Comédie Noire

A Softer World is a weekly webcomic/photoart expression by Canadians Joey Comeau and Emily Horne.

In my time in South Africa I remember a couple of conversations where I tried to explain the genre Black Humour. The challenge, in the racially sensitive environment, was to find a term without underlying racist connotation; black humour, ahh dark humour? Off-colour humour? Damned unconscious racist sentiment in the roots of our language.... Morbid Humour? That works. And by morbid humour- we're talking about the Joseph Heller (Catch 22) and Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse 5) or perhaps South Park and the Daily Show- for those who prefer audio with their visual.

Some weeks ago I picked up a copy of Catch 22 from the second-hand bookstore below my place, where it had been beckoning me for a while. This is a book so damned good Heller got away with the following gangstaesque front-

"When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as Catch-22 I'm tempted to reply, 'Who has?'"

The ten years since I had last read it only opened me further to the unique mixture of tragicomic delirium and piercing, humanistic truth. I remember it was also key to me realising that not all humour in the olden days ("pre 1986") was based on slap-stick, cream pies and the twirling of a dandy's moustache.

"You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!" Chapter 27, pg. 309

"History did not demand Yossarian's premature demise, justice could be satisfied without it, progress did not hinge upon it, victory did not depend on it. That men would die was a matter of necessity; which men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance. But that was war." Chapter 8, pg. 75