster's encyclopedia of literature], entry black humor, p.144 The concept of black humor first came to nationwide attention after the publication of a 1965 mass-market paperback titled Black Humor, edited by Bruce Jay Friedman.{{cite book | last=O'Neill | first=Patrick | chapter=The Comedy of Entropy: The Contexts of Black Humor | title=Dark Humor | editor1=Harold Bloom | editor2=Blake Hobby | chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5Vf6nC8XKWsC&pg=PA80 | page=82 | series=Bloom's Literary Themes | year=2010 | publisher=Infobase Publishing | location=New York, New York | isbn=9781438131023 | access-date=25 March 2017}} The paperback was one of the first American anthologies devoted to the concept of black humor as a literary genre. With the paperback, Friedman labeled as "black humorists" a variety of authors, such as J. P. Donleavy, Edward Albee, Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Vladimir Nabokov, Bruce Jay Friedman himself, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Among the recent writers suggested as black humorists by journalists and literary critics are Roald Dahl,James Carter [https://books.google.com/books?id=IQDVsfeTHeAC&q=roald+dahl+black+humour&pg=RA1-PA97 Talking Books: Children's Authors Talk About the Craft, Creativity and Process of Writing, Volume 2] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230118125108/https://books.google.com/books?id=IQDVsfeTHeAC&pg=RA1-PA97#v=onepage&q=roald%20dahl%20black%20humour |date=18 January 2023 }} p.97 Routledge, 2002 Kurt Vonnegut,{{cite web|url=http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-blackhum.html|title=black humor – Dictionary definition of black humor – Encyclopedia.com: FREE online dictionary|website=encyclopedia.com|access-date=15 April 2018|archive-date=20 October 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151020152750/http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-blackhum.html|url-status=live}} Warren Zevon, Christopher Durang, Philip Roth, and Veikko Huovinen.{{Cite web|url=https://www.booksfromfinland.fi/2013/05/panu-rajala-hirmuinen-humoristi-veikko-huovisen-satiirit-ja-savotat-the-awesome-humorist-the-satires-and-logging-sites-of-veikko-huovinen/|title=Panu Rajala: Hirmuinen humoristi. Veikko Huovisen satiirit ja savotat [The awesome humorist. The satires and logging sites of Veikko Huovinen] | Books from Finland|date=16 May 2013|access-date=21 March 2021|archive-date=18 January 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230118125125/https://www.booksfromfinland.fi/2013/05/panu-rajala-hirmuinen-humoristi-veikko-huovisen-satiirit-ja-savotat-the-awesome-humorist-the-satires-and-logging-sites-of-veikko-huovinen/|url-status=live}} Evelyn Waugh has been called "the first contemporary writer to produce the sustained black comic novel."{{Cite web |last=Lynch |first=Tibbie Elizabet |date=1982 |title=Forms and functions of black humor in the fiction of Evelyn Waugh |url=https://repository.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/DISSERTATIONS-516374 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231108062621/https://repository.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/DISSERTATIONS-516374 |archive-date=November 8, 2023 |access-date=November 8, 2023}} The motive for applying the label black humorist to the writers cited above is that they have written novels, poems, stories, plays, and songs in which profound or horrific events were portrayed in a comic manner. Comedians like Lenny Bruce, who since the late 1950s have been labeled as using "sick comedy" by mainstream journalists, have also been labeled with "black comedy".

File:18251112 Nine-pin bowler execution - gallows humor - Sag Harbor Corrector.jpg, using his own severed head on his final roll, and taking delight in having achieved a strike.{{cite news |title=From a late German Paper |url=https://newspaperarchive.com/sag-harbor-corrector-nov-12-1825-p-1/ |work=The Corrector |date=12 November 1825 |location=Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York, U.S. |page=1}} "Bowl" means ball in modern parlance. Nine-pin bowling preceded modern ten-pin bowling.]]

Sigmund Freud, in his 1927 essay Humor (Der Humor), although not mentioning 'black humor' specifically, cites a literal instance of gallows humor before going on to write: "The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure."{{cite web | author=Sigmund Freud | year=1927 | title=Humor | url=https://pdfcoffee.com/sigmund-freud-humor-1927-5-pdf-free.html}} Some other sociologists elaborated this concept further. At the same time, Paul Lewis warns that this "relieving" aspect of gallows jokes depends on the context of the joke: whether the joke is being told by the threatened person themselves or by someone else.Paul Lewis, "Three Jews and a Blindfold: The Politics of Gallows Humor", In: "Semites and Stereotypes: Characteristics of Jewish Humor" (1993), {{ISBN|0-313-26135-0}}, [https://books.google.com/books?id=Q4k5rE4eHjMC&pg=PA53 p. 49] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230118125115/https://books.google.com/books?id=Q4k5rE4eHjMC&pg=PA53#PPA49,M1 |date=18 January 2023 }}

