Cringe Overhang

Cringe comedy can make people so uncomfortable, the cringe continues even after the comedy has stopped. This paper explains this effect, which I call “cringe overhang”. If audiences weakly connect to the characters, they laugh. If audiences strongly connect, they have a negative emotional response—say, struggling to watch, or wanting to leave the room.Firstly, I argue cringe comedy jokes are illocutionary acts designed to provoke laughter through second-hand embarrassment (Austin 1975). Secondly, I acknowledge that these jokes don’t always produce the desired perlocutionary effect of laughter—sometimes the joke is unable to cut through the embarrassment, merely leaving the viewer in a state of discomfort. Thirdly, drawing on the benign violation theory of McGraw and Warren (2010), I explain that the surplus of embarrassment is due to maximising the violation in the comedy while adding comparatively little benign.Finally, I argue that cringe comedy’s funniness is reliant on its lack of social psychological distancing. By leaving no room between the viewer and the character, embarrassment is maximised, the comedy is less benign (i.e. a stronger violation) and more polarising as a result. This explains i) why cringe comedy produces a comedic “overhang” in some viewers, where they continue to cringe even after the comedy has stopped, and ii) why cringe comedy produces a laughter response in some audiences, and stress responses in others.