Tactical frivolity

Tactical frivolity is a form of public protest involving humour; often including peaceful non-compliance with authorities, carnival and whimsical antics. Humour has played a role in political protests at least as far back as the Classical period in ancient Greece. Yet it is only since the 1990s that the term tactical frivolity gained common currency for describing the use of humour in opposing perceived political injustice. Generally the term is used to denote a whimsical, nonconfrontational approach rather than aggressive mocking or cutting jokes.

The study of humour by social historians did not become popular until the early 1980s and the literature on this subject studying periods before the 20th century is relatively sparse. An exception is the frequently citedRabelais and His World by Mikhail Bakhtin, a Russian scholar considered by some to be the most important thinker of the 20th century. The work discusses the life and times of the writer and satirist François Rabelais with emphases on what the author considers to be the powerful role of humour in medieval and early times. Carnivals, Satire and the French folk custom of Charivari were discussed as mediums that allowed the lower classes to use humour to highlight unjust behaviour by the upper classes. These humorous protests were generally tolerated by the ruling authorities. Examples of the use of humour for political protest even from Classical times, such as the play Lysistrata by ancient Greek dramatist Aristophanes, have been described as "Rabeleisan protest". Studies of hunter gather tribes thought to have systems of social organisation that have changed little since prehistoric times, have found that ridicule or anger is used by many tribes to oppose any individual who tries to assume authority in a way that violates the tribe's egalitarian norms. Tribes observed to show this behaviour include the !Kung, Mbuti, Naskapi and Hazda. An example of a political protest making extensive use of humour in early modern times was the 17th century British movement, the Levellers. There is much more extensive literature covering the use of humour by the protest movements which emerged in the 20th century.

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