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Looking at Laughter: Humor, Power & Transgression in Roman Visual Culture 100 BC-AD 250
In this accessible illustrated book, his 3rd to examine an aspect of Roman visual culture, Clarke asks what made Romans laugh? Looking at Laughter examines a heterogeneous corpus of visual material, from the crudely obscene to the exquisitely sophisticated, from the playful to the deadly serious—everything from street theater to erudite paintings parodying the emperor. Nine chapters, organized under the rubrics of Visual Humor, Social Humor & Sexual Humor, analyze a wide range of visual art, including wall painting, sculpture, mosaics & ceramics. Archeological sites, as well as a range of ancient texts, inscriptions & graffiti, provide the background for understanding the how & why of humorous imagery. This study offers insights into the mentality of patrons & viewers who enjoyed laughing at the gods, the powers-that-be & themselves.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Visual humor. Words or images? Degrees of visuality in Roman humor; Funny faces-onstage & off; Double takes; Apotropaic laughter
2. Social humor. Power over the other or the other's power? Laughing at the Pygmy & the Aethiops; Who's laughing? Modern scholars & ancient viewers in class conflict; Parody in elite visual culture at Pompeii: heroes, gods & foundation myths
3. Sexual humor. Sexual humor & the gods; Laughing at human sexual folly
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Visual humor. Words or images? Degrees of visuality in Roman humor; Funny faces-onstage & off; Double takes; Apotropaic laughter
2. Social humor. Power over the other or the other's power? Laughing at the Pygmy & the Aethiops; Who's laughing? Modern scholars & ancient viewers in class conflict; Parody in elite visual culture at Pompeii: heroes, gods & foundation myths
3. Sexual humor. Sexual humor & the gods; Laughing at human sexual folly
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index
- GenresNonfictionHistoryArt
334 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2007
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February 12, 2014
Much of the value of studying history and alien cultures is to obtain critical perspective and to broaden the imagination as to the range of human possibility. This book, an attempt to get inside the Roman psyche, effectively contributes to such salutary efforts.
The object of Looking at Laughter is “Roman visual culture,” that being everything from graffiti to high art. Because sexual humor “opens up ideas quite at odds with contemporary Euro-American religious culture” (p. 165), it is amply and graphically represented, the book containing 143 colored plates and black-and-white figures. Much of the author's effort is to situate such representations in their original physical and social contexts so readers may appreciate them as their intended audiences did. This is not any easy task, Roman attitudes and assumptions being different than current ones. Here, however, Clarke does an exceptionally good job. To look at the illustrations before reading the text and then to look again, informed by his exposition, is to see the same things in a better, richer light.
The distance between them and us is apparent in a consideration of Roman religion as compared to, say, Christianity. While we tend to see a great gulf between the natural and the supernatural, Romans lived, to borrow Carl Sagan's expression, in a “demon-haunted” world, the space between the profane and the divine being so narrow that an emperor or hero could be acknowledged divine and a god or goddess could lust for and breed with a mortal. Indeed, while Christians ostensibly see sex as a cause of our fall from grace, the Romans saw it as a gift of the gods. While the Christian deity is sexless, the Roman ones, many of them, were quite sexy. It was something, in fact, which we had in common. Just as spirits were everywhere, so were graphic representations of sex—an association touching at the core of classical religion.
An instance of this connection is the herm. Originally cairns raised at crossroads, dedicated to the god of travel, commerce and, by extension, wealth, herms became as unremarkable and even more common than lawn ornaments in ancient Athens. In their final form, as placed near doorways of (common) Athenian homes and (elite) Roman ones, herms were (ithyphallic?) pillars upon which would be busts representing the “heads” of families. Appropriately, at a distance below the progenitor's visage would be his genitalia. Custom and ancestor worship being at the heart of Roman religion, such representations supplemented the more traditionally common maintenance of wax masks of notable forebears, masks that would be occasionally paraded publicly. Such demonstrations would be considered odd today and the herms themselves would be considered vulgar, if not illegal. Yet, to the ancients, the masks were pious, the herms beneficial and protective. Hermes/Mercury not only guarded liminal spaces, but provided good fortune, images of him serving to promote businesses ranging from simple shops to gambling halls and brothels. Representations of the god were not intended to be funny, but some of them shared apotropaic functionality, according to Clarke, with much sexually themed art.
