Political humor~

While I’m probably not the most politically active person around, having been in the United States for over three months now, I have come to realize how prevalent the use of humor, especially irony and sarcasm is in both American politics and the media that discusses it. One would really find it hard not to become sarcastic about the whole thing after watching a few episodes of the Colbert report or reading a few issues of the Onion.

Politicians themselves often use humor to appeal to the people (clearly, most presidents of the United States do have a sense of humor, though not all of them have a good taste for it), or attack their opponents. Medias cannot pass a day without ridiculing or denouncing policies, ideas of certain politicians, events etc. that they do not agree with. Videos of lame campaigns, awkward speeches, mistakes, etc. prosper on YouTube. “Bush jokes” has become so widespread that it has become its own type of humor.

Compared the highly satiric and often incisive humor prevalent in American Politics, “Chinese political humor” is not a phrase that would normally appear in our daily lives. While people do pass satirical comments to one another and a touch of irony can occasionally appear in some small newspaper article, a solemn and official tone has always been the key characteristics of Chinese politics. Yet with the widespread use of the internet, with increasing transparency in government affairs and with more and more people eager to air their views and challenge the authority in these matters, forms of political humor are also beginning to appear in China, though in a somewhat different way.

An interesting case involves a car accident that happened on a university campus in Hebei Province. A car ran into to university students. One student was killed immediately and the other was severely wounded. Rather than stopping the car, the driver drove on as if nothing had happened. After the care was finally stopped by other passing students and security guards, the driver rolled down the window and told everyone around in an aggressive tone “Sue me if you dare, my father is Li Gang!” It turned out that his father Li Gang was the city’s Public Security Bureau deputy director.

The whole nation became furious after hearing the incident, for this was not only a severe case by itself, but also brought up many past cases of government officials covering up criminal actions of their relatives or themselves with their given power. Beside official criticisms, four days after the incident, an online poetry contest invited entrants to incorporate the sentence "My father is Li Gang" (我爸是李刚) into classical Chinese poems. The contest was created on MOP, a popular Chinese Bulletin Board System, and soon received more than 6,000 submissions.

As we laugh at these terribly incongruous poems created, we can feel a deep and bitter sense of sarcasm behind it. The current political atmosphere in China is still against the ideals of political humor and in a sense, freedom of speech (which I believe has both its advantages and disadvantages) has led political humor in China to develop in a more connotative fashion. Since it is quite impossible to make direct satiric criticisms against sensitive topics and issues, and also because Chinese traditions and beliefs have taught us to be comparatively mild and less direct, the emerging forms of Chinese political humor are often not as incisive and direct as that of American political humor. However, this does not make their creators or audience any less concerned about the issues such humor brings up. With this incident, and many others that are beginning to spread via internet and among a new generation of Chinese youngsters, we do see the increasing possibility of change to current systems in the future.