Cringe Humour: Our Love-Hate Relationship
with Socially-awkward Comedy
Angela Sleeter
Abstract
While utilizing humor in the classroom has been proven to be an effective method
for increasing engagement and retention, it can also be problematic as the range and
types of humour which tickle the funny bone of the average American undergraduate
seem to be narrowing alarmingly. Certain types of humour, such as satire, are often
too context-driven for students who do not consume enough literature, news, and
other print media. What students do consume tends to be highly outrageous, off-thewall reality-TV style programming. How can The Onion possibly compete with the
cartoonish figures and circus acts that comprise the American media or with the
constant barrage of sarcastic memes on students’ social media feeds? There is one
type of humour, however, that consistently connects with students: cringe comedy.
Unfortunately, this is not a style of humour that would seem to be appropriate for use
in the classroom. How then can humour-enhanced learning experiences be created if
what students find funny has little to no pedagogical value? In order to get to the
very Schadenfreude bottom of this love of cringe comedy, I enlisted the help of my
students as we explored the origins, characteristics, and appeal of cringe comedy.
What parts of us are drawn to and delighted by this style of humour? What is the
value in laughing at others and ourselves in these awkward and cringe-inducing
situations? Do we somehow need these awkward characters, these embarrassing plot
lines? This paper explores our love-hate relationship with socially-awkward humour,
where it meets and forms boundaries with other types of humour, specifically satire,
and how cringe comedy might possibly find a place in the ostensibly constrained
environment of the university classroom.
Key Words: Social comedy, satire, cringe, pedagogy, empathy.
*****
1. Introduction
There are numerous benefits to using humour as a pedagogical tool.
Humour encourages engagement, increases retention, reduces stress, and improves
cognition and critical thinking skills. The caveat in utilizing humour, of course, is
that not everyone has the same sense of humour; moreover, with the rise of
technology and ubiquitous social media, what students find amusing has changed
dramatically in the last decade. After a formerly-successful lesson that included a
scene from Monty Python’s Holy Grail fell completely flat yet again, I finally
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decided it was time to find out, once and for all, what actually makes my students
laugh. With the gap between what my students and I find humorous developing into
more of a chasm. I wanted to get to the heart of the problem and see what, if anything,
could be done to continue using humor effectively in the classroom. Thus, as part of
a larger analysis/synthesis paper assignment this past spring semester, I conducted
an in-class activity with my first-year composition students around analysing humor.
I began the in-class assignment with “dad jokes,” moved on to slightly more
complex verbal humor like puns and word play, and then introduced them to satire
through The Onion and The New Yorker’s Borowitz Report. Finally, we pulled up
YouTube to watch clips from movies that students found funny. By the end of class,
I wasn’t certain if I was more alarmed by what they found funny or by their almost
complete inability to break down for me why they found these things funny. What
we were certain about, however, was that even our very basic overview of humour
spoke eloquently about issues of education, race, and social economics, as well as
more abstract ideas such as permission/consent, the directed gaze, and perhaps, most
important of all, the role of empathy in humour.
The winner by far of the “what my students find funny” contest was cringe
comedy – good old-fashioned awkwardness and angst splashed across the big screen
like an accident that won’t let you avert your eyes. The website TV Tropes defines
cringe comedy this way:
A big trend in modern TV comedy: shows
where the humour mostly comes from placing
characters in the most embarrassing situations
possible, or having them say the most awkward
or offensive thing possible at all times. Often
uses documentary feel to heighten the
naturalism and increase the cringe, or has actors
in character interacting with an unsuspecting
public. Comedy that gives you second-hand
shame.1
Second-hand shame. We are all familiar with this kind of humour. Ricky Gervais
did it so well in the British version of The Office that it inspired an American version
with Steve Carrell as the cringe-inducing boss. Certainly this trend is not quite as
new as TV Tropes would have us believe. However, the fact that scientists are now
studying “vicarious embarrassment” as a social phenomenon certainly gives
credence to its increasing popularity.
Today, there is increasing exposure of
individuals to a public audience. Television
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shows and the internet provide platforms for this
and, at times, allow observing others' flaws and
norm transgressions. Regardless of whether the
person observed realizes their flaw or not,
observers in the audience experience vicarious
embarrassment.2
It was obvious to me that my students enjoyed this vicarious embarrassment. What
wasn’t obvious was why.
