Revolutionary Humor

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REVOLUTIONARY HUMOR

OZAN O. VAROL

“Every joke is a tiny revolution.”

- George Orwell1

I. INTRODUCTION

On June 2, 2013, a defiant Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan delivered a televised address to the hundreds of thousands of people gathered throughout Turkey to protest his increasingly repressive government and advocate for legal and political reforms.2 Erdoğan proceeded to denounce the protestors as “çapulcu,” which translates roughly to “riffraff.”3 Instead of taking it as an insult, the protestors embraced their newfound label with pride.4 Overnight, the word morphed from an insult to a compliment.5 Thousands of Turkish Facebook users changed their first or last names to “Çapulcu” and national and international celebrities, including Noam Chomsky, self-described themselves as “çapulcu” to express their support for the protestors.6 The root of the Turkish noun (çapul) was then converted into a verb by adding the English suffix “-ing,” creating a neologism (çapulling) that now means “standing up for your rights.”7 This neologism unleashed a new wave of

Assistant Professor of Law, Lewis & Clark Law School. Many friends and colleagues shared their thoughts on this Article, and I particularly thank Viktor Gecas and Susan Mandiberg. For outstanding research assistance, I am grateful to Eric Brickenstein and Philip Thoennes. 1. George Orwell, As I Please, in THE COLLECTED ESSAYS, JOURNALISM AND LETTERS 284 (Sonia Orwell & Ian Angus eds., 1968). 2. Nebi Quena & Suzan Fraser, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Rejects “Dictator” Claims, WASH. TIMES (June 2, 2013), http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/2/turkish-prime-minister-recep-tayyip-erdogan-reject/?page=all. 3. Ozan Varol, How Turks Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Tear Gas, HUFFINGTON

POST (June 11, 2013, 10:57 AM), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ozan-varol/turkey-protests-erdogan_b_3421589.html. 4. Id. 5. Id. 6. Id. 7. Id. The Egyptian revolutionaries created a similar neologism of their own, labeled “mubaraking,” which refers “to a refusal to see reality or to overstay one’s welcome.” Satenik Harutyunyan, Humor: Egypt’s Revolutionary Ally, CARTOON MOVEMENT (July 31, 2012),


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humor and creativity. A music video titled “Everyday I’m Çapulling” was promptly created to the tune of the popular “Everyday I’m Shuffling” chorus from LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem.”8 A widely circulated photo of Yoda in a robe titled “Occupy Gezi” was captioned: “Chapulling everyday too, I am. May the resistance be with you.” An original song by Steady Fingers titled “Chapullin’ Blues” spoke to the solidarity among the protestors through the language of the blues.9 From Gezi Park, the epicenter of the protests, emerged a live Internet-based TV station entitled “Çapul TV.”10 The protestors were no longer liberals, secularists, Kurds, Turks, Armenians, Muslims, Christians, Jews, anarchists, or archrival soccer fans. Together, they were “çapulcu.”11 These examples, and many

http://blog.cartoonmovement.com/2012/07/humor-egypts-revolutionary-ally.html. That neologism made its way into the Urban Dictionary, which defines “to mubarak” as “to intentionally stay when asked or forced to leave.” Thrilla from Manilla, Mubarak, URBAN DICTIONARY (Feb. 10, 2011), http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mubarak&defid=5590712 (“I got fired from my job, but I’m mubaraking it.”). 8. Varol, supra note 3. 9. The full lyrics of the song are as follows:

Woke up this morning, put on my shoes Today is the day when I pay my dues I'm feeling, feel them chapullin' blues People are shouting, walking hand in hand Trying to make other people understand They're all feeling, feeling the chapullin' blues You got your pepper spray, and your water cannons You can beat me as much as you want but you won't see me running You're facing, facing the chapullin' blues You can hide the truth, and tell us lies Pretend you can't see what's in front of your eyes You got it coming, you're gonna face, the chapullin' blues You know, chapullin’ ain't bad, Best kind of feeling that you may ever have Feel them, oh feel them chapullin' blues.

Chapullin’ Blues by Steady Fingers, BLUESYEMRE (June 9, 2013), http://bluesyemre.com/2013/06/09/chapullin-blues-by-steady-fingers/. 10. Dalia Mortada, Capul TV: Turkey’s Alternative to Mainstream Media, PRI’S THE WORLD

(June 21, 2013, 8:40 AM), http://www.pri.org/stories/2013-06-21/apul-tv-turkeys-alternative-mainstream-media. 11. Varol, supra note 3. Even where the Turkish protestors referred to their distinct identities during the protests, they spoke in similar terms. Id. Referring to the nation’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, secularists and nationalists chanted “[w]e are Ataturk’s soldiers.” Id. LGBT activists joined the chorus by chanting “[w]e are Freddy Mercury’s soldiers,” and Kurdish activists joined by shouting “[w]e are Apo’s soldiers” (referring to the Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan), and anarchists by chanting “[w]e are no one’s soldiers.” Id.


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others, illustrate how the Turkish protestors unleashed a wave of humor and creativity that came to symbolize the resistance against government abuses in Turkey and turned the tide on previously repressed expressions of discontent.

Humor also played a prominent role in other recent social movements, including the 2011 Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the 2013 protests in Brazil.12 Egyptians, Tunisians, Libyans, and Syrians all injected unprecedented amounts of humor into their efforts to topple repressive dictators.13 During the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States, humorous signs and slogans directed at American financial institutions and their government allies were prevalent.14 Brazilians likewise deployed humor to counter and cope with abusive police practices, such as the prevalent use of pepper and tear gas.15

The ubiquitous use of humor in the social movements of the twenty-first century presents a notable departure from the social movements of the past. Historically, many social movements have been somber occasions that reflect the gravity of the moment and the seriousness of their objectives. For example, humor played little part in the struggle for Indian independence led by Mahatma Gandhi or the women’s suffrage movement in the United States. The signs displayed during the anti-war protests of the

12. See, e.g., Anna Louie Sussman, Laugh, O Revolution: Humor in the Egyptian Uprising, THE

ATLANTIC MAG. (Feb. 23, 2011, 7:00 AM), http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/02/laugh-o-revolution-humor-in-the-egyptian-uprising/71530/; Dan Beucke, Finding the Humor in Occupy Wall Street, BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK (Nov. 22, 2011, 8:00 AM), http://www.businessweek.com/finance/occupy-wall-street/archives/2011/11/finding_the_humor_in_occupy_wall_street.html; The Signs of the Brazilian Protests, N.Y. TIMES (June 20, 2013), http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/21/world/americas/brazil-protest-signs.html?ref=americas. 13. See Susannah Vila, Social Media and Satire Fuel Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, PBS.ORG (July 14, 2011), http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/07/social-media-and-satire-fuel-arab-spring-in-tunisia-egypt195/ (describing the prevalence of humorous and satirical political cartoons in Tunisia and the rise of satirical Egyptian newspaper El Koshary Today, modeled on The Onion, during the 2011 protests in Tahrir Square); Drawing the Revolution, THE GUARDIAN, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/series/drawing-the-revolution (last visited Feb. 28, 2014) (series of interviews with political cartoonists from Tunisia, Algeria, Syria, and Egypt, discussing their use of satire and humor to criticize the regimes of their countries). 14. See ‘Jesus is Not a Republican’: Wall Street Protesters See the Funny Side as Demo Enters Fifth Week, DAILY MAIL ONLINE (Oct. 15, 2011, 7:05 PM), http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2049519/Occupy-Wall-Street-protest-signs-funny-.html. 15. Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, Holy Smokes Batman, You’re Protesting in Brazil!, NPR.ORG (Sept. 29, 2013, 5:54 AM), http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/09/29/226921958/holy-smokes-batman-youre-protesting-in-brazil; Simon Romero, Troupe, Taking to YouTube, Tickles Brazil and Ruffles Feathers, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 1, 2013, at A6 (describing the rising influence of online comedy group “Porta dos Fundos” and its key role in the 2013 Brazilian protests).



1960s or the March on Washington led by Martin Luther King, Jr., were largely somber (e.g., “We Demand Voting Rights Now,” “Jobs for All Now”), as were the slogans shouted during the anti-apartheid protests in South Africa.16 As a result, mass protests and social revolutions are often depicted as humorless in the academic literature.17

This Article identifies and studies a novel pattern emerging from modern social movements, which bear a counterintuitive element in their conception and design: the ubiquitous use of humor. Although ambiguous, and usually underground, humor played some part in social movements of the past,18 modern social movements—ranging from the protests on Tahrir Square in Cairo to Taksim Square in Istanbul—have ignited a massive humor renaissance to an extent unseen in previous social movements. This Article examines why.

Although humor might appear antithetical, even insulting, to the somber nature of a social movement, this Article argues that humor can be an effective strategic tool to influence legal, constitutional, and political reforms. Humor can pierce the culture of fear prevalent in tyrannical regimes, serve as an effective coping mechanism against repressive government practices, and provoke government officials into reactionary conduct that furthers the social movement’s objectives. The use of humor can reframe and supplant the negative narrative of the movement offered by the regime and build solidarity among heterogeneous members of a movement with pre-existing sociopolitical differences. Humor can support political mobilization by providing a low-cost point of entry into a social movement, obtaining domestic and global resonance for the movement, and persuading others to join the movement by depicting an alternate, and more appealing, reality. Finally, humor can provide an effective avenue for expressing popular discontent and undermine traditional methods of suppression employed by repressive leaders, including laws that criminalize and censor dissent and social mobilization. This Article also examines the costs that revolutionary humor, especially when deployed poorly, can impose on a social movement and offers prescriptions for

16. Robert A. Goldberg, The Challenge of Change: Social Movements as Non-State Actors, 2010 UTAH L. REV. 65, 69 (2010) (noting that the protests during the 1960s “were angry and, at times, bitter”). 17. See, e.g., Hans Speier, Wit and Politics: An Essay on Laughter and Power, 103 AM. J. SOC. 1352, 1358 (1998) (“The revolutionary and the scientist are humorless.”). 18. See, e.g., F. K. M. HILLENBRAND, UNDERGROUND HUMOUR IN NAZI GERMANY 1933–1945 (1995); FRANCIS HOPKINSON, Battle of the Kegs, in THE MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS AND OCCASIONAL

WRITINGS (1792).



minimizing them. Throughout the Article, I illustrate these theoretical assertions empirically through case studies.

Social movements play a critical role in shaping constitutional and legal norms,19 but legal scholars have only recently begun to engage in a sustained effort to develop a “jurisprudence of social movements.”20 Where bottom-up popular mobilizations play a salient role in shaping legal evolution, the analysis of their formation, operation, success, and failure is an imperative legal inquiry,21 to be conducted with the benefit of cross-

19. Jack Balkin and Reva Siegel eloquently explain how social movements affect the law: Even without the formal authority to make law, social movements have the power to change the meaning of law and to alter the normative climate in which laws are interpreted and understood. They can undermine or support the legitimacy of existing practices, dislodge long agreed-upon principles, and nourish new constitutional norms. They can make principles apply to practices to which the principles never before seemed applicable. They can assert the legitimacy of practices previously thought illegitimate. Because of social movement contestation, law can mean things that it did not mean before.