As humor converts anxiety or fear into laughter, so the apotropaic wards off evil. What captures the attention of a person may distract, even disarm, a demon. Spirits were everywhere, both within and without, not all of them well-disposed towards humans. Thus a Roman boy might wear a pendant penis around his neck, a fascinus intended to distract the evil—or envious—eye of demon or pederast. This sounds more like superstition than sense, but it is not all that different from the protective air cleaners, sprays, creams, wipes and pills moderns use to ward off invisible, but omnipresent, germs. Thus, too, mosaic flooring of cocks and cunts ridiculously anthropomorphized might at once fascinate and amuse the guest, giving pause to any intruder, while broadcasting the taste and sophistication of the host.
As without, so within. Not only were the spirits seen objectively, they were also quite subjectively important. Thus the daimon of Sokrates, the inner voice of caution—or what we might think conscience. Thus the emotions, which even now we speak of as “possessing” a person. Again, the apotropaism of laughter, the joke that “cuts the ice” or that disarms the adversary.
Another difference between them and us, closely associated with our religious sense, is ethical. For the Romans, generally speaking, appearance was character. For us “character,” in the approbative sense, is an inner quality, the intentions behind “characteristic” behaviors. We try to respect otherness, to be carefully sensitive to the plight of those less favored than ourselves. We even stretch our compassion to sympathetically imagine misfortunes behind criminal acts and criminal characters. The Romans publicly executed criminals at what amounted to half-time at the games, their deaths often being didactively elevated tableaux with carefully staged mythological themes. Cicero, when he could, mocked the appearances of his political opponents in the Senate. Roman art is replete with witty portrayals of deformity and of otherness, of such spectacles as dwarfish pygmies with disproportionately large genitalia battling, or copulating with, exotic African fauna—or of a convicted criminal bedecked with wings being hoisted high above the stands of the Colosseum only to be dropped in a morally instructive recreation of the Icarian myth.
Of course it is not so simple as all of this. Ambiguity is of the essence of comedy and enantiadromia drives much of it. Christianity, recall, arose from within the bowels of Empire. Sokrates, to the Roman imagination, was represented as being both ugly and chaste. So, too, the darker side of modern apprehensions of difference are still reflected in caricature and in such circus freak shows as still exist. Yet such generalities still serve both as a measure of distinction between cultures and as fulcra central to the play of humor.
There is very little to complain about in this book. For once, the illustrations are adequate to the text. Not much is discussed without it being pictured. Furthermore, Clarke makes his case in every case. No picture goes unexplained, no joke or visual pun goes unexamined. In all instances he establishes, plausibly, that such and such object might evoke mirth in this or that audience. But plausibility is not proof. To me, some of the pictures just seem sexy.
The object of Looking at Laughter is “Roman visual culture,” that being everything from graffiti to high art. Because sexual humor “opens up ideas quite at odds with contemporary Euro-American religious culture” (p. 165), it is amply and graphically represented, the book containing 143 colored plates and black-and-white figures. Much of the author's effort is to situate such representations in their original physical and social contexts so readers may appreciate them as their intended audiences did. This is not any easy task, Roman attitudes and assumptions being different than current ones. Here, however, Clarke does an exceptionally good job. To look at the illustrations before reading the text and then to look again, informed by his exposition, is to see the same things in a better, richer light.
The distance between them and us is apparent in a consideration of Roman religion as compared to, say, Christianity. While we tend to see a great gulf between the natural and the supernatural, Romans lived, to borrow Carl Sagan's expression, in a “demon-haunted” world, the space between the profane and the divine being so narrow that an emperor or hero could be acknowledged divine and a god or goddess could lust for and breed with a mortal. Indeed, while Christians ostensibly see sex as a cause of our fall from grace, the Romans saw it as a gift of the gods. While the Christian deity is sexless, the Roman ones, many of them, were quite sexy. It was something, in fact, which we had in common. Just as spirits were everywhere, so were graphic representations of sex—an association touching at the core of classical religion.
