Using humour to heal

Shareem Amry
New Straits Times
09-30-2001
Using humour to heal
Byline: Shareem Amry
Edition: New Sunday Times - Style; 2*
Section: Aside

WELL, it sure didn't take long. The smoke over the World Trade Centre ruins in New York City hadn't yet dissipated when wince- worthy jokes about the Sept 11 terrorist attacks started rolling in.

Circulating over the Internet for example, is an e-mail that cheekily suggests official songs for some of the players involved in the tragedy.
For chief suspect Osama bin Laden, there's pop star Shaggy's ode to denial, "It Wasn't Me."

For rescuers sifting through the rubble for the dead, there's the golden oldie "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes."

And for the doomed WTC workers who leapt to their deaths, we have R. Kelly's inspirational "I Believe I Can Fly."

SMS messages over handphones have weighed in too.

"Could I come and stay with you for a couple of day?" one message starts. "Everybody's really mad and I could use a friend. Yours truly, Osama bin Laden."

Another one features the front image of an aircraft (cleverly cobbled together using letters of the alphabet, numerals and punctuation signs) coming closer and closer towards to you.

Just when the nose of the plane looks about ready to crack the tiny screen of your handphone, up pops the message: "Beware of terrorists!"

And who can forget the message that masquerades as an advert for an airline that saw one of its planes hijacked and transformed into a bomb.

"Why waste time at an airport?" the SMS quips. "American Airlines now flies straight to your office!"

Receiving one of these gags is not unlike hearing someone break noisy wind at a funeral: you're startled at first but then this insane urge to giggle takes hold of you.

Inevitably however, varying degrees of remorse sets in. Laughing when 7,000 souls are either dead or missing is clearly the kind of thing you should get clubbed on the head for.

But gallows humour isn't meant to be appropriate, much less classy.

It's not just flatulence at a funeral - it's a social faux pas with intent, a deliberate assassination of good taste.

The rueful chuckling it provokes isn't meant to bring us any comfort, but neither is it designed to shame us into an embarrassed silence salted by equal parts of guilt and self-consciousness.

We cook up awful jokes at times like these because we're afraid - if you take a deep breath, you can smell the panic beneath the veneer of grim hilarity.

That first laugh after a tragedy can be hard, because you feel like you should be grateful you're alive and just shut up for the rest of your life.

But we all do need to keep laughing. It's healing and by no means meant to be a sign of disrespect for the dead or the grieving.

* samry@nstp.com.my

(Copyright 2001)