Jack M. Balkin & Reva Siegel, Principles, Practices, and Social Movements, 154 U. PA. L. REV. 927, 949 (2006) (footnotes omitted). See also Claire Riegelman, Environmentalism: A Symbiotic Relationship Between A Social Movement and U.S. Law?, 16 MO. ENVTL. L. & POL’Y REV. 522, 523–24 (2009) (“Social movements integrate law and the institutions of civil society by connecting legal norms to the beliefs and practices of society.”); Gerald Torres, Legal Change, 55 CLEV. ST. L. REV. 135, 136 (2007) (“[S]ocial movement activism is as much a source of law as are statutes and judicial decisions.”); Edward L. Rubin, Passing Through the Door: Social Movement Literature and Legal Scholarship, 150 U. PA. L. REV. 1, 64 (2001) (“Much of our nation's legal history can be described as the product of social movements, and this perspective might provide new insights into otherwise familiar events.”). 20. Torres, supra note 19, at 142; Rubin, supra note 19, at 2 (expressing concern that “legal scholars seem largely oblivious to the extensive social science literature on social movements”); id. at 78 (“The implication of legal scholarship that legal concepts exist in some sort of trans-historical storehouse, to be drawn out as the moral consensus of society and the exigencies of the time demand, distorts the actual process by which law develops. Not incidentally, it also devalues the effort and imagination of those who participate in social movements.”); Douglas Nejaime, Constitutional Change, Courts, and Social Movements, 111 MICH. L. REV. 877, 891 (2013) (“[L]egal scholarship has yet to directly incorporate concepts and frameworks from social movement theory in a sustained way.”); Reva B. Siegel, Text in Contest: Gender and the Constitution from a Social Movement Perspective, 150 U. PA. L. REV. 297, 345 (2001) (“[S]ocial movements have played a significant role in shaping constitutional understandings, but constitutional theory barely recognizes the role that constitutional mobilizations play in the construction of constitutional meaning.”); Michael K. Young, Non-State Actors in the Global Order, 2010 UTAH L. REV. 81, 81 (2010) (“[T]he role of non-state actors in the international legal order or, more simply put, non-state actors and global governance—are interesting, important and remarkably underexamined and underanalyzed.”). 21. See Nejaime, supra note 20, at 878 (“Legal scholars have increasingly focused on the role of social movements to understand both the way in which constitutional meaning is constructed and the role of courts in that process of construction.”); Cary Coglianese, Social Movements, Law, and Society: The Institutionalization of the Environmental Movement, 150 U. PA. L. REV. 85, 86 (2001) (noting the “symbiotic nature of the relationships among social movements, law, and society”).



disciplinary insights and theories.22 Drawing on behavioral research and social movement theory, this Article contributes to the burgeoning legal literature on the role of non-state actors in shaping legal and constitutional change,23 by examining a previously neglected, yet critical, resource—humor—employed pervasively by modern social movements. The social science research on humor has significant practical implications for many fields, including philosophy, social psychology, linguistics, and the law. The legal implications of humor research are only recently creeping into the legal literature,24 and this Article is the first to apply them to social

22. See Christopher W. Schmidt, Social Movements, Legal Change, and the Challenges of Writing Legal History, 65 VAND. L. REV. EN BANC 155, 156 (2012) (“Law professors who are interested in [social movements] talk about ‘popular constitutionalism’ and judicial dialogue; socio-legal scholars talk about ‘legal mobilization’ and ‘legal consciousness’; historians talk about ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ accounts of legal change. Whatever the field and whatever the terminology, all of this scholarship, in one way or another, is concerned with the mechanisms of influence that operate between formal law and the people.” (footnotes omitted)). 23. See, e.g., JOEL F. HANDLER, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND THE LEGAL SYSTEM: A THEORY OF

LAW REFORM AND SOCIAL CHANGE (1978); BARRY FRIEDMAN, THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE: HOW

PUBLIC OPINION HAS INFLUENCED THE SUPREME COURT AND SHAPED THE MEANING OF THE

CONSTITUTION (2009); JACK M. BALKIN, CONSTITUTIONAL REDEMPTION: POLITICAL FAITH IN AN

UNJUST WORLD (2011); Bruce Ackerman, Revolution on a Human Scale, 108 YALE L.J. 2279 (1999) [hereinafter Ackerman, Human Scale]; Nejaime, supra note 20, at 879 (noting “the recent turn by constitutional scholars toward social movements”); Rubin, supra note 19, at 3 (arguing that “legal scholars have much to gain from broadening their perspective and making contact with the social movements literature”); Torres, supra note 19, at 135–36 (studying “demosprudence,” which is “a philosophy, a methodology and a practice that systematically views lawmaking from the perspective of popular mobilizations, such as social movements and other sustained forms of collective action that serve to make formal institutions, including those that regulate legal culture, more representative and thus more democratic”); Balkin & Siegel, supra note 19; Bruce A. Ackerman, A Generation of Betrayal?, 65 FORDHAM L. REV. 1519 (1997); Goldberg, supra note 16; Young, supra note 20; Coglianese, supra note 21; Ian F. Haney Lopez, Protest, Repression, and Race: Legal Violence and the Chicano Movement, 150 U. PA. L. REV. 205 (2001); Siegel, supra note 20, at 303; Anupam Chandar, Jasmine Revolutions, 97 CORNELL L. REV. 1505 (2012); Jordan J. Paust, International Law, Dignity, Democracy, and the Arab Spring, 46 CORNELL INT’L L.J. 1 (2013); Yaël Ronen, Human Rights Obligations of Territorial Non-State Actors, 46 CORNELL INT’L L.J. 21 (2013); D.A. Jeremy Telman, Non-State Actors in the Middle East: A Challenge for Rationalist Legal Theory, 46 CORNELL INT’L L.J. 51 (2013); Hannibal Travis, Wargaming the “Arab Spring”: Predicting Likely Outcomes and Planning U.N. Responses, 46 CORNELL INT’L L.J. 75 (2013); Lynette J. Chua, Pragmatic Resistance, Law, and Social Movements in Authoritarian States: The Case of Gay Collective Action in Singapore, 46 LAW &

SOC’Y REV. 713, 714 (2012). 24. See generally Laura E. Little, Regulating Funny: Humor and the Law, 94 CORNELL L. REV. 1235 (2009) [hereinafter Little, Regulating Funny]; Beth A. Quinn, The Paradox of Complaining: Law, Humor, and Harassment in the Everyday Work World, 25 LAW & SOC. INQUIRY 1151 (2000); Laura E. Little, Just a Joke: Defamatory Humor and Incongruity’s Promise, 21 S. CAL. INTERDISC. L.J. 95 (2011); David A. Golden, Humor, the Law, and Judge Kozinski’s Greatest Hits, 1992 BYU L. REV. 507 (1992); George R. Smith, A Critique of Judicial Humor, 43 ARK. L. REV. 1 (1990); Marshall Rudolph, Note, Judicial Humor: A Laughing Matter?, 41 HASTINGS L.J. 175 (1989); Lucas K. Hori, Bons Mots, Buffoonery, and the Bench: The Role of Humor in Judicial Opinions, 60 UCLA L. REV. DISCOURSE 16



movements intended to influence legal, constitutional, and political reforms. This Article proceeds in two parts: Part II provides a brief background on humor theory and sets forth a theory for what I call “revolutionary humor,” and Part III examines the functions that revolutionary humor can play, and has played, in the context of modern social movements.

II. A THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY HUMOR

Humor eludes precise definitions.25 Humor theorists, also called humorologists, have identified as many as twenty-one categories of humor—including comedy, formal jokes, practical jokes, wit, satire, sarcasm, parody, and puns—and three theories for how humor operates: superiority, incongruity, and release.26 Throughout this Article, I explain and apply these three theories to elucidate the functions that humor, or what I call “revolutionary humor,” can serve to support a social movement.27

Revolutionary humor, as this Article defines it, refers to humor with a sincere undercurrent directed at a government, or one or more of its leaders, in order to effectuate or resist legal, constitutional, or political reforms. Humor can be effectively deployed against all governments, from

(2012); THE JUDICIAL HUMORIST: A COLLECTION OF JUDICIAL OPINIONS AND OTHER FRIVOLITIES (William L. Prosser ed., 1952); Laura Krugman Ray, Laughter at the Court: The Supreme Court as a Source of Humor, 79 S. CAL. L. REV. 1397 (2006); Michael J. Lynch, A Theory of Pure Buffoonery: Fair Use and Humor, 24 U. DAYTON L. REV. 1 (1998); Mark V.B. Partridge, Trademark Parody and the First Amendment: Humor in the Eye of the Beholder, 29 J. MARSHALL L. REV. 877 (1996); James D. Gordon III, Humor in Legal Education and Scholarship, 1992 B.Y.U. L. REV. 313 (1992); James D. Gordon, III, A Bibliography of Humor and the Law, 1992 B.Y.U. L. Rev. 427 (1992); Cary Dee Glasberg, Who Has the Last Laugh?: A Look at Defamation in Humor, 9 LOY. ENT. L.J. 381 (1989); Adalberto Jordan, Imagery, Humor, and the Judicial Opinion, 41 U. MIAMI L. REV. 693 (1987). 25. See Little, Regulating Funny, supra note 24, at 1241 (noting the “impossibility of identifying a precise or all-encompassing definition” of humor); ARTHUR ASA BERGER, BLIND MEN AND

ELEPHANTS: PERSPECTIVE ON HUMOR 3 (1995) (“[H]umor continues to confound us. We’ve never figured out how to deal with it.”); Tad Friend, What’s So Funny?: A Scientific Attempt to Discover Why We Laugh, NEW YORKER 93 (Nov. 11, 2002) (“Seeking a thoroughgoing explanation for humor is like seeking the Fountain of Youth, or the Philosopher’s Stone—it is a quest not for a tangible goal but for a beguiling idea.”). 26. Little, Regulating Funny, supra note 24, at 1244. 27. Social movements are “coordinated, ideologically based efforts that originate within the social sphere or, in other words, as a self-conscious effort by previously unorganized individuals resulting in collective action.” Rubin, supra note 19, at 4. See also Steven Wilf, Copyright and Social Movements in Late Nineteenth-Century America, 12 THEORETICAL INQUIRIES L. 123, 129 (2011) (“[S]ocial movements are concerted and sustained extra-official actions aimed at effecting social change. They reflect more self-consciousness than simply shared belief, more cooperative organization than spontaneous protest, and more broadly based concerns than garden variety interest groups.” (footnote omitted)).



authoritarian regimes to democratic ones.28 For that reason, this Article uses the term “revolution” in a broad sense. As used here, “revolution” includes not only the classic revolutions that topple government leaders, but also less ambitious social movements intended to influence legal, constitutional, or political norms. Bruce Ackerman refers to this latter category of social movements as “revolution[s] on a human scale,” which he defines as “a self-conscious effort to mobilize the relevant community to reject currently dominant beliefs and practices in one or another area of social life.”29

Throughout this Article, I employ framing theory to explain the purposes that revolutionary humor can serve. Framing refers to conscious and strategic efforts by members of a social movement “to fashion shared understandings of the world and of themselves that legitimate and motivate collective action.”30 Under framing theory, “the development of social movements depends to a considerable degree on innovations in the conceptualization of certain key problems, in particular regarding the nature of grievances, visions of potential futures, and . . . understandings of group identity.”31 Through framing, and the use of accessible and resonant symbols, social movements mobilize their members and persuade bystanders.32 As explained infra in Part III, humor can serve as a framing mechanism by conceptualizing a social movement’s message, its vision,

28. Cf. ERICA CHENOWETH & MARIA J. STEPHAN, WHY CIVIL RESISTANCE WORKS: THE

STRATEGIC LOGIC OF NONVIOLENT CONFLICT 66–67 (2011) (“[W]hether the opponent is democratic or nondemocratic seems to matter little with regard to the success of nonviolent campaigns.”). 29. Ackerman, Human Scale, supra note 23, at 2283. 30. DOUG MCADAM ET AL., COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES ON SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 6 (1996); ERVING GOFFMAN, FRAME ANALYSIS 6 (1974); Barbara O’Brien & Catherine M. Grosso, Confronting Race: How A Confluence of Social Movements Convinced North Carolina to Go Where the McCleskey Court Wouldn’t, 2011 MICH. ST. L. REV. 463, 480 (“A frame is an interpretive scheme defining a problem and making the case for specific changes to rectify it. To succeed, a social movement’s leaders must package their ideas in a way that ‘push[es] the right buttons’ by resonating with existing beliefs and values. In that sense, social movement organizers are ‘consumers of existing cultural meanings and producers of new meanings.’” (footnotes omitted)). 31. Lopez, supra note 23, at 211. 32. Nejaime, supra note 20, at 892–93. See also Jeannie Oakes et al., Grassroots Organizing, Social Movements, and the Right to High-Quality Education, 4 STAN. J. C.R. & C.L. 339, 364–65 (2008) (“Framing is not simply finding the right ‘turn of phrase’ to motivate individuals; rather it poses a new conception of an existing social problem that moves it from being seen as regrettable and inevitable to being considered an injustice that can and should be remedied. Scholars of framing see this process as being a deliberate effort of social movement actors to assign meanings to events and conditions that will mobilize supporters and allies.” (footnote omitted)).



and its collective identity.33 Humor can also stimulate the amplification of frames, which refers to elaborating the social movement’s beliefs and values, and the extension of frames, which refers to expanding the appeal of the social movement’s values to a broader audience.34

Revolutionary humor can assume a plethora of forms. Political cartoons, photographs, videos, hand-made signs on protest grounds, text messages, Tweets, Facebook posts, and even jokes told during informal conversations all fall within the broad ambit of revolutionary humor. The content of revolutionary humor, as illustrated in examples throughout this Article, can evoke laughter or draw attention to tragedies through dark comedy. Revolutionary humor can also involve vitriolic wit and sharp-tongued, hard-hitting satire directed at government leaders. Ironically, it is frequently the government leaders themselves who provide the fodder for much of the humor that fuels the protests. Revolutionary humor can place repressive leaders in a lose-lose situation and provoke responses that further the social movement’s goals. In joking about their government and its leaders, members of social movements also engage in a healthy dose of self-deprecation and often use humor to draw attention to their own humiliation or suffering as a coping mechanism, as well as to cast a positive light on their movements in order to obtain resonance at home and abroad.

