It's Funny Because it's Terrifying
or, Happy Poo-rim
A day or two after the capitol was attacked on Jan. 6, I was talking to my friend Raffi about our reactions as we watched the events of the day unfold. He said that it had been hard for him to know how to react because the mob that day, which included several guys dressed in fur and horns, was a confusing mix of scary and absurd, like a cross between the KKK and the Insane Clown Posse. The intersection of hilarity and horror came up again a few days later in discussions of whether or not it’s OK to joke about the Marjorie Taylor Greene Jewish space laser conspiracy. To me and to a lot of my peers, it may be genuinely terrifying that an elected Congressperson is that anti-Semitic, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t also good fodder for jokes. And, as my friend Ethan pointed out, that is basically what the Jewish holiday of Purim is all about. According to the Book of Esther, an evil guy in power tried unsuccessfully to exterminate the Jews around 2500 years ago, and every year we commemorate it by reading the story, getting drunk, wearing funny costumes, and sending our friends bags of junk food. (Today is Purim, if you didn’t know.) Genocide - it’s hilarious!
The Book of Esther itself was probably intended to be funny. Still, the Jewish characters in the story are depicted as being quite upset about the plot to kill them, including Queen Esther herself. According to Esther 4:4,
When Esther’s maidens and eunuchs came and informed her, the queen was greatly anguished.1
The Talmud2 offers an explanation of this passage, which could use some interpretation, since the word for “she was anguished” is a rather unusual one (vatitḥalḥal). It also happens to sound like the Hebrew word for “body cavity” (ḥalal). So the rabbis of the Talmud, who like puns, thought it’d be clever to say that the word therefore refers to something going on with body parts:
“The queen was greatly anguished.” What is the meaning of “greatly anguished”? Rav said: She got her period. Rabbi Yirmiyah said: She had to go to the bathroom.3
As someone who has definitely had her fair share of anxiety-induced digestive fun times, it seems not unreasonable to me to think that getting upset about something might induce a need to use the facilities. The bit about Esther getting her period seems less likely and also kinda misogynistic. I want to run with it a little, though, especially because this week Phil and I started Season 4 of one of our favorite shows, Big Mouth, which is a gross, hilarious, and extremely insightful animated show about puberty. (It is also definitely not appropriate for actual middle schoolers.) Sorry for a few minor spoilers, but the second episode of the season is called “The Hugest Period Ever,” and it’s about, well:
One of the main characters, Jessi, goes to summer camp and gets a giant period. Like so many things on the show, v v relatable.4 Also like many moments on the show, it deals with this topic in an extremely viscerally funny way, including Jessi’s animated vagina talking while spitting out blod clots, and a bit in which bloody pads get loose from Jessi’s swimsuit and soak up the camp lake. This kind of “potty humor” is what turns some people off the show, but to me, it’s part of what makes the show great. Everything is physical in Big Mouth, even things that aren’t: the kids have “hormone monsters” that embody their experience of puberty (pictured above is Jessi’s hormone monster Connie, voiced by Maya Rudolph), and certain emotions get animated in the show, too (a Shame Monster and, in Season 4, an anxiety mosquito). The show is all about how pubescent kids, but also arguably all of us, experience the world through our overly present bodies. And our bodies, whether they are bleeding on our underwear or excreting at bad times or ejaculating or breaking in various ways or just existing in the world in view of other people, are both funny and terrifying. Potty humor is funny because it’s horrific — it’s premised on the idea that our bodies that we walk around in every day are largely out of our control, which means that one day they will totally fail us and we’ll die! Ha ha!
Here is a recent personal example. Two years ago I had surgery for tongue cancer, and because I am very lucky, I’ve been pretty much living my normal life since then. I am, however, missing a very small part of my tongue, and the one apparently permanent downside of this is that I’ve lost the ability to whistle. I used to be a really good whistler, if I may say so myself, and I miss it. The other day, I decided to see if I could find anybody who gave whistling lessons on the internet and could help me learn to do it again. Lo and behold, I found the website of Whistlin’ Tom, with instructions to email for consultations. I sent him a note, and yesterday I received the following reply:
“I too have had the tongue cancer and recovered. It didn’t affect my whistling but then not so long ago I had a transient ischemic attack, a mini-stroke they call it. Now I can no longer whistle either, that’s life”
Despite having also recovered from tongue cancer with this skill intact, Whistlin’ Tom can now no longer whistle either!!! Sad, but also… a little bit funny, no? I mean, at least we are both still alive and well enough to write emails? In any case, I think he is exactly right that, in a nutshell, that’s life. In which case maybe the idea that Esther got bad news about genocide, panicked, and immediately got her period is actually kind of perfect in that it’s scary, sad, funny, and embarrassing all at once, just like life a lot of the time. And may I suggest that the fear/bodies/mortality/humor connection is especially appropriate for a year in which a lot of Jews are remembering last Purim, when they naively crowded into a room with a bunch of people to celebrate, or perhaps, as in the case of one of my colleagues, when one of their relatives gave the entire family Covid at a festive holiday meal. Life can be truly terrifying, especially recently, and there are definitely times and ways in which that is not appropriate or useful to joke about. But at moments when that’s all that’s left to do, and if it can grant a sense of release and doesn’t hurt anyone else, you might as well make a poop joke.
Thanks so much to everybody for reading and sorry that this got kinda dark! If you got this email but aren’t subscribed yet, and you’d like to see more content that will be similar to this except probably not as morbid, you can click the button below.
Although in context, her reaction might actually be because she was informed that her uncle has appeared at the palace wearing inappropriate clothes.
If you didn’t know, I study emotions in the Talmud, so you can expect more of this kind of content in future newsletters!
Megillah 15a. This verse is also discussed two other places, Sotah 20b and Niddah 71a, with more of a focus on the question of whether or not fear really does make you menstruate. The rabbis think that anxiety would actually make you not get your period (potentially true! stress does indeed mess with one’s cycle), but that a sudden shock could cause you to start bleeding (I don’t think so).
Though I personally relate to this and a few other Jessi plotlines, I was basically the other main female character, Missy Foreman-Greenwald (in seasons 1-3), when I was twelve. Also Nick Kroll, a famous comedian who is one of the creators, graduated from my middle school, so maybe that makes it extra relatable for me. It also means that because I’m still on the alumni list and because Jews email alumni lists about such things, I got an email when his grandmother died. I am sorry for Nick Kroll’s loss earlier this year.