Humor based on the September 11 attacks

The September 11 attacks were a series of terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda against the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed. Jokes based on the events have been made in print and other media since soon after the attacks took place.

A number of scholars have studied the ways in which humor has been used to deal with the trauma of the event,[1][2][3] including researcher Bill Ellis who found that jokes about the attacks originating in the U.S. the day afterwards, and Giselinde Kuipers found jokes on Dutch websites a day later.[4][5] Kuipers had collected around 850 online jokes about 9/11, Osama Bin Laden, and the Afghanistan war by 2005.[4] A notable early public attempt at 9/11 humor was by Gilbert Gottfried just a few weeks after the attacks. During a comedy roast for Hugh Hefner at the Friars Club the crowd did not respond well to Gottfried's 9/11 gag. One audience member at the club yelled out "Too soon!", which has since become a common response to jokes told in the immediate wake of tragedies. Gottfried then improvised and performed "The Aristocrats" routine, which released a great deal of tension and got rousing applause from the crowd.[6][7]

In contrast to these early jokes about 9/11, late-night comedy shows and humorous publications did not appear for several weeks following the attacks.[4] The Onion, a satirical newspaper, cancelled the issue that had been scheduled to be released on September 11, 2001, and then returned to print with a special edition on September 26, 2001, which was devoted to the attacks. When the issue was released, the newspaper staff felt trepidation over making humor of such a tragic event. "Everyone thought this would be our last issue in print," according to one staff writer. Despite this expectation, The Onion staff was quickly inundated with comments from readers, the vast majority of which were positive.[8] However, they self-censored the article titled "America Stronger Than Ever, Say Quadragon Officials."[9]

One of the first 9/11 jokes was made by a major American comedian in the UK was one told by Joan Rivers in London in 2002. The joke concerned the widows of fire fighters killed in the attacks, who Rivers said would be disappointed if their husbands had been found alive as they would be forced to return money they had received in compensation for their late spouses.[10] The joke received condemnation from Harold Schaitberger, General President of the International Association of Fire Fighters.[11]

In literature

"The Zero" (2006) by Jess Walter is a post-9/11 satirical novel which features a New York City cop who shoots himself in the head and forgets it minutes later; his brain damage accounts for gaps in the story.[12]

In 2016, comedian Billy Domineau uploaded a spec script to the Internet that he had written for Seinfeld,[13] which had aired its last episode in 1998, set in New York during the days after the attacks. He said later that it had started when he suggested "a 9/11 episode of Seinfeld" to a student as an example of "an exercise in bad taste" for a class.[14] In his episode, the show's four main characters follow plotlines typical of them, all related to the attacks: Jerry becomes convinced that dust from the fallen towers is contaminating his food; Elaine, initially relieved that she won't have to break up with a boyfriend who worked at the Twin Towers, finds herself engaged to him when he unexpectedly survives; George basks in the glory after he is mistaken for a hero who rescued people, and Kramer attempts to recover the high-quality box cutter he loaned to Mohammed Atta. Popular minor characters, such as George's parents and Newman, also make appearances. "[It] is indeed in bad taste, but it perfectly captures the self-obsessed way these characters would handle such a crisis," wrote The Guardian.[15]

In animation

In the Family Guy episode "Back to the Pilot", broadcast in November 2011, Brian and Stewie take a trip back in time during which Brian tips off his past self about 9/11 so that the old him can play hero and stop the terrorist attacks. This causes George W. Bush not to be re-elected, meaning a Second Civil War starts that leads to nuclear attacks on the Eastern Seaboard. Brian and Stewie are then forced to go back and mend the situation, later noting that their celebratory cheers of causing 9/11 to happen again would sound really bad if taken out of context. A Time critic wrote of the episode, "It sounds custom-made for a 'too soon' label, and it probably is. But avid Family Guy viewers live for 'too soon' moments, no matter how sensitive the material."[16] Other news organizations, including Aly Semigran of Entertainment Weekly, also thought the show had gone too far with the reference.[17] Deadline also commented that it "squeaked past the Fox standards and practices department but is sure to raise as many eyebrows."[18]

