“Bwahahahaha” is a weekly column that explores the roots of Korean humor through the joke book “Kkalkkal Useum,” originally published in 1916. One of my favorite movies is Charlie Chaplain’s “City Lights” (1931), but one scene is unwatchable: the one where the rich fop is roaring drunk, trying to drive himself home while careening all over the street. The timing is as clever as everywhere in Chaplain, but drunk driving feels like something that can’t be laughed at anymore. Humor is often amoral, or at least the protagonists of humor usually aren’t moral exemplars. So why does a moral taboo destroy humor so quickly? Within humor psychology, benign violation theory claims that something is funny if it violates some norm, but the violation ends up seeming harmless. From this perspective, if drunk driving can’t be considered ultimately harmless, then it can’t be funny. This punchline of the joke I’m translating today depicts — a trigger warning — domestic violence. It isn’t funny, but the reason I’m translating it is that as part of the collection “Kkalkkal
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