2. The Impact of Social Constructs on Humour
In order to help with the “why,” it may be helpful to offer some context around
my student population and the general demographics of my classroom. Many of my
students come from impoverished neighborhoods, lower socio-economic brackets,
and unstable home lives. The majority of my students are first-generation college
students who struggle with everything from good study habits and time management
practices to the apparently-common Millennial issues of social media addiction and
high levels of anxiety (two things which, in my opinion, are undoubtedly connected).
About half of my students arrive in my classroom carrying experiences with gangs,
guns, physical and sexual assault, domestic violence, mental illness, and the death
of someone close to them. I believe this is in important context because in light of
where some of my students have come from, it cannot be surprising that many have
not had the opportunity to develop a funny bone. Humour is something of a luxury.
If you are constantly living in survival mode, you probably cannot afford to spend
time and expend energy developing your sense of humour. If these students have
learned to find humour in their world, it has often been humour of the darker variety
than a middle-class, non-minority student would have encountered in their high
school years. Thus, race and class are almost certainly inextricably tied to our
individual senses of humour.
As I guided my students through the humour analysis, I fully anticipated
seeing these differences in humour preferences based on race, class, and even
gender. It was therefore extremely telling that none of my students, regardless of
gender, race, or socio-economic background, found satire funny. It occurred to me
then that perhaps understanding what they didn’t find humourous might lead me to
a better understanding of what they did and why. It would be, at least, a start. So
with a little probing and some additional research, I was able to discern three reasons
why my students specifically – and I believe this holds true for college-age students
in general – did not find satire amusing.
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3. The Problem with Satire
One issue that precludes understanding of satire is that the target of the humour
may not be initially obvious. Unlike cringe comedy in which camera angles,
directing style, and overt awkwardness point to the exact target of derision, satire is
more subtle. Because it’s inherently closer to the truth, students struggle to discern
just what exactly is happening. The cues aren’t there showing them what they are
supposed to be laughing about, and without that explicit permission to laugh, they
tend to remain silent and baffled. This idea of permission (or consent being required)
before people will laugh has become more apparent to me the deeper I delve into
humour studies. In cringe humour, there is either clever self-deprecating humour –
“Hey! Laugh at/with me!” - or there is a specific object of ridicule that everyone
knows to be the target. Millennials also tend to be more visually oriented, preferring
to pass a meme around or share a video rather than exchange verbal wit which is
often the basis of truly great satire. This, too, creates an environment of permission,
consent, and sharing in which laughter flows more easily.
All of this seems to indicate that laughter has become something less
spontaneous and individualized and more like structured behavioral with a set of
rules dictating who laughs at whom and where and why. Cringe comedy functions
as the less emotionally mature sibling to satire. They both want you to laugh at the
ridiculousness of something, but only cringe comedy will forcefully remind you that
you don’t want to be the one being laughed at or the only one who isn’t laughing.
Being given permission, having your gaze specifically directed toward an object of
derision, and avoiding being the object oneself then all become easier ways of
engaging humour. Satire was never that easy. Satire requires some work, some
imagination, and especially some critical thinking skills.
The lack of critical thinking, analytical, and problem solving skills probably
lies even closer to the heart of why students struggle with satire. In their most
simplistic form, jokes are simply little problems to solve. You hear a joke. You find
the clever word play or the incongruity or the twist you didn’t see coming at first,
and then you solve or resolve it and (hopefully0 you laugh. But underdeveloped
problem solving skills or even a propensity toward lazy thinking, may prevent
someone from taking the necessary mental steps to solve the riddle. And this matters,
not because we want people laughing all the time (though there is value in laughter),
but because a fixed mindset will hit a wall like this – a riddle, a problem, something
they can’t immediately solve – and they will stop.
Meanwhile, someone with a growth mindset will grapple a bit. They will
push against the wall of a problem until it collapses and they are free to move forward
again. They will untangle the joke and find the resolution. And psychologists have
proven a growth mindset is one of the most important factors in student success and
achievement. It can contribute to motivation, and it can narrow the gender gap in
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STEM fields.3 With that in mind, it immediately becomes obvious why humour
could play an important role in the classroom, and why specific types of humour like
satire can provide vital information to us about our students. One bit of crucial
information that the bafflement over satire provides us is the alarming lack of social
and political commentary and news sources to which the current generation expose
themselves.
