‘Coyote Was Going There…’: The Role of Humor in Sacred Narrative and Performance

The International Journal of

Religion and Spirituality in Society

RelIgIonInSocIeTy.com

VOLUME 3 ISSUE 2

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'Coyote Was Going There...'The Role of Humor in Sacred Narrative and Performance

DENNIS KELLEY

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY IN SOCIETY

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‘Coyote Was Going There…’: The Role of Humor in Sacred Narrative and Performance

Dennis Kelley, University of Missouri-Columbia, U.S.A.

Abstract: Many American Indian stories are tales of bawdy and risqué humor, as well as of great sacred gravity. That these two qualities, comic and sacred, are not considered mutually exclusive in American Indian traditional narratives has been suggested elsewhere (e.g. Andrews 2000; Aswell 2005; Bricker 1973; Lincoln 1993;). However, much of the treatment of the nature of humor in religion generally is situational and anecdotal rather than theoretical, for example, the ways in which ministers use jokes to convey Biblical themes in sermons or how humor and faith allow one to transcend adversity. My intent is to suggest that the categories “humor” and “sacred” co-define a genre of mythic narrative that plays an important role in American Indian religions, and that perhaps scholars might find this analysis helpful in the isolation of comic elements within the narratives of other of the world’s traditions. This theoretical direction, I will also herein suggest, can encompass much of what might be considered popular cultural expressions of humor, comic irony, and satire such as The Daily Show and the stand-up comedy of Louis C. K.

Keywords: Sacred Humor, Indigenous Traditions, Mythology

“Coyote: A trickster whose bag of tricks contains permutations of love, hate, weather, chance, laughter, and tears, e.g. Lucille Ball”

-Entry in the Journal of Thomas Builds-the-Fire, from Sherman Alexie’s collection of short stories The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.

oyote was going there…” begins many traditional California Indian Coyote Tales, stories of bawdy and risqué humor, as well as of great sacred gravity. That these two qualities, comic and sacred, are not considered mutually exclusive in American

Indian traditional narratives has been suggested elsewherei, as has the comparison of religious ideologies and humor production/receptionii. However, it seems this concept lacks from in-depth treatment in the academic study of religion and sacred practices, especially regarding the ritual use of humor. Much of the treatment of the religious nature of humor in this vein is dedicated to the use of humor in religious settings and themes to convey specific ideas, such as through using jokes in sermons or pastoral careiii. My intent is to suggest that the categories “humor” and “sacred” can co-define a genre of religious narrative and practice that plays an important role in American Indian religions, and that comedic expression is itself an inherently sacred act. I might also suggest that this concept applies to much of the humorous, ironic, and satirical expressions of pop culture. In other words, satire and ironic humor in popular culture may in fact function in the same way as humorous narratives that exist within the tales and myths of Indigenous communities. Thus, I believe can we make a theoretical connection between the comically sacred nature of a character such as Old Man Owl in the Apache oral tradition, a character that provides comically infused instruction on communal standards and values, and that of such contemporary American dramatis personae as John Stewart or the venerable Homer Simpson.

This article represents an initial foray into the topic, drawn largely from ideas that inform a larger project on American Indian spirituality in modernity, where I found the importance of humor in the navigation of the issues associated with the colonial project impossible to overstate. Humor is very much an integral part of the narrative structure of American Indian stories, and those stories carry the cargo of cultural values, mores, and spiritual truths that have been orally transmitted through the generations. The particular character of American Indian humor is at once familiar and distant, drawing from both general themes of human existence as well as from the particular experiences of the multiple tribal traditions that make up Indian Country. In my

“C

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book, I attempt to illuminate the spiritual tools employed by contemporary Natives for the purposes of establishing and maintaining traditional identities. Indeed, it is the persistence, and flourishing, of contemporary Native communities that stands as testament to the amazing resistance and resolve displayed by them. One of the important aspects of this continuity of cultural values within Indian Country is the presence of storytellers, people who remember and transmit ancient tales as well as construct new stories using traditional themes, symbolism, and technique. What I propose is a brief overview of these themes, symbols, and techniques, connecting them to the discourse on religion and spirituality derived from myth, symbol, and ritual analysis, and finally making connections to humorous storytelling and performance as themselves sacred, functioning as methods for conveying sacred ideas and values within lived social contexts.

