Where have all the good jokes gone?

By Myra Sidharta

JAKARTA (JP): It was late in the evening when Nana burst into Leyton and Olga's house where we had our Christmas party. Dinner was over, but Nana was late as usual, because she had to go to many different places. Nana, always noisy and giggly, had a lot to tell about the latest political developments and, of course, she brightened up the room with her stories and jokes.

But the atmosphere changed when she told a joke about the First Person's physical handicap. Of course, laughter initially followed, but after a while some people showed great embarrassment. Someone reprimanded Nana, who suddenly felt like a member of the group of comedians which tried to cash in on the same handicap on TV two months ago.

Nana, repentant, made up her mind to go to the President to apologize. A discussion followed about whether it was a good joke or not, and the majority thought it was not. What went wrong? Why are there no good jokes circulating anymore? Why is it that we who laughed indiscriminately about all the jokes about the New Order suddenly started to discuss the rationale of a joke?

Were the jokes funnier then? Or was it because they were told whisperingly, after looking around to make sure that no other people would hear it, like important state secrets? Were we laughing because we thought that we had escaped being jailed?

Some of the jokes were so good that we wondered who had made them. But nobody ever found out, they just appeared and then spread like wildfire. In any case, Indonesia was on the way to becoming the country with the best national jokes.

It was then that Mimi came up with the theory that the former first person made them up himself or recruited a professional to create them. Next to the jokes we had acronyms and abbreviations that were made into jokes because they, too, were so innovative and funny. That led her to think that the makers must have been professionals, and not merely people with time on their hands who found some inspiration. Take, for instance, "Toshiba", the Japanese electronics brand, which in the New Order was used to describe the first family's three sons: Tommy, Sigit, Bambang.

Why would the high and mighty invent jokes mocking themselves? "No," Mimi said "if you analyze these jokes, they seldom ridiculed them, rather they spoke of their greatness. Take the joke in which the late former first lady asked her husband to follow her to heaven and to which he answered "as soon as our daughter has built a highway to heaven". At first, one would think of derision, but the joke refers to the daughter's accomplishment in building highways."

But then why were they invented?

"Joking about someone is a way to act out our aggression toward that person," Mimi said. "Once the aggression is acted out by laughing, we do not have the need to act out openly and in reality again. A catharsis has taken place, just like during a session of psychoanalysis. That was why we were all ostensibly so complacent during that period. And the mastermind behind all the injustice during the New Order knew that, in this manner, the people could be controlled. Their anger was controlled, and he did not have to fear an uprising.

"A very smart utilization of psychological warfare, well, cold war, warfare maybe. The bad jokes during the period of reform were probably also invented by 'them' for if you remember, they are truly deriding the people in power."

Leyton asked: "If he was such a good psychologist, why couldn't he control his children and his cronies?"

"Good question," said Mimi. "There is only one explanation for that: to be able to create more jokes for the replacement of aggression, and with this method he could keep the potential enemies at bay."

Applause followed this ingenious explanation. The evening was filled with abundant laughter as we raked up the old jokes.

Poor Leyton and Olga couldn't laugh as heartily as we did, for jokes are difficult to translate into foreign languages.