by Thomas Wilk and Steven Gimbel
Last month’s open mic night at New College of Florida revealed more than just the comedic ineptitude of its administrators; it exposed the underbelly of a culture clash at the heart of the academic institution. Amidst the cultural war that has engulfed New College, following a takeover by figures appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis, the event was meant to be a light-hearted affair. Instead, it turned into a public spectacle with calls for a dean’s ouster and New College claiming a victory over cancel culture.
Hosted as part of a comedy course, the night featured a routine by Dean of Students David Rancourt that included jokes about a 7-year old boy exposing himself to a girl at the bus stop, violation by a drill sergeant’s baton, and a forced choice between death and “bunga bunga.” The jokes elicited a mix of reactions from the audience. Even New College President Richard Corcoran, who followed Rancourt’s performance, noted the abundance of gay jokes in the set. Corcoran jokingly called Rancourt his “former” dean of students, but, after his homophobic routine, some in the community wish that it wasn’t a joke.
In response to outrage from students and the media, the university gave a statement to The Sarasota Herald-Tribune: “Cancel culture is over at New College. Comedy is a work of art, one that is reliant on our society’s tenets of free speech and free expression. New College supports its students, faculty and staff’s right to participate in artistic endeavors like a comedy performance, or any other civil exercising of free speech and free expression.”
The College is making a common mistake about the ethics of humor. We’d know because we wrote the book on it. The mistake is to think that just because an act is intended to be humorous it must be beyond the scope of moral judgment.
Art is of inherent value and, insofar as comedy is an art form, anything goes. Comedy, though, is a linguistic art form, and language always (yes, always) requires interpretation. We don’t just rely on the words coming out of their mouth to grasp what a speaker is trying to communicate. We also depend on the broader context in which they say it. So, what was Dean Rancourt saying? Should we see him as merely cracking some jokes or is there a more reasonable interpretation?
A joke, when it is a mere joke, doesn’t commit the speaker to whatever stereotypes or presuppositions one must grasp in order to get the joke, and it certainly doesn’t commit her to any implications that might have followed had the joke been uttered in sincerity. Whether we can reasonably expect the audience to interpret some bit of speech as just a joke, however, depends on who the joker is, the context of the joking, the relationship between the joker and audience, and the quality of the jokes.
First, let’s look at the identity of the joker. Rancourt is telling jokes that play on a fear of anal penetration, a fear that often goes hand-in-hand with anxiety that one will be seen as gay if one experiences this. The jokes perpetuate a fear and othering of gay men. If we can interpret it as mere joking, then those implications might not follow, but can we? There’s nothing about Rancourt—a burly guy in a button down and khakis who is a longtime GOP lobbyist with no history of activism on behalf of LGBTQIA folks—that screams, “I don’t mean to be demeaning.” He doesn’t get to tell jokes derogatory toward gays because there’s nothing about him that makes it likely that audiences will conclude that he doesn’t really mean what he says. If he were himself gay or an avid proponent of gay rights, things might be different. We could presume that he intends no harm to that community, and so have some grounds for interpreting his speak as a mere joke. But that just isn’t the case in this case.
Next, let’s look at the context. These administrators took to the stage in a comedy club, and that matters. It’s a space reserved for comedians to test out routines that might flirt with the boundaries of propriety. When you stand on that stage, you get a bit of extra joke capital. You can afford to tell jokes that you couldn’t tell in other settings. So, even if nothing about Rancourt licenses the telling of these jokes, the context is working in his favor.
How about the audience? Is it reasonable for Rancourt to expect that they’ll interpret his speech as just joking on the basis of their relationship? We can, after all, tell jokes among friends that we can’t tell in other contexts because we know that they know we’re just joking. Rancourt doesn’t know his audience, so, unlike a good friend, he shouldn’t expect them to cut him any slack. The audience, however, does know him as an administrator at their school, and in that context, he speaks with some authority. They can expect a certain decorum, and he seems to have violated that expectation. Given his relationship to the audience, it seems he should have expected that they were likely to interpret his jokes as something closer to sincere speech. Administrators can tell jokes, but they’d better exercise maximum care given the power that comes with their office.
Here’s the clincher, though: the jokes were just bad. None of them were novel; they date back decades. The dean also butchered them. His timing wasn’t great, his wording was clumsy, and he swallowed the punchlines. What’s an audience to think when an administrator takes the stage and badly tells a few off-color jokes. Did he really intend to entertain them or should they see him as trying to get away with spouting his homophobia. It seems pretty clear that the latter is the most reasonable interpretation.
The New College of Florida’s open mic debacle is more than just a series of unfortunate jokes; it’s a cautionary tale of what happens when those in power lose sight of their role as custodians of community values. As we navigate the complexities of free speech and humor, let’s not forget the importance of context, empathy, and the responsibility that comes with public platforms. The true art of comedy lies not just in making people laugh, but in doing so in a way that unites rather than divides. Bad comedians are told not to quit their day jobs, Dean Rancourt might not have a choice.
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Thomas Wilk is the author of In on the Joke: The Ethics of Humor and Comedy with Steven Gimbel and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Widener University.