Joke Capital vs. Punching Up/Punching Down: Accounting for the Ethical Relation between Joker and Target

Abstract

Abstract The currently dominant view concerning humor ethics is punching up/punching down. According to this view, members of one community with less social capital are allowed to make jokes at the expense of another with more social capital as a means of achieving social justice, while those in a community with more social capital are forbidden from making jokes about those with less. The latter is considered an act of bullying, which further entrenches pre-existing social injustice. While there is value in the moral intuitions that underlay this view, it falls prey to several problems. A new approach, the joke capital approach, is introduced which has the virtue of accounting for the cases in which punching up/punching down is effective but also is capable of handling the problematic cases.