Humor of the Gallows

by Tom Ferrick Jr.

JULY 20, 2007 TAGS: HUMOR, DEATH PENALTY COMMENTS (2)

In the world of oxymorons, gallows humor is up there with jumbo shrimp.

Can you imagine a worse time to make a joke than just before they put the noose around your neck or raise the axe or let the guillotine fly?

Besides, murderers and martyrs " two highly popular subjects of executions -- aren't known for their senses of humor.

But, then there was Vincent Gutierrez, a murderer who was executed (where else?) in Texas in March of this year.

After he was strapped into a gurney and prepped for lethal injection, Gutierrez looked up and said: "Where's a stunt double when you need one?"

Gutierrez, in turn, inspired Patrick Knight, another Texas murderer, due to follow him into the death chamber in June.

Murphy used MySpace.com to hold a contest, soliciting jokes, promising to use the winner as his last words.

As Michelle Lyons, spokeswoman for the Texas prisons, told Reuters: "He wants to keep his execution light."

Knight's contest was tasteless and bizarre, so naturally it drew a huge response. There were more than 250 submissions.

At the end, though, Knight punked out and got all emotional. Strapped down and about to get the needle, he said: "I said I was going to tell a joke. Death has set me free. That's the biggest joke. I deserve thisâ€¦."

So much for keeping it light.

The father of gallows humor has to be St. Lawrence, the Fourth Century A.D. church official martyred by the Romans for refusing to yield up the church's treasury.

Since the Romans were really ticked at Lawrence, a humane execution " say, crucifixion or being eaten by lions " would not do. They decided to light a charcoal fire, put Lawrence on a gridiron, and slowly roast him to death.

At one point, Lawrence is said to have turned to his executioners and quipped: "Turn me. I am done on one side."

On the strength of that one-liner, St. Lawrence was later made a patron saint of comedians. He also became " and I am not making this up " the patron saint of cooks. (Obviously, by someone within the Vatican with a sick sense of humor.)

Over the years, gallows humor has suffered from definitional drift. The 2002 edition of Merriam-Websters' Unabridged defines it simply as: "humor that makes fun of very serious or terrifying situations."

In other words, it has been lumped together with sick jokes, black humor and dead-baby jokes

No less an authority than Sigmund Freud would dispute that. To Freud, gallows humor (or galgenhumor, to use the German) had a meaning that placed it in a category of its own. It was, very specifically, an act of defiance.

"By making our enemy small, inferior, despicable or comic, we achieve in a roundabout way the enjoyment of overcoming himâ€¦," Freud wrote in a famous 1905 essay on jokes (which, I must say, is not at all funny).

History hasn't yielded many examples of people who wisecracked at their executions. Speeches, yes. Protestations of innocence, yes. Pleas for mercy, sure. But not many one-liners.

Take mass murderer of young men John Wayne Gacy. The most he could muster at his execution in 1966 was to turn to his guards and say: "You can kiss my ass."

And this guy made his living as a clown?

Sir Thomas Moore gave it a try. Being led up rickety steps to the chopping block in 1535, he turned to his escort and said: "I pray you, Mr. Lieutenant, see me safe up; and for my coming down, let me shift for myself."

I guess you had to be there.

If gallows humor is a scarce commodity, how about gallows puns?

I could find only two in all the literature. One was uttered by George Appel. A murderer, about to be executed in the electric chair in 1928, Appel turned to the witnesses and said: Well, gentlemen, you are about to see a baked apple."

In 1996, James French, yet another murderer, was sitting in the electric chair in Oklahoma, when he quipped: "How's this for a headline? French Fries."

French fries. Now that's funny.