Bails with Jokes

Bails with Jokes

Saud Hanif

Jokes are lenitives for our mental health because they reduce frustrations to some extent which are caused by desires that are considered immoral in our civilised society. Our mind sprouts various desires daily which are driven by our natural instincts. These are natural drives actually and the desires sprout from our biological self. But, sorry to say, we have another self which is bestowed to us by the civilised society in which we live. In the society our often desires, might be against any person we do not like or about any forbidden activity, are considered as immoral. In order to avoid the immorality, we continuously deny (or repress) our desires and keep wearing a civilised attire in the society. This denial is, in a way, a self-denial. But as the intensity of an instinct behind any desire ascends, our mind starts searching for ways to satisfy the instinct along with keeping sanctity of society. One of the ways is making jokes by using wit as David Carter says in his book Literary Theory, ‘Wit enlightens us and enables to share in protest against the self-denial we have accepted as the cost of a civilized existence.’

          Making jokes is a common activity for instance we often make jokes of personalities we do not like or hate. Similarly, nowadays, in our country, we come across many of the funny dubbed videos of political personalities that are created to make fun of them on social media. We get pleasure by making this kind of fun because the civilised society bounds us to insult them in reality. This pleasure, which have gained through wit, is actually alleviatory which gives relief to our minds. Consequently, psychoanalytically speaking, we can say that a joke is a bail on behalf of our mind for an instinct before our mind surrenders.