However, perhaps reflecting how the acceptability to mainstream broadcasters of jokes referencing the 9/11 attacks has evolved only gradually, the DVD release of the earlier season five Family Guy episode "Meet the Quagmires", first broadcast in 2007, contained an extended scene which was removed from the episode as first broadcast. In the deleted scene, while traveling in time back to 1980s Quahog with Peter, Brian is confronted by the boyfriend of a woman he has been hitting on. In response to the boyfriend's challenge that he will fight Brian 'anywhere, any time', Brian invites the man to meet him "On top of the World Trade Center, September 11th 2001 at 8am", to which the boyfriend replies "I will be there, pal. You think I'll forget, but I won't!".[19] Additionally, the season seven episode "Baby Not on Board" features a scene in which the Griffin family visits Ground Zero, which Peter erroneously believes is "where the first guy got AIDS".[20] The season six episode "Back to the Woods" had Peter committing identity theft against a fictionalized James Woods, in retaliation of him doing the same and ruining his life. Peter appears on the Late Show with David Letterman proving he is Woods, promoting a comedy film based on the attacks.[21]

To improve the chance of an Oscar award, a 9/11 joke was cut from Jean Dujardin's 2012 comedy film The Players. The deleted scene featured a man seducing a woman in a New York apartment while an aircraft crashes into the World Trade Center in the background.[22]

In The Simpsons episode "Moonshine River", aired in 2012, Bart tells his father he would desire New York now that his two least favorite buildings have been obliterated, but then quickly adds Old Penn Station and Shea Stadium, after a pause.[23][24]

In advertising

In the days before the 15th anniversary of the attacks in 2016, Miracle Mattress of San Antonio, Texas, briefly ran a commercial promoting a sale themed around the occasion. In it the daughter of the store's owner, in conversation with two employees who stood behind her, explained how the store was recalling the Twin Towers' collapse by selling all its inventory at the price of twin-sized mattresses for the weekend with the slogan "Twin Towers, Twin Price". At the end of the ad, she inadvertently pushed the two employees into twin piles of mattresses behind her, one of which was topped with the American flag; both collapsed. After briefly expressing shock and horror, she turned to the camera and said "We'll never forget".[25]

The company soon pulled the ad, but copies were saved and uploaded to the Internet, where it and Miracle became the subject of intense and vociferous criticism. Entertainment Weekly said it "might be most offensive commercial ever". The Miracle Mattress Yelp! and Facebook pages filled with disparaging comments and calls for boycotts. Owner Mike Bonnano, whose daughter had, as the chain's head of marketing, conceived the commercial and starred in it, apologized profusely but eventually decided to close the San Antonio location "indefinitely" pending disciplinary measures and donations to the 9/11 Foundation. Miracle Mattress reopened a few days later.[26]

Online

Memes have become a common way of distributing jokes about 9/11. A lot of these memes play with or make fun of 9/11 conspiracy theories such as "Bush did 9/11" or "jet fuel can't melt steel beams." There have also been viral videos on Vine and other platforms that joke about fictional characters or other famous people doing the attacks. In these videos, the creators have a clip of them, or something they throw, or perhaps an aircraft they fly, and then cut to footage of the planes hitting the Twin Towers (mostly Flight 175 hitting the South Tower). This makes fun of that character or real person, saying "(blank) did 9/11".[27]

