Compressing Scales: Characters and Situations in Egyptian Internet Humor

Abstract

This article examines common political assumptions made in Egyptian internet comics, mainstream television discourse, and everyday conversation in Cairo. These assumptions compress local, national, and global scales of analysis into a manageable set of characters (e.g., the President, the People) interacting in everyday situations. Arguing against psychological interpretations, the article highlights the social and historical context within which humor is ‘entextualized’ on par with television and everyday discourse, based on an analysis of a selection of Egyptian internet comics, television moments, and political talk in Cairo between 2013 and 2015.

Key Words:

• Digital culture
• Egypt
• Facebook
• Humor
• Internet
• Memes
• Political communication
• Television

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Susan MacDougall and Munazza Ebtikar for their valuable feedback, as well as Walter Armbrust for allowing me to brainstorm some of the ideas discussed in this article.

Notes

¹ Walter Armbrust (2000) Introduction: Anxieties of Scale, in W. Armbrust (ed.) Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond, pp. 1–31 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).

² Jay D. Bolter & Richard Grusin (2000) Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge: The MIT Press).

³ See Khalid Kishtainy (1985) Arab Political Humor (London: Quartet); Allen Douglas & Fedwa Malti-Douglas (1994) Arab Comic Strips: Politics of an Emerging Mass Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press); Walter Armbrust (2007) Bravely Stating the Obvious: Egyptian Humor and the Anti-American Consensus, Arab Media & Society, 3 (Fall). Available at https://www.arabmediasociety.com/?article=413, accessed August 12, 2017.

⁴ See Walter Armbrust (1996) Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press); and Lila Abu-Lughod (2005) Dramas of Nationhood (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

⁵ See Michael Billig (2005) Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humor (London: SAGE).

⁶ See Richard Bauman & Charles L. Briggs (1990) Poetics and Performance as Critical Perspectives on Language and Social Life, Annual Review of Anthropology, 19, pp. 59–88.

⁷ Samer S. Shehata (1992) The Politics of Laughter: Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarek in Egyptian Political Jokes, Folklore, 103(1), p. 76.

⁸ Afaf L. Al-Sayyid Marsot (1980) Humor: The Two Edged Sword, Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 14(1), p. 1.

⁹ A brief listing of vernacular categories of ‘humor’ in Egypt indicates the very broad range of phenomena hidden behind the label. Next to the joke (nukta), one can talk about the gag (effeh), the caricature (karikateir), or the comic as conventional forms of humorous discourse. One can ‘joke around’ (yhazzar), ‘act silly’ (yhayyes), ‘make tame jokes’ (ye’lesh), ‘say nonsense’ (yhalles), or ‘make wordplays’ (y’affi) to engage in everyday humorous practice, especially among young urban males in Cairo. One can evaluate someone’s sensitivity to joking by talking about the ‘lightness of the blood’ (kheffet el-damm), the lighter being the merrier. In an exhaustive account of ‘humor’ in Egypt, one would need to take these diverse joke texts and practices into account—see Atif’s early attempt to address the matter among Cairo’s urban middle-classes: Nadia Izzeldin Atif (1972), Awlad el-Nokta: Urban Egyptian Humor, PhD thesis, University of California at Berkeley. All this is without mentioning formal meta-categories like ‘comedy’ (komedya), ‘humor’ (fukāha), or ‘satire’ (sukhriyya), which are used to describe various literary genres in the Arabic tradition and in Egyptian popular culture. On this matter, see: Laila Abou-Saif (1972) Najib al-Rihani wa Tatawwur al-Komedia fi-Misr [Najib al-Rihani and the evolution of comedy in Egypt] (Cairo: Dar el-Maarif); Abdallah Ahmad Abdallah (1983) Al-Saḥāfa al-Fukahiyya fi-Misr [The satirical press in Egypt] (Cairo: General Book Organization); Shawki Dayf (1984) Fil-Shi’r wal-Fukāha fi-Misr [On poetry and humor in Egypt] (Cairo: Dar al-Maarif); Shahe Kazarian (2011) Humor in the collectivist Arab Middle East: The case of Lebanon, Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 24(3), pp. 329–348.

