Psychodynamics of ‘Wifey’ Jokes

Abstract

In the technological world, when everyone is addicted to social networking sites like face book and instant messaging services like watsapp, jokes are continuously being invented and circulated to evoke laughter. Nevertheless, these jokes are hardly innocent but highly political. A society, which is basically patriarchal, uses the tool of humour to stabilize the prevailing inequality. While it is irrelevant to go in search of an individual author of these jokes, it definitely hints at ‘collective agents’. In Indian society, where marriage becomes an ideological apparatus, social networking sites serve the purpose of educating women on how to be an ‘ideal’ wife. The paper seeks to analyse the psychodynamics of these anti- wives jokes through the theories put forward by psychoanalysts like Freud, Lacan, Zizek and Adam Jukes.