Humor, emotion, and interpretive communities in the controversy over Jerry Springer: The Opera

1 Introduction

In How I Escaped a Certain Fate, Stewart Lee describes how, when Jerry Springer: The Opera (JSTO) aired on the BBC, he was in Germany and, seeing the furor over the show, people he was with jokingly described their work as “Entartete Kunst,” degenerate art, the term adopted by the Nazis to spurn Modernist art trends (Lee 2010: 121–3). Although this is a humorous exaggeration, the anecdote illustrates how the relationship between humor and religion is frequently fraught with tension to the point of censorship and protest, phenomena that Giselinde Kuipers has labelled “humor scandals” (Kuipers 2011). This article uses the example of the backlash to JSTO to explore these tensions and the emotive power of humor. I argue for the concept of interpretive communities of emotional readers, groups whose identity is shaped by their shared emotional response to different media. This is a new coinage but one which also builds on earlier work on literature and emotion. This approach not only helps us to understand the important role emotion plays in our responses to humor, but it also emphasizes the social and interpersonal aspects of the emotional experience of humor.

For those unfamiliar with the case, a short précis is in order. Jerry Springer: The Opera started life at Battersea Arts Centre in 2001 and moved to the National Theatre in London for a run in 2003. Initially, the show received critical acclaim, even receiving positive reviews in Christian media (e.g. Billington 2003; Bennett 2003; Codd 2006). The tipping point in the show’s reception came after the decision to air a recording of the show on the BBC in January 2005. Protests were organized by Mediawatch-UK (the successor to the National Viewers and Listeners Association) and the advocacy group Christian Voice. Their success in getting key talking points and protests covered in the national news helped fuel further public outrage. The BBC received 63,000 complaints, a record number that has only recently surpassed (see Chortle 2021).

How did a comedy about Jerry Springer provoke such outrage from Christians? Well, the show begins in a similar fashion to the US television show with Jerry bringing on various couples who get to air their problems and desires, complete with operatic advert breaks. Although some might already find a comedy featuring a chorus of Ku Klux Klan members and a nearly-wed with a diaper fetish distasteful, the second part of the show was considered most offencive due to its allegedly blasphemous content. After being shot by one of the participants on his show, Jerry enters a dream sequence in which he is dragged to Hell by Satan and forced to do a show to get an apology for Satan from Jesus.

This article focuses not on the comic portrayal of religion in this show but on the outrage the show produced. Adapting theoretical approaches to the study of literature and emotion, I show how interpretive communities of emotional readers are constructed and shaped, and how this concept helps us to understand the response to JSTO. In part I am using this case study to make the wider claim that emotions – both positive and negative – play a central role in the social and political aspects of humor. In this respect my argument also challenges Robert Phiddian’s recent argument that, while there are occasions when satire makes substantive political impact, satire’s political work largely rests in “the catharsis of political emotions” (2019: 13). As we shall see, in interpretive communities of emotional readers, the evocation of emotion as a shared experience central to the group’s identity is a central mechanism by which the groups’ leaders spur members to political action. Displays of emotion, in my reading, are a critical tool for those seeking to persuade their audience to adopt a particular attitude to humor or to fight for specific political ideals.

After establishing a theoretical framework for understanding interpretive communities of emotional readers, I apply this concept to Christian Voice’s reaction to JSTO. While they are not the only group who were vocal in their outrage at the show, they were the most notorious due to Stephen Green’s (the group’s leader) attempt to prosecute the BBC for blasphemy in 2007. As we shall see, the anger and disgust felt towards offencive comedy is not an isolated moment but part of a community’s normative interpretative framework. For the Christian communities I consider, the group’s reaction to a text like JSTO is interlinked with their reading of the Bible.

The second half of this article turns to examine the response to JSTO in more detail. On the one hand, I show that many of the strategies employed by Stephen Green to make Christian Voice a cohesive and emotional community were grounded in tactics that had been used to great success in Britain during the 1960s and 70s by Mary Whitehouse. While her organization, the National Viewers and Listeners Association, focused their attention on media such as TV and radio, Christian Voice are an overtly religious community (they call themselves a “ministry”) and are more political, as they also share news stories interpreted from a conservative Christian perspective. Taking a foray into the emotional community constructed by Mary Whitehouse not only helps us to see a model consciously used by Stephen Green, but it also gives us helpful background for the other group involved in the public outcry over JSTO, Mediawatch-UK, the name taken by the National Viewers and Listeners Association in 2001.

