Before you start scrolling through these memes, you might think: “Can history even be funny?” After all, a large part of history is wars, cruel atrocities, famines, beheadings, and just a lot of suffering in general. Granted, time creates distance that lets us look at these events in a more detached manner, and the fact that societies and people in the past were very different from us helps as well.
Mark Twain has famously said that humor is tragedy plus time, essentially cementing the idea that we can joke about anything. Perhaps that’s why, over time, we as a society can joke about humanity’s biggest tragedies. So, now, through memes, we’re able to joke about medieval wars without thinking about the casualties, Belgium’s imperialism in Africa, and the fate of the many “witches” in the Middle Ages.
Jokes about authoritarians and the atrocities they committed might be deemed insensitive, tasteless, and unfunny by many. But when done well, it has immense power: it strips those evil monsters of their mystique, diminishing their authority and historical importance.
An excellent example of political satire done well is Mel Brooks’s 1967 film The Producers. Many film studio executives and even independent film studios rejected the film, finding the idea of using Hitler for comedy appalling. However, to this day, Brooks’s film and its subsequent iterations on Broadway and a later remake are quintessential pieces of satirical comedy.
As Brooks himself explained, it was his own way of getting revenge on the authoritarian and his system. “The only real way I could get even with Hitler and company was to bring them down with laughter.”
There are other historical events we probably shouldn’t find funny, but do. Take the defenestration of Prague, for example. The act of yeeting nobles out of a castle window shouldn’t be funny, but because it happened so long ago and for a seemingly absurd reason, it seems farcical to us. The whole event ignited a brutal 30 Years’ War, but that’s usually not the part that the memes focus on.
The gist of the story is that, in 1618, some Protestants who were unhappy with the restriction of their freedoms threw two members of the royal governing body out of a castle window. In reality, the defenestrations were three: one in 1419, and one more in 1483 . However, people usually refer to the third when talking about the Defenestration of Prague. So, three royal governors flew out of a castle window, but, in the mother of all plot twists, all three survived. How? They apparently fell into a pile of manure. We’ll leave out the follow-up
The act itself seems cringy and comical to us today, like a bad gag in an SNL sketch. However, defenestrations were a method of mob violence against bad rulers, similar to other forms of capital punishment. But it also had a symbolic element: it represented a disgraced noble’s “fall from grace.” Prague’s nobles survived, but the victims of the 1419 Prague Defenestration did not. Other times, those pushed out the windows survived thanks to their thick period clothing and the castle wall's architecture, which was sometimes a grassy slope.
Which historical event is best for memeing, in your opinion, Pandas? Do you think anything in history is off-limits for memes? Many similar communities to “Classic History Posting” have a 20-year rule where only events older than 20 years can be made into memes, so what would be your pick? Let us know in the comments!
If you’re a history fan, don’t forget to check out these incredible photographs from Ancient Egypt and fascinating historical stories that sent people down rabbit holes.