The appeal of revolutionary humor is, in part, its simple and straightforward nature. Because revolutionary humor aims to obtain domestic and global resonance for the movement, it employs universal symbols, trendy words, memorable photographs, and catchy songs. Unlike political commentary, which often attracts a limited and select audience, revolutionary humor has a much broader reach. It appeals to and stimulates the basic, universal human desire to smile. It creates a memorable narrative of repression and resistance that allows others, even those from starkly different backgrounds, to easily identify with its message. In addition, and as explained infra Part III.C.3, humor might also be less susceptible to censorship or suppression efforts as compared to traditional political commentary, especially where the mainstream media is subject to the government’s influence or control.35

33. Cf. Oakes et al., supra note 32, at 365 (“[F]rames are linked with the development and maintenance of collective identity—the strong sense of being a member of a group—particularly as social movement coalitions become heterogeneous.”). 34. Cf. Lopez, supra note 23, at 211. 35. See infra Part III.C.3.



As defined in this Article, revolutionary humor excludes humor directed at other social groups. Although humor directed at other social groups may increase solidarity between “the insiders” of the group, the non-members, or outsiders, may be adversely affected because “group boundaries may . . . be erected and patrolled by ‘humorously’ degrading those who are outside.”36 The mockery of “outsiders” can foment or amplify societal rifts and undermine the effectiveness of a social movement intended to bring about reforms on a broader scale.

The next Part examines the functions that revolutionary humor can serve. Although those functions are significant, it is important to keep in mind that humor is not a modern day Kryptonite against repressive leaders. As Ackerman reminds us, “failure is the most common revolutionary outcome.”37 Revolutionary humor may not shame defiant dictators into acquiescence. Nevertheless, humor can cause informal, subtle transformations to societal attitudes toward government authority, crack the sphere of fear that allows oppressive regimes to flourish, open the floodgates for the expression of discontent, and fundamentally transform established relationships between the ruler and the ruled.38 The 2013 Turkish protests, for example, were largely unsuccessful in changing the majoritarian governance style of Prime Minister Erdoğan who remained steadfastly defiant during the protests and in their immediate aftermath.39 But the protests effected a fundamental transformation in Turkish culture.40 The ubiquitous use of revolutionary humor during the protests eroded the culture of self-censorship that had developed over the past decade.41 Although the protests have largely abated, Turks now gather in discussion forums all across the country to exchange ideas and communicate their vision for the future of their nation.42 That societal transformation promises to outlive the protests.43

36. Quinn, supra note 24, at 1165. 37. Ackerman, Human Scale, supra note 23, at 2284 (emphasis added). See also Balkin & Siegel, supra note 19, at 950 (“[R]arely can movements completely realize their aims in law. More often, a movement’s aims are transformed in the quest.”). 38. Cf. CHENOWETH & STEPHAN, supra note 28, at 36. 39. Katya Adler, New Wave of Peaceful Protests in Turkey, BBC NEWS EUROPE (June 20, 2013, 5:08 PM), http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22995036#TWEET797024. 40. Id. 41. Id. (“Turks are no longer afraid to speak up where they were before.”). 42. Id. 43. See also Joshua Yaffa, The Kremlin's Not Laughing Now, N.Y. TIMES, SR4 (Feb. 26, 2012), available at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/opinion/sunday/political-satire-returns-to-russia.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 (“Humor and a sense of irony will not keep Mr. Putin from returning to the presidency, but they have contributed to a sense of civic engagement and vitality that will most



III. THE FUNCTIONS OF REVOLUTIONARY HUMOR

The following four sections examine the functions that revolutionary humor can serve, and has served, in the context of a social movement. Section A discusses how humor can construct a collective identity among heterogeneous members of a social movement. Section B analyzes how humor can be deployed to pierce the culture of fear that exists in many repressive regimes. Section C studies humor as a mechanism for expressing popular discontent. Section D examines how humor can promote political mobilization and obtain domestic and global resonance for the social movement. Each section first explains the applicable theory and then illustrates the theory empirically through case studies.

A. CONSTRUCTING A COLLECTIVE IDENTITY

A collective identity—which refers to an individual’s “cognitive, moral, and emotional connection with a broader community, category, practice, or institution”44—is essential to the effective operation of a social movement.45 Historically, these movements demanded legal, constitutional, or political reforms in favor of a relatively well-defined disenfranchised or marginalized group, such as African-Americans, women, immigrants, or LGBT groups.46 These groups were connected by a social identity based on a shared race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender, or sexual

certainly outlive next week's election.”); Howard Zinn, The Optimism of Uncertainty, THE NATION (Sept. 4, 2004), available at http://www.thenation.com/article/optimism-uncertainty# (“Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don’t ‘win,’ there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile.”). 44. Francesca Polletta & James M. Jasper, Collective Identity and Social Movements, 28 ANN. REV. SOC. 283, 285 (2001). See also Alberto Melucci, The Process of Collective Identity, in SOCIAL

MOVEMENTS AND CULTURE 41 (Hank Johnston & Bert Klandermans eds., 1995) (“[C]ollective identity [is] the ability of a collective actor to recognize the effects of its actions and to attribute these effects to itself. . . . Collective identity therefore defines the capacity for autonomous action, a differentiation of the actor from others while continuing to be itself.”). 45. See Rubin, supra note 19, at 42 (“In order to constitute a social movement, people’s individual identities must possess a collective element. This point is obviously necessary from a structural perspective, since only mass action is likely to produce political or cultural effects . . . .”); Lopez, supra note 23, at 212 (“The construction of collective identity is now understood to be a major antecedent to, as well as a significant accomplishment of, social movements.”); William A. Gamson, Commitment and Agency in Social Movements, 6 SOC. F. 27, 27 (1991) (“Any movement that hopes to sustain commitment over a period of time must make the construction of a collective identity one of its most central tasks.”). 46. See generally William N. Eskridge, Jr., Some Effects of Identity-Based Social Movements on Constitutional Law in the Twentieth Century, 100 MICH. L. REV. 2062 (2002).



orientation.47 And where a shared social identity was lacking, a common political cause frequently served as the cohesive agent. Supporters of the anti-war movement, the animal rights movement, the pro-life and pro-choice movements, and the environmental movement were all linked by a common political cause.48 That link—based on a social identity, a common political cause, or both—promotes the construction of a collective identity among members of a social movement.

1. Divergent Identities in Modern Social Movements

In contrast to many of their historical counterparts, modern social movements tend to be more heterogeneous. They bring together divergent groups with pre-existing sociopolitical differences unconnected by a common social identity or a shared normative vision, aside from a general discontent with the status quo. For example, the protests that occurred in Summer 2013 in Turkey comprised a kaleidoscope of groups, including environmental activists protesting widespread urban redevelopment projects, secular Turks protesting creeping Islamisation in society, historically disenfranchised Kurds demanding equal civil rights, apolitical groups resentful of patriarchal government practices, and anti-capitalist Muslims.49 In many ways, there is more that separates these divergent groups than connects them. They have starkly different sociopolitical backgrounds and distinctive objectives for taking to the streets. The revolutionaries of the Arab Spring also cut across generational, religious, political, and gender lines. In Egypt, for example, the 2011 demonstrations against Hosni Mubarak included protestors who hailed from all facets of Egyptian society.50 Women and men, Muslims and Christians, secularists and Islamists, the poor and the wealthy all joined hands in the aptly named al-Tahrir, or Liberation Square, in a call for freedom and democracy after decades of rule by dictators.51 Although they had a common calling—Hosni Mubarak’s ouster—their motivations and normative vision of their country’s future diverged significantly.52

In the context of a social movement, divergence can be a double-edged sword. The existence of heterogeneous sociopolitical groups in a

47. Id. 48. Rubin, supra note 19, at 8. 49. See Michael Birnbaum, In Turkish Protests, A Patchwork of Demands, WASH. POST (June 9, 2013), http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-turkish-protests-a-patchwork-of-demands/2013/06/09/4e5f839c-d140-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html. 50. Ozan O. Varol, The Democratic Coup d'État, 53 HARV. INT’L L.J. 291, 292 (2012). 51. Id. 52. See id.



popular movement evinces its broad domestic resonance, provides diverse resistance resources and strategies to the movement, multiplies possible points of leverage against the government, and makes it more difficult for the regime to isolate and repress participants.53 But divergence can also produce undesirable consequences. It can cause the movement to splinter into different factions with competing agendas. A deft government can exploit these rifts to its advantage, pit one faction against the other, and undermine the effectiveness of the movement. For example, the 1988 Burmese uprising against the country’s military dictatorship was unsuccessful in part because the movement failed to overcome internal disunity and create cohesive networks.54

Historically, social movements were also united by committed, charismatic leaders55 or opposition political parties. Individuals such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela came to symbolize and animate the social movements they represented, and mobilize the resources required to perpetuate them. In modern social movements, however, a unifying charismatic leader is often lacking. No single individual led the revolutions of the Arab Spring or the Occupy Wall Street movement, nor were the 2013 protests in Turkey and Brazil united by a charismatic leader.56 Also absent from many modern social movements are organized and effective opposition political parties that can give voice and representation to the revolutionary message and unify the social movement.57

2. Humor and Cohesion

When a social movement lacks a shared social identity, a common political purpose, or a unifying charismatic leader, humor can serve as a powerful cohesive agent. Humor, by its nature, is a social phenomenon.

53. See CHENOWETH & STEPHAN, supra note 28, at 40, 192. 54. See id. at 184–85. 55. Rubin, supra note 19, at 28 (“The creation of [social movements] is often the work of committed leaders; it is these leaders, therefore, who mobilize the resources needed to create an active social movement.”). 56. See Yaffa, supra note 43 (noting the “essentially leaderless nature of Russia’s current protest movement”). 57. See Dani Rodrick, Turkey’s Protests Send a Strong Message, But Will Not Bring Democracy (June 4, 2013), http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2013/06/turkeys-protests-send-a-strong-message-but-will-not-bring-democracy.html; Thomas L. Friedman, Postcard from Turkey, N.Y. TIMES, June 18, 2013, A27, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/opinion/friedman-postcard-from-turkey.html (“So in a move that has intriguing implications, Turkish youths used Twitter as their own news and communications network and Gezi Park and Taksim Square as their own parliament to become the real opposition.”).