In the final section of this article, I explore how a consideration of the social and political context of JSTO can help us to understand interpretive communities of emotional readers and their relationship with humor. I argue that outbursts of anger from religious communities against humor are fuelled most when the community feels that its identity is under threat. Humor in such contexts is seen as especially dangerous as it focuses attention on the rift between a religious community and those it sees as its enemies.

2 Communicating emotion to interpretive communities

It is axiomatic in humor studies that humor plays a crucial role in the construction of group identities (see e.g. Martin and Ford 2018: 261–79; for religious identities in particular see Zekavat 2017: 123–46). A shared sense of humor can strengthen group solidarity, such as when humor and laughter play a role in ritual, but equally a group can define its identity by devaluing humor, such as by defining certain topics off-limits for joking. A group can be defined, that is, by what it doesn’t laugh at. As Gilhus’ article in this volume also demonstrates, emotion is central to this process. How we feel about humor, including the appropriate boundaries of acceptable humor, helps us to identify with others. After the BBC decided to air JSTO, for instance, some Christian communities like Christian Voice used their outrage partially as an expression of identity.^[1] These communities felt under attack not simply as Christians but as British Christians. This attack was felt especially keenly coming from the BBC, as many feel that, as a nationally funded service, the BBC should reflect British values.

To understand how the performance and articulation of emotion functions in the context of humor, here I argue for the concept of interpretive communities of emotional readers. This concept draws on the intersections between literary theory and social psychology. In particular, I argue that Gerben van Kleef’s Emotion as Social Information (EASI) Theory can be read in conjunction with Stanley Fish’s approach to interpretive communities of readers to help us understand how humorous texts can provoke strong outrage from groups. The main advantage of this approach is that it permits us to examine critically the intersubjectivity of the emotions humor causes.

EASI theory attempts to specify and delineate the social effects of displaying and articulating emotions. How does being in a group of friends who are all laughing make us feel? What is our reaction to someone telling us how outraged they are at a comedian who has mocked our beliefs? EASI theory claims that “emotional expressions convey social information” and that observers’ emotional and affective states are influenced by our interpretation of this information (van Kleef 2016, esp. 13–36). We do not necessarily express every emotion that we feel; instead, emotional expressions can be deliberately directed at others, as we hope that they will pick up on our feelings and react appropriately (cf. Côté and Hideg 2011; van Kleef et al. 2011).

Others interpret these social signals through affective reactions (which are more automatic) and/or inferential processes (more deliberate or effortful), with the consequence that “emotional expressions inform observers about the expresser’s appraisal of the situation” (van Kleef 2017: 241; cf. 2016: 37–55).^[2] One study exemplifying this demonstrated that infants would be more likely to cross a visual cliff if their mother is smiling as opposed to her looking fearful (Klinnert et al. 1983). These processes may make an observer feel the same emotion they observe or they might feel a different, appropriate emotion. For example, when Christian Voice’s Stephen Green expressed his disgust at the BBC for choosing to air JSTO, other members of the group might share his disgust, being spurred to take action, or they might feel afraid because they are worried that the supposed moral decline of the nation is unstoppable.

When applied to humor, this approach can help us to understand different emotional reactions to comedy. We might enjoy a comedy show, for example, not simply on its own merits but because we see our friends enjoying it. By contrast, this also allows us to see how humor can become controversial, as angry or disgusted reactions to a work of comedy can snowball as a community starts to share its feelings about the perceived mockery they have witnessed. Thus, while here I am interested primarily in the negative reactions to JSTO, this theoretical approach could be equally conducive to those interested in the social and political impact of humor.

Moreover, EASI theory intersects with other existing approaches to the role of emotion in the creation, re-enforcement, and policing of group norms. For example, Barbara Rosenwein has examined “emotional communities,” a group “in which people adhere to the same norms of emotional expression and value – or devalue – the same or related emotions” (Rosenwein 2006: 2). These communities often share common interests, values, goals, and their attitudes to emotions and emotional expression can be used to help the group achieve these goals. Similarly, as van Kleef has discussed, emotions shared among group members “may facilitate coordinated action by fostering bonds and group loyalty” (van Kleef 2016: 104). Which emotions a group values and how are shaped by the degree to which they help that group achieve its aims. As we shall see, in Christian Voice’s reaction to JSTO, not only is humor devalued, but also anger and disgust are modelled as appropriate – indeed necessary – responses to achieve the group’s aims.

