Laughing at Dentistry- Therapeutic or Hostile?

I was fascinated to come across these hideous images.  One way that people deal with subjects that are tremendously scary or threatening is to make  jokes about them.

How many psychiatrist or OB-GYN jokes have we heard?

In fact, you might say that "Laughing at Dentistry" is therapeutic in so far as it displaces the psychic energy that is propelling the Fear Response.

The nervous energy generated by the Fear of Dentistry may be released in the chuckle that accompanies a dental humor-ism.

Playwrights, authors and screenplay writers usually depict The Dentist in some derogatorily humrous fashion--what sweet revenge (and royalties) writers can extract from their past unhappy dental experiences!  The inherent hostility written into these creative works is predictable and usually betrays a an exhausted lack of imagination.

The one instance of a fictional dentist not being given "The Humorous Treatment", was the Nazi Dentist depicted by Laurence Olivier in The Marathon Man.

A Coke Machine that Makea a Sick Joke

A Close-Up View of the Hilarity