Whilst you feel like you need to say something to help your cause, nothing tangible comes out when you try – you are at one moment aware of how devoid of a sense of yourself you can be, and at the same time, necessarily on display for others, real or imagined, to see. It is, of course, the violent petrifaction associated with shame, perhaps as universal a feeling as any. Even though we want to step away from this feeling, it is predicated with pain. Bridget Jones, in many ways a comedic pariah of contemporary shame, suffers this condition throughout Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary. Bridget, often left speechless in the wake of shame, provides a wealth of examples when she narrates the failings of her life: “Not being a natural liar, I ended up mumbling shamefacedly to Geoffrey, [about her love life] ‘fine,’ at which point he boomed, ‘so you still haven’t got a feller!” (11). Like Bridget, we often cannot avoid the pain shame brings, and perhaps equally unavoidable, the stinging realization that for others, this may be as comical for them as it is painful for you. As Bridget draws out, shame and humor are often intimately related. How can this be the case?
What undoubtedly is brought to light when articulating shame and humour in the same capacity is the seeming tension between the two concepts. On a basic level, they appear to be near binaries in a continuum of emotion, from despair to elation. Moreover, when we strive to contrast these concepts, at least superficially, we have many ways to do so. Certainly, there is the clear social aspect to both shame and humour; the dynamic interaction could be a prolific way to approach a critical comparison. Perhaps equally engaging, one could look at the physiological ramifications of shame and humour. Yet, in either case, I believe, one is bound to fall short of their goals – if one intends to fully explain why shame can be comical – because these methods treat both as though a comparison can bring the two concepts into coincidence. They are, as mentioned, too paradoxical and binary for coincidence. Instead, the more fruitful approach is to demonstrate how they are not concepts, theories, or even fully defined terms at all. Rather, unifying a workable model of shame and humour rests on recognizing that they are sensibilities; in other words, they represent a way of seeing the world particular to the individual. Therefore, the success of this essay is contingent on effectively reading Bridget Jones’s Diary in relation to the sensibility of shame and humour in contemporary culture, something I intend to accomplish by reading Fielding’s work through an analysis steeped in Susan Sontag’s canonical Notes on “Camp”. The result, I expect, will be a more unified presentation of shame and humour in one specific context, Bridget Jones’s Diary, which will open an opportunity for new dialogue and discourse in a larger project of theorizing shame and humour as recognition of a cultural shift.
Both Fielding and Sontag appear on the cultural stage at times of distinctive culture paradigm shifts. Whereas Fielding is writing during the late 1990’s, a time where identity politics became wavering sites of confusion for those trapped between Madonna “Vogue” and Dawson’s Creek, Sontag’s early works came nearing the beginning of fragmented personalities. Maturing her academic thought during the climate of Andy Warhol’s factory scene, Sontag was one of the earliest theorists to claim that things in popular culture could be talked about critically, and more importantly, that these issues sat in a conflicted scheme of contexts. Although Sontag’s essay, Notes on ‘Camp’, deals with the notion of Camp specifically and not humor and shame, more generally it works to demonstrate how complex ideas can be expressed by their unstable context. Co-opting Sontag’s voice, I too would like to find similar ends in some aspects of shame and humor: “though I am speaking about sensibility only – and about a sensibility that, among other things, converts the serious into the frivolous – these are grave matters”. In a sense, Sontag seems to be speaking directly towards how Bridget lives her daily life, where the serious becomes frivolous – transforming the shameful into the humourous.