While EASI theory allows us to articulate in more detail how social bonds are created and perpetuated, Rosenwein’s approach helps us to reflect on the relationship between emotional and political communities. Social constructions defining what constitutes “proper” social conduct, for instance, are intricately tied to hegemonic political forces. Other emotional communities within the same social setting may then aim to challenge those forces. For example, the Alternative Comedy boom in the UK in 1979 and the 1980s could be said, in a sense, to have constructed an emotional community whose core values, such as anti-racism and anti-sexism, were designed to challenge the status quo of stand-up comic performance in the UK.

When applied to literature or other media, we can understand the construction of shared values and goals through the expression of emotion in the context of Stanley Fish’s “interpretive communities.” In Fish’s model, “interpretive communities are made up of those who share interpretive strategies not for reading (in the conventional sense) but for writing texts, for constituting their properties and assigning their intentions” (Fish 1980: 171). Interpretive communities, Fish argues, exist prior to the act of interpretation and consequently arguments over the interpretation of a text are derived from the reading strategies of different interpretive communities rather than because the text itself is a stable source of meaning. In the same way, not only is our emotional disposition shaped by the accumulation of our experiences, but our sense of humor too is shaped by our social context and background (cf. Friedman 2014).

Just as emotional expressions in EASI theory cohere group mentalities with a view to achieving specific goals, in Fish’s interpretive communities reading and writing are task- and goal-oriented acts. As he put it, “members of the same community will necessarily agree because they will see (and by seeing, make) everything in relation to that community’s assumed purposes and goals” (1980: 15). For Fish, the fact that interpretive communities pre-exist interpretation and are goal-oriented is important because this demonstrates that reader-response theories of literary interpretation do not open the door to relativism. For scholars of humor, Fish’s interpretive communities are a reminder that how we understand a joke is dependent on a combination of personal and social factors. Additionally, Fish’s discussion of interpretive communities anticipates the potential for different groups to come into conflict over the “correct” way to interpret a text, which is precisely what can happen when humor broaches sensitive or taboo topics, such as religion.

Where Fish’s approach is lacking is in its appreciation of the role of emotion in shaping interpretive communities (cf. Olson and Worsham 2004: 152–6). Fish’s interpretive communities are imagined to clash based on their interpretive strategies, but he does not consider how emotions shape the beliefs on which these communities depend. This, I argue, is where van Kleef’s EASI theory can be applied to deepen our understanding. Considering these two theories side-by-side helps us to centralize the emotional experience of literary media. Moreover, the emphasis in EASI theory on emotional expressions invites us to focus our attention on how viewers articulate their feelings about a text. In cases like the reaction to JSTO, these emotional reactions are intense and collective.

In the next sections, we will turn to examine how the response to JSTO exemplifies the value of my concept of interpretive communities of emotional readers. At the same time, it is worth considering this concept in the context of other studies of humor as well as the limitations of this approach. For example, Sophie Quirk has employed the idea of reference groups to demonstrate the political power of stand-up comedy. As she puts it, “when a comedian brings an audience together, they create, cement and instruct a reference group who have a potentially powerful impact on the processes by which future opinions and behaviours are determined” (Quirk 2015: 185). My concept of interpretive communities of emotional readers not only aims to extend this approach to the impact of comedy beyond “preaching to the converted” but also to focus on the emotive aspect of this phenomenon, which is only one aspect of how interpretive communities and reference groups react to comedy.

Moreover, in making the case for the value of interpretive communities of emotional readers I do not mean to suggest that the interpretation of humor is entirely subjective. As others have emphasized, although humor is often described as ambiguous or polysemous, the extent to which humor is open to multiple interpretations is variable (cf. Boxman-Shabtai and Shifman 2014) and we should not divorce interpretations of humor from the rhetorical and aesthetic aspects of the text (Nieuwenhuis and Zijp 2022, esp. 349).^[3] Instead, the concept I have advocated for here aims to hone in on the emotional aspect of the interpretation of humor, and one which I feel has been not always received due attention.