Even where humor occurs in a solitary, non-social setting, it still often operates as a “pseudo-social” experience, triggered by response to a memory or recording that involves a social setting.58 Humor can provide the requisite glue to connect individuals from divergent backgrounds and allow them to establish what might otherwise be difficult-to-form relationships. Through participation in a social movement and interaction with others in that movement via the use of humor, individuals redefine and transform themselves, promoting the development of a collective identity for the movement as a whole.59

Humor can create a collective identity for a popular movement by integrating individuals into the humorist’s broader “intellectual in-crowd.”60 The cohesive effects of humor are particularly salient when the humorist and the listeners share an understanding about the background of a joke.61 Because revolutionary humor is ordinarily directed at well-publicized and therefore well-known measures implemented by a government, or familiar leaders within the government, it can be effective in producing a collective identity and reinforcing cohesion so long as the joke has relevance to individual experiences.62 That collective identity, in turn, supplants and at times redefines identities within an internally divergent social movement that encompasses many religions, races, or political views. According to social movement theory, group identity exists symbiotically with social movement activism, with “reconceptualizations of identity serving as spurs to insurgency, and in turn, with mobilization contributing to the development of new collective identities.”63 In modern social movements, humor has played a prominent role in using grievances

58. Little, Regulating Funny, supra note 24, at 1241 (citing ROD A. MARTIN, THE PSYCHOLOGY

OF HUMOR: AN INTEGRATIVE APPROACH 5–6 (2007)); Rod A. Martin, Sense of Humor and Physical Health, Theoretical Issues, Recent Findings, and Future Directions, 17 INT’L J. HUMOR RES. 1, 5 (2004) (noting that humor is associated with an increase in “social support”); Joseph Boskin, The Complicity of Humor: The Life and Death of Sambo, in THE PHILOSOPHY OF LAUGHTER AND HUMOR 254 (John Morreall ed., 1987) (“Our laughter is always the laughter of a group. You would hardly appreciate the comic if you felt yourself isolated from others.” (quoting Henri Bergson)); KONRAD

LORENZ, ON AGGRESSION 284 (2002) (noting that laughter produces a “strong fellow-feeling among participants”). 59. Cf. Rubin, supra note 19, at 42. 60. Katrina Triezenberg, Human Enhancers in the Study of Humorous Literature, 17 INT’L J. HUMOR RES. 411, 413 (2004). 61. See Little, Regulating Funny, supra note 24, at 1253. 62. Robert D. Benford & David Snow, Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment, 26 ANN. REV. SOC. 611, 619–20 (2000). 63. Cf. Lopez, supra note 23, at 211–12.



against the regime to establish a collective identity and serve as a source of camaraderie among the divergent protestors.

Beyond the case of the Turkish “çapulcu” discussed in the Introduction, there are many other instances of collective identities formed via humor. In Sudan, Syria, and Russia, protestors also turned derogatory terms used by their dictators into symbols of resistance. In Sudan, protestors held “elbow-licking” demonstrations in response to a speech by Sudanese Dictator Omar al-Bashir who taunted the protestors by suggesting that their efforts to topple him were as futile as attempting to lick one’s own elbows.64 Similarly, in Syria, a Facebook page titled “We Are All Germs” poked fun at the official statements from the Bashar al-Assad government describing the protestors as “germs.”65 The satirical page depicts Assad as “Doctor Dettol,” a widely used disinfectant in Syria.66 In Russia, after President Vladimir Putin compared protestors against his rule to Bandor-logs—the monkeys from Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book who chant “We are great. We are free. We are wonderful”—a Russian journalist quipped: “What say you, Bandar-logs. Shall we go prowling?”67

Egypt provides another salient example of a collective identity formed through humor. As Issandr El Amrani explains, “in Egypt’s highly dense, hyper-social cities and villages, jokes are nearly universal icebreakers and conversation-starters, and the basic meta-joke, transcending rulers, ideology, and class barriers, almost always remains the same: Our leaders are idiots, our country’s a mess, but at least we’re in on the joke together.”68 The 2011 Egyptian protests against the Hosni Mubarak dictatorship demonstrate that the broader the reach of a government’s repressive practices, the more the humor directed at those practices may unite a social movement made up of many factions and allow them to find different points of resonance in revolutionary humor.69 As one Egyptian put it, “Mubarak was a man who united all religions, because he degraded the

64. Mohamed El Dahshan, Why We’re Ignoring the Revolution in Sudan, FOREIGN POL’Y (July 5, 2012, 10:12 AM), http://transitions.foreignpolicy.com/posts/ 2012/07/05/why_we_re_ignoring_the_revolution_in_sudan. 65. Syria Germs, FACEBOOK, https://www.facebook.com/syria.germs?sk=wall. 66. Id. 67. Julia Ioffe, The Condomnation of Vladimir Putin, FOREIGN POL’Y (Dec. 16, 2011), http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/15/the_condomnation_of_vladimir_putin?page=0,1. 68. Issandr El Amrani, Three Decades of a Joke That Just Won’t Die, FOREIGN POL’Y (Jan. 2, 2011), http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/02/ three_decades_of_a_joke_that_just_wont_die. 69. See Thomas Olesen, The Funny Side of Globalization: Humour and Humanity in Zapatista Framing, in HUMOUR AND SOCIAL PROTEST 21, 27 (Marjolein’t Hart & Dennis Bos eds., 2007).



Muslims, he degraded the Christians and he degraded the Jews.”70 Egyptian democracy advocate Hisham Kassem also elucidates how Mubarak and his authoritarian practices united the nation more than previous Egyptian dictators Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat: “Under Nasser, it was the elite whose property he had nationalized that told jokes about the president. Under Sadat, it was the poor people left behind by economic liberalization who told the jokes. But under Mubarak, everyone is telling jokes.”71

3. Humor and Egalitarianism

In addition to stimulating camaraderie among the divergent members of a social movement, humor can also promote egalitarianism. By creating a singular identity—that of “the protestor”—it can shatter, at least during the course of the movement, extant class distinctions and hierarchies, establishing a relatively egalitarian collective group identity. For example, although the protestors in Turkey cut across socioeconomic lines, their dress code was the same: street clothes, goggles, and a gas mask. Once they donned their protest outfits, they abandoned their identities—whether it be a student, a teacher, a blue-collar worker, or a celebrity—and assumed the alter ego of a “çapulcu.” During the course of the protests, social distinctions were thus supplanted by the collective group identity constructed through the use of humor, which promoted cohesion within the social movement.72

To be sure, humor can also divide, rather than unite, a movement. Cutting satire, though a powerful tool, can be misplaced or misunderstood, especially when other societal groups, rather than the government, are targeted.73 This divisive humor may exclude such groups from a social movement, dissuade their members from joining the movement in the first place, galvanize counter-mobilizations, and delegitimize the movement. Despite these real risks, well-crafted revolutionary humor directed primarily at a government or its leaders, as the above examples demonstrate, can serve an important role in constructing a collective

70. Michael Slackman, When a Punch Line is No Longer a Lifeline for Egyptians, N.Y. TIMES, Apr. 6, 2011, at A11, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/world/ middleeast/06cairo.html?pagewanted=all. 71. El Amrani, supra note 68. 72. Some protestors made tongue-in-cheek complaints that the wealthy protestors had better gas masks. 73. Cf. Martha F. Davis, Law, Issue Frames and Social Movements: Three Case Studies, 14 U. PA. J.L. & SOC. CHANGE 363, 367 (2011) (“By the same token that successful collective action framing can enhance social movements, unsuccessful framing can have a neutral impact or even sap their energy and momentum.”).



identity and promoting much-needed solidarity and camaraderie within a social movement.

B. PIERCING THE CULTURE OF FEAR AND REPRESSION

Repressive regimes often operate under a culture of fear that places barriers, both physical and mental, on free speech and expression.74 That culture of fear can assume many forms. Protestors may fear losing their lives or liberties, minorities may fear the tyranny of the majority, regime supporters may fear retaliation by the opposition, and the international community may fear turbulence and chaos in a possible power vacuum following a revolution.75 Operating in this culture of fear, citizens may take comfort in the status quo, and social movements may face prohibitive roadblocks in their mobilization efforts.76

1. Humor and Fear

Humor can be a powerful antidote against that culture of fear. Humor is associated with an increase in “the positive emotional states accompanying humor and laughter,” a decrease in the “adverse effects of psychosocial stress on health,”77 and an increase in pain tolerance.78 Humor can boost morale, improve endurance, and provide much-needed motivation to the weary members of a social movement who must often continue their protests for weeks, if not months, to achieve their goals.79 Humor thus operates as a crucial resilience mechanism, which “refers to the capacity of contentious actors to continue to mobilize collective action despite the actions of opponents aimed at constraining or inhibiting their

74. See Andrew Hammond & Tarek Amara, Tunisians Take Pride in “Arab Spring” Slogans, Humour, REUTERS (July 1, 2011, 4:05 AM), http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/01/uk-tunisia-uprisings-humour-idUSLNE76001H20110701. 75. See Jessica Carter, Creativity and the Arab Spring, ASPENIA ONLINE (Feb. 5, 2012), https://www.aspeninstitute.it/aspenia-online/article/creativity-and-arab-spring-conversation-ammar-alani. 76. See Chua, supra note 23, at 713–14 (“Particularly in repressive regimes where civil-political rights are curtailed, violated, or lack cultural resonance, social movements may not be able to mobilize rights the way their counterparts in Western liberal democracies can and do.” (citations omitted)). 77. Martin, supra note 58, at 4, 5. 78. Karen Zweyer et al., Do Cheerfulness, Exhilaration, and Humor Production Moderate Pain Tolerance?: A FACS Study, 17 INT’L J. HUMOR RES. 85, 100, 115 (2004). 79. See Harutyunyan, supra note 7 (“In strictly technical terms, the protests in Tahrir square were extremely exhausting on physical, psychological, and emotional levels. Personal accounts from protesters document physical presence in the square for weeks on end. At the peak of the uprising, thousands of Egyptian protesters did not have the opportunity to go home to eat or even shower for several days on end.”).



activities.”80 For example, during the 2011 Egyptian protests, humor played a critical role in bolstering the spirits of the protestors:

In order for the protesters to have the capacity to brave all aspects of protesting for weeks on end, social humor served as an undoubtedly needed source of energy and inspiration . . . . By building a safe sense of community, political jokes and social satire were critical to diverting attention away from the sheer difficulty of actualizing a revolution and added positivity to an otherwise exhausting and difficult process.81

Because it serves as a coping device in times of distress, humor tends to develop because of, not despite, a population’s fears.82 As Egyptian-British journalist and blogger Sarah Carr put it: “Interestingly, the tougher circumstances get, the more the jokes increase, which explains why Tahrir Square was essentially a comedy explosion.”83

2. Release Theory

The release theory of humor also sheds light on the mechanism by which humor pierces the culture of fear in repressive regimes. Humor “taps into repressed sources of pleasure, pressure, or anxiety”84 and serves as a cathartic vehicle for releasing nervous energy.85 Humor can stimulate intellectual curiosity about subjects traditionally considered uncomfortable or taboo, and do so in a non-hostile fashion,86 thereby releasing “the pressure of inhibition.”87 For individuals confronting fear, sadness, or anger—emotions prevalent in repressed populations—humor may also

80. KURT SCHOCK, UNARMED INSURRECTIONS: PEOPLE POWER MOVEMENTS IN

NONDEMOCRACIES (Bert Klandermans ed., 2005). 81. Maren Williams, Egyptian Humor Fuels Revolution, CBLDF (Aug. 15, 2012), http://cbldf.org/2012/08/egyptian-humor-fuels-revolution/. 82. Michael Chernin, Why So Serious?: Black Humor Amid Horror in Syria, BROWN POLITICAL

REV. (Apr. 11, 2013, 10:24 PM), http://www.brownpoliticalreview.org/2013 /04/why-so-syrious-black-humor-amid-horror-in-syria/. 83. Sussman, supra note 12. 84. Little, Regulating Funny, supra note 24, at 1241 (footnotes omitted). 85. MICHAEL BILLIG, LAUGHTER AND RIDICULE: TOWARDS A SOCIAL CRITIQUE OF HUMOUR 91 (Mike Featherstone ed., 2005). See also Michael Rundle, Syrian Satire: Amid the Bloodshed, What Makes Syrians Laugh?, THE HUFFINGTON POST, (Mar. 31, 2012, 6:21 PM), http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/03/23/syrian-satire-amid-the-bloodshed_n_1375491.html (“Humour was the only way I could deal with my anger. Bittersweet, dark satire was the expression with which I felt most at ease in order to make contradictions visible.” (quoting Syrian satirist Jiim Siin)). 86. Little, Regulating Funny, supra note 24, at 1252, 1256. 87. JERRY PALMER, TAKING HUMOUR SERIOUSLY 61 (1994).