According to Vassilis Saroglouiv, there is some consensus that the creation and appreciation of humor in the human mind derives largely from the use of incongruity. Peter Marteinsonv also suggests that humor plays on indistinct boundaries between verifiable facts, individual intuition, and cultural frameworks. Sacred values represent the ideal, and our material reality often differs from that sacred ideal. In our need for what Anthony Giddens calls “ontological security,” relative continuity in our perceptions and a stable sense of our social world, we require some grounding influences that establish a sense of foundational reality, and for that we tend to appeal to a unifying system of sacred access.

Though the term “religion” has been notoriously debated, the phenomena comprising the category are nonetheless associated with social constructs–religion is a collective product. Humorous ideas and acts are also dependent upon a common lexicon of sorts. While the manifestation of these may differ from community to community, a comparative approach can reveal some constructs that approach universality. To make this claim, I of course need to rely on concrete examples, and for that I will use two basic genres of American Indian uses of sacred humor, Trickster Tales and Clowning, with an emphasis on the Trickster, as these can be shown as both sacred in and of themselves, and present in non-Indian contexts.

The Trickster

In the study of American Indian mythic forms, the oral transmission of these texts provides both a literary (of sorts) and a performative context from which to derive meaning. While it is wise to view Indigenous oral traditions as existing in a separate realm as those in the written form, the nature of narrative allows both orality and textuality to be viewed through the same semiotic lens. As with Barthes’ “readerly text,” the audience has a role to play in establishing ultimate meaning, drawing on common conventions. This vocabulary of signification gives the tale its ability to communicate communal values, as well as the effects of positive and negative relationships to those values. The classic “trickster” tale is an excellent example of this mythic form.

The term “trickster” has a tendency to over-simplify what is actually a complex of scenarios, characters, and mythic cycles. However, a set of broad characteristics can be identified for the purposes of comparison, all of which point to the key feature of the trickster: ambiguity and incongruity. Subverting norms, mores, and values, shifting physical forms, and taboo violation all describe typical tales involving the trickster, and highlighting an important facet to these characters: symbols of social separation. For Gerald Vizenorvi, trickster characters should always be considered in a communal context, as the trickster is “in a collective, hardly ever in isolation. When he is in isolation, he’s almost always in trouble…” and needing to use his cunning and magic to reconnect to “…imagination, to people, to places.”vii William Hynes points to the difficulty in defining the trickster as in keeping with the resistance to capture exhibited by the characters themselvesviii. Nonetheless, like Hynes, I maintain that the possibility exists to create a

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KELLEY: ‘COYOTE WAS GOING THERE…’

profile of sorts, for the purposes of comparison on the one hand, for the establishment of the connection between the trickster motif and sacrality on the other.

The form has, as I see it, three key features: familiar characterization, an emphasis on transgression, and of course, humor. Familiarity of form is simply the fact that an indigenous community’s trickster is nearly always the same being, or collection of beings. While there may be many characters who transgress, act in canny and cunning ways, or engage in comedic action, the trickster maintains a particular position in the symbolic lexicon and is immediately identifiable. The trickster appears when the key elements associated with his dangerous flirtation with the liminal, in the darker side of the Turnerian sense of subversion described by Rene Girard as the encouragement of the “proliferation of the double-bindix,” due to the transgression of communal categories of difference. The potential for both social and sacred chaos renders the trickster as focusing lens, one that both clarifies socially appropriate behavior by displaying the opposite, and provides a user-friendly proxy heuristic for exploring sacred meaning.

A variety of animal people fill this role in American Indian tales, Raven in the Pacific Northwest, Rabbit in the Southeast, with specific characters like Inktomi the Spider in Lakota tales, and Keoonik for the Mi'kmaq. As these various forms have their own specific tribal contexts, it would be impossible for me to do any of them full justice here, however, there is a character who has a wide range in terms of species, as well as one that encompasses the profile of the trickster, I refer here to the venerable Coyote, and I will here use California Indian stories as exemplary. One important caveat, however, is that not all California Indian Coyote tales are the same, they are not at all interchangeable. It has been historically problematic in the study of American Indian cultures and traditions to navigate early essentialization by anthropologists, folklorists, and others who tend to conflate what are very different tribal traditions. That being said, the character “Coyote” as he appears in tales where he fills this role, are comparable enough that a trope can be derived, with key differences among tribal traditions that I will note.

