Death Makes a Comedy

An Episode of 'The Office' Highlights the Role of Humor in Speciesism & Groupthink

I’ve been wanting to write about The Office for a long time now, and every time I opened up this draft, I returned to the plot of “Grief Counseling.” A season three episode in which Michael Scott forces his employees to grieve with him over the death of a boss he hated, it culminates in the office hosting a funeral for a bird who died flying into the office building’s glass door.

Much of this episode’s humor derives from the implicit understanding that there’s something inherently comedic in treating the death of a bird with as much, or more, gravitas as the death of a human. The proposition of a funeral for some random dead bird is as preposterous as a cat casting a ballot in an election, and suddenly the premise of animal rights has transformed into a caricature.

Though The Office’s writers might not have realized it, the deeper belief fueling their storyline is that animals are unworthy of equitable ethical concern, and therefore it’s acceptable to crack jokes at their expense.

But this is more of a systemic problem than a twenty-year-old sitcom episode. We can see this same kind of othering language across various comedic mediums. Let’s take a look at a couple.

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I was listening to an episode of my favorite bookish podcast¹ when the issue of a listener’s transphobic book club came up. Here’s some of the things the hosts said:

• “[Co-host’s name], besides beating these people up, what do you think [this listener should do]?”

• “There’s only so many hours in my day to commit emotional labor for transphobes.”

• “These people are not worth your fucking time. Like, fuck them. Fuck them so hard.”

• “My advice is, first off, tell me where they live.”

• “Hopefully they fall into the sewer.”

• “Hopefully…the earth opens up and swallows them whole.”

While they also offered some kinder words and good advice for the listener, the hateful hyperbole struck me. Like, really, you want these people to die? You personally want to cause them physical harm? I doubt it. But it’s easier to virtue signal than to actually do the work of outreaching to people with different—and, yes, sometimes hateful—views.

The podcast’s tone is lighthearted. What they said is meant to be comedic, and for most of their listeners, it probably worked because we’re all generally more on the progressive side than not. And I don’t even disagree with the sentiment expressed by the hosts. We shouldn’t have to subject ourselves to hate or waste our emotional energy on people who despise our very existence. But if we speak about other people with such disdain behind their backs, all we can expect is the very same vitriol in return.

We see these kind of jokes on late-night talk shows, in which the hosts riff on the day’s political events and often elicit boos from the crowd whenever a Republican does something slightly offensive and cheers whenever a Democrat does something mildly honorable. Usually, there’s some sort of joke about the Republican’s (or the person who’s engaged in some sort of socially unacceptable act) appearance/personality. Take a few lines from John Oliver’s episode about last year’s Republican National Convention on Last Week Tonight:

• “I do not like that man Ted Cruz/ I do not like his toxic views/ I do not like his nasty speeches/ I do not like the shit he preaches/ I do not like him when he fishes/ I do not like him when he kisses/ Pulling off that beard, he ain’t/ That man Ted Cruz looks like a taint”

  • This is a common refrain on the show, in which Oliver delivers a poem in the style of Green Eggs and Ham whenever Cruz appears in one of Oliver’s segments

• “[Y]ou should never go out in public dressed like that. He looks like Alan Arkin playing one of the Angry Birds. He looks like a divorced strawberry. He looks like if a G.I. Joe had an off-hours bowling team.”

• “…a man who apparently showed his plastic surgeon and hair stylist a photo of Holland Taylor and said, ‘This, please.’”

I’ll admit, it’s a little funny, like when he called Jared Kushner “a sentient Kohl’s mannequin who read a book once,” but jokes about people’s appearance are cheap. They signal that, yes, you are less deserving of basic courtesy, and we are judging you and laughing at you because of it.

While the targets of the jokes may not always find it offensive, there are viewers who will. As a former young Republican, I felt that pain acutely. Even now that I’m far more progressive, the sensitivity to being labeled an inconsiderate ingrate still sticks with me. As if saying the “wrong” thing or subscribing to a different belief system than those of mainstream progressivism could make me unworthy of the air I breathe. I changed my political affiliation despite all that, not because of it.

But I’m less concerned with how our words make other people feel than with what humor like that does to us. The thing is, maligning people with different views doesn’t change those views, nor does it make us feel better. It simply makes us self-righteous, and it emphasizes the differences between us when, in actuality, we share far more in common, especially with centrists (or, in the animal rights movement, with animal welfare advocates, vegetarians, and flexitarians).

As liberal or open-minded as we may think we are, we all have been wrong about something. (Probably many things.) How many comedians, or jokesters in your life, have made cracks about vegans ruining Thanksgiving? I feel like I can’t get through a holiday season without hearing something like this. While needling jokes like this have existed as long as there’ve been people who went against the grain, seeing celebrities and other public figures participate gives their audience permission to do the same.