Black comedy has the social effect of strengthening the morale of the oppressed and undermines the morale of the oppressors.Obrdlik, Antonin J. (1942) [https://www.jstor.org/pss/2769536 "Gallows Humor"-A Sociological Phenomenon] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230118125115/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2769536 |date=18 January 2023 }}, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 47, No. 5 (Mar. 1942), pp. 709–716Mariah Snyder, Ruth Lindquist [https://books.google.com/books?id=vdl4s1zHPdIC&pg=PA111 Complementary and alternative therapies in nursing] According to Wylie Sypher, "to be able to laugh at evil and error means we have surmounted them."Wylie Sypher quoted in ZhouRaymond, Jingqiong [https://books.google.com/books?id=cLTsZ39XW80C&pg=PA132 Carver's short fiction in the history of black humor] p.132

Black comedy is a natural human instinct and examples of it can be found in stories from antiquity. Its use was widespread in middle Europe, from where it was imported to the United States.{{Verify source|date=July 2021}} It is rendered with the German expression Galgenhumor (cynical last words before getting hangedLynch, Mark [https://es.toonpool.com/cartoons/Typical%20man_236420 A witch, before being burned at the stake: Typical man! I can never get him to cook anything at home (cartoon)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230118125124/https://es.toonpool.com/cartoons/Typical%20man_236420 |date=18 January 2023 }}). The concept of gallows humor is comparable to the French expression rire jaune (lit. yellow laughing),Redfern, W. D. and Redfern, Walter (2005) [https://books.google.com/books?id=SU0MxAMRCawC&pg=PA211 Calembours, ou les puns et les autres : traduit de l'intraduisible ], p.211 quote: {{blockquote|Des termes parents du Galgenhumor sont: : comédie noire, plaisanterie macabre, rire jaune. (J'en offre un autre: gibêtises).}}Müller, Walter (1961) [https://books.google.com/books?id=Nws8AAAAIAAJ Französische Idiomatik nach Sinngruppen], p.178 quote: {{blockquote|humour macabre, humeur de désespéré, (action de) rire jaune Galgenhumor propos guilleret etwas freie, gewagte Äußerung}}Dupriez, Bernard Marie (1991) [https://books.google.com/books?id=uff2N62Jx9wC&pg=PA313 A dictionary of literary devices: gradus, A-Z], p.313 quote: {{blockquote|Walter Redfern, discussing puns about death, remarks: 'Related terms to gallows humour are: black comedy, sick humour, rire jaune. In all, pain and pleasure are mixed, perhaps the definitive recipe for all punning' (Puns, p. 127).}} which also has a Germanic equivalent in the Belgian Dutch expression groen lachen (lit. green laughing).{{cite book |last =Brachin|first = Pierre |date=1985|url =https://books.google.com/books?id=GeUUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA102 |title =The Dutch language: a survey|isbn = 9789004075931 |pages = 101–2 |publisher = Brill Archive}}Claude et Marcel De Grève, Françoise Wuilmart, [http://www.flsh.unilim.fr/ditl/TRADUCTION.htm Treaduction / Translation] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110519173702/http://www.flsh.unilim.fr/ditl/TRADUCTION.htm |date=19 May 2011 }}, section Histoire et théorie de la traduction – Recherches sur les microstructures, in: Grassin, Jean-Marie (ed.), [http://www.ditl.info DITL] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181108073314/http://ditl.info/ |date=8 November 2018 }} (Dictionnaire International des Termes Littéraires), [22 November 2010]"(1950) [https://books.google.com/books?id=posrAQAAIAAJ Zaïre], Volume 4, Part 1, p.138 quote: {{blockquote|En français on dit « rire jaune », en flamand « groen lachen »}}Chédel, André (1965) [https://books.google.com/books?id=mQBAAAAAIAAJ Description moderne des langues du monde: le latin et le grec inutile?] p.171 quote: {{blockquote|Les termes jaune, vert, bleu évoquent en français un certain nombre d'idées qui sont différentes de celles que suscitent les mots holandais correspondants geel, groen, blauw. Nous disons : rire jaune, le Hollandais dit : rire vert ( groen lachen ); ce que le Néerlandais appelle un vert (een groentje), c'est ce qu'en français on désigne du nom de bleu (un jeune soldat inexpéribenté)... On voit que des confrontations de ce genre permettent de concevoir une étude de la psychologie des peuples fondée sur les associations d'idées que révèlent les variations de sens (sémantique), les expressions figurées, les proverbes et les dictions.}}

Italian comedian Daniele Luttazzi discussed gallows humor focusing on the particular type of laughter that it arouses (risata verde or groen lachen), and said that grotesque satire, as opposed to ironic satire, is the one that most often arouses this kind of laughter.Pardo, Denise (2001) [http://quattrostracci.altervista.org/SforzaItalia/intervis2.htm Interview] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080820100021/http://quattrostracci.altervista.org/SforzaItalia/intervis2.htm |date=20 August 2008 }} with Daniele Luttazzi, in L'Espresso, 1 February 2001 quote: {{blockquote|Q: Critiche feroci, interrogazioni parlamentari: momenti duri per la satira.