If you have ever seen Canis latrans in the wild, the skulking, wary, curious nature of this remarkably adaptive animal would be testament to the choice of coyotes to represent this aspect of Native storytelling. Coyote always seems to be smiling, even while holding a dead housecat in his mouth, standing next to a swimming pool in the backyard of a suburban Los Angeles home. Prior to European arrival, there is little doubt that coyotes lurked at the periphery of human habitation, waiting to filch a meal from an unattended fireplace. In Native California, Coyote lives at the figurative periphery, as well, providing a semiotic representation of ambiguity, shifting genders, appearance, allegiances, and motives in a capricious attempt to satisfy his own desires.

In a tale told by the Chumash Indians of Central Californiax, Coyote was hungry, as usual, and unwilling to do any productive work to help himself, as usual. So he devised a plan. He made himself look like a female toad and hopped off to flirt with Toad. Toad was a lonely bachelor, so was overjoyed at the attention given him by this young female toad. He asked her to marry him t once, and Coyote as the female toad agreed. The rest of the animals prepared for a big wedding feast, and all of Toad’s assets were depleted in his desire to make a big fancy party. Coyote, as the female toad, ate his fill of the feast, and sat back completely satiated. Toad bid all of the guests farewell, and turned to Coyote and said “Ah ha! NOW it is finally time for our wedding night!” But Coyote turned back into himself and ran off laughing, leaving Toad sad and broke.

A story told by the Maidu of the Northern Sierra Foothillsxi tell of Coyote finding Mole hard at work on his burrow. Coyote saw that Mole was carrying a small pouch, so he kicked Mole out from the burrow and said, “Hello cousin! why not give me a smoke?” He thought the sack was full of tobacco. Mole said “I have no tobacco” and tried to get back to work. But Coyote prevented him for going back in and said, “I see that sack of tobacco that you are carrying.” Mole said, “this isn’t tobacco, let me back into my burrow so I can get back to work.” Coyote said, “Fine. I will just take it, then.” Mole protested, “No! Don’t open the sack!” But Coyote did anyway. The sack was full of fleas, and they jumped from the sack and began to bite Coyote all

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over. Coyote yelled to Mole “Please cousin! Take back this bag!” But Mole had already gone back into his burrow, and Coyote has been plagued with fleas ever since. “Coyote said, “The people can call me Coyote.”

The Karuk of The Klamath River region tellxii of a time when the animals were upset because the Yellowjackets, a very powerful tribe, were the only ones to have fire and they refused to share it with anyone. The other animals were cold and tired of eating their food raw. So a delegation went to Old Man Coyote. “You are good at scheming and conniving,” they said. “Go to the Yellowjackets and find a way to get us fire.” Coyote agreed and devised a plan, which he shared with the animal delegation. Then he went to visit the Yellowjackets. At this time, Yellowjackets were only yellow and had no black markings. They were very vain, and considered themselves the most attractive animals of all. Sitting around a blazing campfire conversing after a meal, Coyote said, “You Yellowjackets certainly are a beautiful color yellow.” They replied that there were already aware of this. Coyote then said, “It’s too bad there isn’t…well never mind.” “Too bad there isn’t what?” the Yellowjackets asked. “It’s really nothing.” Coyote replied. The Yellowjackets insisted that Coyote say what was on his mind, and he said “I was thinking it was too bad you didn’t have another color on you, to really make the yellow stand out.” The Yellowjackets were now very interested, as their vanity was piqued. “Tell us what you mean.” the Yellowjackets insisted, so Coyote took a piece of charcoal from the edge of the fireplace, and painted black marks on one of the Yellowjackets. “There. Something like that.” Coyote said, and the Yellowjackets were very impressed. They all grabbed charcoal and began to paint themselves, arguing over who looked better. While this was going on, Coyote quietly stole a stick from the fire and ran off with the flame. Once the Yellowjackets realized what he had done, they gave chase. Just as they caught up with him and were going to sting, Coyote handed the fire off to Fox, who darted off in his zigzag manner, eluding the Yellowjackets who had turned their attention to him. Eventually, they overtook Fox and were about to sting when Fox handed the smaller, but still burning stick to Bear. While Bear is not as fast, he does have a thick hide, and when the Yellowjackets caught him, he was able to withstand some stings. Just as he had taken all of the stings he could stand, he handed the flame to Hawk, who soared up as high as he could. The Yellowjackets struggled to go as high as he, with little success, until Hawk eventually had to descend on the draft. As soon as the Yellowjackets were nearly upon him, Hawk swooped down low over a pond and dropped the fire, now merely a glowing ember. Just before the ember hit the water, Toad popped up and caught the ember in his mouth and submerged. The Yellowjackets, who can’t stand the water, buzzed angrily over the surface until they decided to leave, saying “That ember is surely out by now.” After they flew off, Toad popped back out at the pond’s edge, and spit that ember onto a willow tree. The animals all gathered together, happy that the plan had worked, but were confused about how to get the fire back out of the tress. Coyote showed them how to use sticks to tease the fire back out, and that is how the people came to know how to make fire.