The endearing nature of Bridget surely stems, in large part, from the seemingly unending shameful situations she puts herself in around others. In a profound sense, Bridget contextualizes herself in a matrix of shameful relations in such a way that she engages with people with full knowledge that their interactions will be embarrassing for her, and likely, comical for everyone else. For instance, Bridget is forever embarrassed at the ludicrous situations she puts herself in to appease her mother’s wishes. Attending a ‘tarts and vicars’ party in the garden of a family friend, Bridget regrettably arrives without being given notice that the theme was abandoned, “I [Bridget] couldn’t believe this. I mean, did she think that I dressed as a bunny girl normally or something?” (Fielding 169). Obstinately mocked, Bridget is left to explain the conspicuous lack of her boyfriend, Daniel Cleaver – a truly shameful (shameful for whom, perhaps, is debatable) event. Nevertheless, even if the reader sympathizes, it is extremely difficult not to laugh. Fielding wrote Bridget purposively to be caught in constant shameful circumstances, and furthermore, for these to be funny. However, as a book enters common parlance interpretations vary, and conversely, there are those who are repulsed by the idea that these types of shameful instances are funny. The next step, consequently, is to likely explore where this divide takes our understanding of shame and humor.
Shame, one could argue, is a moment of social experience where external premises become internalized as negatively consequential. According to James Twitchell, shame is an internalized other, a watcher that represents the cultural gaze felt by a subject (39). Partially correct, Twitchell seems only to corner shame in a particular way, pejorative and limited in its scope. Humour, in rebuttal, applies the opposite logic; it takes that which is internally motivated and makes itself public in a moment of pleasure. The challenge occurs, of course, in the event where the divide between humor and shame act simultaneously and our faculty of sense towards the two becomes bewildered. Twitchell’s definition fails to express all the aspects of the shame/humor interplay. At any given moment where shame and humor combine, Twitchell fails to recognize that a more intricate emotional response occurs, one which might not be anthropologically explainable. In retrospect, however, it may be possible to salvage a sense where the readers can reconstruct some semblance of a unified position, one where the malice of shame is intertwined with the supposed benevolence of humour. There are those, perhaps, who may suggest that the comedy defuses shame. Also, there are some, surely, who will claim that humour found in shame is mean spirited. I, however, will take a much softer stance and suggest neither are necessarily the case; the humor in shame is an esoteric condition, and, as such, it is impossible for everyone to be in on the joke. Nevertheless, there is a unison, which necessarily not everyone will be privy to, that allows a space where shame can be comical and painful simultaneously – being on the inside of the shameful joke. Being in on the joke may even apply, or maybe likely does apply, for the person being shamed. Bridget, for example, can present the collapse of her love life with the adroit cultural references that some may find humorous while others will not. Fielding demonstrates this, narrating as Bridget, “whinging” (British slang for a comically annoying whine) in the wake of finding her boyfriend, Daniel, to be a cheater: “I’m falling apart. My boyfriend is sleeping with a bronzed giantess. My mother is sleeping with a Portuguese. Jeremy is sleeping with a horrible trollop, Prince Charles is sleeping with Camilla Parker-Bowles. Do not know what to believe in or hold on to anymore” (181).
Bridget’s romantic collapse hints at what I present as a larger cultural paradigm, one where multiple interpretations are evoked, and in being evoked, create separate camps of inclusion and exclusion, of the humor and the shame. The roots of this condition, as I have begun to present, can be distinctly seen in Sontag’s view of Camp. Again, I find her model to be apt in a greater sphere of analysis regarding the multitude of possible contexts one given event can have, in particular, on shame and humour: “[it] is esoteric – something of a private code, a badge of identity even”. This is a difficult position to take, perhaps, because it is elusive to demonstrate and is necessarily so. However, wisps of this sentiment can be found in judgments readers take when encountering the instances of the confused shame and humour. There are those who laud the exploits of Bridget, enamored with her “real-to-life” tendencies, reflected in customer reviews from Amazon:
Bridget Jones is a little beyond the usual marriage age, and she feels it because people keep reminding her that her clock is ticking. She is literate but not always competent. Her love life is a mess. She worries about her weight, her smoking, her drinking, and just about everything else. In fact, she keeps a meticulous record of her failures. Often she is funny, seeing the foolishness of it all. And sometimes she is in despair and insecure. She is always a social and physical klutz. And these flaws in her make her come alive. (Long)
In this review , we find a reader who “gets it”, assuming, of course, that there is indeed something to “get”. What should not be taken from this review, however, is that this sensibility for Bridget that the reviewer demonstrates is in anyway universal. Neither should one understand this in the sense that this is a more correct reading than any other, especially one that does not seem to “get it.” Again, it remains an esoteric enterprise, which furthermore, is not consistent between all times and all places. It could be the case, in any type of social setting, that we could become more like this second, less favorable, reviewer:
After the first 50 odd pages I revisited the site and re-evaluated my interpretations of customer's reviews. Had I missed something? Yes, there were a few skeptics in the reviews and those that just did not "get her". Refusing to believe I am someone that can not "get" Bridget, I persevered [sic], determined to find that missing link that would catapult me into a raving reviewer. Around the middle of the book I realized that it had improved somewhat, but I had yet to have huge guffaws, loud, raucous laughter and the temptation to down a bottle of scotch and smoke a pack of fags (Hansen).
