Evil Laughter. It’s a perversion of the real thing.
I attended a recent production of Porgy and Bess and was struck by how often I heard evil laughter. Over and over again, someone laughing at someone else’s pain. Even the honorable Porgy laughed when he killed a man, amazed at his own success eliminating a piece of evil in the world. Though perhaps that was a bit of nervous laughter.
Sportin’ Life, the pimp and lowest of the low, laughed the most. Crown too, the 2nd most evil character in this community of African Americans in the South in the early 1900’s. They did it every time they succeeded in overpowering another.
It was fitting that the pimp, the one with a twisted association with sex, would also have a twisted association with joy and laughter.
Laughter can swing both ways. When someone is lost, their laughter and subsequently their joy, comes from hurting another. Beware when you hear it for this is a very disconnected human being.
Dark humor is just another form of evil laughter. We see it in comedy all the time. But that doesn’t make it any less alarming.
Laughter is an expression of love. If you are laughing at something dark, you’ve gotten it twisted.
Sometimes it might come out when there’s pent-up rage. Evil laughter is a passive aggressive way to express anger. “It’s just a joke.” Hidden cruelty.
The ridicule usually comes from unresolved pain. No doubt from someone having been ridiculed in their past. How can he pass it on to you? He can try to do it with evil, misplaced laughter.
Laughter belongs in a place of wholeness for it is a connection to our deepest selves.
Evil laughter is a pitiful expression of a lost human being.
In entertainment, it’s always the villain who laughs the evil laugh.
Photo: Wikimedia: Porgy & Bess
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