No laughing matter…Do we take comedy too seriously?

In 1905 Sigmund Freud claimed to have basically sucked the fun out of comedy by “having reduced the mechanism of humorous pleasure to a formula…The pleasure in jokes has seemed to us to arise from an economy in expenditure upon inhibition, the pleasure in the comic from an economy in expenditure upon ideation…and the pleasure in humour from an economy in expenditure upon feeling. In all three modes of working of our mental apparatus the pleasure is derived from an economy.” He also argued that an effective joke can function like a bribe, using pleasure to trick us into collusion: “In the case of aggressive purposes it employs…[this] method in order to turn the hearer, who was indifferent to begin with, into a co-hater or co-despiser, and creates for the enemy a host of opponents where at first there was only one.”

In 2022 the first observation was echoed by former comedian Volodymyr Zelensky: “Jesters were allowed to tell the truth in ancient kingdoms…complex mechanisms and political formulations are difficult for humans to grasp. But through humour, it’s easy: it’s a shortcut” and the second by notably humourless culture warrior Titania McGrath: “Comedy is a tool used by fascists to spread hate. A kind of hate spatula, if you will.”

This salon will be chaired by salon regular Rebecca Rosewarne and we will be joined by:

Claire Berry: Claire Berry started doing standup comedy in 2019 and founded and hosted Fem de la Femme CIC in Liverpool, which ran for three years. The project ran sell out events and workshops for female comics and began to put women on the comedy map in Merseyside.

In 2025 Claire was hounded out of the local comedy circuit after referencing the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of sex in the Equality Act. Claire will discuss the current state of comedy, in particular for women who are now battling with old school and progressive misogyny in addition to the censorship of material at grassroots comedy events.

Simon Kirchin: Simon Kirchin is Professor of Applied Ethics at the University of Leeds, and Director of IDEA: the Ethics Centre. He works on ethics, political philosophy and philosophy of art. Over the past few years he has been working with comedians and writers about the philosophy of comedy, thinking about how ethical issues interact with comedy and humour. He is currently writing a short book on comedy and freedom of speech.

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