Reflecting on the review, it certainly seems as though the reviewer lacked a type of cultural currency that alienated her from all of pop culture enjoyment. Rather, the reviewer suggests that, in this case, she simply did not “get” Bridget.
Ultimately, there is a fundamental feature that allows shame and humour to coexist. Even in the same context, in this case Bridget Jones’s Diary, one does not overwhelm the other and annihilate the emotions it formerly carried. Only here, in this convoluted place of finding the inclusive and exclusionary in the same, paradoxical, concoction of shame and humour, can we begin to properly express the elusive nature of the two together at the same time in the same society. Yet, in the same breath, although we as an audience may feel driven one direction or another, this does not preclude our understanding or appreciation for recognition of the other emotion, either immediately or in reflection. The struggle shifts, therefore, because we no longer strain to locate the matrix of shame and humour, but rather how to justify it, a matter of taste to be sure. How do we prove this? As is my modus operandi, I refer back to the method Sontag used to find the sensibility of the elusive Camp because of the similarities in ambiguity:
Taste has no system and no proofs. But there is something like a logic of taste: the consistent sensibility which underlies and gives rise to a certain taste. A sensibility is almost, but not quite, ineffable. Any sensibility which can be crammed into the mold of a system, or handled with the rough tools of proof, is no longer a sensibility at all. It has hardened into an idea.
From this vantage, I further endeavor to pursue the consequential issue in the mixture of shame and humour: can it be culturally justifiable?
Throughout youth, there are moments where nearly universal ideals are passed down as common sense – things we find often to be neither common nor sensible at all. One such case intimately involves humour and shame: it is important to laugh with, not at, people. To this end, author Kelly Marsh contextualizes the common sentiment expressed about the failure of Bridget and the shame she is put through as a consequence, particularly by those critical of Fielding’s book: “Her diary revels hilariously in her insecurities, her mistakes, and her failures even as it qualifies her successes; as a result, critics suggest that the humor of the novel is not consciously created by Bridget but rather at her expense” (52). This charge by the critics, that the humor is at Bridget’s expense, surely cannot hold true in all cases, there is something more nuanced occurring. It will help to refer back to Bridget, so obviously pained by her shameful experiences, but often without being privy to the humor we as readers find in the moment. In this excerpt, Bridget experiences the normative shame accompanying dating a younger man as an older woman, and what is worse, getting lost on the way to his apartment:
Feel like Old Woman of the Hills. Was so long since had been on a date that was completely full of myself and could not resist boasting to taxi driver about my ‘boyfriend’ and going to my ‘boyfriend’s’ who was cooking me supper. Unfortunately, however, when I got there, Number 4 Malden Road was a fruit and vegetable shop. (Fielding 217)
Although we may laugh, is this simply laughing at, not with, Bridget? To this end, I cannot say – it feels like something only particularly answerable by the ridiculed. However, what can be delved into more voraciously are the sensibilities involved. Certainly, there are cases where laughter can be done with the intention to wound. This, however, is of little concern to this discussion, because, ultimately, the intent of the laughter is thinly veiled. Rather, the difficult question is of a different variety: how are we supposed to “read” humour in cases where the intention is not to inflict harm but there exists the assumption that we are not laughing “with” the shamed? Vitally, is this not what we mean when we ask if shame and humour are compatible?
