Gallows humor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  (Redirected from Gallows humour)
Jump to: navigation, search


Gallows humor is typically made by or about the victim of such a situation, but not the perpetrator of it.[4]

Nature and functions[edit]

Jewish humor book - "Motke Chabad"


Gallows humor has the social effect of strengthening the morale of the oppressed and undermines the morale of the oppressors.[6][7] According to Wylie Sypher, "to be able to laugh at evil and error means we have surmounted them."[8]

Gallows humor is a kind of humor which developed in middle Europe, from where it was imported to the United States as part of Jewish humor.[3] It is rendered with the German expression Galgenhumor. The concept of gallows humor is comparable to the French expression rire jaune,[9][10][11] which also has a Germanic equivalent in the Belgian Dutch expression groen lachen.[12][13][14][15]

Italian comedian Daniele Luttazzi discussed gallows humour focusing on the particular type of laughter that it arouses (risata verde or groen lachen), and said that grotesque satire, as opposed to ironic satire, is the one that most often arouses this kind of laughter.[16][17][18] In the Weimar era Kabaretts, this genre was particularly common, and according to Luttazzi Karl Valentin and Karl Kraus were the major masters of it.[18]


There are multiple recorded instances of humorous last words and final statements. For example, author and playwright Oscar Wilde was destitute and living in a cheap boarding house when he found himself on his deathbed. There are variations on what his sentence exactly was, but his reputed last words were, "Either that wallpaper goes or I do."[citation needed]

Examples of gallows speeches include:

  • One of the first convicts transported in Australia by the British Empire, nicknamed after the pirate Black Caesar, escaped the penal colony in 1789 and lived as a bushranger in the wilderness. He survived by raiding garden patches with a stolen gun. When he was eventually caught, according to colonial governor David Collins he was "so indifferent about meeting death, that he declared in confinement that if he should be hanged he would create a laugh before he was turned off, by playing some trick upon the executioner."[19]
  • Murderer James French has been attributed with famous last words before his death by electric chair: "How's this for a headline? 'French Fries'." Likewise, when a Jewish mob boss George Appel was electrocuted, his last words were: "Well, gentlemen, you are about to see a baked Appel."[citation needed]


  • The Japanese Navy Mitsubishi G4M Isshikirikkou (イッシキリッコウ) "Betty" bomber airplane was called "Hamaki" (葉巻 or はまき, meaning cigar) by the Japanese crews not only because its fuselage was cigar-shaped, but because it had a tendency to ignite on fire and burn violently when it was hit. The American nickname was "flying Zippo" - as the slogan of the cigarette lighter company was: "Guaranteed to light on first strike, every time".[citation needed]
  • Similarly the British took to calling the M4 Sherman tank, which burnt out or exploded easily when hit, "Ronson" after the cigarette lighter whose slogan was: "Lights up the first time, every time!".[citation needed]
  • Soviet pilots in WWII joked that the true meaning of the type designation of the LaGG-3 was Lakirovanny Garantirovanny Grob, "varnished guaranteed coffin".
  • Overnight, in the Battle of Jutland (31 May - 1 June 1916), the destroyer HMS Tipperary was sunk; only 13 survived out of a crew of 197, in her engagement with heavily armed German dreadnought SMS Westfalen. The survivors were identified in the gloom by Royal Navy rescuers because they were heard in the distance, singing, "It's a long way to Tipperary". Their rescuers said, "We knew it was you".[citation needed]

In culture[edit]

In film[edit]

In the conclusion to Monty Python's Life of Brian, a group of crucified criminals joyfully sing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life"

In print[edit]

  • In Stephen King's science fiction novel The Tommyknockers (1987), the main character reflects on a joke he "heard once". As a man is about to be executed, the firing squad leader offers the man about to be executed a cigarette. He replies, "No thanks, I'm trying to quit."
  • In her ethnography Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday life in Brazil (1993), anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes describes the use of gallows humour by the inhabitants of an impoverished shantytown in northeastern Brazil.[citation needed]

Mercutio is stabbed in a swordfight by Tybalt, Juliet's cousin:


See also[edit]


  1. ^ "gal'lows hu"mor". Retrieved 2013-03-27. 
  2. ^ "gallows humor - definition. American English definition of gallows humor by Macmillan Dictionary". Retrieved 2013-03-27. 
  3. ^ a b Kurt Vonnegut (1971) Running Experiments Off: An Interview, in Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut quote:


  4. ^ Alan Dundes and Thomas Hauschild (1983) Auschwitz Jokes, in Western Folklore, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Oct., 1983), pp. 249-260
  7. ^ Mariah Snyder, Ruth Lindquist Complementary and alternative therapies in nursing






  12. ^ Brachin, Pierre (1985) The Dutch language: a survey pp.101-2
  13. ^ Claude et Marcel De Grève, Françoise Wuilmart, TRADUCTION / Translation, section Histoire et théorie de la traduction - Recherches sur les microstructures, in: Grassin, Jean-Marie (ed.), DITL (Dictionnaire International des Termes Littéraires), [22 Nov 2010]"











  19. ^ Hughes, Robert. "The Fatal Shore." Vintage Books. New York. 1986. Page 196.
  20. ^ Witticisms Of 9 Condemned Criminals at Canongate Press

Further reading[edit]