¹⁰ Afaf L. Al-Sayyid Marsot (1971) The Cartoon in Egypt, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 13(1), pp. 2–15.

¹¹ K. Kishtainy, Arab Political Humor.

¹² A. Douglas & F. Malti-Douglas, Arab Comic Strips.

¹³ Matthew Diamond (2002) No Laughing Matter: Post-September 11 Political Cartoons in Arab/Muslim Newspapers, Political Communication, 19, pp. 251–272.

¹⁴ Abdul-Rahim Al-Shaikh (2007) Historiographies of Laughter: Poetics of Deformation in Palestinian Political Cartoon, Third Text, 1, pp. 65–78; Nadia Yaqub (2009) Gendering the Palestinian Political Cartoon, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 2, pp. 187–213.

¹⁵ See A. Douglas & F. Malti-Douglas, Arab Comic Strips.

¹⁶ See N. Yaqub, Gendering the Palestinian Political Cartoon.

¹⁷ A. L. Al-Sayyid Marsot, Humour: The Two Edged Sword.

¹⁸ For examples in Franco’s Spain, see Stanley H. Brandes (1977) Peaceful Protest: Spanish Political Humor in a Time of Crisis, Western Folklore, 36(4), pp. 331–346; and Oriol Pi-Sunyer (1977) Political Humor in a Dictatorial State: The Case of Spain, Ethnohistory, 24(2), pp. 179–190. For the Soviet Union, see Christie Davies (2007) Humour and Protest: Jokes under Communism, International Review of Social History, 52, pp. 291–305; and Christie Davies (2010) Jokes as the Truth about Soviet Socialism, Folklore, 46, pp. 9–32.

¹⁹ K. Kishtainy, Arab Political Humor; Sharif Kanaana (1990) Humor of the Palestinian ‘Intifada’, Journal of Folklore Research, 27(3), pp. 231–240; and S. S. Shehata, The Politics of Laughter.

²⁰ See further Farida Makar (2011) ‘Let Them Have Some Fun’: Political and Artistic Forms of Expression in the Egyptian Revolution, Mediterranean Politics, 16(2), pp. 307–312; Iman Mersal (2011) Revolutionary Humor, Globalizations, 8(5), pp. 669–674; Heba Salem & Kantaro Taira (2012) Al-Thawra al-Dahika: The Challenges of Translating Revolutionary Humor, in Samia Mehrez (ed.) Translating Egypt’s Revolution: The Language of Tahrir, pp. 183–211 (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press); Bahaa-eddin Abulhassan Hassan (2013) The Pragmatics of Humor: January 25th Revolution and Occupy Wall Street, Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 4(2), pp. 551–562; and Mohamed M. Helmy & Sabine Frerichs (2013) Stripping the Boss: The Powerful Role of Humor in the Egyptian Revolution 2011, Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 47, pp. 450–481.

²¹ Deepa Anagondahalli & Sahar Khamis (2014) Mubarak Framed! Humor and Political Activism before and during the Egyptian Revolution, Arab Media & Society, 19 (Fall 2014). Available at: https://www.arabmediasociety.com/?article=846, accessed August 12, 2017.

²² Elliott Colla (2013) In Praise of Insults: Slogan Genres, Slogan Repertoires and Innovation, Review of Middle East Studies, 47(1), pp. 37–48.

²³ Some recent studies have emerged on news satire in Egypt; see, for examples Joel Gordon & Heba Arafa (2014) ‘Stuck with Him’: Bassem Youssef and the Egyptian Revolution’s Last Laugh, Review of Middle East Studies, 48(1/2), pp. 34–43; Yomna Elsayed (2016) Laughing Through Change: Subversive Humor in Online Videos of Arab Youth, International Journal of Communication, 10, pp. 5102–5122; and Amal Ibrahim & Nahed Eltantawy. (2017) Egypt’s Jon Stewart: Humorous Political Satire and Serious Culture Jamming, International Journal of Communication, 11, pp. 2806–2824. On humor outside Egypt, see Matt Sienkiewicz (2012) Out of Control: Palestinian News Satire and Government Power in the Age of Social Media, Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture, 10(1–2), pp. 106–118; Lisa Wedeen (2013) Ideology and Humor in Dark Times: Notes from Syria, Critical Inquiry, 39(4), pp. 841–873; and Anke Reichenbach (2015) Laughter in times of uncertainty: Negotiating gender and social distance in Bahraini women’s humorous talk, Humor—International Journal of Humor Research, 28(4), pp. 511–539.

