This Isn’t Funny!: Humor in (times of) Crisis
Wed, Nov 8, 2017
2:00 PM–4:30 PM
The James Gallery
This workshop led by Menaham Haike will examine and discuss the role of humor in the crisis of imagination, and the delicate relationship between humor and imagination. The current political climate, and the ongoing immense political shifts occurring worldwide, feel at times like the punch line to a joke we all missed (even though we watched it unfolding in front of our eyes). Are we experiencing a crisis of humor that correlates with the crisis of imagination? Is humor a legitimate form of critique? What are our new regulations on what is funny? Are things funny because they are offensive, or are they offensive because they are funny? Through a historical review of our attitudes towards humor, the fleeing of humor to an imaginative (cartoon) world, and a re-examination of offense within the limits of what is “politically correct,” the workshop aims to give us a better understanding of this phenomenon, so we may burst out laughing, as an attempt at optimism in face of despair.
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