Suicide Humor - Remember, Gravity Kills

That title is your trigger warning. Not everybody will want to read this.

Humor is having a moment. Or is it a year? Or have we tipped over into so much dystopia that humor will be our only survival for the undetermined future?

I searched on Types of Humor Memes and—gosh! People really are disecting this subject lately. This is my favorite, because it doesn’t take itself so seriously:

I’m not sure what is hierarchical about humor. Usually when a person creates a hierarchy, it tells as much about the person as the subject. Like, I presume that Grant Snider, the person who created this piece, is into dark humor and paradox, and not into puns, because he thinks dark humor and paradox are the highest forms.

I suppose another reason this is my favorite meme is because paradox and dark humor are my lane too. So it puts me at the top. (Self-deprecation—also at the top.)

Mental Illness Humor Is Dark

Yes, that describes Prozac Monologues, both the book and the blog. Dark humor and irony are my strong suit, along with a bit of self-depreciation.

Here’s an excerpt from Prozac Monologues, the book, to give you an idea:

Jump!

     The week after my return from Costa Rica I had another doctor’s appointment, this one with my regular doctor, and I said not a word about bizarre thoughts or nail files. I got a new script and was off on my next adventure, this one called Celexa.

     I did the laundry and packed my new meds for a business trip. For the life of me, I cannot tell you where I went, some conference, some hotel . . . Cincinnati? I do remember the balconies on each floor overlooking the lobby. Right outside my room, I leaned over the rail. I don’t know why I even had a room. I never slept on Celexa.

     The hard marble fountain in the lobby looked lovely from up on the fourteenth floor as I leaned over, gripping the rail. The fountain called me to come down.

     But wait. Directly below me was the roof over the fitness center. Sure, it was thirteen flights down. But what if its slope broke my fall? What if the fall didn’t kill me? I could end up paralyzed. If paralyzed, how could I carry out my plan?

     Besides, ow.

Writing About Suicide?

Well yes, this is dark humor. But what is going on here?

First, the technique:

1. Create tension. A person leaning over a rail, thinking about jumping to fall thirteen floors onto the glass roof of a fitness center? Yes, there’s some tension.

2. Break the tension with an absurdity, the irony of making a joke about what was, indeed, a horrific moment for me.

Second: the purpose: Why did I tell this story? And why tell it this way? Is suicide funny?

Suicide is a taboo subject. When a young person dies and the obituary doesn’t mention the cause, we can guess it was a suicide, but the family was not willing to use the word. When somebody asks a person how they feel, anything may come out of their mouth other than, “I want to die.”

So suicide is a natural topic for a comedian. Comedians are the people who have permission to say what may not be said. Our topics are things that make people uncomfortable. The topics themselves create the tension. So then we can break the tension. In the process, people are given a space in which to consider, maybe even learn something about those uncomfortable topics.

Suicide humor is a special case. It multi-tasks. While it is making everybody laugh, for people who are suicidal, the joke tells them that they are not alone. The sense that somebody else has been through it and survived it itself relieves the impulse. That was what gave me the fierce determination to tell that joke.

Prozac Monologues was a mission for me, to tell people who are suffering that they are not alone.

And then I break the tension, so the people who are not suicidal can breathe. They can step back from that scary space. And take their finger off the phone that was ready to call 911 on me.

Self-deprecation Versus Bullying—The Ethics of Humor

Okay, this is important. This is very important:

Self-deprecation humor becomes simply deprecation when it is used by people who do not share the experience. Deprecation is another word for bullying. And bullying is not on that pyramid up there—because bullying is not funny. Even if people laugh, even if it is called a joke, of the dumb joke variety, it is not funny.

So suicide humor is by nature first-person humor. Because otherwise it’s not funny. So also a number of other topics: ethnic humor, cancer humor, disability humor. We get to tell those jokes. And we have a right to tell them. We have the right to use whatever language we choose to describe our own experience.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

One more thought: If suicide humor is by nature first-person humor, then suicide itself is not humor. [Now what kind of humor was that?]

Yeah, I suspect a lot of people didn’t find this post funny. Oh well. Just remember:

Gravity kills.