Good comedy should bring people in despite their differences, not exclude those who see the world differently.

While I consider myself rather libertarian in terms of what should/shouldn’t be permitted in comedy, we need to be honest about the purpose of this kind of humor. It’s meant to persuade fans that our point of view is correct and, in doing so, dissuade non-fans from engaging. We are so certain that the perspective of our little bubble is self-evidently correct—moral—that we actively demean people outside the group for being ignorant assholes.

If we truly care about issues like transphobia, animal rights, and social justice, and want to make the world a more accepting place—and I believe the people using this kind of comedy do truly care—we should reach out to them with compassion and try to understand the circumstances that created their prejudice. Not accepting it, not allowing it—just understanding. Talking about one another without talking to each other only deepens the divide between both sides.² That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy to do so, or that people who make offensive jokes are intentionally malicious. It’s easy to make fun of someone; it’s harder to find humor on common ground.³ But I’d argue it’s worth the effort.

Let’s return to John Oliver for a second. If you’ve watched even a few episodes of his show, you may have noticed his bizarre tendency to sexualize animals. It’s become a running gag. For instance, he’ll put an image on screen of a horse and say, “You know that horse fucks,” or “It’s not sexual harassment. It’s a horse.” Sometimes the joke hinges on his own attraction to an animal.⁴

Jokes like this on Last Week Tonight share the same heart as those in “Grief Counseling.” At their core, what makes them funny is the idea of animals having the same moral worth as humans. John Oliver jokes about getting hot over a picture of a horse because obviously it’s gross. But if he were to switch out the horse for a human child, or even a grown woman, there wouldn’t be much laughter.⁵ The fans—the in-group—all understand that animals are less significant, and therefore it’s ethically permissible to make objectifying jokes at their expense. And those who criticize this kind of humor become outcasts, shunned by the group because they don’t conform.

Obviously, they’re not usually thinking that hard about it. Something’s funny, so we laugh. But when the premise of a joke centers on another person, human or not, we should always be skeptical of its design and intent. Are we just being performative, bolstering our sense of righteousness to signal to the rest of the group that we’re in the know? Do we actually care about social issues, or are we just trying to score points with our audience without examining our own complicity in perpetuating the very problem we think we’re addressing?

If you have to explain a joke, then you’ve failed as a comedian, but maybe if we all took more care in examining our jokes before we say them, we might realize that at their core is more hate than humor.

A Final Note

Would you believe me if I said that I wrote most of this before November’s election? I hate to sound like another one of those liberals eating their own, attacking people on my own side when public figures on the right care so little about people who differ from them. However, with an old administration returning to power today, vitriol will only become more commonplace.

It’s a gut reaction to lash out when someone attacks us, and I’ll admit I haven’t mastered it. Not even close. I don’t know what the right answer is when it comes to dealing with these deep political divides; I can barely talk to my family about anything beyond the superficial because we are so strongly opposed. But I know that when it comes to protecting animals, we can only hope to save them by inviting people in rather than shaming them into compliance. Humans are stubborn creatures. We can never change people’s hearts by force, only show them that life could be better if we all come together.

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On my mind: “Pizza Homicide” by Samurai Pizza Cats

Okay, so last year I went through a brief Electric Callboy phase, which is how I stumbled across this song. Not my typical thing; I prefer more serious metal. While the lyrics make it clear that anyone who puts pineapple on pizza deserves a violent death—“Fuck fruits on my pizza/ No pineapples on my pizza/ Grease and meat is all I need, all I need”—my little vegan brain was thinking about how that grease, meat, and cheese offer their own kind of death, both for the people who eat the pies and the animals being made into them.

Now that I think about it, maybe this song is deeper than I originally gave it credit. If you listen beneath the screams, metal songs often discuss substance abuse and self-harm, both of which could apply to intentionally eating unhealthy foods.

1. I’m choosing not to reveal the name. As I said, it’s one of my favorite podcasts.

2. Of course, it can be nearly impossible to have conversations with people who are hostile to our cause, but it’s important for those of us who care about social justice to not cast the first stone, to go high when they go low.

3. Venting about difficult people can be cathartic, even essential to maintaining good mental health. But that doesn’t mean we should be doing it publicly for all the world to hear. Keep it quiet, within a small group of people you trust.

4. For the record, I don’t actually believe he’s sexually attracted to animals. It’s just a weird running joke.

5. Fans of this kind of humor may rebuke by saying that I’m taking this way too seriously, that it’s all hyperbole and good fun. But for the same reason it’s wrong to make sexual jokes about a woman even when she’s not in the room, it’s wrong to make jokes about animals even if they can’t understand them. Jokes aren’t about the subject of their humor but about the substance of them; often, they say more about the person making the joke than the person the joke’s about.