I have chosen these three stories as they span the general themes associated with Coyote tales. In the first story, Coyote is successful in his scheme, and though he creates problems, he is able to realize his (selfish) goal. In the second tale, Coyote makes an effort to force his will in order to get something he wants, displaying rude and abusive behavior, and is himself victimized, hoisted by his own petard. The final story displays the wisdom that is at times associated with Coyote, ultimately benefitting not only the animal people, but the human ones as well. Often told as a sort of grand narrative arc in some Native communities, Coyote tales have the tendency to display Coyote as maturing over time. Told in seasonal sequences (in fact, in some tribal traditions, Coyote stories are not to be told during the Winter), the “trickster” and cunningly adept Coyote gives weigh to the bungler, lacking any restraint, impulsively getting himself into ridiculous, even dangerous, situations. In fact, several Coyote tales I have heard have Coyote getting killed, and needing to be brought back to life by someone, who usually does it out of pity,

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further reducing Coyote’s esteem. Finally, Coyote becomes wise from all his adventures, able to give advice, and ply his cunning to the benefit of people.

Another of the classic “tricksters” is Old Man Owl in the Apache tradition. Similar to Coyote tales, Old Man Owl stories often vary from community to community (there are actually several different Apache reservations). In his excellent book Wisdom Sits in Places, Keith Basso describes the category “wisdom” from the Western Apache perspective, locating it in a set of communal values associated with their ancestral tradition. Having named places, he finds, the ancestors provided a “place world,”xiii a conceptual framework that can be activated by saying the place name, allowing one to travel to that place in one’s mind, and use the lessons associated with the story of that place to think through specific problems. “Quoting the ancestors,”xiv then, is a sacred activity to be taken very seriously, even when the story associated with the place is funny.

In a particularly well-placed example, Basso recounts a story wherein he is working with a group of Apache cowboys, older men with the respect of the community, when a younger Apache rides up to where Basso and the elders are resting under a tree. The young man has spent some time acting out in ways that are annoying to the community after a breakup with his girlfriend. He has been drinking too much, and making clumsy and unwanted advances to girls in town. He sits down and quietly informs the men that he has been sober for several days and would like to come back to work. He is both ready and needing to get out of the village where he has been the brunt of gossipy jokes. What happens next puzzles Basso. The men begin to make seemingly unrelated comments in Apache such as “So! You got tired walking back and forth!” and “So! You’ve smelled enough burning piss!” Then man responds with an equally obtuse comment (“For awhile I couldn’t see!”), and the men assure the young man that there will be work for him starting the next day. What Basso finds out from the men later is that they were invoking a collection of stories associated with Old Man Owl in which he receives comeuppance for being overly foolish, especially where his seemingly overwhelming desire for sex was concerned. In one story, two sisters exploit Old Man Owl’s own folly for their amusement at a place called Gizhyaa’itiné (Trail Goes Down Between Two Hills) where they each climbed a hill on opposite sides of the trail and enticed him with promises of sex. As he climbed one hill, the other sister would call to him, prompting him to turn and climb toward her, then the other sister would call, and so on, until Old Man Owl became exhausted (“So! You got tired walking back and forth!). Another story that takes place at Gizhyaa’itiné tell of the same pair who again torment the old man in a tale that involves one of the sisters urinating on his fire (So! You’ve smelled enough burning piss!”). Old Man Owl, hopelessly myopic, makes the story even funnier by mistaking the urine for rain. The young man admits his own questionable behavior by associating himself with Old Man Owl (“For a while I couldn’t see!”), thus communicating both his contrition and his reformation. What Basso finds from his Apache consultants is that the processes surrounding the correction of behavior has to be dealt with carefully. It is not the men’s intention to condescend to or belittle the young man, he clearly realized he had misbehaved. Plus, there are social rules associated with such things that involve the man’s own matrilineal elders, and it simply isn’t the elder men’s place to correct the younger man. By using Gizhyaa’itiné to anchor their response, the men deftly handle the situation is such a way that they are able to teach a lesson and ground it, literally, in the Apache value system which is embedded in the landscape.