3 Christian Voice’s community of emotional readers

According to the model I have advanced, “emotions do not only influence those who experience them but also those who observe them” (van Kleef 2017: 240; cf. Fischer and van Kleef 2010). This matters for the study of humor and comedy because, as Oliver Double pointed out in the case of stand-up (2014: 239), “a lot of it is about defining who the individual is, who the community is and how one relates to the other.” An interpretive community’s response to comedy involves not only an emotional experience but also the observation of others’ emotions, both those of the performers and those of one’s fellow audience.

In this section, I use the example of Christian Voice and their response to JSTO to exemplify my concept of interpretive communities of emotional readers. As readers Christian Voice were most of all interested in Biblical interpretation. At the same time, as a result of Stephen Green’s desire to rouse his contemporary Christian Britons out of what he saw as a form of apathy, literary interpretation for Christian Voice went hand-in-hand with political activism. Their campaign against JSTO was just one part of their wider agenda, the restoration of a Christian Britain. Their interpretation of media, both the Bible and beyond, was both emotional in the way that it was orientated around what they saw as the deterioration of British society and values and goal-oriented as group members were exhorted to undertake political action.

In the “About us” page on their original website (www.repentuk.com), we see how Christian Voice framed itself as a goal-oriented community. The opening sentence defines Christian Voice as a form of opposition: “Christian Voice is a ministry for those Christians who are fed up with the way things are.” This opposition has the aim of restoring a specific vision of Christianity to society: Christian Voice is “Christianity with testosterone.” They are also explicit about how these goals are to be achieved: they specify that Christian Voice is an “active ministry” whose actions for God include letter-writing, targeted emails to public figures, protests, and leafleting.

Christian Voice re-enforce their social and political agenda by constructing a community of readers. What and how group members read is carefully delineated with a central focus on interpretation of the Bible. This is reflected in the materials sold and promoted by the organization. For example, Christian Voice sell a “Lamplight 1-year Bible Reading Plan,” compiled and ordered by Stephen Green (Christian Voice 2002). The Lamplight fosters group loyalty and bonding as members know that each day they are all reading the same text with the same aims and intentions.

The Biblical interpretation on which the community is founded is then re-enforced and reified through Christian Voice’s news stories. In the news still available online, we can see a concerted effort to align readers’ reactions to the news with their reading and interpretation of the Bible. For example, a bulletin covering the story of Christer Johansson (who was arrested in 2009 in Sweden for removing his son from social care without authorization) exemplifies how Green intertwines Bible study with political activism in his communication with followers (Christian Voice 2011). After detailing the case, the bulletin gives a rhetorically embellished summary (e.g. comparing Swedish Social Services to the Nazi SS), followed by instructions on what biblical passages to read in response to the story (in this case Malachi 4:6 and Mark 9:42), what they should pray, and whom to contact (here exhorting readers to contact the Swedish embassy). This example clearly demonstrates how Christian Voice created a community not simply of faithful readers of the Bible but also of political agents.

The outrage generated by Christian Voice in response to JSTO is a continuation of this communal interpretive experience. The centrality of the Springer case for Christian Voice’s identity as a group is reflected by the fact that their website had a specific landing page (http://www.repentuk.com/springer.html), from which visitors can access further webpages telling the story of Christian Voice’s campaign, covering everything from their initial protest on the 7th January 2005 until the start of the blasphemy court case in January 2007. The Springer home page provides the context (“The story started when BBC2 decided to screen the West End ‘musical’ ‘Jerry Springer: the Opera’ on Saturday 8th January 2005”), explains why members of Christian Voice should be concerned with the show’s blasphemous content, and details what they can do about it.

Significantly, this webpage creates an emotional narrative through which the audience is invited to interpret the opera. This narrative is emphatically personal, as the writer (not named but likely Stephen Green and therefore positioned as such below) discusses his experiences and feelings directly, most notably in a section called “So what’s all the fuss about?” The author here overtly and repeatedly expresses his emotions. After outlining why they and other Christians chose not to see the show during its run at the National and then in Cambridge, they explain that they did eventually see a preview:

It was more disgusting, more blasphemous, more crass and more offensive than I could ever have imagined. I was, and still am, angry that such a gratuitously nasty, hateful, spiteful and blasphemous piece of work is being performed in our land, let alone that it was national television. It being on in a London Theatre offends me, just as much as a murder or rape happening being [sic] closed doors offends me. And more to the point, those crimes offend Almighty God.

