Is it ok that Kristen Bell’s husband joked about killing her? — Worthwhile Language Advice
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A few people have asked me to write about Kristen Bell’s recent Instagram post celebrating her wedding anniversary with Dax Shepard. Their questions can be summed up as basically:
1. What do you think about his joke?
2. Why do you think people had such a strong reaction to it?
Content warning: Femicide and intimate partner violence
Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell are both US actors based in Los Angeles; he also has a popular podcast and has written and directed movies. They’ve been married for more than a decade.
On October 12th, Bell posted the below photo on Instagram and wrote in the caption, “Happy 12th wedding anniversary to the man who once said to me: ‘I would never kill you. A lot of men have killed their wives at a certain point. Even though I’m heavily incentivized to kill you, I never would.’❤️”
It’s clearly being presented as a joke, one that Bell herself finds funny, since the post is in celebration of their relationship and she closed out the caption with a heart emoji.
There are sighted people who looked at this photo and thought at first that Shepard was hugging one of his children, but it is in fact Bell. She is 5'1" (155 cm) to his 6'2" (188 cm) and looks like she weighs about 100 lbs (45k) less than him.
Their embrace looks loving, but it also highlights that Bell is much, much smaller than Shepard and that he could easily overpower her. It is also worth noting that his right arm and hand are not in a standard hug position: instead, his right hand is cupping and fully encompassing the back of her head, which is not how people usually hug. Gripping a partner’s head or wrapping an arm around their neck (instead of their shoulders) is often seen as a sign of unhealthy control or abuse.
This post generated a lot of commentary on the internet. Most can be summed up as:
1. That “joke” isn’t appropriate
2. Girl, are you ok?
Where is the humor?
Let’s start with a closer look at the words in the post and how they are meant to convey humor.
The mechanism of the humor is a little complicated to unpack. It’s adjacent to but not really sarcasm. In sarcasm, a person means the exact opposite of the semantics of their words. Like when your colleague says, “Oh, a 4 pm meeting on Friday! Just what I was hoping for.”
But Shepard didn’t say something like, “I want to kill you.” He said “I would never kill you… Even though I’m heavily incentivized to…” So it’s not a straightforward flipping of the words’ meaning through sarcasm, even though we’re meant to understand he’s just joking about killing her.
What’s useful here is Erving Goffman’s analysis of the different roles that are performed by a person producing language. In Goffman’s framework, there are three roles:
Author: The person who has come up with the words being said or signed or written.
Animator: The person who is saying or signing or writing those words.
Principal: The person who is aligned with the position being expressed by the words. “Who is officially responsible.”
In Bell’s post, Shepard is the author of the words in the quote marks. Bell is the animator, since she (or a social media manager, although that feels unlikely) typed up the caption when she created her post.
But who is the principal? It’s complicated. Because Shepard’s words are expressing two different positions, and those positions are contradictory. Position 1: I would never kill you. Position 2: I have considered killing you, and there are arguments in its favor, so the threat of my killing you is real.
Proportionally, his words are weighted more heavily towards Position 2. “I would never kill you” and “I never would” support Position 1, that’s 8 words total. “A lot of men have killed their wives at a certain point. Even though I’m heavily incentivized to kill you” supports Position 2, and that’s 20 words, more than twice as many.
Why bring up murder at all? Well, some people prefer to be edgy than to be earnest, and that’s ok. In general, birthday and anniversary posts on Instagram lean more on the earnest side. So they might just be positioning themselves as dark and different.
But because the mechanism of the humor isn’t clear, and because people don’t know enough about Shepard’s and Bell’s relationship to judge their interactions, we’re kind of left hanging. Without history and context, those two contradictory principal positions don’t let us say definitively, “He’s just joking and that’s one way they express their love.” In the end, we’re left with a lot of verbiage and a physical posture that feels more threatening than loving.
Was this joke appropriate for a public post?
No.
Bell’s very public Instagram posting of Shepard’s joke violates two of my Principles of Language Optimization: (5) Incorporate other perspectives, and (6) Recognize pain points.
