«Humor has no limits, it is the people who use it that must have limits.»

13/03/2018

The days of the High School Debate League began on February 21st and ended on Friday 23rd at the UAB. In this edition, the participating high schools faced the question "Does humor have limits?".

Professor José María Perceval has been asking himself that same question for years. In 2007, he published the article "Between humor and anger: satire and vision of the West in the media of the Arab-Muslim world". His most recent research on the subject is found in his book El humor y sus límites (2015), where he analyzes humor as a recent phenomenon, focusing on the universal figure of the jester. Now the professor has put into practice his knowledge as a member of the jury of the last edition of the High School Debate League.

1) What is humor?

Humor for me is like the logical-philosophical, it is a section of philosophy because it just takes people who are listening to a joke to the illogical part that reviews it and, therefore, serves us as knowledge of reality. This is an academic position.

2) You have theorized about the link between terrorism and humor in your book. During the debates that relationship has been a recurring theme.

Not exactly. The students repeated the limits of humor with respect to people. Then we must consider: does the humor have limits? Humor does not, because it is an instrument. It's as if you said: does science have limits? Neither. It is humans who can destroy the planet with science and it is humans who can harm you with humor. It is a problem of pointing, not of humor itself. I believe that it is more than what was said about the relationship with terrorism. More than terrorism, I would say with fear. Because humor is an overcoming of fears. That's why many jokes are told in funerals or in majestic ceremonies: they are laughable. For example, the Oscars. Great ceremonies need humor because otherwise they end up being empty instruments. When Tortell Poltrona explained the matter of humor, he said that a normal gesture like "I greet you": you repeat it several times and you already create a sense of humor with regard to that ceremony. As simple as a greeting. Imagine a public ceremony, a religious ceremony, a state ceremony... they are all laughable.

3) Nowadays, after the attacks in Barcelona, ​​what room do you think black humor has in our society?

It's a little bit complicated. On the one hand, the moral limit is set by the public, not the law, because if the law sets limits then it is applied depending on who. And, in addition, the law has the problem that protects the other way round: the most unprotected groups, as they have fewer defenses, are the most likely to be attacked. Individuals are much more vulnerable than a famous person. A celebrity has lawyers to report you. Each group thinks "this is not possible and should be denounced or this is freedom of opinion". I believe that freedom of opinion is both. If you take an individual person that has had their life wrecked because of a joke it is obviously the most reportable and is possibly the one with the least defense. Or a minority ethnic group or a group that cannot defend itself.What can be done before the big groups? For example, gender jokes, jokes with ethnic groups such as Catalans, Jews or Andalusians. I think that there is no limit to this, the limit has to be set by the public because I do not believe that they are groups that are not defensible but, simply, they may feel offended. Today you will be, tomorrow others will be. If people do not laugh they will not laugh at those jokes.

With regard to humor linked with terror, there is a film that I would recommend to everyone: Four lions (2010). This film makes humor about an attack and shows that, after all, terrorists are human too. They live in a dream world, in fantasy, and they commit those terrible acts, but they are not inhuman, they are not outside humanity. We cannot control terrorism if we think they are monsters that come from different planets. They are people who can be on the street, and not only terrorists but also those who justify them. To disarm this maybe you have to understand it and humor can be a way.
As for black humor, there have been several famous cases. Here I am honestly relatively pragmatic. If they attack specific people and this person feels offended and the complaint is a matter of law. Now, jail or not, I would put them, for example, to do social services. But what we obviously cannot prevent is that an individual feels offended. If this individual person is a public person, I would think about it. Revenge will not solve these problems.

There are jokes that in my time were told about physical defects, about four eyes, about lame, about homosexuals, about women, that now they do not make fun anymore. I believe that society must overcome it because the terrible problem we have is not where we set the limits to humor but where we put the limits to the law, stopping the supposed negative humor. We can find very terrible cases, such as the puppeteers or Carrero Blanco. We were in another era and now we are spending too much cotton, and I think that may affect the freedom of opinion.

4) What has been the role of social networks in its spreading?

Very ambiguous On the one hand, social networks viralize fantastic things, very good, and, on the other, terrible things. Right now what happens with social networks is that the effect is like when a catastrophe happens in what before, in ancient societies, were small villages and right now are big cities, then a catastrophe is much bigger. With social networks it is the same: now the catastrophe is very big. Here what I would rather do is an education in schools to the generations that are going to happen to us so that they realize that although they are alone at home, they are united to the world, which was not like that before. This reality must be lived. What you do has an effect on the world. For example, in the United States, they watch Facebook networks to hire people. We live absolutely naked before the world, something that used to happen relatively, but not so obviously. Naivety is what often leads to pressures one morning, to an anger that can destroy your life. And the social network does that.

5) As a jury in the debate league: how would you rate the interventions of the high school students?

Well I was frankly surprised for good. The level was fantastic and, honestly, I think that these leagues should be much bigger, must be much more widespread. Not only to prepare you for college but because in the university itself there is much lack of debate. We make a kind of education absolutely Gutenberg: I ​​read or speak as a great figure or as a walking book, and students must learn. This unidirectionality of education must be broken. We do not have this necessary feedback and we do not teach the students how to speak, how to express themselves, how to defend ideas ... And that is what they are going to do next. What's more, social networks are now in a prehistoric stage and that means you're going to be directly confronted with the public. Now come those articles that are written where the insults are alternated with the most incredible things. In part, the only thing that I see as positive is that, at a minimum, they serve not to go to the psychiatrist because they already get all the bad toxins out of that day. Imagine when it is live.

6) What do you think that have been the strongest arguments?

I think the most interesting arguments are those linked to personal concerns. This argument was not said more academic than I said in my book, but then in the intention they did allude to that question, to the normal person who feels assaulted. That is very interesting. I focus more on the matter of humor as a form of logical philosophy, and should be taught in philosophy because it just leads to illogical consequence. Now there is much talk of serendipity. It is a story of the three princes of Serendip who, by intuition, come to the conclusion about a case and the joke is that they almost condemn them to death because, as they know so much, they think they are thieves. They have arrived by logical consequences, we would say now Sherlockholmians. In the same way that Sherlock Holmes is the best example for a history researcher, humor is also a way to get there. Of course, it is also good for journalism as rhetoric. In an article in which you have the irony, the form, the character, you work very well. But, apart, as a philosophy, a joke actually sometimes defines a situation in a fantastic way.

7) Did you find some similes that were made during the debate — specifically, the winner, the Can Roca high school— as The Handmaid's Tale or Lysistrata?

There were groups, specifically the one who won, who were very prepared. Not only had they read. If you allude to Lysistrata or Aristophanes or questions of Henri Bergson or Freud about the joke, you can see that there is a really important base behind. But the interesting thing is not the academic of the debate, but the rhetoric of defending the argument for or against. In that sense, I found them fantastic, with a very high level.

8) To finish, very briefly, do you think that humor has limits?

I believe that humor has four limits: the law (you have to be very careful with it because it can kill humor, creativity and democracy); morality (which can also be decisive because we can have large groups that are offended by certain things when it might be necessary to happen or make the person who is making the joke stay without people laughing); social groups (laugh at some things and not at others), and individual people (the limits that I put on my humor).

Concluding: humor has no limits, it is the people who use it that must have limits.
 
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