This is, I believe, a third contributing factor to the satire conundrum.
Students simply are not reading enough, especially news which they apparently do
not consume beyond the superficial entertainment and celebrity variety or whatever
may pop up in their social media news feeds as “currently trending.” In fact, there
appears to be enormous apathy toward anything outside of the social media feeds,
and unless students deliberately seek out political or international new sources – and
some do, but they are the minority -- it is unlikely they will encounter world events,
economic policy, or even human interest stories. This then explains why satire
confounds them. Without the necessary context that most satire is based upon, there
is no reference point. If you do not know the truth, you cannot discern when someone
is stretching it for the sake of making a point. To many of my students, satire is the
mental equivalent of throwing darts at an invisible dart board.
4. Cringe Humour
Assuming then that a lack of permission and obvious targets, poor critical
thinking skills, and questionable cultural literacy leads students to an inability to
engage with satire, it is then possible to begin to extrapolate why cringe comedy and
socially awkward humour are appealing.
Part of what makes cringe comedy work is that the cringe target is obvious. That
is, who or what we are supposed to be laughing at is obvious. Often the camera
angles and mockumentary-style directing make the target even more conspicuous.
According to an article in TIME about the end of The Office (American version):
Cringe comedy is all about the painful laughs
derived from the awkwardness of social
interaction and around people’s lack of selfawareness. Its building block is the painful
silence that hangs in the air after a thoughtless
remark. That’s why cringe comedy often uses
single-camera (documentary or movie-style
shooting) and no laugh track, instead of the
more theatrical three-camera, live-audience
setup that’s been the sitcom standard since I
Love Lucy. Cringe comedy often borrows the
techniques of reality TV – the relentlessly
tracking camera, the confessional asides – to
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find humor in the difference between a
character’s self-image and the way he or she
actually comes off to other people. That kind of
clinical scrutiny is funny but merciless – that’s
where the “cringe” comes from.4
In direct opposition to the subtlety of satire, socially awkward humor gives plenty
of cues and, more importantly, blatant permission for us to laugh. From the berating
diatribes of the notoriously evil Dr. Cox on Scrubs to the squirm-inducing
obnoxiousness of David Brent on The Office, from the painful self-absorption of
Larry on Curb Your Enthusiasm to Elaine Benes doing her “dry-heave” dance moves
on Seinfeld, we know we are supposed to laugh at the painful, awkward, selfabsorbed, and often oblivious characters parading in faux-reality across our screens.
Given this explicit permission to laugh, many people will find humour in the
vicarious embarrassment. Indeed, my students would ask how you can do anything
but laugh when you have a bird’s eye view of the entire world’s arguments and
awkwardness, an endless stream of dating disasters and drunken prat falls that
populate their handheld devices, their news feeds, their Netflix queues.
Perhaps it is precisely because the Millennial generation is accustomed to
seeing their lives and the lives of others play out on a screen that cringe comedy is
so appealing. Young people accustomed to watching live auditions on American
Idol, to Keeping Up with the Kardashians, to cheering on a Bachelor as he searches
for true love in real time have an innate familiarity and comfort with the cringe genre.
If you’ve grown up with confessional-style social media as the norm, socially
awkward situations may actually seem less cringe-worthy and more just a fact of
life. Still, cringe comedy wasn’t invented along with reality TV. After all, how many
of us watched in vain for years while Gilligan spoiled every attempt to get the
shipwrecked cast off the island? How many of us couldn’t get enough of Road
Runner and Wiley Coyote, all the flying anvils and exploding TNT bundles? It’s not
new, and yet recent television comedies would have us believe they invented the
socially awkward. The truth is that there is an enormous leap between the cartoon of
a French-speaking skunk pursuing an accidentally-painted cat and Judd Apatow
movies chronicling the painful escapades of anchormen, popstars, bridesmaids, and
middle-aged virgins. A rueful laugh has been trumped by the cringe reflex.
So we can see that cringe comedy asks very little of its audience. It offers
around-the-clock availability of material for which no in-depth political or social
knowledge is needed, no problem solving skills are required. You have permission
to laugh at the pain of strangers and even share it with friends. Cringe comedy asks
very little while it offers big laughs at the expense of others. It also painfully and
awkwardly reminds you that you are the one who gets to laugh. In a world where
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embarrassment can go global in minutes, where no one wants to be the object of
laughter, only the purveyor of it, you may find yourself thanking your lucky stars
that no matter how difficult your life is, at least you have not been publicly
humiliated on the worldwide web.