Throughout this inductive process, it has made the most sense to refer Fielding’s instances of shame to a societal trend elaborated in the work of Sontag. However, I have been extremely sensitive to calling the shame and humour discussion equivalent to the sensibility of Camp, for there are certainly instances where this simply does not apply. Fortunately, contextualized as it is, it feels appropriate to now make the leap to definitively call Bridget’s shame a mode of Camp. What allows this paradigm shift, both in the context of this essay and in society, is a relationship of confused identity, where shame can foster laughter, and humour garners shamed humility – the exclusive, and elusive, laughter “at” a subject with harmless intent. Yet it is not enough to say this claim simply exists, the issue of presenting this as true must bear relevance.
Since we have previously explored the relationship of inclusion and exclusion in shame and humour, and this does not seem to garner any prolific realizations in the explication of why we allow ourselves such liberties, there must be another way to contextualize the relationship. If there is one relationship that must necessarily be emphasized, therefore, it must be found in the brush off colloquialisms like “chillin’ out”, “takin’er easy”, or “kickin’ back”. It is, quite simply, a reactionary method of deflating the anxious, and this is fundamentally a modified sensibility to the serious. If this can be taken as a condition of modern sensibilities, which I believe that it must be, it seems appropriate to use the words first used by Sontag to describe this mode of humour with Camp sensibility: “The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to ‘the serious.’ One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious” [emphasis added]. Essentially, while we recognize that the consequences of shame, and perhaps much more important, the causes are of shame are tremendously serious, approaches like humour and laughter can visibly blur and complicate the relation. Whereas the issue of shame is surely serious, we can begin to approach it in a frivolous, playful manner.
Envisioning a world where the distinction between shame and humour become increasingly blurred, especially when looking at Bridget Jones’s Diary, it becomes more convincing that the two create a sensibility reflected in the very way we come to perceive the world around us. Personally, this begins to make the most sense, which is to say only in relating the impossibility of ever fully understanding the entire issue do we make progress. To do so, I believe the type of codified, shame/comedic relationship found in Bridget Jones’s Diary makes the most sense if looked at in terms of Sontag’s notion of Camp. If, for instance, we read Sontag’s notion of Camp we can begin to extract some of the malice that plagued some readings of humour in Fielding’s work:
Camp proposes a comic vision of the world. But not a bitter or polemical comedy [...] Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation - not judgment. Camp is generous. It wants to enjoy. It only seems like malice, cynicism. (Or, if it is cynicism, it's not a ruthless but a sweet cynicism).
With camp sensibilities fresh in our minds, it is now the case that we can read about Fielding’s Bridget with a “sweet cynicism” that does not provoke malice, despite laughing at Bridget’s failures:
Sink into morbid, cynical reflection about how much romantic heartbreak is to do with ego and miffed pride rather than actual loss, also incorporating sub-thought that reason for Fergie’s [Sarah Ferguson] insane overconfidence may be that Andrew [Duke of York] still wants her back until he marries someone else, har har [sic]. (191)
In the first section of the previous quote the audience is triggered to laugh at Bridget’s shame, a shame that has been brought to the forefront throughout the course of the entire book. However, there is an interesting tonal shift in Bridget’s own diction, one that amplifies and strengthens the association of shame and humour with Camp, where Bridget turns to the miseries of Fergie, the former Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson. She seems to present the same sort of comical shaming, without passionate malice, to the woes that plagued Fergie in the tabloids at the time. Drawing out the connection, Bridget’s participation in this type of playful, campy, “sweet cynicism” reveals that like the reader who “get’s it”, Bridget, too, is among the esoteric camp humor.