Bell has 14.8 million followers on Instagram. So there’s got to be a broad range of perspectives and lived experiences among the people who follow her.
When Bell posted words where someone who says he loves her also says he’s considered killing her, she forgot that for many of her followers, this is a grim reality. That many, many people have lived with abusers who were NOT joking when they talked about killing them.
And when Bell didn’t incorporate the perspectives of people who have been traumatized by intimate partner violence and murder, she did not recognize their pain points. Instead of presenting just a light-hearted celebration of her anniversary, she caused unexpected pain for a certain percentage of her audience.
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In my book chapter on recognizing pain points, I talk about “just joking” and the need to be careful. An excerpt:
“Let’s say you learn a really funny joke about a plane crash. You’ve never lost anyone to a plane crash, so for you it’s just funny.
You might tell the joke to close friends who you know haven’t been affected by plane crashes. But if, right as you’re about to tell the joke, a friend shows up who lost a sibling in a plane crash, you’re probably not going to tell the joke anymore.
And if you live in a place where a lot of people were affected by a plane crash, you might stop telling the joke altogether, because you never know who it would be painful for. ‘I don’t want to remind someone of a terribly upsetting thing just for the sake of a joke,’ you might think as you decide to put it on the shelf for a while.”
Just switch out “plane crash” for “intimate partner violence and femicide” and it’s the same situation. Bell is living in a place where a lot of people have been affected by violence against and murder of women. A LOT of people.
Do you know what the leading cause of death is in the US for pregnant women/women who have just given birth? It isn’t medical. It isn’t physical complications.
It’s murder, almost always by their partner.
A few statistics from the Emory University School of Medicine:
Every year nearly 5.3 million incidents of IPV [intimate partner violence] occur among U.S. women aged 18 and older
IPV results in nearly 1300 deaths and 2 million injuries every year in the United States
More than three women in the US are killed by husbands/boyfriends every day
This means that Bell’s audience of nearly 15 million is pretty much guaranteed to include followers who have been traumatized and physically harmed by violence and murder from their boyfriend, husband, or partner.
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In fact, some of the top comments on her post come from followers like these:
“Domestic violence isn’t a joke.”
“Crazy thing to joke about honestly. Sincerely, someone who thankfully survived.”
“What a wild thing to post during Domestic Violence Awareness month.”
Many other comments defended the post, basically using the “just joking” defense. As I’ve talked about before in my writing, “just joking” suggests that because there is a humorous framing, nothing is inappropriate. So if someone says there’s a problem, it’s actually their problem. They’re oversensitive, and they need to lighten up.
On the one hand, dark humor is a common coping mechanism. And Shepard has talked about the abuse he experienced and witnessed as a child.
On the other hand, “just joking” about doing something threatening or inappropriate is also a common testing mechanism by abusers. To see what the response is and if they can take it a step further. We see it in personal relationships. And we see it at work, where people with views officially frowned upon by society (like racism and misogyny) “just joke” to see what they can get away with.
So we’re left without a clear interpretation of Shepard’s intentions or what’s going on in their relationship.
Is there the threat of or actual abuse? This is supported by Shepard’s controlling-looking grip on Bell’s head and the suggestion that he’s considered killing her (and has strong incentives to).
Or is this just the way the two of them joke, engaging in dark humor? This is supported by their work and writing as comedic actors, and banter seen in interviews with them, like one where he jokes about Bell murdering people and about him hitting her.
In the end, I’m not going to make a judgment about the health of this celebrity relationship or about the ways they use humor at home.
But I will make a judgment about the appropriateness of Bell’s post.
If you like to joke about violence and murder at home or with friends and everyone is fine with it, great! I certainly have friends that I have made super super dark jokes with, and it was genuinely bonding and liberating to have someone to talk with like that. Comedy and humor are powerful in all kinds of ways.
But you have to know your audience and take them into consideration.
We overuse the word triggering these days, but this Instagram post by Bell was genuinely triggering in the original mental health sense of causing someone to relive past trauma.
When millions of people have been traumatized by violence against and murder of women? The way to optimize your communications is to keep your jokes about violence and murder limited to an audience you know is ok with that kind of humor.
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