5. Pedagogical Implications: Teaching Empathy
Clearly, there are pitfalls that accompany using this type of humor in the
classroom. The first and most obvious is that the content can be inappropriate even
by fairly liberal standards of what can be viewed and discussed in the classroom.
Cringe humour often contains profanity, vulgarity, and sexual content, and if those
issues were not enough to discourage utilization of this in the classroom, there is the
more pressing issue of finding an actual legitimate pedagogical purpose for doing
so. Simply wanting to connect with students through humor is not enough
justification for indiscriminately showing clips from Lena Dunham’s Girls. Unlike
satire which can serve as a springboard to discussion or riddles and puns which can
teach problem solving and writing skills, cringe comedy is designed to make you ….
well, cringe. How could that possibly be useful in an academic setting? The answer
lies in a skill that is at the very heart of academic and vocational success, a skill that
can and must be taught as part of all analytical and critical thinking lessons. That
skill is empathy.
As I have noted several times in this paper, a core objective in all of my writing
courses is the development of critical thinking skills. In addition to writing well, all
of my students must display critical thinking though their ability to ask questions,
embrace nuance, challenge assumptions, and exhibit empathy. While empathy is a
key component of critical thinking, it can be difficult to teach for several reasons,
not the least of which is that students are highly reluctant to show any kind of
vulnerability in the classroom. However, the combination of the “vicarious
embarrassment” study mentioned above and the students’ own love of cringe
comedy may be the ideal solution to teaching critical thinking through relatable,
relevant, engaging humour.
In the “vicarious embarrassment” study, scientists discovered a link between
seeing someone doing something socially awkward and a person’s neural pathways
registering it as pain. “In two consecutive studies, using behavioral measures and
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the authors show that the experience
of vicarious embarrassment is linked to empathy and neural activations in brain areas
constituting the affective component of the pain matrix….” 5
One of the key points of the study was that the people most affected negatively
by watching others in socially awkward or embarrassing situations were those who
were self-described as having high levels of empathy. In other words, the higher
your level of empathy, the more painful it is for you to watch cringe comedy. Herein
lies the key and also the conundrum. Surely not everyone who enjoys cringe comedy
is lacking in empathy, and yet how to explain the rise of its popularity? Has the
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ubiquitous nature of cringe humour caused a certain level of desensitization in a
generation that seems incapable of looking away or turning off the awkwardness?
There is room for much more research on this subject, and certainly the next time
I engage my students in a humour analysis activity, I will be armed with an entirely
new set of questions – questions that will encourage critical thinking, employ their
empathy, and ensure they never watch The Hangover 2 or Mean Girls in quite the
same way again. Perhaps the best strategy for utilizing humour, teaching empathy,
and guiding students toward better critical thinking can be found in a thorough
examination of not what we find funny, but in how we react to those socially
awkward situations that are constantly dancing across our screens.
Notes
1
"Cringe Comedy." TV Tropes. Accessed May 26, 2016.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CringeComedy.
2
"Your Flaws Are My Pain." EurekAlert: The American Association for the
Advancement of Science. April 13, 2011.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-04/plos-yfa041211.php.
3
Blackwell, Lisa, and Carol Dweck. "The Growth Mindset." Mindset Works.
Accessed May 26, 2016.
https://www.mindsetworks.com/webnav/whatismindset.aspx.
4
Dahl, Melissa. "Why Watching The Office Makes Us Cringe." Body Odd. April
15, 2011. http://bodyodd.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/04/15/6472696-why-watchingthe-office-makes-us-cringe.
5
"Your Flaws Are My Pain." EurekAlert: The American Association for the
Advancement of Science.
Dr. Angela Sleeter is an Assistant Professor of English and Humanities at Lincoln
College in Lincoln, Illinois. When not teaching and subjecting students to her
quirky sense of humour, she enjoys researching European history, traveling to
American Civil War battlefields, planting flowers in her enchanted back garden,
watching re-runs of British archaeology programs, and singing Broadway musicals
at the top of her lungs as she commutes to campus down America’s famous
highway-Route 66. Most days you’ll find her secretly pining for a pet unicorn.