Green’s rhetoric appears all the more effective through its use of hyperbole and repetition, emphasizing his anger and disgust. The reader’s appropriate response here, if not already sufficiently self-evident in this passage, has also been primed by the introduction. In his discussion of the Sikhs’ reaction to Behzti,^[4] Green suggests that “God sent a challenge to Christians to look at the willingness of Sikhs to stand up for their religion.” The eagerness of Sikhs to defend their beliefs is then contrasted with those Christians who are “peaceful to the point of pious apathy.” It is precisely this absence of feeling that Green’s narrative opposes. The Christian Voice community should feel outraged, angry, and disgusted; they should want to do something about it.

Having roused his readers to a kind of pious incandescence, Green outlines the grounds on which he describes JSTO as blasphemous.^[5] This section focuses on the second act. Green tells his readers that Jesus describes himself as “a little bit gay” and includes a comic twist on a popular idiom in his fight with Satan, “Talk to the stigmata.” In addition to direct quotes from the show, Green provides a running interpretation, directing his readers’ outrage. For example, consider Green’s depiction of the portrayal of God and Jerry Springer:

God the Father emerges as an old fool who needs therapy, and Jerry Springer becomes an alternative saviour. Which makes David Soul’s character the Antichrist, of course … God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, is portrayed as an inadequate who is called upon to answer Satan’s grievances. He needs a shoulder to cry on and it’s Jerry Springer’s.

The passage selectively paraphrases several scenes in the play to create a simplified dichotomy that contrasts the core beliefs of Green’s audience with the portrayal of religion in JSTO. God is flipped from omniscient and omnipotent to inadequate and vulnerable, while Jerry, who is later in the paragraph described as amoral, is depicted as “an alternative saviour.” By taking a concertedly straight-faced reading of the opera Green invites his audience (who are contrasted with “liberal wiseacres” who defend JSTO) to adopt not only his interpretation but also his feelings about the show.

Additionally, as we saw in the news bulletins, Green uses Biblical readings to cohere his interpretive community and to spur them on to civic action. For example, in the opening section of the page, arguing that Christians should not allow insults against God or Jesus, he alludes to Revelations 3:16 and 21:8 to show that “the apathetic and the fearful have no part in the Lord’s purpose.” The emotions Green feels in his account of watching the show, anger and disgust especially, show him to be diametrically opposed to the apathetic and fearful and they spur him (and implicitly his community) to action. The action available to likeminded readers appears at the bottom of the page, as we are given the official contact details for the BBC and Ofcom as well as the email address of the then Director General Mark Thompson, and encouraged to protest.

Thus far, we have seen how the rhetorical strategies of Christian Voice were designed to construct a community of interpretive readers, whose shared interpretation of the Bible provides the foundation for a call to action. This fits precisely with my concept of interpretive communities of emotional readers: the community uses emotion to construct a shared reading experience and to influence each other. However, the tactics used by Stephen Green and Christian Voice were not created ex nihilo. They rely on a set of culturally constructed norms and rhetorical tropes. In the next sections, I will demonstrate not only how both Christian Voice and Mediawatch-UK redeployed previously successful strategies for constructing and mobilizing emotional readers, but also how a comparison with Mary Whitehouse’s campaigns reveals that the conflict between humor and religion is intensified at times when a community’s sense of identity is in crisis.

4 Modelling emotional readers: Mary Whitehouse re-experienced

A key figure whose influence on the reaction to JSTO should be considered is schoolteacher turned activist Mary Whitehouse. Analysing Whitehouse’s success during the 1960s and 70s is important for our understanding of JSTO for two reasons: first, the organization she helped to create, renamed Mediawatch-UK in 2001, was a vocal critic of the show; second, many of the tactics Whitehouse used to shape and cohere her community were redeployed by critics of JSTO. Whitehouse’s community created specific social and political goals, and their emotional reactions to media both defined the community and exhorted members to achieve these wider goals.