In his book Humor and Society: Explorations in the Sociology of Humor, Marvin Kollerxv identifies a set of social functions for humor. Among these, Koller suggests social correction as key among them. Keith Basso’s Western Apache scenario is typical in Indian Country in that stories involving the trickster character are often used in this manner. Somewhat defying the stereotypical view of the trickster as a category, the bungling nature of some tricksters teaches by bad example. We are not meant to follow in either Old Man Owl or Coyote’s footsteps, but rather, use these characters as an example of what NOT to do. There are, of course, examples of social correction in which the trickster uses his cunning to expose the character flaws in others,

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also a teachable moment. The Trickster is at once selfish and formidable, hasty and imprudent, and capable of learning from mistakes to produce wisdom and insight. In this way, Coyote, Old Man Owl, and indeed tricksters in general, depict the human condition, inserting it into the sacred tales of the people much in the way that the young Apache man identified himself with Old Man Owl. In this way, social correction occurs within a shared system intimately related to a sacred cosmos.

Clowns and Clowning

Ritual humor, humorous aspects of sacred ceremonies and rituals, provide an example of another of Koller’s categories: catharsis and relief from stressxvi. Sacred clowns in American Indian communities, long a subject of study in anthropology, provide opportunities for such relief and are an important aspect of tribal traditions. Much more than simply comic relief, these clowns are often dedicated to an entire life of contrary behavior, effectively placing them at the periphery of society and in closer proximity to the dangerous aspects of the cosmos. Being a clown, it seems, can be very serious business indeed.

The clown dancers of the Puebloan groups in the Southwestern US are the definitive example of this serious funny business. The Hopi, for instance, employ a clown along side the dancers who embody the Katsinam, the deity spirits largely responsible for the well-being of the Hopi. These clowns participate in the ceremonial dances both as central figures and peripheral actors, sometimes milling around the spectators while the dances take place. Interestingly, the Hopi term for their clown, tcuku means both “clown” and “make a point” as in conversation. Clearly, the clown is meant to direct attention to the potential for imbalance and disorder in a religious culture that places beauty and balance at the center of their ideological system. Thus, when the clowns make noise during quiet times, dance in the wrong direction, or even soil the dance grounds by urinating or defecating, they expose the reality of chaos, give it form and function in a humorous way, and alleviate much of the trepidation that can arise when an uncertain world meets the ideal world of order and harmony.

The Latin root for the word “sacred,” sacer, referred to places and things “set apart,” assumed to have been rendered thus through some process or other within Roman religious culture. This is significant to this discussion in that an Indigenous view of this category is almost universally assumed to be intrinsic with regard to that which is sacred. Thus, the ritual complexes associated with a great many Native communities revolves around recognizing the sacred nature of a situation, seasonal cycle, person, place, etc. I prefer to use the term “power” to describe Native views of the sacred, and I borrow a conceptual framework that corresponds with the semantic theories of George Lakoff and Mark Johnsonxvii, in that both “sacred” and “power” are culturally-located grand metaphors that organize communal approaches by embodied thinkers to collective value systems. The presence of higher-order value systems, Durkheim’s “moral community,” are often presented in contemporary approaches to the study of religion as being inherent in the human psyche, an evolutionary fact formed as an aspect of our key adaptive mechanism: culture. The recognition of sacred power as a category had a role in the development of the cerebral cortex and our ability to assess truth–our capacity for belief. Thus, in addition to using humorous characters to convey proper relationships, the very presence of disorder, in a story or a performance, can be seen as confronting the reality of sacred power in both its positive and negative aspects.