serve as a coping device.”88 It may allow individuals to become accustomed to their fears and even conquer them by transforming their limitations into strengths.89

The “Orange Alternative” anti-communist movement that operated during the 1980s in Wroclaw, Poland is illustrative. Waldemar Fydrych, the leader of the movement, observed that through the use of humor, “[t]he Wroclaw street slowly ceases to fear, and through participation in the fun, people learn to support more serious [protest].”90 A young mother attending the often humorous events staged by the Orange Alternative movement described her experience as follows:

I try not to miss any of Orange Alternative’s happenings. This is because I want sometimes not to fear the militia and their clubs. I come to convince myself that not every day must be depressing and dirty; I come so that at least once every few months, for a few hours, I can show everyone—and perhaps myself most of all—that I can be just like people somewhere in the ordinary, normal world. I can laugh, have fun, be provocative. I need this for my psychological health. I don’t want always to think about the fact that there is no milk for my child. Such a happening, once every few months, is an orange alternative to reality.91

By depicting an alternative reality, the use of humor can thus create a “reality distortion field,”92 which allows protestors to believe that they can accomplish even their most ambitious objectives. By distorting proportion and scale of difficulties, humor allows the unimagined to become imaginable.93 What begins as a joke may later become reality.94

88. See Little, Regulating Funny, supra note 24, at 1252–53; TED COHEN, JOKES: PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHTS ON JOKING MATTERS 40 (1999) (“Humor in general and jokes in particular are among the most typical and reliable resources we have for meeting . . . devastating and incomprehensible matters.”); Donatella Della Ratta, Irony, Satire, and Humor in the Battle for Syria, MUFTAH (Feb. 13, 2012), http://muftah.org/?p=3062 (“One of the goals of artistic production is to bring a sort of relief to people who are suffering on the ground.” (quoting Syrian artists Mohamed and Ahmad Malas)). 89. Little, Regulating Funny, supra note 24, at 1253. 90. PADRAIC KENNEY, A CARNIVAL OF REVOLUTION: CENTRAL EUROPE 1989, at 190 (2003). 91. Id. 92. That term was coined by Bud Tripple at Apple Computer to describe Steve Jobs’ ability to convince himself and others around him that virtually anything could be accomplished. See Prasad Kaipa, Steve Jobs and the Art of Mental Model Innovation, IVEY BUS. J. (May/June 2012), http://iveybusinessjournal.com/topics/leadership/steve-jobs-and-the-art-of-mental-model-innovation#_edn1. 93. Marjolein’t Hart, Humour and Social Protest: An Introduction, in HUMOUR AND SOCIAL

PROTEST, supra note 68, at 1, 20. 94. Id.



3. Humor and Repression

Humor can lessen the impact of a tragedy or a repressive government practice by transforming the tragedy or repression into a more congenial or at least endurable experience.95 For example, during protests in 2013, Turks responded to abusive police practices, such as the pervasive use of batons and tear and pepper gas, by making light of them.96 Many protestors proudly referred to the bruises they inherited from police abuse as “Erdoğan’s kisses.”97 When tear-gassed, some protesters responded with outcries of “More!”98 When a rare lapse occurred in the rampant use of tear gas, protestors phoned the police to express their concerns and ask when and where the tear-gassing would recommence so that they could show up in a timely fashion to consume their daily dose.99 They retaliated against the use of pepper gas by throwing red peppers at the police and nicknaming their Prime Minister “Red Hot Chili Erdoğan” and “Gasfather.”100 A group of university students wrote and performed a jazz song on protest grounds that likened the taste of pepper gas to honey.101 Similar slogans encountered on protest grounds included “Tear gas works wonders on your complexion,” “Tear gas helps you lose weight,” and “I haven’t showered for days; wash me, water cannon!”102 Devoted fans from archrival soccer teams were videotaped chanting “Tear Gas Ole!”103 Tear gas canisters became a popular vase substitute for flowers presented during the courtships that began on protest grounds.104 Other defiant chants intended to bolster courage by comparing pepper and tear gas to traditional household practices: “Tear gas cannot intimidate Turks accustomed to checking for a leak in the bottled gas at our home by using a cigarette lighter!” Another banner likewise evoked a traditional tool of discipline in Turkey: “Pepper gas is nothing! Our parents disciplined us by putting hot peppers in our mouths.” By equating the government’s response to the protests with traditional, albeit inexpedient, cultural practices, humor

95. Little, Regulating Funny, supra note 24, at 1253. 96. Varol, supra note 3. 97. Id. 98. Id. 99. Id. 100. Id. 101. Id. 102. Id. 103. Nippes Yard Productions, Istanbul United—Trailer No. 1, YOUTUBE (July 31, 2013), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4hK0WxBi5c. 104. Varol, supra note 3.



served to mollify, at least to some extent, the fears of those who may have been reluctant to step onto the protest grounds.

Examples from other nations abound. Brazilians used similar methods against the pervasive use of pepper spray and tear gas during the protests that took place in Summer 2013. Referring to the common use of vinegar to combat the effects of tear gas, they dubbed their uprising the “Salad Revolution.”105 A photograph depicted a Brazilian protestor dressed up as a tennis player, armed with a tennis racket, and ready to volley the tear gas canisters launched by the police.106 During the Occupy Wall Street movement, which began in New York City, a Saturday Night Live segment depicted New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg reassuring the protestors that the pepper used in the pepper gas against the protestors was “made from 100% pure cayenne pepper extract, without any added oil or trans fats, and was completely salt-free.”107 A sympathetic Martha Stewart used pepper spray to season a Thanksgiving turkey on the Today Show.108

These examples show how humor can provide joy in an otherwise joyless landscape, serve as an omen of better days, dissolve widespread feelings of solitude, and mollify those afraid to speak up for fear of persecution. Humor communicates to the members of a repressed population that they are not alone109 and therefore provides much-needed encouragement to the populace to take action. The explosive and infectious quality of laughter can persuade people that speaking up is preferable to silence and self-censorship. As Donatella Della Ratta explains in the context of the Syrian uprising, the use of humor, as well as “extreme, unpleasant expressions that were never before heard in Syria is a form of liberation, represents a symbolic break with the past and serves as notice that many Syrians will never again blatantly pretend to believe the magnificent rhetoric” of President Bashar al-Assad and his party.110

105. Brazilians Start “Salad Revolution”, AL JAZEERA (June 18, 2013), http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/2013061819020022838. 106. Arılar Ölürse Insanlar Da Ölür, Brezilyalı Genç Gaz Fişeği Ile Dalga Geçti, Timeline Photos, FACEBOOK (June 19, 2013), https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=578212635557320&set=a.565275000184417.1073741828.565259373519313&type=1&ref=nf. 107. Mayor Bloomberg Occupies “SNL,” THE DAILY BEAST (Oct. 16, 2011), http://www.thedailybeast.com/videos/2011/10/16/mayor-bloomberg-occupies-snl.html. 108. Video: Martha Stuart Pepper Sprays a Turkey, THE GLOSS (Nov. 25, 2011), http://www.thegloss.com/2011/11/25/odds-and-ends/video-martha-stewart-pepper-sprays-a-turkey-688/. 109. Adler, supra note 39. 110. See Ratta, supra note 88.



C. EXPRESSING POPULAR DISCONTENT

“Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”

- Mark Twain111

In many repressive regimes, avenues for expressing discontent are limited or non-existent.112 Tyrannical regimes ensure their own survival by delegitimizing dissent and stifling pluralism through government-sanctioned abuse.113 Where the government restricts avenues for expressing discontent, humor may be one of the only methods of reclaiming free speech and expression, at least in informal conversations and on social media.114

For a repressive leader, humor operates on an exposed nerve of sensitivity. Perhaps counterintuitively, many repressive leaders prefer violent social movements to non-violent ones because violent social movements enable them to justify crackdowns and other draconian measures, such as the imposition of states of emergency or martial law, to the domestic and international community.115 In contrast to violence, humor undermines a repressive leader’s justification for cracking down on a social movement. As a Syrian activist explained, “The [regime knows] how to play when arms are involved, but do[es] not know how to react to mash-ups, parodies and irony.”116

111. See El Amrani, supra note 68 (“The joke is the devastating weapon which the Egyptians used against the invaders and occupiers. It was the valiant guerrilla that penetrated the palaces of the rulers and the bastions of the tyrants, disrupting their repose and filling their heart with panic.” (quoting Egyptian actor Kamal al-Shinnawi)). 112. See Bernard Lewis, Free at Last? The Arab World in the Twenty-First Century, 88 FOREIGN

AFF. 77, 86–87 (2009). 113. Id. 114. See Clay Shirky, The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change, 90 FOREIGN AFF. 28, 28–29, 34 (2011) (arguing that social media has transformed the way people access information and contribute to political debate); Sarah Joseph, Social Media, Political Change, and Human Rights, 35 B.C. INT’L & COMP. L. REV. 145, 151–54 (2012) (describing the use of social media during the Arab Spring protests to quickly disseminate information). 115. CHENOWETH & STEPHAN, supra note 28, at 51. 116. Ratta, supra note 88. See also A Quote from John Lennon for OWS, DAILY KOS (Oct. 10, 2011, 08:45 AM), http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/10/1024765/-A-quote-from-John-Lennon-for-OWS# (“When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you—pull your beard, flick your face—to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.” (quoting John Lennon)); CHENOWETH & STEPHAN, supra note 28, at 51 (finding that “when regimes crack down violently, reliance on a nonviolent strategy increases the probability of campaign success by about 22 percent”).



1. Superiority Theory

The superiority theory of humor illustrates how humor can be effectively deployed to express discontent against repressive leaders. Ancient philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, and Cicero disapprovingly described humor as a superiority “mechanism of disparaging others to enhance one’s own sense of well-being.”117 Socrates, for example, cautioned that society must regulate humor, particularly superiority humor that mocks authority.118 Many scholars find the superiority theory problematic primarily because it can be deployed to establish the superiority of one group over another and disparage other groups or individuals.119

This perspective on superiority humor overlooks its salutary effects in expressing discontent against repressive leaders during a social movement. Superiority humor serves to both ridicule and criticize charismatic leaders, who are frequently at the helm of repressive regimes and who enjoy a perception often described as invincible or quasi-divine within their domestic populations. Superiority humor can render mortal what might otherwise appear immortal and reduce a seemingly untouchable leader to the masses. It can also distort the scale of difficulties by downplaying the presumed dangerousness of repressive leaders. As Sigmund Freud, a champion of superiority humor, explains, “by making our enemy small, inferior, despicable or comic, we achieve in a roundabout way the enjoyment of overcoming him.”120 Through the use of vitriolic wit, superiority humor can also enhance the self-esteem of the individuals depicted in the superior position,121 which, in the context of a social movement against a repressive leader, are the people. It can also divert attention from their suffering and humiliation.122

Examples of superiority humor abound in modern social movements. A popular video series in Tunisia depicted a French baguette-wielding Captain Khobza fighting off Tunisian dictator Ben Ali and his loyalists.123

117. Little, Regulating Funny, supra note 24, at 1245. 118. Id. 119. See id. at 1252. 120. SIGMUND FREUD, JOKES AND THEIR RELATION TO THE UNCONSCIOUS 103 (1960). 121. Little, Regulating Funny, supra note 24, at 1255. 122. Harutyunyan, supra note 7. 123. Mohamed Haddad, Tunisia’s Baguette Wielding Activist Gives Bread Riots Modern Meaning, THE DAILY STAR (July 19, 2011, 01:21 AM), http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2011/Jul-19/Tunisias-baguette-wielding-activist-gives-bread-riots-modern-meaning.ashx#axzz2PX6hgDsX; Srdja Popovic & Mladen Joksic, Why Dictators Don’t Like Jokes,



In Egypt, widely circulated videos represented Hosni Mubarak and other government officials as evil movie characters, including a fabricated Star Wars poster with Mubarak depicted as the evil Emperor Palpatine.124 Likewise, a sign displayed during the Egyptian protests stated, “Down with Mubarak—and my mother in law,”125 which essentially equated a seemingly invincible autocrat with a human being.

