Caty Borum’s The Revolution Will Be Hilarious

Book review by Lauren Woods

From ancient Rome, where citizens drew penises on city walls to mock Caesar’s infidelities, to the United States in the 1960s, where Yippies “levitated” the Pentagon as anti-Vietnam War action, to modern day comedy routines and platforms like Instagram and TikTok, ordinary people have used comedy to point their fingers at authorities and agitate for change. These are just a few examples found in Caty Borum’s The Revolution Will be Hilarious: Comedy for Social Change and Civic Power.

Borum’s book illustrates how comedy can change minds by breaking down barriers between people. When it includes more perspectives—a diversity of race, gender, and lived experiences—comedy can elevate marginalized voices and bring social issues to life in funny and original ways. And yet, as Borum explains, comedy is too often neglected, assumed to be frivolous, instead of utilized as the catalyst for change it can and should be.

Borum is the executive director of the Center for Media & Social Impact (CMSI), a creative innovation lab and research center, and a provost associate professor at American University’s School of Communication. She has written two other books about entertainment media and social change: A Comedian and An Activist Walk Into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice, co-authored with Lauren Feldman; and Story Movements: How Documentaries Empower People and Inspire Social Change. Under Borum’s leadership, CMSI has also created large-scale comedy and human rights programs, including the Yes, And… Laughter Lab, a creative incubator to help comedians develop social justice oriented comedy.

Borum examines some of the many reasons why comedy isn’t taken as seriously as it should be (pun intended) as a catalyst for social change. One possible reason: its impact is difficult to measure. Many human rights and political activists work in practices where they measure, monitor, and report on social changes. That’s difficult to do with comedy, even though we know it can be effective in changing minds. Despite this, Borum argues, comedy should be right beside traditional tactics of progressive social change, like policy briefs, press conferences, fact sheets, and news articles.

One only need remember the remarkable rise of Sarah Cooper, from her comedy lip sync of then-President Trump’s suggestion of disinfectant to beat coronavirus in, “How to Medical,” on TikTok, all the way to a Netflix comedy special, Everything’s Fine, to see the creative possibilities of comedy in grabbing the public’s attention and focusing it on the ridiculous.

The book is thoroughly researched and includes the results of many comprehensive interviews, but that is also part of the challenge of reading it. Despite the subject matter, the material often feels academic and dry. The introduction alone is a dense 26 pages. The arguments are so complete and the examples so many that it is easy to get lost in the sheer volume of names and movements. The book is most compelling when instead it delves more deeply into fewer examples of comedians changing perspectives and shows the reader how.

Still, Borum’s message is deeply important. Borum puts it succinctly in a quotation from Vanessa Jackson, who is part of the Radical Optimist Collective, which deals with racial trauma and healing: “We need laughter because it’s very easy to become a humorless activist.” This is why The Revolution Will be Hilarious should be required reading for activists and ordinary people looking to expand the reach of social movements.

Borum devotes a lot of space to talking about how norms are changing around comedy and new voices are breaking in, as Hollywood and TV networks begin to realize that their businesses (and profit margins) require diverse stories and storytellers. The changing landscape of comedy, small and gradual though the changes may be, is paving the way for a greater number of previously excluded voices. 

One example is the author’s comedic partnership with IllumiNative, a Native American women-led social justice organization that focuses on creative culture and social change, shares authentic and funny takes from Native American perspectives, and corrects inaccurate narratives about Native American people.

In another case of comedy changing minds, in coastal Norfolk, Virginia, the author and her colleagues created a live comedy show in collaboration with Hip Hop Caucus, a grassroots racial justice group, to bring together young Black comedians to talk about the connections between climate change and vulnerable communities of color. The result was Ain’t Your Mama’s Heat Wave, a live standup special and “docu-comedy” that highlights the group’s community organizing strategy to mobilize young Black voters to fight for environmental justice. 

As Borum puts it so well:

“Taking comedy seriously means intentional efforts to alter the underlying mechanisms by which cultural territory is availed and ceded to funny artists with something important to say—particularly the voices and experiences of people who have been and are systemically oppressed. Contemplating comedy for social change means that we believe in the vital importance of humor as a formal mechanism to help strengthen democracy and build an equitable society that honors its pluralism….”

My favorite reason that Borum gives for the importance of comedy is that comedy draws us in to listen in new ways. Listening and creative group ideation are at the heart of a co-creative process between activism and comedy, she writes. As comedy writer and performer Sebastian Conneli puts it in Borum’s book, “As an improviser, listening is the most important thing you can do. . . . You will feel a reaction when something happens out of the ordinary. You’ll never be able to hear what’s unusual and funny about someone’s experience without listening.”

And that’s the magic in the alchemy Borum describes between comedy and activism: how listening closely can bring about that spark of change.

The Revolution Will Be Hilarious: Comedy for Social Change and Civic Power is published by NYU Press. You can buy it from your local DC bookstores, such as Politics and Prose or Kramers.

Caty Borum is Executive Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact; Associate Professor of Communication at American University; and author of Story Movements: How Documentaries Empower People and Inspire Social Change; and co-author, with Lauren Feldman, of A Comedian and An Activist Walk Into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice.

Lauren Woods is a D.C.-based writer. Her work was nominated in 2019 for Best Small Fictions and in 2022 for Best of the Net. Find her on Twitter: @Ladiwoods1.