Killing jokes

'What is really disturbing about The Name of the Rose, however, is the underlying belief in the liberating, anti-totalitarian force of laughter, of ironic distance. Our thesis here is almost the exact opposite of the underlying premiss of Eco's novel: in contemporary societies, democratic or totalitarian,that cynical distance, laughter, irony, are, so to speak, part of the game.'

Zizek, S. The Sublime Object of Ideology. 1989.