Mary Whitehouse’s interpretive community of emotional readers began with the creation of the pressure group Clean-Up TV (CUTV) by Whitehouse and Norah Buckland in 1964. At their Birmingham Town Hall meeting on the 5th May of that year, the founders’ speeches clearly set out the values to which this nascent community was to adhere. The CUTV campaign defined Britain as a Christian country and argued that the role of the BBC in particular, as a public service, was to uphold British Christian values and morals. The campaign was about restoration, not abolition. As Whitehouse herself put it, “we are NOT against the BBC, we are FOR the BBC” (Thompson 2012: 69). At the same time, Whitehouse made it clear that this campaign was driven by emotion. She stated that her campaign “was born out of frustration and concern” and relates how “countless parents were deeply distressed” by what they have heard said on their televisions (Thompson 2012: 69–70). In 1965 the CUTV campaign became the National Viewers and Listeners Association (NVALA). That year their manifesto was delivered to parliament with 366,355 signatures (Black 2010: 105–8).

Like Christian Voice, the NVALA was an interpretive community of emotional readers. The community was created and spread through investment of time and money: news of the organization spread through word of mouth, newsletters, and printed manifestos and leaflets. To give a sense of their scale, in November 1964 a CUTV newsletter refers to the expense involved in printing 55,000 copies of the manifesto and 20,000 copies of their “Women of Britain” leaflet (Thompson 2012: 73). Stephen Green, as we saw, used many of the same tactics for Christian Voice, although by the early 2000s he was also using the internet to spread news further and faster.

Letters Whitehouse received from supporters clearly reflect how group members’ emotional experiences were shaped by their participation in the community. In one letter a supporter explains: “I never felt so near fury as I did last might [sic], when I saw ‘Viewpoint’ and Doctor Comfort was on” (Thompson 2012: 72). As the writer explains, “I spent a sleepless might [sic] I was so annoyed, but I really blessed your name, and thought to myself, ‘Thank God we have someone who is doing something.’” The pain and anger of watching a doctor supposedly corrupt the young on television is tied to, and partially alleviated by, the comforting knowledge that the community and its leader are there to fight against what they see as the moral decline of the nation.

The rhetoric of moral decline is central to the communities of both Mary Whitehouse and Green’s Christian Voice. Indeed, as Stanley Cohen has outlined in his study of moral panics, the notion of a “prophecy of doom,” the claim that forms of deviance will happen again and will only get worse, is a common theme in moral panics (Cohen 2002: 52). For example, as Sir Hugh Greene (Director-General of the BBC from 1960–69) put it in a letter to his future wife, Mary Whitehouse held him “more responsible than any other for the moral decline of the nation” (Thompson 2012: 40). Although Mary Whitehouse aimed her sights against many forms of contemporary media, comedy played an important role in Whitehouse’s moral crusades.

In addition to her criticism of comedies like Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em (1973–8) and It Ain’t Half Hot Mum (1974–81), Whitehouse’s most notable comic target was Johnny Speight’s Till Death Do Us Part (1965–75). The most famous criticism of this show was its use of obscenity: Whitehouse claimed to have counted in one episode 103 uses of the word “bloody” before giving up the count (Tracy and Morrison 1979: 88), while letters sent to Lord Hill (chairman of the BBC governors) by one of Whitehouse’s supporters parodied the excessive use of “bloody” in the show (Davies 2016: 31; the letter is quoted at Thompson 2012: 162).

The obsession with counting obscenities set a precedent for one of the most widely reported claims about JSTO, namely that the show featured more than 8,000 swearwords. Seemingly the earliest instance of this claim in the news was Tara Conlan’s (2004) article for the Daily Mail, including the specific sums that the show “contains 3,168 mentions of the f-word and 297 of the c-word.” Although Conlan does not say from where she got these numbers, it may be significant that this article contains comments from John Beyer, the director of Mediawatch-UK. This number certainly appears to have been inflated: the Daily Telegraph apparently counted 451 swear words (Deans 2005) while Stewart Lee put the number at 170 (Lee 2010: 144). The precise number is less important here than the rhetorical strategy underpinning it. Giving a precise, if exaggerated, number of obscenities both makes the level of offence seem higher and gives the reader an impression of intellectual authority, as though the argument is grounded in facts and not simply emotions.

