PANDEMIC IN THE BIG CITY: PARADOX CORONAVIRUS LAUGHTER

Abstract

The ambivalence of the nature of laughter causes interest in exploring the possibilities of humor to unite people and help in the era of the coronavirus pandemic, acting as a stress regulator. The article is devoted to the study of ‘coronavirus humor’ in urban culture.War, death, and disease have always been secretly forbidden topics for jokes. But during catastrophic events at some point the ‘mass production’ of jokes, memes, songs, anecdotes. Since the beginning of the pandemic, many international cartoon competitions have been held to combat the coronavirus.The purpose of the article is to analyze the cases of ‘coronavirus humor’ from different countries, its place in the socio-philosophical manifestation and conceptualization of laughter culture from the point of view of ‘socioanthropоsaving’ and ‘socio-anthropo-destructive’ factors and modes of laughter.Citizens in different parts of the world reacted to the general threat, the excitement around toilet paper, the features of distance work and learning, self-isolation and its consequences, new rules of behavior in different parts of the world.When we are sick, we are not kidding, we try to heal. And when there is no certainty: sick or not, when it is unclear what is happening, and whether there is a threat to us and our loved ones, humor becomes an important means of interaction, reaction to this threat. In the face of an external threat, we begin to joke, because, on the one hand, it is a compensation for our insecurity. On the other hand, humor is what allows us to unite. It strengthens our solidarity when we all laugh at the same thing together. This means that we all know the same facts - we share the same agenda, and this is important. We have common values, common norms - we laugh at the same thing. So, humor is not just a need to ‘laugh’ at your fear, but also an indicator and factor of our sociality.