See also

References
  1. Brottman, Mikita (February 12, 2012). What's So Funny About 9/11? Archived February 20, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, The Chronicle of Higher Education
  2. Ellis, Bill (June 6, 2002). Making a Big Apple Crumble: The Role of Humor in Constructing a Global Response to Disaster Archived April 21, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, New Directions in Folklore
  3. Lewis, Paul. [Cracking Up: American Humor in a Time of Conflict] (2006)
  4. Kuipers, Giselinde (March 2005). ""Where Was King Kong When We Needed Him?" Public Discourse, Digital Disaster Jokes, and the Functions of Laughter after 9/11". The Journal of American Culture. 28 (1): 70–84. doi:10.1111/j.1542-734X.2005.00155.x.
  5. Ellis, Bill (October 2001). "A Model for Collecting and Interpreting World Trade Center Disaster Jokes". New Directions in Folklore (5). Archived from the original on September 30, 2012. Retrieved May 14, 2012.
  6. "The Guardian". Archived from the original on October 10, 2008. Retrieved April 13, 2012.
  7. Holt, Jim (August 27, 2011). The Encyclopedia of 9/11: Humor Archived April 15, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, New York (magazine)
  8. Stableford, Dylan (August 25, 2011). "Remembering The Onion's 9/11 issue: 'Everyone thought this would be our last issue in print'". The Cutline. Yahoo News. Archived from the original on August 8, 2012. Retrieved May 17, 2012.
  9. "Fast Chat: The Onion". Newsweek. October 21, 2001. Archived from the original on September 23, 2017. Retrieved August 15, 2017.
  10. "Joan Rivers Jokes About 9/11 Victims". IMDb. May 1, 2002. Archived from the original on April 17, 2015. Retrieved June 25, 2012.
  11. "IAFF Rebuts Joan Rivers Humor on 9-11". International Association of Fire Fighters. Archived from the original on October 31, 2014. Retrieved June 25, 2012.
  12. Maslin, Janet (September 11, 2006). "New York Times: "After the Cataclysm, a Surreal Drift of Failing Senses" https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/11/books/11masl.html?_r=0 Archived September 21, 2017, at the Wayback Machine
  13. Domineau, Billy (August 2, 2016). "The Twin Towers". Google Docs. Archived from the original on September 6, 2016. Retrieved September 7, 2016.
  14. Kickham, Dylan (August 4, 2016). "Seinfeld 9/11 spec script author says episode should've existed, but couldn't". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on October 7, 2016. Retrieved September 7, 2016.
  15. Czajkowski, Elise (August 5, 2016). "Seinfeld 9/11 script: a work of genius or just pretty, pretty good?". The Guardian. Archived from the original on September 10, 2016. Retrieved September 7, 2016.
  16. Pous, Terri (November 14, 2011). "Did Family Guy's 9/11 Satire Go Too Far for a Laugh?". Time. Archived from the original on November 15, 2011. Retrieved November 14, 2011.
  17. Semigran, Aly (November 14, 2011). "'Family Guy' 9/11 gag: Did they finally go too far this time?". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on November 16, 2011. Retrieved November 14, 2011.
  18. Andreeva, Nellie (November 14, 2011). "'Family Guy' On 9/11 Attack: "Let It Happen"". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on November 15, 2011. Retrieved November 14, 2011.
  19. imdb.com Archived February 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, Family Guy: Meet the Quagmires (2007), Quotes. Retrieved July 17, 2013
  20. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on January 14, 2017. Retrieved November 29, 2016.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  21. Pierson, Robin. "Episode 9 - Back to the Woods". The TV Critic. Archived from the original on April 19, 2014. Retrieved September 29, 2012.
  22. Allen, Peter (March 1, 2012). "9/11 joke in Jean Dujardin film 'cut so he could win Oscar for The Artist'". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
  23. Semigran, Aly (October 1, 2012). "The Simpsons' Season 24 Premiere: I Was Saying 'Boo-Urns'". Hollywood.com. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
  24. David Sullivan, Robert (September 30, 2012). "The Simpsons: "Moonshine River"". The A.V. Club. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
  25. Jamie Narrientos (September 8, 2016). Mattress company airs offensive 9/11 commercial (Online video). Archived from the original on September 8, 2016. Retrieved September 9, 2016.
  26. Hibberd, James (September 9, 2016). "9/11-themed mattress ad might be most offensive commercial ever". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on September 10, 2016. Retrieved September 8, 2016.
  27. Hess, Amanda (July 6, 2015). "Teenagers and 9/11 trutherism jokes: How these memes became a phenomenon". Slate Magazine. Archived from the original on September 11, 2016. Retrieved September 12, 2016.
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