Comedy and Atypical Language’s Corrective Dispositions and Powers

In “The Return of the Prodigal Daughter” (2009), Tianlian Zheng writes about, as the title implies, hostess’ return from the city to their rural hometowns and the identity complications they encounter as the transverse between locations. Interlaced into this chapter is a discussion of comedy’s corrective disposition. Here, Zheng downplays comedy’s corrective power and makes it secondary to atypical language’s corrective power. However, both of these corrective powers accomplish the same end; one corrective should not diminish the other because they work in tangent.

Zehng dismisses comedy’s corrective power for atypical language’s corrective power. Zheng writes, “You may recall the language used by Fragrance in her conversation with Jun. As foul as the langue was, it was as least used in the context of joking banter, but as often it was used as a weapon in serious arguments, and against people whom village culture required be respected” (2009: 158). Zheng goes on to write about Fragrance challenging the elderly through phrases such as “Fuck you mother” (2009: 159). In other words, Fragrance’s comic corrective challenge to Jun is not as serious as her foul language corrective challenge to the elderly because her corrective challenge to Jun was under a “joking” context; it was mere “banter.” However, comic challenges are just as potent as language challenges, and they often act as seamless corrective unit.

More specifically, the “joking banter” polices Jun’s actions successfully. Fragrance makes a fool of Jun when he attacks her profession by saying, “if you were a woman, you would sell yourself so much that you would not even be able to walk” (Zheng 1992: 155) and by supplementing her words by spreading her legs apart which made it hard for her to walk. In other words, Fragrance turns Jun into the joke and marginalizes his attack on her.

This same idea can be seen when Cheng tells the other hostess about the migrant who mimicked a western film when trying to get her to sleep with him. A hostess responded by making an obscene jester of her own and turned the migrant into the joke, turned him into an outsider (Zheng 1992: 153). Zheng writes, “the male migrants are seldom successful in making the transition to urban status and often merely become the laughingstock of the hostesses” (1992: 153 – 154). In other words, the migrants’ incapability to adjust, their rural rigidity locks them into the subject position of comic exertion. Their rigidity is unacceptable, and the hostesses challenge the rigidity by laughing at the migrants. Laughter becomes a corrective action.

Essentially, comedy’s corrective power is no less than atypical language’s corrective power as Zheng argues in “The Return of the Prodigal Daughter.” Comedy successfully polices even if comedy seems not be as direct as atypical language. In addition, comedy and atypical language often work together to police.

Zheng, Tiatian. 2009. “The Return of the Prodigal Daughter” in Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.