One can get away with certain things, for instance, a joke about how terrible a friend looks, if the person is wise in picking opportunities. Certainly, there are types of jokes that can be told in closed circles of close friends; you can shame a close friend, with a comedic tone, in ways that one would never dare try with a casual acquaintance. Perhaps, it is this sort of sentiment, the dynamic that humor can play in a small group of friends, of a small group dynamic, that can be utilized to characterize the sensibility of camp humor and shame. Since we have constructed shame, humor, and camp together in an esoteric grouping, the most obvious move to make is to appeal to simile; the benevolent humor in shame circulating throughout society today is like the playful mockery in a group of friends.
To this point, there is one aspect that remains unresolved. While I have said how shame and humor relate to groups as well as relationships to a complex, frivolous relation to the serious, this method would fail without answering an underlying question: why is it so funny? Certainly, in shame, we are laughing at some sort of failure of intention; the way things worked out was not as the actor intended. To reconcile our thoughts, Sontag gives us the words to express the humor of shame: “it doesn’t sneer at someone who succeeds in being seriously dramatic. What it does is to find the success of certain passionate failures.” Bridget, in many ways, is permeated in what can be best called passionate failures: “[Bridget] is adept at identifying her shortcomings, but rather passive in the face of change. Such a large list of resolutions [each day in her diary and at the beginning of the year] seems to guarantee failure” (Whelehan 23). By celebrating the failure of intention found in shame like we find in Bridget, the awkward social repercussions of shame become subjects of laughter, a laughter that sees failure as success and shame as humorous. Undoubtedly, this is a Camp sensibility that evolves out of a mind state seeking pleasure, one with enough personal and cultural reflexivity to recognize that if given the right intentions, even shame can be humorous:
Camp taste is a kind of love, love for human nature. It relishes, rather than judges, the little triumphs and awkward intensities of "character." . . . Camp taste identifies with what it is enjoying. People who share this sensibility are not laughing at the thing they label as "a camp," they're enjoying it. (Sontag)
This resonates strongly with Fielding’s work; Bridget is an endearing, lovable character who we want to give the benefit of the doubt, to laugh alongside her failures. We enjoy the failures of Bridget, largely because we are set-up to laugh up at the mixture of seriousness and playfulness with which she approaches her life. Bridget intends to avoid dating pitfalls in her New Year’s resolution: “[she will not] fall for the following: alcoholics, workaholics commitment phobics [sic], people with girlfriends or wives, misogynists, megalomaniacs, chauvinists, emotional fuckwits or freeloaders, perverts” (Fielding 2). This is funny. This is meant to be funny. We allow it to be funny because we have a Camp sensibility to know that it is not meant to be exceedingly hurtful. Furthermore, we understand that Bridget is not so vulnerable that we cannot laugh at her plight without it being taken maliciously: “[…] Bridget underplays […] herself: she owns an apartment in central London, holds jobs in publishing and television, attracts desirable men, and maintains her family relations and a wide circle of true friends” (Kelly 57). We have given ourselves the authority to relax, to lighten up.
Perhaps this relationship of humor and shame offers the evidence for a cultural shift in how we view shame in the context of humor in society. Perhaps, however, it is not. While reading Bridget Jones’s Diary, one does not get the sense that finding humor within shame – while maintaining a sense of benevolence and compassion – is altogether revolutionary or new. This is on one hand troubling, considering the lack of investigation afforded this type of relationship; and on the other hand, exciting, given the potential for more work to be done in the area. What may be most apt, ultimately, is to claim that the way we come to conceptualize the relationship between shame and humor and formulate ways to speak about the two – for example, using the language of Camp provided by Sontag – is the cultural shift we should now be focusing on. Furthermore, this shift can be given a favorable, optimistic outlook. As the relationship between the serious and frivolous - perhaps the real paradigm shift - becomes queered, we begin give justifications as to how we can laugh at shame, and what is more, have all parties partake in this laughter. This, as Bridget would say, is “v.g.”, very good, indeed.
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