A: Satira è far ridere a spese di chi è più ricco e potente di te. Io sono specialista nella risata verde, quella dei cabaret di Berlino degli anni Venti e Trenta. Nasce dalla disperazione. Esempio: l'Italia è un paese dove la commissione di vigilanza parlamentare Rai si comporta come la commissione stragi e viceversa. Oppure: il mistero di Ustica è irrisolto? Sono contento: il sistema funziona.}}Daniele Luttazzi (2004) [https://web.archive.org/web/20060506133300/http://www.danieleluttazzi.it/?q=node%2F221 Interview], in the Italian edition of Rolling Stone, November 2004. Quote: {{blockquote|racconto di satira grottesca [...] L'obiettivo del grottesco è far percepire l'orrore di una vicenda. Non è la satira cui siamo abituati in Italia: la si ritrova nel cabaret degli anni '20 e '30, poi è stata cancellata dal carico di sofferenze della guerra. Aggiungo che io avevo spiegato in apertura di serata che ci sarebbero stati momenti di satira molto diversi. Satira ironica, che fa ridere, e satira grottesca, che può far male. Perché porta alla risata della disperazione, dell'impotenza. La risata verde. Era forte, perché coinvolgeva in un colpo solo tutti i cardini satirici: politica, religione, sesso e morte. Quello che ho fatto è stato accentuare l'interazione tra gli elementi. Non era di buon gusto? Rabelais e Swift, che hanno esplorato questi lati oscuri della nostra personalità, non si sono mai posti il problema del buon gusto.}}Marmo, Emanuela (2004) [https://web.archive.org/web/20060506133300/http://www.danieleluttazzi.it/?q=node%2F221 Interview] with Daniele Luttazzi (March 2004) quote: {{blockquote|Quando la satira poi riesce a far ridere su un argomento talmente drammatico di cui si ride perché non c'è altra soluzione possibile, si ha quella che nei cabaret di Berlino degli Anni '20 veniva chiamata la "risata verde". È opportuno distinguere una satira ironica, che lavora per sottrazione, da una satira grottesca, che lavora per addizione. Questo secondo tipo di satira genera più spesso la risata verde. Ne erano maestri Kraus e Valentin.}} In the Weimar era Kabaretts, this genre was particularly common, and according to Luttazzi, Karl Valentin and Karl Kraus were the major masters of it.

Black comedy is common in professions and environments where workers routinely have to deal with dark subject matter. This includes police officers,{{cite book|last=Wettone|first=Graham|title=How To Be A Police Officer|date=2017|publisher=Biteback|isbn=9781785902192|page=4|chapter=1}} firefighters,{{cite magazine |url=https://www.firechief.com/2018/03/21/firefighter-humor-stops-being-funny-when-civilians-arent-in-on-the-joke/|magazine=Fire Chief |title=Firefighter humor stops being funny when civilians aren't in on the joke |date=21 March 2018|access-date=8 March 2019|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180321175002/https://www.firechief.com/2018/03/21/firefighter-humor-stops-being-funny-when-civilians-arent-in-on-the-joke/|archive-date=21 March 2018}} ambulance crews,{{cite journal |last1=Christopher |first1=Sarah |title=An introduction to black humour as a coping mechanism for student paramedics |journal=Journal of Paramedic Practice |date=December 2015 |volume=7 |issue= 12|pages=610–615 |doi=10.12968/jpar.2015.7.12.610 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285582173|language=en }} military personnel, journalists, lawyers, and funeral directors,{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/christmas/8162822/Funeral-directors-most-likely-to-laugh-at-Christmas-cracker-jokes.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220110/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/christmas/8162822/Funeral-directors-most-likely-to-laugh-at-Christmas-cracker-jokes.html |archive-date=10 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|publisher=The Daily Telegraph|title=Funeral directors most likely to laugh at Christmas cracker jokes|date=27 November 2010|access-date=16 August 2019}}{{cbignore}} where it is an acknowledged coping mechanism. It has been encouraged within these professions to make note of the context in which these jokes are told, as outsiders may not react the way that those with mutual knowledge do.

A 2017 study published in the journal Cognitive Processing{{cite journal |last1=Willinger |first1=Ulrike |last2=Hergovich |first2=Andreas |last3=Schmoeger |first3=Michaela |display-authors=etal |title=Cognitive and emotional demands of black humour processing: the role of intelligence, aggressiveness and mood |journal=Cognitive Processing |date=1 May 2017 |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=159–167 |doi=10.1007/s10339-016-0789-y |pmid=28101812 |language=en |issn=1612-4790|pmc=5383683 }} concludes that people who appreciate dark humor "may have higher IQs, show lower aggression, and resist negative feelings more effectively than people who turn up their noses at it."{{cite web |last1=Specktor |first1=Brandon |title=If You Laugh at These Dark Jokes, You're Probably a Genius |url=https://www.rd.com/culture/dark-sense-of-humor-and-intelligence/ |website=Reader's Digest |access-date=15 April 2019 |date=15 October 2017}}

• Blue comedy
• Comedy horror
• Cringe comedy
• Cruel jokes series
• List of British dark comedies
• Macabre
• Satire (film and television)
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