Of the many behaviours and coping mechanisms humans employ in times of struggle, gallows humour is perhaps one of the strangest. At the best of times, it feels incongruous and dissonant, and at the worst of times it becomes inappropriate and offensive. Yet there is a strange draw people feel toward it in times of trouble – making light of situations that were circumstances different would seem horrifying. The play Jesus Hopped the “A” Train” by Stephen Adly Guirgis is an example of this – almost literally, given that one of the characters, Lucius Jenkins, is placed on death row and executed before the conclusion of the play. With its irreverent style and heavy use of seemingly sloppy (but in truth, carefully chosen) slang, there are very few extracts that don’t contain even a little humour. If one were to flip to a random page, one could almost be forgiven for regarding this as some sort of prison comedy, where all we see are the incarcerated swearing at each other, at their lawyers, and at prison guards. But taken as a whole, the play is a poignant commentary on various serious issues – the American legal system, the death penalty, religious redemption for the evil, amongst others.
With this in mind, what then is the function of this humour? How does it contribute to discourse on a serious issue? Perhaps the levity serves to help our processing of these ideas. There is a limit to the human ability to deal with trauma. Once it is reached, some people go into shock, regressing brain function to a more basic, animal fight-or-flight style of thinking. Others may sink into a depressive spiral, the sadness cascading onward. Another response may be to simply halt empathy and emotional connection, meaning it is difficult to regard further tragedy as more sad or more worthy of contemplation, meaning it has essentially no effect. A single piece of literature may be hard pressed to elicit the first two responses, but the third response is definitely possible – as a text piles on more and more tragedy, there is an inflation of tragedies, and each one becomes less meaningful than the last. Humour and levity can reign this effect in by keeping the audience grounded, allowing them to process more of the play’s message.