From cognitive science and evolutionary studies the idea that we as a species are hard-wired for humor also seems to have achieved consensus.xviii Our early hominid ancestors required two key elements: information about the immediate world, and a social group with whom to exploit that information for the purposes of survival. Laughter serves both in that laughter communicates calm, which, given that our family line has been prey far longer than it has been predator, would signal times of satiation and safety, important for social interaction, a hallmark of group-oriented

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species. Early hominids, then, used laughter as a way to communicate well-being and collective identity. But there is another interesting direction. Cognitive science shows that the human brain is rigorous in its desire to categorize.xix Everything has a place and everything must be in its portion of the cerebral cortex. Thus, things which are incongruent or out of place draw the attention of our brains–both in the conscious mind as well as subconsciously–key for the assessment of data for such details as whether that dangling vine is in fact a snake. It seems that humor, or the development of an appreciation for funny things, may have begun as an appreciation for irony.

Ritual theory also makes this connection in that Eliade’s Homo religiosus uses ritual action as, at least in part, as a method for marking things, places, people, and times as “sacred” over against things that are “profane.” Whether the liminality of van Gennep or Turner, the emphasis on incongruity in Smith, or the emphasis on social action in Grimes, ritual is, at its core, a focusing lens, what Smith calls a “mode of paying attention.”xx Humor, it seems, also has a unique ability to both draw attention to incongruity and “mark” it as relevant. While this process is most evident in comic forms that employ irony, other forms of humorous speech and action draw upon juxtaposition. Clowns do what they probably shouldn’t, comedians draw attention to banal details that most of us ignore. It may be that these tools of comedy reach us at an evolutionary level.

Humor is uniquely effective in its capacity to express dissonance and incongruity, essential features of humor, as well as in the resolution of these cognitive breaks. As already stated, it may be that humans find things “out of place” to be inherently funny, and the assumption that there is a proper place for them to be out of assumes a common system for classification between the producer and the audience. Koller also gives this aspect voice in his assertion that one key social function of religion is social bonding. For Koller, joking can reinforce relationships by drawing on the “joking relationship”xxi in that in reaffirms the unique social arrangement that allows for the joke to transpire between parties. Whether that relationship of fool to king, between peers, or as a way to establish control over a third party by engaging in jokes about an out-group, social bonds are identified and strengthened in the joking process. Our inherent need to identify and bond with others of our species to form a community is aided by many cognitive factors, the use of humor is emerging in the minds of some analysts as one of the most universal.

In Indian Country, joking relationships have long been used to identify communal networks. It has been my experience that being teased (sometimes mercilessly) is a sure sign that you are accepted. Contemporary Native Americans use literature, film, and performance as expressive venues for both a self-effacing humor that is often aimed directly at a Native audience (though non-Natives can enjoy the jokes as well) as well as poking fun at American society in general. Perhaps this latter point is more in line with Koller’s catharsis/relief function. Take for example the film Smoke Signals, one of the few films about and by Native Americans popular enough to do relatively well in general distribution. Based on a collection of short stories by Sherman Alexie and directed by Chris Eyre, Smoke Signals contains a great many “inside jokes” that may have eluded the non-Native audience, such as a car that would only drive backwards. Though not articulated, many Indians would “get” the “reservation car” joke: if your car runs at all, it’s a good car, even if it runs only in reverse gear. Plus the obvious Coyote/Clown reference, provided by moving through space and time in reverse, was not lost on the film and book’s Indian audience. But there is also a very real attempt by such Native humorists as Alexie, stand-up comics like JR Redwater and Charlie Hill, or any of the hundreds of powwow emcees to tell jokes at the expense of their White audience. These jokes and humorous situations draw attention to the, shall we say “difficult” relationship between Whites both here and in Canada with the aboriginal peoples of North America.

Certainly this mirrors to a large degree the work of African American comics from Moms Mabley to Chris Rock. Black comedy in the contemporary cultural marketplace provides a unique window into the development of a collective identity in the antebellum US. Wresting the

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control from white minstrelsy, following the northern migration into the jazz age, and using the comedic art form to gain entrée into the white-dominated world of television, comedy has given voice to black America, introducing whites to African Americans as folks just like us. Bill Cosby and Flip Wilson gaining (relatively) early acceptance by a wide TV audience gave space to more political voices like Dick Gregory. But to look back into the more distant genealogy, and you find the origins of that humor in tales like those of Ananzi, the West African trickster. I can’t think of a clearer example of a modern trickster than Richard Pryor, and his performances as catharsis for the black audience, revelation for whites.