An instance of this connection is the herm. Originally cairns raised at crossroads, dedicated to the god of travel, commerce and, by extension, wealth, herms became as unremarkable and even more common than lawn ornaments in ancient Athens. In their final form, as placed near doorways of (common) Athenian homes and (elite) Roman ones, herms were (ithyphallic?) pillars upon which would be busts representing the “heads” of families. Appropriately, at a distance below the progenitor's visage would be his genitalia. Custom and ancestor worship being at the heart of Roman religion, such representations supplemented the more traditionally common maintenance of wax masks of notable forebears, masks that would be occasionally paraded publicly. Such demonstrations would be considered odd today and the herms themselves would be considered vulgar, if not illegal. Yet, to the ancients, the masks were pious, the herms beneficial and protective. Hermes/Mercury not only guarded liminal spaces, but provided good fortune, images of him serving to promote businesses ranging from simple shops to gambling halls and brothels. Representations of the god were not intended to be funny, but some of them shared apotropaic functionality, according to Clarke, with much sexually themed art.
As humor converts anxiety or fear into laughter, so the apotropaic wards off evil. What captures the attention of a person may distract, even disarm, a demon. Spirits were everywhere, both within and without, not all of them well-disposed towards humans. Thus a Roman boy might wear a pendant penis around his neck, a fascinus intended to distract the evil—or envious—eye of demon or pederast. This sounds more like superstition than sense, but it is not all that different from the protective air cleaners, sprays, creams, wipes and pills moderns use to ward off invisible, but omnipresent, germs. Thus, too, mosaic flooring of cocks and cunts ridiculously anthropomorphized might at once fascinate and amuse the guest, giving pause to any intruder, while broadcasting the taste and sophistication of the host.
As without, so within. Not only were the spirits seen objectively, they were also quite subjectively important. Thus the daimon of Sokrates, the inner voice of caution—or what we might think conscience. Thus the emotions, which even now we speak of as “possessing” a person. Again, the apotropaism of laughter, the joke that “cuts the ice” or that disarms the adversary.
Another difference between them and us, closely associated with our religious sense, is ethical. For the Romans, generally speaking, appearance was character. For us “character,” in the approbative sense, is an inner quality, the intentions behind “characteristic” behaviors. We try to respect otherness, to be carefully sensitive to the plight of those less favored than ourselves. We even stretch our compassion to sympathetically imagine misfortunes behind criminal acts and criminal characters. The Romans publicly executed criminals at what amounted to half-time at the games, their deaths often being didactively elevated tableaux with carefully staged mythological themes. Cicero, when he could, mocked the appearances of his political opponents in the Senate. Roman art is replete with witty portrayals of deformity and of otherness, of such spectacles as dwarfish pygmies with disproportionately large genitalia battling, or copulating with, exotic African fauna—or of a convicted criminal bedecked with wings being hoisted high above the stands of the Colosseum only to be dropped in a morally instructive recreation of the Icarian myth.
Of course it is not so simple as all of this. Ambiguity is of the essence of comedy and enantiadromia drives much of it. Christianity, recall, arose from within the bowels of Empire. Sokrates, to the Roman imagination, was represented as being both ugly and chaste. So, too, the darker side of modern apprehensions of difference are still reflected in caricature and in such circus freak shows as still exist. Yet such generalities still serve both as a measure of distinction between cultures and as fulcra central to the play of humor.
There is very little to complain about in this book. For once, the illustrations are adequate to the text. Not much is discussed without it being pictured. Furthermore, Clarke makes his case in every case. No picture goes unexplained, no joke or visual pun goes unexamined. In all instances he establishes, plausibly, that such and such object might evoke mirth in this or that audience. But plausibility is not proof. To me, some of the pictures just seem sexy.
April 19, 2009
A must-read for any art historian that is interested in humor. The funny is like the sexy--highly dependent on the culture. Clarke has some great material in this book, like graffiti and illusionistic murals. Also some very creepy material, like humorous executions.
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