Beneath the surface, superiority humor often contains serious political undercurrents that serve a significant signaling function. Excessive use of humor may diminish a movement’s credibility or cause outsiders to view the movement’s plight as less serious or urgent. A serious political undercurrent underlying superiority humor, however, helps portray a social movement as credible and legitimate, and it signals that humor is being used as an avenue for drawing attention to sincere societal problems. For example, a widely circulated photograph of a computer screen in Egypt depicted a window titled “Installing Freedom,”126 along with an error message that declared, “Cannot install Freedom: Please remove ‘Mubarak’ and try again.”127 In addition, carpenters’ unions in Egypt advocated the use of “Hosni Glue” because it “sticks for 30 years,”128 referring to three decades of autocratic rule under Mubarak. Two other popular jokes were directed at prevalent election fraud and corruption under Mubarak’s reign:

President Bill Clinton came to visit Mubarak in Egypt and was impressed by how popular he was and how easily he kept winning re-election. “Mubarak,” he said, “I’m about to run for re-election. Could you send your advisors to Washington to help run my campaign?’” Mubarak says OK and sends his men to Washington to help campaign for Clinton. On Election Day, when all ballots are counted, the count is 90 percent in favor of electing Hosni Mubarak.

On his deathbed, Mubarak laments, “What will the Egyptian people do without me?” His advisor tries to comfort him: “Mr. President, don’t worry about the Egyptians. They are a resilient people who could survive

FOREIGN POL’Y (Apr. 5, 2013), http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/04/05/why_dictators_don_t_like_jokes. 124. El Amrani, supra note 68. 125. Marina Ferhatovic, Best Way to Get Tunisians to Vote, EMAJ MAG. (Oct. 26, 2011), http://emajmagazine.com/2011/10/26/editorial-best-way-to-get-tunisians-to-vote/. 126. Popovic & Joksic, supra note 123. 127. Id. A post-Mubarak version of the same message announced: “Installation freedom has finished successfully.” Sussman, supra note 12. 128. Harutyunyan, supra note 7.



by eating stones!” Mubarak pauses to consider this and tells the advisor to grant his son a monopoly on the trade in stones.129

Egyptian activists also satirized Mubarak through fake Twitter profiles and humorous tweets with political connotations. Although Mubarak is rumored to have never sent an email in his life, a satirical @HosniMubarak profile appeared on Twitter.130 Following crackdowns on journalists during the 2011 uprising, @HosniMubarak tweeted: “I have 3 video cameras, 2 still cameras, 5 microphones, and 7 journalists for sale. They are all labeled ‘Al Jazeera.’”131 Mubarak’s son and heir-apparent Gamal’s fake Twitter profile boasted: “My Daddy owns Egypt.”132 The satirical Twitter profile for Mohamed Tantawi, Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, described him as “Kicking ass, taking names, and wearing decorations with more colors than you can find in a pack of Skittles.”133 The ability of satire to pierce through traditionally satire-proof institutions, such as the military, highlighted a fundamental transformation in Egyptian society134 and sent a broad and powerful message: no institution was immune from the biting criticism of satire, and no institution was above the revolutionary reach of the people.

As the Arab Spring spread from Tunisia and Egypt to other Arab nations, so did the widespread superiority humor that fueled the revolutions. Despite ongoing atrocities, activists continued to tap the efficient resource of humor. A widely shared Tweet read: “Dear Arab people: What happens in Egypt stays in Egypt. Sincerely, Arab dictators.”135 Libyans made light of conspiracy theories offered by their dictator Gaddafi who blamed foreign agents for the uprising against him.136 A popular cartoon depicted Gaddafi with the following caption: “This uprising against me is obviously the work of the American print media to get rid of me. Just because they’re tired of trying to spell my name right!”137

129. Making Fun of Pharoah: Why Egypt’s Long-Serving Dictator Makes Such a Good Punch Line, FOREIGN POL’Y (Jan. 2, 2011), http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/02/making_fun_of_pharaoh. 130. Id. 131. Id. 132. Id. 133. Id. 134. See Sussman, supra note 12. 135. Id. 136. See id. 137. See id.



Even in Syria, amid one of the gravest civil wars in modern history, superiority humor found some appeal. Syrians invoked the country’s rich tradition of dark humor138 to draw attention to their suffering.139 In an episode of a satirical YouTube series titled “Top Goon: Diaries of a Little Dictator,” a nervous President Bashar al-Assad, depicted by a finger puppet named “Beeshu,” wakes up after nightmares about the uprising against him.140 After swearing that he “has not killed as many as [his] father did in Hama,” Beeshu is comforted by one of his military generals who sings him a lullaby, titled “We love you,” until Beeshu falls back asleep.141 The episode ends with a conspicuous message to the viewers: “Syria, don’t be afraid, Bashar will follow Gaddafi.”142

Superiority humor was also invoked to express discontent during the 2013 Turkish and Bulgarian protests.143 For example, in response to increasing restrictions on the sale and consumption of alcohol, Turkish protestors chanted, “You banned booze and we sobered up!”144 Turkish couples were photographed conspicuously kissing on protest grounds in defiance of government measures that were intended to ensure observance of “morals” in public places.145 When the patriarchal Turkish Prime Minister called on women to bear three children, the protestors responded, “Are you sure that you want three children like us?”146 In addition, in Bulgaria, protestors in swimsuits staged a “tanning” protest in front of the Parliament building because the Parliament planned to take a month-long vacation less than a month into its new term.147

2. Impulsive Regime Reactions

Expression of discontent through humor and creativity can also fuel a social movement by invoking impulsive reactions from governments that

138. Id. 139. Betsy Gomez, In the Middle of an Uprising, Syrians Rediscover Satire, COMIC BOOK LEGAL

DEF. FUND (Apr. 2, 2012), http://cbldf.org/2012/04/in-the-middle-of-an-uprising-syrians-rediscover-satire/. 140. Massasit Matti, Top Goon Episode One-Beeshu’s Nightmares, YOUTUBE (Nov. 23, 2011), http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=W5RifYxWr-4. 141. Id. 142. Id. 143. Rundle, supra note 85. 144. Sibel Utka Bila, Young Turks Use “Disproportionate Wit” to Shake Up Erdogan, AL

MONITOR (June 9, 2013), http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/06/turkey-protests-humor-resistance.html. 145. Id. 146. Id. 147. Bulgarians in Swimsuits Protest Deputies’ Holiday Plans, WORLD BULLETIN (July 31, 2013, 04:45 PM), http://www.worldbulletin.net/?aType=haber&ArticleID=114286.



ultimately disserve their interests. To illustrate, anti-Putin protestors in Siberia decided to use teddy bears, South Park figurines, and Lego characters to stage a protest.148 Stumped by this unconventional protest, the Siberian authorities resorted to conventional tactics and arrested the toy figurines.149 Troubled Siberian officials then imposed a ban on similar protests on the grounds that only Russian citizens could participate in demonstrations and the Chinese-made toy figurines used in the protests were decidedly not Russian.150 Instead of stifling the protests, these government actions went viral, bringing more visibility to the protest movement and its revolutionary message as well as inspiring potential recruits.151

Likewise, in Serbia, a student group mocked Slobodan Milošević by taping a photograph of him on an oil barrel and placing the barrel, along with a baseball bat, in a prominent location in Belgrade’s largest shopping district.152 Shortly thereafter, dozens of fed-up Serbs lined up for their chance to take a once-in-a-lifetime swing at their dictator.153 Unable to arrest the shoppers or find the culprits behind the prank, the police arrested the barrel instead.154 A photo of police officers dragging the barrel to their vehicle became an icon of the resistance against Milošević, spurring a protest movement commenced by a small group of students to morph into a nationwide movement of 70,000 members.155

Russia provides another example of a government leader’s failed attempts to refute satire. After protestors wearing white ribbons appeared in the tens of thousands to protest Vladimir Putin’s rule, Putin sarcastically compared their ribbons to condoms.156 That comment unleashed a wave of satire against him. Comrade Putin morphed into Comrade Condom,157 and

148. Popovic & Joksic, supra note 123. 149. Id. 150. Id. See also Ezekiel Pfeifer, Bureaucrats Block Protesting Lego Men, MOSCOW TIMES (Feb. 16, 2012), http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/bureaucrats-block-protesting-lego-men/453146.html (“Approval could not be granted due to a confusion in the understanding of the law regulating public demonstrations. The organizers of a public event can only be Russian citizens.” (quoting the official statement)). 151. Popovic & Joksic, supra note 123. 152. Id. 153. Id. 154. Id. 155. Id. 156. Ioffe, supra note 67. 157. Neil Brady, Comrade Putin Becomes Comrade Condom as Masses Protest, STORYFUL (Dec. 24, 2011, 10:13 AM), http://storyful.com/stories/14910-comrade-putin-becomes-comrade-condom-as-masses-protest.



photos depicting Putin standing in front of the Kremlin with a condom doctored onto his coat went viral.158 Additionally, after Putin compared the protestors to the outcast monkeys in Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, a popular satirical television show in Russia portrayed Putin as a goofy boa constrictor.159 As one of the authors of @KermlinRussia, a satirical Twitter account, put it: “Putin stopped being scary. He started to become silly.”160

Similar observations were made about failed government efforts to refute satire in Egypt and Turkey. According to Egyptian writer and activist Marwa Elnaggar, “[T]he events and official statements [from the Egyptian government] were more laughable than any jokes we made up.”161 In Turkey, as journalist Andrew Finkel aptly observed, “Worse than defying the prime minister, the protesters are making him look like a fool.”162 Humor is thus frequently difficult to refute through the conventional political messages on which politicians rely.163 As the above examples illustrate, politicians’ attempts to challenge satire with argument frequently serve the counterproductive purpose of providing fodder for further satire.

3. Censorship

To be sure, repressive leaders may attempt to stifle humor directed at them by censoring it or intimidating, arresting, prosecuting, or even torturing satirists.164 Although regime repression is a formidable obstacle for any social movement, large-scale crackdown attempts on humor may fail because humor in social movements rarely emanates from a single, tangible source.165 Especially where the protest movement enjoys broad support from diverse portions of the population, isolation and selective repression of participants, though certainly possible, are more difficult to

158. Ioffe, supra note 67. 159. Yaffa, supra note 43 (“Today’s political humor, much of it online, is designed to make Mr. Putin and his allies appear out of touch, uncool and, in a way, not especially dangerous—an empowering idea in a country where people had grown accustomed to the unquestioned power of whoever sat in the Kremlin.”). 160. Id. 161. Sussman, supra note 12. 162. Andrew Finkel, The Children of Taksim, N.Y. TIMES LATITUDE BLOG (June 12, 2013, 11:53 AM), http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/the-children-of-taksim. 163. Hart, supra note 93, at 8. 164. See, e.g., Rundle, supra note 85 (noting that prominent Syrian satirist, Ali Ferzat, was beaten by masked gunmen and had his hands broken); Justin Brown, Comic Spring in the Arab World, COMIC

BOOK LEGAL DEF. FUND (Aug. 9, 2012, 1:00 AM), http://cbldf.org/2012/08/comic-spring-in-the-arab-world/; Harutyunyan, supra note 7. 165. See, e.g., Harutyunyan, supra note 7 (“Because they were so numerous and therefore socially powerful, Egyptian protestors could openly and directly attack the ruler through humor without the fear of being punished or censored.”).



achieve.166 Censorship is also less likely to be effective for informal humor circulated via the relative anonymity of word of mouth, email, and social media,167 especially compared to traditional political commentary, which may be subject to the government’s influence or control. Egyptian leaders, for example, have been largely unsuccessful in censorship attempts due in large part to the oral tradition of Egyptian humor and jokes, which are often conveyed in informal settings.168 Likewise, in Serbia, the social movement against the Milošević regime succeeded despite the regime’s widespread attempts at repression and intimidation.169

In addition, using symbols in revolutionary humor, instead of depicting actual government officials, may assist in evading censorship.170 For example, Egyptian cartoonist Sherif Arafa crafted a figure labeled “The Responsible” in his political cartoons instead of depicting actual government officials.171 Arafa explains: “I draw him differently every time so he can have the physical characteristics and age of the top officials I want to criticize.”172 Likewise, a popular Syrian Facebook page titled “The Chinese Revolution Against the Chinese Dictator” critically reports on events in Syria as if they are happening in China.173 The use of anonymous or fake Facebook profiles and Twitter accounts can also undermine censorship efforts.174