I have come to see such expressions of humor as ceremonial–the ritual marking of incongruity, formation of social bonds, invocation of power–in ways that are congruous with more traditional forms of Native comedy. Indeed, it may be that the non-Native counterparts of Indian humorists and clowns such as stand-up comedians, situation comedies on television, and humor websites such as FunnyOrDie.com are also expressing our desire for resolution of the many dissonant aspects of modern society we witness regularly–ignorance, violence, fear–by playing the clown and creating an escape valve. In addition, the nature of laughter is such that its presence may activate deeply located feelings of calm and reassurance, needed in a world in which dissonance is the norm in many ways. Is it possible to see John Stewart as a sacred clown, or such satire as The Office as sacred narrative? This would require a broad view with regard to the conceptualization of the term “sacred.” What I suggest is taking the discourse on “civil religion” to a logical conclusion with regard to secular values and indeed the American self-perception as originating from a “wholly other,” to use Otto’s frame, or in a collective struggle for our Manifest Destiny. Martin Marty refers to both of these rationales collectively when he speaks of a “public theology

xxiii

xxii,” as does Robert Bellah when he calls American civil religion " a collection of beliefs, symbols, and rituals with respect to sacred things and institutionalized in a collectivity ."

During the campaign coverage for the US presidential election in 2012, I was struck by the ability of the electronic media to increase the amount of election humor available both in cyberspace and in TV and radio, as commentators on those two formats were compelled to include elements derived from websites, blogs, Twitter and Facebook. In what can be seen as arguably the most divisive political climate in the new millennium, the kind of existential anxiety that accompanies even the appearance of cultural instability requires some appeal to what passes as spiritual comfort in a secular system. We search for verification of our beliefs from pundits and their expert analysis, dispassionate veracity from the news media, and the exposure of folly by comedians and satirists. Much like the clowns dancing in the wrong direction, Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report, The Simpsons, and Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update give us an opportunity to see that things aren’t that bad, if we are still able to laugh.

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Brightman, Robert, “Traditions of Subversion and the Subversion of Tradition: Cultural Criticism in Maidu Clown Performances” American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 101, No. 2 (1999), pp. 272-287

Bruchac, Joseph. “Follow the Trickroutes: An Interview with Gerald Vizenor,” in Survival This Way: Interviews With American Indian Poets, ed. Joseph Bruchac, 287-310. Tucson:University of Arizona Press, 1990.

Dixon, Roland B. “Some Coyote Stories from the Maidu Indians of California.” The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 13, No. 51 (1900), 267-270.

Gervias, Matthew and David Sloan Wilson, “The Evolution and Functions of Laughter and Humor: A Synthetic Approach.” The Quarterly Review of Biology, 80/4 (2005), 395-430.

Girard, Rene Violence and the Sacred. London: Continuum Press, 1992. Harms, William F. Information and Meaning in Evolutionary Processes. London: Cambridge

University Press, 2004. Hynes, William J. “Mapping the Characteristics of Mythic Tricksters : A Heuristic Guide,” in

Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours, Contexts, and Criticisms, ed. William J. Hynes, and William G. Doty, 33-45. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993.

Koller, Marvin R. Humor and Society: Explorations in the Sociology of Humor. Huston: Cap and Gown, 1988.

Lakoff , George and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Saroglou, Vassilis. “Religion and Sense of Humor: An A Priori Incompatibility? Theoretical Considerations from a Psychological Perspective,” Humor, 15–2 (2002), 191–214.

Smith, Jonathon Z. To Take Place : Toward Theory in Ritual, Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Marteinson, Peter. “Thoughts on the Current State of Humour Theory,” Comedy Studies, Volume 1, Number 2 (2010), 173-180.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Dennis Kelley: My primary focus is the religious nature of contemporary Native North Americans, primarily urbanized communities and traditional religious revitalization movements. I am interested in how social constructions such as ethnicity and gender relate to issues of belief and religious worldview. It seems to me that the primary role of the construct “religion” is to contribute to the organizational matrices that comprise what Pierre Bourdieu calls the “field,” – the setting in which each social actor is situated. In addition, religion can both provide and alter an individual’s social toolkit, thus becoming an important factor in the creation and maintenance of both individual and collective identity. Tribal people can use – and be used by – their status as “indigenous” in the navigation of contemporary circumstances influenced by religion: social, political, and economic power.

