by Richard Roper
Tony and Chris are horsing around with their friend and colleague Ralph. Chris grabs Ralph’s hair and leaps back in surprise as what turns out to be a wig comes away in his hand. ‘What, you didn’t know?’ Tony says, a sly grin on his face. So far, so quirkily charming. But context is all, and in this case, what’s actually just happened is that Tony (Soprano) has just brutally murdered his old pal and capo and lied about it to his heroin-addicted nephew who he’s called over to help dismember Ralph’s corpse. This is typical of The Sopranos, a show laced with dark humor throughout. But why go there? Well, the moment serves two purposes. Firstly, for the characters – it is a chance for them to find a moment they can bond over. Chris knows full well that Tony has killed Ralph, Tony knows full well that Chris is high – so for them to find something to laugh about in the middle of all this horror allows them a brief second of respite, a second or two of common ground. The second function of the moment is to show us, the viewer, that what we are witnessing is real life. Not that we’re watching a documentary – what a twist that would have been! – but that these gangsters are not slick, unfeeling, glamorous machines; they are fallible, they are human – and so much of being human is about making each other laugh, even in the most dire situations.
This for me is why – when used well – dark humor is so important in the stories we tell, because it is one of the most powerful tools we have in our arsenal as human beings. Even someone living the most charmed life will be visited by tragedy and misfortune or downright bad luck at some point in their time on this planet. The moment where you can make a joke to your friends about it is always that tipping point where you can stick a middle finger up at what’s just happened and show that you aren’t going to be bullied into submission any longer. Perhaps the greatest example of this in art is comedian Tig Notaro’s legendary stand-up show ‘Live’, performed just a few days after receiving a diagnosis of stage-two breast cancer. Introducing herself with words, ‘Hello, I have cancer’, Notaro goes on to talk about her illness, her recent break-up, and everything else in between, all with jet-black deadpan humor. What’s particularly fascinating is how the audience responds. Usually when you are listening to a comedy album the laughter from the crowd is predictable, like a wave breaking on the shore each time a punchline is delivered. But as Notaro speaks, the laugher comes in scattergun bursts – some of it hearty, some stifled. It is the spontaneous sound of recognition and shock as they watch a high-wire act of someone coming to terms with their mortality in almost real-time. It is a profoundly life-changing thirty minutes, and a fantastic example of the power of dark humor to help us be fearless.
My personal love of the dark side comes stems from my life-long obsession with comedy – both stand-up and sitcoms. Broken down to its simplest, comedy is all about surprise. The set-up of a joke makes you think one thing and then the punchline pulls the rug from under your feet. ‘Formulaic’ is one of the most commonly used adjectives used to criticize comedy – we know what’s coming, so aren’t surprised, so we don’t laugh. If you’ve become as much of a nerd as I have, it makes it harder and harder to find new ways to be surprised – which is why, like an addict looking for my next high, I ended up turning to darker comedies to find something unpredictable, and from both sides of the pond. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Peep Show. The League of Gentlemen – these are all shows that feature a cavalcade of dark themes and plotlines, characters without a moral compass – but crucially all the jokes are justified, it is not being dark for the sake of being dark. These shows constantly surprise with how far they are willing to push the boundaries, and is for that reason why they have such cult followings. It feels like they are saying ‘yeah, the world can be the worst, but if we throw our heads back and laugh our asses off, then we’ve won already’.
With dark humor being at the core of the art I love, it’s probably no surprise that my debut novel Something to Live For was always intended to have that at its core. The book was inspired by a real article I read about local authority workers in England who are tasked with dealing with the situation when someone dies alone. These are people who spend their nine to fives in the most horrific, depressing circumstances – but without exception they all exhibit stoicism and respect while finding as much humor in the situation as they can in order to simply get through. When you see it employed in moments as hopeless as that, you see just what a superpower dark humor can be, and why we need it in stories more than ever.
