Humor at the Airport? Visualization, Exposure, and Laughter in the “War on Terror”

With the emergence of aviation as a target for terrorism and serious crime in the 1970s, the affective dimension of airport security changed drastically and is now carefully engineered as a zone of earnest and solemn protocol. Against a backdrop of bombings and hijackings, airport security today enacts a “no bullshit” approach to the “war on terror.” Humor has essentially been banned from screening operations. From signs reading “No bomb jokes, please,” to drastic consequences in the case of non-compliance, security appears as something that is not to be fooled around with. Against this background, this paper builds on ethnographic fieldwork at Hamburg airport during the German trial run with body scanners in 2011. During the time of observation, we found a surprising amount of reciprocal laughter and joking. We argue that this can be conceptualized as an attempt to break open a space for laughter, momentarily abandoning protocol in order to deal with issues of visualization, exposure, and shame which arise from the new focus on the fleshly anatomical body.