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i See Keith V. Bletzera, Nicole P. Yuanb, Mary P. Kossb, Mona Polacca, Emery R. Eavesc and David Goldmand “Taking Humor Seriously: Talking about Drinking in Native American Focus Groups” in Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness, Volume 30, Issue 3, (2011), 295-318; Robert Brightman, “Traditions of Subversion and the Subversion of Tradition: Cultural Criticism in Maidu Clown Performances” American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 101, No. 2 (1999), pp. 272-287 ii Vassilis Saroglou, “Religion and Sense of Humor: An A Priori Incompatibility? Theoretical Considerations from a Psychological Perspective,” Humor, 15–2 (2002), 191–214. iii For an excellent overview of this use of humor in pastoral care contexts, see James Martin’s Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life, (New York: HarperOne Press 2011). iv Soroglou, “Religion and Sense of Humor.” 193 v Peter Marteinson, “Thoughts on the Current State of Humour Theory,” Comedy Studies, Volume 1, Number 2 (2010), 173-180. vi Joseph Bruchac, “Follow the Trickroutes: An Interview with Gerald Vizenor,” in Survival This Way: Interviews With American Indian Poets, ed. Joseph Bruchac. (Tucson:University of Arizona Press, 1990), 287-310. vii Bruchac “Follow the Trickroutes.” 295. viii William J. Hynes, “Mapping the Characteristics of Mythic Tricksters : A Heuristic Guide,” in Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours, Contexts, and Criticisms, ed. William J. Hynes, and William G. Doty. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993), 33. ix Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred, (London: Continuum Press, 1992), 188 x This story was told to me by Chumash storyteller Georgiana Sanchez in the Summer of 2001. xi Roland B. Dixon, “Some Coyote Stories from the Maidu Indians of California,” The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 13, No. 51 (1900), 268-269 267-270 xii This story was told to me by Karuk storyteller Julie McCovey in 1998. xiii Keith Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places, (Albuquerque: New Mexico Press 1996), 5-6. xiv Basso, Wisdom Sits. 3. xv Marvin R. Koller, Humor and Society: Explorations in the Sociology of Humor, (Huston: Cap and Gown 1988). xvi Koller, Humor and Society. 19. xvii George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008) xviii See for example Matthew Gervias and David Sloan Wilson, “The Evolution and Functions of Laughter and Humor: A Synthetic Approach.” The Quarterly Review of Biology, 80/4 (2005), 395-430. xix See William F. Harms, Information and Meaning in Evolutionary Processes (London: Cambridge University Press, 2004). xx Jonathon Z. Smith, To Take Place : Toward Theory in Ritual, Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 102. xxi Mahadev L. Apte, Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach (London: Cornell University Press.1985), 29. xxii Marty, Martin E. Religion and Republic: The American Circumstance (Boston:Beacon Press 1989) p. 295 xxiii Bellah, Robert N. “Civil Religion in America.” Dædalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Winter 1967, Vol. 96, No. 1, 8.

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The International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society aims to create an intellectual frame of reference for the academic study of religion and spirituality, and to create an interdisciplinary conversation on the role of religion and spirituality in society. It is intended as a place for critical engagement, examination, and experimentation of ideas that connect religious philosophies to their contexts throughout history in the world, places of worship, on the streets, and in communities. The journal addresses the need for critical discussion on religious issues—specifically as they are situated in the present-day contexts of ethics, warfare, politics, anthropology, sociology, education, leadership, artistic engagement, and the dissonance or resonance between religious tradition and modern trends.

Papers published in the journal range from the expansive and philosophical to finely grained analysis based on deep familiarity and understanding of a particular area of religious knowledge. They bring into dialogue philosophers, theologians, policymakers, and educators, to name a few of the stakeholders in this conversation.

The International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal.

ISSN 2154-8633

‘Coyote Was Going There…’: The Role of Humor in Sacred Narrative and Performance

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