The attempted use of censorship by a repressive government may also backfire. Censorship attempts may undermine the government’s legitimacy

166. Cf. CHENOWETH & STEPHAN, supra note 28, at 40. 167. Harutyunyan, supra note 7 (“Social humor, however, is unique in that it is able to thrive in an authoritarian society because it is in many cases difficult to censor. The government’s difficulty in censoring social satire and political jokes comes partially from an oral culture.”); Zeynep Tufekci, As Egypt Shuts Off the Net: Seven Theses on Dictator’s Dilemma, TECHNOSOCIOLOGY (Jan 28, 2011), http://technosociology.org/?p=286 (“How do you censor five million Facebook accounts in real time except to shut them all down? . . . The capacity to selectively filter the Internet is inversely proportional to the scale and strength of the dissent. In other words, regimes which employ widespread legitimacy may be able to continue to selectively filter the Internet. However, this is going to break down as dissent and unhappiness spreads.”). 168. Slackman, supra note 70 (“Egyptians are quite used to expressing themselves through jokes and humor because that was often the only way to express ourselves.”); Williams, supra note 81. 169. CHENOWETH & STEPHAN, supra note 28, at 77. 170. See Hart, supra note 93, at 19 (“[W]hen the authorities act in a repressive way, the protestors can always refer to the excuse they were ‘only’ joking; meanwhile, the critical points are made, nevertheless.”). 171. Harutyunyan, supra note 7. 172. Id. 173. Ratta, supra note 88. 174. See, e.g., Ioffe, supra note 67; Ido Kenan, e-Censorship and the Arab Spring, MA’ARAV

(Nov. 17, 2011), http://www.maarav.org.il/english/2011/11/e-censorship-and-the-arab-spring/.



and draw the opprobrium of the international community.175 Images and news of protestors jailed or abused by the police for their acts of satire, shared swiftly on social media, can send shock waves and inspire outrage throughout the domestic and global community.176 A government’s response to free expression with repression may galvanize activists, strengthen their resolve, and allow them to leverage the repression to win the sympathy of others and obtain support for the movement.177 In Egypt, for example, government efforts to crack down on social media activism had the counterproductive effect of inciting more public activism: “People who were isolated by efforts to shut down the Internet, mostly middle-class Egyptians, may have gone to the streets when they could no longer follow the unrest through social media.”178

Censorship efforts can also bolster the stature of a protest movement. By attempting to censor the movement, a government implicitly lends credibility to the movement and communicates that the movement’s message is serious and presents a threat to repressive practices. In so doing, the government may imbue the movement with a level of legitimacy and prominence the movement may have lacked pre-censorship. In Turkey, for example, the government’s pre-publication seizure of a book titled The Imam’s Army—which described the infiltration of the Turkish police force by members of an Islamist movement—had the counterproductive effect of

175. Popovic & Joksic, supra note 123. 176. Chenoweth and Stephan explain how repression against a nonviolent social movement may backfire:

Repressing nonviolent campaigns may backfire if the campaigns have widespread sympathy among the civilian population by turning erstwhile passive supporters into active participants in the resistance. Alternatively, repressing nonviolent activists may lead to loyalty shifts by increasing the internal solidarity of the resistance, increasing foreign support for it, or increasing dissent within the enemy ranks—provided violent counterreprisals by the resistance do not occur. This effect may be catalyzed further if the repression is communicated to domestic and international audiences that are prepared to act.

CHENOWETH & STEPHAN, supra note 28, at 50–51 (citations omitted). 177. Chua, supra note 23, at 719. Cf. CHENOWETH & STEPHAN, supra note 28, at 50 (“Backfiring creates a situation in which the resistance leverages the miscalculations of the regime to its own advantage, as domestic and international actors that support the regime shift their support to the opposition because of specific actions taken by the regime . . . .”). 178. Catherine O’Donnell, New Study Quantifies Use of Social Media in Arab Spring, U. OF

WASH. TODAY (Sept. 12, 2011), http://www.washington.edu/news/2011/09/12/new-study-quantifies-use-of-social-media-in-arab-spring/; Marco Papic & Sean Noonan, Social Media as a Tool for Protest, STRATFOR GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE (Feb. 3, 2011), http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110202-social-media-tool-protest (“Shutting down the Internet did not reduce the numbers of Egyptian protesters in the streets. In fact, the protests only grew bigger as websites were shut down and the Internet was turned off.”).



drawing more attention to it.179 The text of the book was posted online and was downloaded by more than one hundred thousand readers in one day, many of whom may not have read the book without the publicity generated by its seizure.180

Humor can also be deployed to publicize and criticize the government’s censorship efforts. For example, during his decade-long rule as Prime Minister in Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan bludgeoned the Turkish media into self-censorship through arrests of journalists and the imposition of massive tax fines on media corporations.181 At the height of the 2013 protests in Turkey, mainstream media channels were running regularly scheduled programming, ranging from cooking shows to penguin documentaries.182 To take a swipe at the complacent mainstream media, many protestors donned penguin outfits on protest grounds.183 In addition, frustrated by the Turkish media’s silence on the protests, game show host Ali Ihsan Varol decided to make an unlikely use of his live television show, The Word Game, to draw attention to them.184 During a show that aired at the height of the protests, all of the answers to the questions Varol posed to the contestants were blatant references to the protests (e.g., Twitter, gas mask, dictator, censorship) and the final two answers were thinly veiled messages to Prime Minister Erdoğan (“apologize” and “resign”).185 Buoyed by Varol’s courageous act of defiance on live television, hundreds gathered at the headquarters of mainstream newspaper and television stations, waving wads of cash in the air and asking how much they must pay to get their fair share of media coverage.186 Following the outpouring of humorous stings and cutting satire directed at the Turkish media, at least some media channels began to cover the protests, as well as the rampant police abuse.187

179. Jürgen Gottschlich, “The Imam’s Army”: Arrested Journalist’s Book Claims Turkish Police Infiltrated by Islamic Movement, SPIEGEL ONLINE INT’L (Apr. 6, 2011), http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-imam-s-army-arrested-journalist-s-book-claims-turkish-police-infiltrated-by-islamic-movement-a-755508.html. 180. See id. 181. At the time of this Article’s writing, Turkey houses more journalists in prison than any other nation in the world, including Iran and China. See Dexter Filkins, Turkey’s Jailed Journalists, NEW

YORKER DAILY COMMENT (Mar. 9, 2012), http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/03/turkeys-jailed-journalists.html. 182. Varol, supra note 3. 183. Id. 184. Id. 185. Id. 186. Id. 187. Bila, supra note 144.



This section examined how humor can evade the traditional methods of censorship prevalent in repressive regimes and open up the political sphere to the expression of discontent. As the above examples illustrate, humor can also serve as an effective method of evoking counterproductive reactions from government leaders with an otherwise unresponsive monopoly on power, which serves to provide further fodder for revolutionary humor.

D. PROMOTING POLITICAL MOBILIZATION

Political mobilization through collective action is critical to the success of a social movement.188 Mobilization broadens the base of the resistance and strengthens the movement.189 Without participation by broad segments of the population, the movement runs the risk of being disregarded as an unrepresentative fringe faction.190 Political mobilization can also foment rifts among regime loyalists and influence them to reconsider their positions, thereby raising the political, economic, and military costs to the government of maintaining the status quo.191 The larger the number of participants in a social movement, the more likely it is that social or family ties will connect the movement to the members of the regime itself, which may cause the regime members to defect192 and further weaken the regime. Political mobilization also enhances the credibility of the opposition movement.193 Behavioral research shows that the probability of an individual adopting a fad or trend increases with the proportion of the population that has already done so.194 Mass civilian participation can thus boost the appeal of the movement to potential recruits, bolstering its growth, which, in turn, increases its effectiveness.195

188. CHENOWETH & STEPHAN, supra note 28, at 30 (“[A] critical source of the success of nonviolent resistance is mass participation, which can erode or remove a regime’s main sources of power when the participants represent diverse sectors of society.”). 189. Cf. id. at 10–11. 190. Papic & Noonan, supra note 178. 191. Cf . CHENOWETH & STEPHAN, supra note 28, at 41, 44. 192. Cf. id. at 46–47. 193. Cf. id. at 11, 27. 194. See id. at 35 (“Scholars have found that individuals are more likely to engage in protest activity when they expect large numbers of people to participate . . . .”). In addition, under critical mass theory, recruitment to a social movement accelerates when political mobilization appears safe and likely to succeed. Id. at 114. 195. Cf. id. at 11.



1. Domestic Resonance

Humor can promote domestic political mobilization by making the movement trendy. As Srdja Popovic and Mladen Joksic put it: “Make a protest fun and people don’t want to miss out on the action.”196 In fact, humor can be more effective in eliciting participation than political campaigns or party membership. Because humor weakens the defenses of an audience and renders them more amenable to persuasion,197 individuals may be tempted to join a social movement that expresses its message primarily through humor.198 New recruits may join the movement after being prodded through humorous messages by friends, relatives, and coworkers. Humor’s infectious quality thus serves as what social movement theorists refer to as a “mobilizing structure,” which is a “collective vehicle[], informal as well as formal, through which people mobilize and engage in collective action.”199

Humor can also serve as a mobilizing structure by increasing the emotional and practical benefits of joining a social movement, while reducing its apparent costs, which include time, money, and physical and psychological effort.200 The central challenge in mobilizing any social movement is to alter that cost-benefit calculation in favor of participation.201 As discussed supra in Part III.B, revolutionary humor distorts the difficulty of realizing the social movement’s goals by depicting an appealing alternative reality where the costs of participation are lower and the probability of success is higher.202 The costs of participation are lower because participation—defined as “active, observable engagement of individuals in collective action”203—can assume a plethora of forms. Individuals can participate by cracking a joke during a conversation, an email, or a text message, posting a humorous update on Facebook, or formulating biting satire on Twitter.204 Although nonviolent movements are rarely casualty-free, these activities are fairly low-risk, at least relative to

196. Popovic & Joksic, supra note 123. 197. John C. Meyer, Humor as a Double-Edged Sword: Four Functions of Humor in Communication, 10 COMM. THEORY 310, 324 (2000). 198. Popovic & Joksic, supra note 123. 199. MCADAM ET. AL., supra note 30, at 3. 200. KRISTIN A. GOSS, DISARMED: THE MISSING MOVEMENT FOR GUN CONTROL IN AMERICA 50 (2006). 201. Id. 202. See supra Part II. 203. CHENOWETH & STEPHAN, supra note 28, at 30. 204. Cf. id. at 10 (“The moral, physical, informational, and commitment barriers to participation are much lower for nonviolent resistance than for violent insurgency.”).



more violent struggles.205 Participation through humor does not require physical strength, youth, or agility, which opens up the movement to broad segments of the population.206 In addition, participation may require little or no training beyond a good sense of humor. People can contribute to the movement, and bolster its popularity, from the safety and the relative anonymity of their homes. The low-cost entry point of participation through humor explains why many modern social movements count among their ranks exceptional numbers of previously apolitical individuals.207

To be sure, social reform rarely happens solely through humorous messages on social media or jokes told over informal conversations.208 For a social movement to achieve its aims, more passive forms of membership must often evolve into street action.209 Humor does, however, lower the barriers to participation, providing an important low-cost entry point for reluctant or risk-averse individuals to join the movement. Courage tends to breed courage,210 and after taking that first step, subsequent steps become easier. In addition, there is strength in numbers, especially during the early stages of a movement when it is most vulnerable to regime repression.211 Even when some individuals participate solely through more passive means, mass participation can broaden the appeal of the movement and help in evading regime repression.

2. Incongruity Theory

The incongruity theory of humor also explains why humor can be effective in promoting political mobilization. Under the incongruity theory, humor emerges from the combination of two seemingly incongruous phenomena.212 Freud explained that incongruity arises from the coupling of dissimilar things, contrasting ideas, sense in nonsense, and the succession of “bewilderment and enlightenment.”213 The following joke illustrates the use of humorous incongruity in a legal setting: “O’Riley was on trial for armed robbery. The jury came out and announced, ‘Not guilty.’

