“I think history can absolutely be light and humorous at times!” says high school history teacher and social media personality Jaclyn Richie.
“There are so many instances where, in hindsight, we can see that people may have overreacted or blown situations way out of proportion. I love the famous saying, "If you can’t laugh at yourself..." One of my favorite examples to teach is the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The original attempt was a chaotic series of failures, almost like a comedy of errors,” she explains.
American history writer and author of Swastika Nation: Fritz Kuhn and the Rise and Fall of the German-American Bund, Arnie Bernstein, also agrees that comedy and drama are threaded throughout the eons, going back to when we were just “slime crawling out of the swamps.”
However, he notes that the funny factor may depend on the individual's sense of humor. “One person’s “That’s hysterical!” Is another person’s “That is so not funny!” I’m sure some people of Russia’s upper crust laughed like crazy at Czarina Catherine the Great’s antics. Others, like the serfs, not so much.”
A lot of comedy doesn’t age well, Bernstein adds. “What might have been funny for its time in history is now akin to the stale of-their-time cultural jokes of South Park or Family Guy. For example, humor at the expense of someone for their race, religion, or gender was a big laugh-getter for a lot of eras and in just about every strata of human existence. That doesn’t play well with modern sensibilities,” he says.
Another example he provides is the now obsolete court of jesters. “From Ancient Rome through the English Restoration period, people with intellectual or physical disabilities provided royal big shots with loads of laughs. High comedy then. Not so funny now. History also has a way of roughing out the edges of unsavory characters. Roman Emperor Caligula gave his horse a job as Roman Counsel, most likely as a joke. Funny stuff. But he also had incestuous relationships with his sisters. That’s an “ick” factor that drains all the humor from the horse lawyer story.”
“It’s a given that so many great comic moments throughout history went unrecorded. Pity,” he adds.
When it comes to combining history with memes, Richie believes that it can be a fantastic way to lighten up history and make it more accessible. “They bring historical events into relatable contexts and can engage people who might not otherwise have much interest in history. They offer a fun entry point to more complex stories.”
Bernstein sees it as a double-edged sword. “Again, it depends on your sense of humor. There are universal memes that land the jokes every time, like the one with Abraham Lincoln that reads: 'The problem with quotes on the Internet is that you cannot always depend on their accuracy.’”
That said, he believes there can also be a danger of historical misinterpretation. “Does the meme have some sort of agenda? Could it be misinterpreted—and deliberately so? Is it cruel, is it dishonest, does it have a political intent that can tamper with civil discourse? Are people taking these distortions or outright lies as historical truth?
If it’s parody, I get it. I love a good historical parody. But with memes not everyone always gets the joke or the intention of the joke. This can lead to dire consequences, particularly when so many people get their information from TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and so on, where these memes rule the day,” warns Bernstein.
We were also curious to know what the most unserious event in history that these experts can recall is. For Richie, it’s the Anti-Moustache Movement of the 1910s.
“In a public health effort, campaigns promoted clean-shaven faces because mustaches were believed to trap germs. Men were actually encouraged to shave, and the movement was so serious that barbers reported a spike in men coming in to get rid of their "unsanitary" mustaches. It’s such a funny example of how even small social pushes can take off and shape cultural trends, even if based on unproven ideas.”
