Why should the COVID-19 pandemic keep us from having some laughs? After all, dark times call for dark humor. There's plenty of it out there — see TikTok — and it's actually scientifically good for us.Laughing, even when (or especially when) the world's falling apart, releases dopamine, the body chemical that makes you feel pleasure. In psychology, the benign-violation theory—which explains that laughing at stuff that could kill us makes those threats easier to handle— also makes sense of this juxtaposition of laughter and fear.“You want to cope. So you try to make jokes about it,” said humor expert Peter McGraw. “And then and in that way, it's that really wonderful ability that especially professional comedians have, which is to creatively find ways to make these violations benign.”A notable example is what happened when the AIDS crisis ravaged the LGBTQ community. Gay artists and writers still created humorous plays and art and literature, even as they watched their loved ones die. Playwright Robert Patrick's former AIDS-afflicted lover requested he turn his death into a joke.“He asked me to write a funny AIDS play,” Patrick said, remembering his '80s play, Pouf Positive. “And I said I can't write a funny AIDS play. He said, 'Of course you can, Bob. It's the biggest joke played on us since sex itself, and with the longest punchline.'”VICE News looked at other historical examples of dark humor, and the fallout for some of its practitioners.Cover: Tony Kushner, whose play "Angels in America" brought AIDS jokes to American Theater in the early '90s. (VICE News Tonight/VICE TV)
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