Truth, lies and jokes in narrative criminology

• In Event: Narrative Criminology 1: Humour and emotions

Abstract

Several researchers on social harm and control, punishment and victimization have noted how humor, jokes and laughter play a part in narratives about crime. However, these topics have not been well studied in criminological research. One reason might be that it feels disrespectful to do so, or that zooming in on humor seems irrelevant to understand the lives and experiences of the populations we study.

But laughter, jokes, satire and clowning can be powerful tools to deal with or resist disempowering circumstances and mitigate felt experiences of harm, with gallows humor as a well-known example. Mikhail Bakhtin wrote that where seriousness “burdens us with hopeless situations”, laughter “lifts us above them and delivers us from them”. Although conversely, humor can also be used to legitimize aggression and violence, to keep marginalized groups in place and to perpetuate the structural status quo.

This conceptual paper aims to challenge the paucity of criminological research on humor. It explores how narrative criminology can take humor more seriously, and debates how jokes, truth and lies are interdependent social forces.

Jokes, humor and laughter are intimately connected to – and themselves shape – what counts as truth and lies. Joking about things one is not supposed to joke about can be a form of truth-telling. Humor can challenge stereotypes, revealing ideas and perceptions that are pervasive but often left unarticulated. But humor may also work to keep disadvantaged individuals, groups and communities in place, to silence their voices, invalidate their experiences or perpetuate simplistic caricatures and stereotypes. With humor as a means to such darker ends, the joker’s goal is reached through selective storytelling, disparaging exaggerations or outright lies.

This presentation will illuminate how truth, lies and jokes in crime narratives reveal fault lines in the social fabric, and works to preserve, challenge or upend power structures.

Author

• Anja Emilie Kruse, Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law, University of Oslo, Norway