205. Cf. id. at 38. 206. Cf. id. at 35. 207. See, e.g., Yaffa, supra note 43 (“For many of today's protesters [in Russia], this is the first time they have given much thought to politics, and they are wary of the dour tone that has long defined Russian opposition politics. They use humor to signal that they are not interested in traditional politics and do not take themselves—or Mr. Putin—too seriously.”). 208. Papic & Noonan, supra note 178. 209. Id. 210. CHENOWETH & STEPHAN, supra note 28, at 36. 211. See id. 212. Little, Regulating Funny, supra note 24, at 1245–46. 213. FREUD, supra note 120.



‘Wonderful,’ said O’Riley, ‘does that mean I can keep the money?’”214 This joke is incongruous because it juxtaposes two seemingly inconsistent phenomena: acquittal of armed robbery followed by an admission to the crime.215

In modern social revolutions, protestors rely on incongruity to make light of their government’s repressive tactics. Incongruous humor may become viral since incongruity is “inherently interesting, i.e., intellectually provoking, unusual, and ear catching.”216 In addition, incongruous humor is memorable because the coupling of two unlikely phenomena stimulates cognitive processes by requiring the audience to abruptly reorganize the two concepts.217 These humorous messages can then reach hundreds of thousands of people with a single Facebook post or Tweet, galvanizing supporters and creating interest in a movement in a matter of seconds.218

Humor, and especially incongruity humor, played a critical role in promoting political mobilization against Mubarak. Humorous viral photographs and videos directed against Mubarak made it trendy to join the protests in Tahrir Square.219 No doubt, many of the protestors were motivated primarily by a political desire to oust Mubarak from the seat he had occupied for decades, but many were also stirred by the “comic explosion” taking place across the nation.220 Simple messages of humor—such as “Leave [Mubarak], my arm hurts” or “Leave [Mubarak], I want to shower/see my wife/shave/get married”—made it easier for others to identify with the movement.221

3. Global Resonance

In addition to promoting domestic political mobilization, humor can also serve as a salient method of attracting the support of international partners. Humor transcends national boundaries. A humorous photograph or video can break through social, cultural, and political barriers, connect

214. Jerry M. Suls, A Two-Stage Model for the Appreciation of Jokes and Cartoons: An Information-Processing Analysis, in THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HUMOR: THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES AND

EMPIRICAL ISSUES 81, 90 (Jeffrey H. Goldstein & Paul E. McGhee eds., 1972). 215. See Little, Regulating Funny, supra note 24, at 1245–46. 216. Id. at 1241. 217. BILLIG, supra note 85, at 66. 218. Papic & Noonan, supra note 178. 219. Popovic & Joksic, supra note 123. 220. Id. See also Slackman, supra note 70 (“‘I went to [Tahrir Square] every day looking for a new joke,’ said Ibrahim El Houdaiby, a former youth leader in the Muslim Brotherhood who quit the organization two years ago.”). 221. Sussman, supra note 12.



people from divergent backgrounds, and create global resonance for the protest movement. By using universal symbols to craft humor, the humorist implicitly declares, “I am only human just like you.”222 Humor can create a memorable narrative of repression and resistance that allows an audience to easily identify with its message.223 It can cast protestors and their message in a positive light and supplant negative regime narratives about a social movement. In so doing, humor can act as an issue-reframing mechanism by providing “alternative definitions, constructions or depictions of policy problems.”224 The positive portrayal of a social movement through humor can therefore play a significant role in obtaining international resonance.

For example, humor emanating from Tahrir Square served as a central reframing mechanism. Humorous photographs and videos, including a video depicting Egyptians dancing to the “Harlem Shake,” served to reframe and supplant the negative narrative of the social revolution offered by the Egyptian government.225 Egyptians were not the angry, extremist radicals that their leaders would have the world believe. The use of universal symbols of humor, such as the “Harlem Shake” in Egypt or LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” in Turkey,226 can draw the sympathy of the international community because it portrays the protestors as relatable individuals who share a global aspiration for more democratic governance.227

Even where humor appears in words, rather than universally decipherable depictions in photographs or videos, humorous messages can still be communicated across the globe with the assistance of human and computer translators.228 Further, many protestors, aware that their messages

222. Olesen, supra note 69, at 25. 223. See O’Brien & Grosso, supra note 30, at 493 (“Psychologists have long recognized that people are moved more by anecdotes than statistics.”) (citing Richard E. Nisbett et al., Popular Induction: Information Is Not Necessarily Informative, in COGNITION AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOR 113, 128 –31 (John S. Carroll & John W. Payne eds., 1976); RICHARD NISBETT & LEE ROSS, HUMAN

INFERENCE: STRATEGIES AND SHORTCOMINGS OF SOCIAL JUDGMENT 55–59 (1980)). 224. Thomas Nelson & Zoe Oxley, Issue Framing Effects on Belief Importance and Opinion, 61 J. POL. 1040, 1041 (1999). 225. Popovic & Joksic, supra note 123. 226. See Varol, supra note 3. 227. See Williams, supra note 81 (“By serving as a forum to publicly display the social humor used during the revolution to billions of people, the internet helped show the global community that the Egyptian activists in Cairo intended to achieve their ends through peaceful means and with positive spirits. Although this may seem to be a rather elementary element of a revolutionary movement, the image of the Egyptian uprising as a phenomenon rooted in positivity was an extremely important part of gaining popular support from the outside world.”). 228. Sussman, supra note 12.



were broadcast abroad, authored some of their signs and slogans in English, which extended the reach of their messages to Western audiences.229 The Western media picked up on the English-language humor and streamed it on major outlets.230 Revolutionary humor from Egypt, for example, provided fodder to Western comedians—including Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, and Bill Maher—demonstrating the extent to which humor was able to spread the revolutionaries’ message.231 Likewise, Ali Ihsan Varol’s deft use of his television game show in Turkey to lend support to the 2013 Turkish protests captured a global audience when Rachel Maddow aired segments from Varol’s show, dubbing it the “best new thing in the world today.”232

By increasing the global resonance of a social movement, humor may motivate international partners to abandon their diplomatic, financial, or military support of the existing regime or to affirmatively sanction it.233 For example, much of the international community withdrew its support of Mubarak following mass demonstrations, which strengthened the opposition movement. Likewise, international boycotts against the apartheid regime in South Africa also bolstered the effectiveness of the anti-apartheid movement.234

4. Post-Revolution Mobilization

Because jokes can leave a lasting impression and assume a life of their own, humor can also help sustain the social movement’s message even after its immediate goals have been realized. For example, following Mubarak’s downfall in Egypt, a satirical video criticized the majoritarian governance style of Egypt’s democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi by depicting him as “Super Morsi” bouncing on the heads of his

229. See Harutyunyan, supra note 7. 230. Sussman, supra note 12. 231. Joshua Norman, Have Your In-Laws Mubaraked? . . . and Other Egypt Humor, CBS NEWS

(Feb. 8, 2011, 11:59 A.M.), http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20030979-503543/have-your-in-laws-mubaraked-and-other-egypt-humor. 232. See Rachel Maddow Show Video Archive, June 6, 2013: Turkish Game Show Speaks Truth to Power Through Quiz Answers, MSNBC.COM, http://video.msnbc.msn.com/rachel-maddow/52127606/ (last visited Feb. 28, 2014). 233. Cf. CHENOWETH & STEPHAN, supra note 28, at 41, 53. 234. Id. at 27. Nevertheless, international support for a domestic movement can also impose costs on the movement. Depending on its source, international support can cause the movement to lose domestic legitimacy and drive away potential recruits unwilling to be identified with a foreign power. See id. at 27, 55. Especially where the movement resonates with only a limited international audience, foreign support can play into regime narratives about the movement’s status as a foreign conspiracy. External support can also create or exacerbate the free-rider problem where participation in the social movement appears unnecessary in light of foreign support. Id. at 54–55.



political opponents as if in the “Super Mario Brothers” video game.235 An example from Tunisia is also illustrative. In the lead-up to Tunisia’s democratic elections, residents of a town in northern Tunisia were astonished to find a giant poster of their deposed dictator, Ben Ali, hanging from a city wall.236 Within minutes, aggravated residents tore down the poster, revealing the following message written on the wall: “Beware, dictatorship can return. Vote on October 23rd.”237

Humor’s role in the post-revolutionary period, however, is likely to be limited. Although humor can provide a much-needed lifeline to a budding social movement, it may not bring long-lasting compromise or national unity. After the social movement’s goals have been achieved and the revolutionary moment fades, so can the cohesion among the divergent groups strengthened by revolutionary humor, especially where they have conflicting normative visions of their nation’s future. That was the case in Egypt, when broad and diverse groups coalesced in the uprising against Mubarak, but one prominent faction, the Muslim Brotherhood, dominated the post-Mubarak governance in Egypt, largely shunning the remaining factions.238 That, in turn, resulted in a massive uprising against the Muslim Brotherhood, followed by a military intervention that ousted Morsi from his presidential seat in July 2013.239 Egypt serves as a cautionary reminder that social movements, cohesive during a revolution, may devolve into fractious chaos in the post-revolutionary period.240 Social movements must therefore find other sources of unity and cohesion as the revolutionary moment subsides, the jokes fade, and the common bonds that connected the members of the social movement collapse.

235. Lee Moran, Super Morsi! Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi Gets the “Super Mario” Treatment in Nintendo Parody Video, N.Y. DAILY NEWS (Mar. 5, 2013, 8:50 AM), http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/egyptian-president-mohammed-morsi-super-mario-treatment-article-1.1279634. 236. Ferhatovic, supra note 125. 237. Id. 238. See Issandr El Amrani, When Protest Serves Power, N.Y. TIMES LATITUDE BLOG (Oct. 23, 2012, 8:12 AM), http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/a-first-protest-against-the-muslim-brotherhood-consecrates-its-hold-on-power/?ref=muslimbrotherhoodegypt. 239. See David D. Kirkpatrick, Deadly Riots Erupt Across Egypt on Anniversary of Revolution, N.Y. TIMES (Jan. 25, 2013), http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/world/middleeast/tens-of-thousands-fill-tahrir-square-on-anniversary-of-egyptian-revolt.html; Matt Bradley & Reem Abdellatif, Egyptian Military Ousts President Morsi, WALL ST. J. (July 4, 2013, 7:01 AM), http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323899704578583191518313964. 240. See Kirkpatrick, supra note 239; Bradley & Abdellatif, supra note 239.



IV. CONCLUSION

During the night of celebration following Mubarak’s ouster, a musician led a massive crowd of protesters on Tahrir Square in a song that captured the essence of the Egyptian uprising.241 “Laugh, O Revolution!” he sang.242 The revolutionaries, cheering, clapping, and waving the Egyptian flag, shouted back the chorus in unison: “Ha ha ha.”243

That humorous call-and-response tune is emblematic of the humor renaissance taking place across the social movements of the twenty-first century. Although the concept of revolutionary humor may, at first blush, appear as a paradoxical construct, a study of modern social movements demonstrates the significant role that the previously underutilized resource of humor can play to further the purposes of a social movement. Deployed properly, humor can pierce the culture of fear prevalent in tyrannical regimes, serve as an effective coping mechanism against repressive government practices, increase the self-esteem of an oppressed population, and provoke the regime into reactionary conduct that ironically legitimizes the protestors’ objectives. The use of humor can reframe and supplant the negative narrative of the movement offered by the regime and build solidarity among heterogeneous members of a movement with pre-existing sociopolitical differences. Humor can support political mobilization by providing a low-cost point of entry into a social movement, obtaining domestic and global resonance for the social movement, and persuading others to join the movement by bolstering its appeal. Humor can also provide an effective avenue for expressing popular discontent and undermining traditional methods of suppression employed by repressive leaders, including laws that criminalize and censor dissent and social mobilization. Future scholarly accounts of revolutions and social movements would be remiss to ignore the powerful antidote of humor against government repression and abuse.

241. Hossam Eldin, بيضاء ثورتنا - رامى - ثورة يا اضحكو, YOUTUBE, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKKbgWei0Bc &feature=player_embedded. 242. Sussman, supra note 12. 243. Id.



Revolutionary Humor

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