²⁴ The geographical concentration on Tahrir Square is indicative of the way in which ‘the Arab Spring’ has been located at the heart of Cairo in academic discourse, although anthropologists have been at the forefront of examining how the revolution was experienced at the margins. See: Lila Abu-Lughod (2012) Living the ‘Revolution’ in an Egyptian Village: Moral Action in a National Space, American Ethnologist, 39(1), pp. 21–25; Samuli Schielke (2015) Egypt in the Future Tense: Hope, Frustration, and Ambivalence before and after 2011 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).

²⁵ For a well-developed literature review on the matter, see: M. Billig, Laughter and Ridicule.

²⁶ M. Billig, Laughter and Ridicule, p. 175.

²⁷ See further S. S. Shehata, The Politics of Laughter; and Adel Hammouda (1992) Al-Nukta al-Siyasiyya: Kayfa yaskhar al-misriyyun min ḥukkāmihim [The political joke: How Egyptians ridicule their rulers] (Cairo: Sphinx lil-Tibā‘a wal-Nashr).

²⁸ N. I. Atif, Awlad el-Nokta, pp. 1–2.

²⁹ Compare O. Pi-Sunyer, Political Humor in a Dictatorial State with D. Anagondahalli & S. Khamis, Mubarak Framed!.

³⁰ A. L. Al-Sayyid Marsot, The Cartoon in Egypt, p. 3.

³¹ S. S. Shehata, The Politics of Laughter, p. 80.

³² D. Anagondahalli & S. Khamis, Mubarak Framed!, p. 4.

³³ Compare C. Davies, Humor and Protest: Jokes as the Truth about Soviet Socialism with Alexei Yurchak (1997) The Cynical Reason of Late Socialism: Power, Pretense, and the Anekdot, Public Culture, 9, pp. 161–188.

³⁴ Peter Sloterdijk (2001/1987) Critique of Cynical Reason (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).

³⁵ See Adel Iskandar (2014) The Meme-ing of Revolution: Creativity, Folklore, and the Dislocation of Power in Egypt, Jadaliyya. Available at: https://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/19122/the-meme-ing-of-revolution_creativity-folklore-and, accessed August 12, 2017.

³⁶ R. Bauman & C. L. Briggs, Poetics and Performance as Critical Perspectives on Language and Social Life.

³⁷ S. S. Shehata, The Politics of Laughter, pp. 79–80.

³⁸ D. Anagondahalli & S. Khamis, Mubarak Framed!.

³⁹ Given the wave of repressive measures exacted against academics and intellectuals by the current Egyptian government, I have chosen to protect the anonymity of my interlocutors through the use of pseudonyms. The ethnographic vignettes remain, however, actual occurrences.

⁴⁰ O. Pi-Sunyer, Political Humor in a Dictatorial State, p. 182.

⁴¹ Tim Jenkins (1994) Fieldwork and the Perception of Everyday Life, Man, 29, p. 452.

⁴² Paul Dresch (2000) Wilderness of Mirrors: Truth and Vulnerability in Middle Eastern Fieldwork, in: P. Dresch, W. James & D. J. Parkin (eds) Anthropologists in a Wider World: Essays on Field Research, pp. 109–127 (New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books).

⁴³ The original pictures were uploaded on Sisi’s official Facebook page on January 29, 2016, then relayed on the website of the Egyptian daily Al-Youm al-Sābe‘ [The Seventh Day], whose watermark is overlain on the image. The original caption, however, gives no indication as to the specific people represented in the image.

⁴⁴ Linda Herrera (2014) Memes and the War of Ideas, in: Revolution in the Age of Social Media: The Egyptian Popular Insurrection and the Internet, pp. 115–141 (London: Verso).