The other prominent aspect of the NVALA’s attack on Till Death Do Us Part was the reaction to the episode ‘The Bird Fancier,’ aired in September 1972. This episode featured a scene in which Mike (Alf’s son-in-law) suggested that Mary may be “on the pill.” As part of her response to the episode, Mary Whitehouse wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) proposing that they bring a charge of blasphemous libel against the BBC (Tracy and Morrison 1979: 110–17, Thompson 2012: 294–6). Although in this instance the DPP refused to bring the charges, Whitehouse later used the same tactic in her successful prosecution of Gay News in 1977, the last successful case brought under the law of blasphemy before its abolition in 2008 in England and Wales.

This latter case made Whitehouse a model to emulate in the furore over JSTO. The case was cited by Mediawatch-UK and Christian Voice in written evidence submitted to a House of Lords Select Committee on religious offences in 2002 as evidence for the continued value of blasphemy legislation. Additionally, in the news coverage of Green’s case against the BBC, the connection between his blasphemy case and Whitehouse’s case against Gay News was made overtly by several sources (such as Reuters, The Telegraph, and Chortle). However, the parallels go beyond simply the use of prosecution under the same law. As we have seen, the adoption of similar positions, most important among which was the view that Britain remains a Christian country and the national television service should reflect this, underpinned both cases. Similarly, in both cases the backing of a group of like-minded, like-feeling supporters helped to bring their case to trial.

On the one hand, the parallels between Mary Whitehouse’s campaigns and the responses to JSTO demonstrate that intertextual strategies, i.e. references to notorious past examples, played a crucial role in both the rhetorical strategy and the success of Mediawatch-UK and Christian Voice’s campaigns. On the other hand, these parallels show that my analysis of the JSTO case is not an isolated incident but part of a larger pattern. Both examples deploy a trope available to interpretive communities of emotional readers when conflict arises between their interpretive goals and the aims of others outside of the community. Namely, both campaigns present themselves as a defence of traditional values, among which religion can often play a critical role.^[6] As one of the founders of CUTV put it, the NVALA could “set the pace in curing the social ills and moral evils which affect and infest every nation under the sun” (Tracy and Morrison 1979: 105). When the irreverence of comedy is perceived as a threat to those values, public emotional displays have the capacity to galvanize group identity in response to a perceived threat to their (religious) identity. In the final section I look in more detail at the community’s sense of identity to argue that conflict, such as the conflict between humor and religion, frequently erupts in the context of larger perceived threats to the community’s values.

5 Emotional communities in crisis

Thus far we have seen how central emotions are to the construction of interpretive communities, especially in shaping the group’s sense of shared identity. Within this framework, humor can play several potential roles: at the extreme ends of the spectrum, humor can be the glue that binds the group together in opposition to outsiders or it can be a danger, threatening to undo the group’s bonds. In the case of religious communities, humor is an especially divisive issue (e.g. van Herck 2011; Kuipers 2022). Using the examples of the NVALA and Christian Voice, I argue that outbursts of anger from religious communities against humor are intensified when religious communities feel their identity is under threat.

Both Mary Whitehouse’s campaigns in the 1960s and 70s and Christian Voice’s criticisms of JSTO were grounded in the argument that Britain is a Christian country. Although neither group spoke for the British Christian community as a whole, this argument exemplifies their aim to uphold traditional social values in the face of an opposition that extended far beyond the specific comedies against which they railed. Despite having roots that extended back some time, from the 1960s onwards in the UK Christianity has seen a process of continuous decline (for the 1960s as a key turning point see McLeod 2008). Church attendance in England in the 1960s was estimated at around 20 percent (Brown 2006: 225–6) and continued to decline as attendance fell by 45 percent between the 1970s and 2000 (Brown 2006: 278). By around the turn of the millennium, as Callum Brown put it (2006: 317), “Britain was one of the most secular places that the world had ever known.”

In the 1960s, the sense of decline in Christian faith occurred at the same time as both the availability of TV sets and a change in the leadership and direction of the BBC. As Christie Davies has discussed (2016: 28–35), when Sir Hugh Greene became Director General of the BBC old taboos and rules (such as those famously enshrined in the Green Book) were replaced with a more progressive agenda. Whitehouse’s campaign to clean up TV was at once a reaction to specific policy change and to a feeling that British Christian sentiment was under threat.

