Spreading fun: Comic zombies, Joker viruses and COVID-19 jokes

Abstract

This article examines the interplay between humour, science and pandemics in culture. Asking what comic scenarios of infectious diseases look like in different media, the article focuses on comic zombiism in film, clown viruses in comics and COVID-19 jokes on the internet. What can we learn from comic zombies and the Joker – the clown prince of crime in the DC Universe – about infectious diseases? What do viral jokes about pandemics in popular communication (COVID-19 memes in particular) that explicitly refer to these pop cultural phenomena teach us about our understanding of the spread of diseases? And in what way is the spread of humour comparable to the spread of viruses? Exploring these questions, this article investigates the ways humorous interpretations of infectious diseases shape, cultivate and reinforce cultural meanings of diseases and science.

Challenging the stereotype through humor? Comic female scientists in animated TV series for young audiences

“…His clown act involves presenting scientific findings in front of the Academy, and features him getting slapped every evening by other clowns/Academy members. The clown-scientist connection shapes humorous interpretations of Frankenstein (Jürgens, 2019;Jürgens and Williamson, 2020), but also contemporary pop cultural characters, such as the Joker in comics and animated film (Jürgens et al, 2021a). Most of these scenarios revolved around violent body engineering using morbid, dark humor or slapstick.…”

Communicating urgency through humor: School Strike 4 Climate protest placards

“…It is thus not surprising that some placards also include references to humorous popular animated film comedies, including Finding Dory (Figure 3b) and The Lorax (Figure 3d), as well as films and books (for example, reference to a character in Harry Potter in Figure 3c), and music Love Is In The Air (Figure 3a). These placards are interesting because fictional narratives in entertainment media are a powerful means of reaching the public with scientific content and can help audiences interpret information about the environment and (its) science (without having to justify its accuracy), which can help them answer questions about the world [Jürgens et al, 2021;Kirby, 2017]. For example, employing cultural references in climate videos serves to increase the entertainment level of climate messages and thereby increase perceived audience engagement with the topic [Topp et al, 2019], with this entertaining experience deepening audience encounters [Burns et al, 2003].…”

“…2022; or Jürgens, Fiadotava, Tscharke & Viaña, 2021]. It is therefore not surprising that humor plays an important role in the context of climate protest.…”

“…On the one hand, research highlights that humor can draw attention to and increase engagement with climate change [Anderson & Becker, 2018;Eisend, 2009], and help people cope with the catastrophic effects of global environmental problems [cf. Jürgens et al, 2021]. On the other hand, this stream of research also shows that humor can divert people's attention from the main message and negatively influence the credibility of serious issues such as climate change [e.g.…”

Injecting fun? Humour, conspiracy theory and (anti)vaccination discourse in popular media

“…Alongside other aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic (Jürgens et al, 2021), vaccination has become a popular topic for jokes, humorous images with text captions (i.e. image macros or memes) and other forms of humour.…”