Similarly, in the 1990s and 2000s, the emergence of both a more secular and multicultural society put strain on the view of Britain as a straightforwardly Christian country.^[7] This tension is well exemplified by the House of Lords Select Committee report on religious offences in England and Wales (for a discussion of this report in the context of changing attitudes to blasphemy, see Nash 2007: 25–32). Reporting on the options available to Parliament regarding the common law of blasphemy, they summarized the positions adopted by different witnesses who submitted evidence to the committee: some argued that Britain has become secular and its religious heritage should be abandoned; others argued that the law should continue to reflect the “Christian character” of the country; and others still suggested that the “multi-faith” nature of the UK should be reflected in its laws (Lords Select Committee 2002-3a: para 33).

Both Mediawatch-UK and Christian Voice were among the groups who submitted evidence and both unsurprisingly placed their focus on Christian belief. Mediawatch-UK, while acknowledging the protection of different faiths (e.g. under the Human Rights Act) argued that the law as it stood “is to protect the sensibilities of Christian believers and sympathizers from gratuitous offence” (Lords Select Committee 2002-3c HL 95-III). Christian Voice’s submission, meanwhile, explicitly opposed extending the law to cover other faiths, arguing that “the United Kingdom has a Christian Constitution,” and referred to blasphemers as “militant anti-Christian agitators” (Lords Select Committee 2002-3b HL 95-III).

These examples reflect a typical pattern in humor scandals which highlights the overlap between humor scandals and moral panics. While a moral panic is often characterized by its suddenness and volatility, they do not occur in a vacuum. Indeed, Stuart Hall has argued that the moral panic is ‘one of the key ideological forms in which a historical crisis is “experienced and fought out” (Hall 2013: 218; cf. Cohen 2002: xxxvii). Likewise, humor scandals frequently play out ideological debates that form part of the fabric of historical crises (compare e.g. debates between free speech and censorship in the debates around the Jyllands-Posten cartoons; cf. Kuipers 2011).

My model of interpretive communities of emotional readers sheds light on why periods of identity crisis have such potential to erupt into forms of conflict like a moral panic. In EASI theory, while displays of emotion always convey social information, they do not all have the same impact on others’ thoughts or behaviour. One of the factors which influences the extent of an emotional display’s impact is the individual’s motivation (van Kleef 2016: 61–2). If we already believe that our faith is under attack, someone telling us how upset and angry they were about a comedy’s portrayal of Jesus will be all the more effective. Periods in which the community feels that its core values are under threat provide the breeding ground for precisely this form of motivated thinking.

6 Conclusions

In this article I have argued that interpretive communities of emotional readers provide a valuable framework for interpreting public outrage in response to comedy. Bringing together the work of Stanley Fish and Gerben van Kleef I have demonstrated how our emotional responses to media play a vital role in the construction of group identity. Humor’s potential to divide audiences – is the text funny or not? Is it offencive or not? – makes comedy especially prone to negative emotional reactions like the one that occurred after the airing of JSTO. Although not every comedy is equally polysemous and open to multiple interpretations, this approach highlights the important role of emotion for the political impact of comedy and humor.

Through the response to JSTO I have explored the techniques Christian Voice and Mediawatch-UK used to create and cohere these groups. In both cases displays of emotion, individuals expressing their feelings and reactions to different media, as well as the group’s ability to share these reactions and additional information widely and quickly, proved key factors in ensuring the efficacy of the group’s action. Moreover, in my examination of these techniques, we have seen how the aesthetic and political aspects of these groups are correlated.

This correlation is a consequence of the goal-oriented nature of interpretive communities of emotional readers. While the aims and values of communities may differ wildly, these groups can deploy numerous common rhetorical strategies through which they can construct their own sense of identity and call members to action. In the case of the reaction to JSTO, Christian advocacy groups presented themselves as defenders of traditional values by defining Britain as a Christian country whose national broadcaster should reflect these values. Analysing the interplay between comedy and its critics reveals how interpretive communities of emotional readers contribute to our understanding of humorous texts more generally: we should remember that emotion and goal-oriented reading play just as important a role in the interpretation of comedy and other humorous texts as in other literary texts.

Lastly, I have argued that my examples throw significant light on one factor which can intensify the negative reactions to comedy. During periods in which a community faces a crisis of identity, which may be caused by factors such as the perceived decline of morality, less cohesion in the group, or the increase in multiculturalism, the potential for outcry increases. When we try to understand examples of outrage and backlash against comedy and humor, then, we should look to consider the importance of the emotional impact of humor itself as well as a critical eye on the discourse of outrage.