Julie Gillis opens the question up about what’s funny when, how and why.
I like comedy. I like performing it, reading it, watching it (though curiously, I’m not all that good at writing it). Humor is a part of the human experience and it can be so, so good. It can also go so, so wrong.
While there are many sites to learn and read about what comedy is, like this wiki which lists everything from satire to scatology, I see humor as serving several purposes in the life of a human being.
1) Deflecting pain: We see painful horrible things around us all the time. From breakups to war, from falling down to dying, from theft to assault it’s out there and we experience it or see it happening to those we love. Humor can be used as a way to protect ourselves (when it happens to us) from the initial pain. It can also be used as a totem of sorts….”If I joke about this and claim to have superior knowledge or reactions to this bad thing, it won’t happen to me.” Often called Gallow’s Humor, we use this when we’ve been through something terrible. If I, as a victim of something, make a joke about it, I’m owning the situation. We may as outsiders also joke about ghastly things to help avoid them happening, or to teach our children on yet another level, about how to help stop these things in the future.
2) Group bonding/ostracism: We are group creatures and much as gossip can create bonds between group members against non group members (or start the process of un-group-membering someone) so to can jokes about “the other.” In the best of circumstances, you’ll have Accounting list their many jokes about the idiocy of the Marketing team and vice versa. At worst, you have racist, sexist, phobic jokes designed to reaffirm one groups (superior in their minds) choices over that “other” group. Often these types of jokes are then reclaimed by the “other’ed” group so that Gay people can tell F#gg#t jokes, but no one else can.
3) Exaggeration, hyperbole, satire (bitter or otherwise): Jokes and stories designed to highlight absurdity, create an over the top parallel to something actually happening, or pointing out truth to power in such a way that the humor is carefully wielded tool of politic. Often you’ll see jokes that are so over the top, they are clearly not meant to be serious.
4) Physical comedy: Face it folks, from time immemorial we’ve laughed at people falling down. Fair? I don’t know. I think this points to the violence inherent in the human animal. We are violent creatures and we laugh at each other’s pain for all the reasons listed above-to understand it, to avoid it, to isolate which group we are in, to push back against greater violence or political power.
5) Telling stories about “what we know is true”/”What we want to change”: Many comedians will start a piece with “Fellas/Ladies, don’t you know that this thing always happens…..” and the audience responds with “Yes! We do agree that women/men are just like this.” Often, that’s how it’s left. A humor piece cementing stereotypes. Sometimes they’ll do a little tilt of that platform and reverse the story, showing off how humanity is actually much more complex than stereotypes.
6) Causing pain: This is actually a subset of all of the above. Using a joke to ostracize, belittle, put down or other someone is a way of using humor as a weapon. “Can’t you take a joke?” is a secondary level of that belittlement, insisting that the insulted person play into their own belittlement by “taking it.”
Oddly, I think the same actual words in a joke, can be told in ways/contexts that build up the person, or tear them down. It’s all in the telling.
Humor is a way we tell stories about the world. As such, there are vast differences in how we make humor happen-men and women may tell those joke and hear those jokes differently, other countries have different perspectives on humor.
So then some important questions are….when does humor go too far? When is the situation right or wrong for humor to be a part of the conversations? How far away from a traumatic event does one need to be before witnessing humor is no longer triggering? How do we tell the jokes in a way that actually highlights what’s WRONG with the situation, not in a way that makes light of things. How do we push back against belittling jokes? How does conflict come out of humor?
There are other questions. I’d welcome your discussion in the threads.
Here are some videos using humor to talk about really difficult topics. For the record, I’m aware that the Wanda Sykes piece has a moment on female assault and also a moment on (stereotypical) male/female relations, but the humor is structured in a fantastic way, juxtaposing charm and bitterness, issues of bodily autonomy and what parts are of value, etc. FYI, I’m in no way discounting male survivors of assault. If you’ve seen any vids showing similar types of humor pointing out similar themes but for men, please link.
The Chris Rock piece deals with issues of humor and words. Who gets to use words when? Warning: Rock uses very course language in regards to race and sexuality that people may find offensive.
Controversial? Thought Provoking? Yep.
Finally, I’d ask us all, for I know we are focused on civil rights, social justice, and making the world a more decent place here at GMP: Can we engage in social justice work with humor? What kind? Can we use context to allow for triggering words? How do we manage different senses of humor and reactions to such difficult things? Or is the work just too serious to take the risk?
Let’s discuss.
Photo: Vince Bucci/AP
About Julie Gillis
Um…yeah, I never found watching people get hurt to be particularly funny. At all. I try to stay away from people who do.
That’s why I put in a photo of the Three Stooges…
How about America’s Funniest Home videos? All the dads who get baseball bats to the nuts at the hands of a 3 year old?
I’m not saying anyone *should* find these things funny, I’m just curious where individuals draw the line.
I grew up watching America’s Funniest Home videos as a little boy. I never laughed when someone got hit in the nuts with a baseball bat. My mom laughed. My sisters laughed. I never laughed. In fact I remember feeling hurt and angry that they would laugh about something that I knew hurt so much.
I think the question is why *you* find that funny.
The Three Stooges were engaging in patently fake violence for comedic purposes, the people on America’s funniest home videos are actually getting hurt, and I will not watch it for exactly that reason.
The analysis of comedy is not possible in this context! In that, it’s similar to Pornography – It defies definition “But, You Know It When You See it”!
I heard Sir Billy Connelly ( The Big Yin ) talk about comedy – which was funny as he could not explain Comedy himself and even why people found him funny. Dame Maggie Smith is the same – an expert in comic timing and she just does not know how she does it!
It all boiled down to a simple position “Laughing with – Or – Laughing at”.
If people laugh with you, it’s funny and comedy. If they tell you you’re laughing “at”, it’s a fail!
Comedy is an invitation, and if you find yourself at an empty table, you may need to rethink your career path.
Can we engage in social justice work with humor?
I think its possible but its a tight rope walk at best. Due to different people and different groups of people having different experiences this answer is going to vary drastically.
How do we manage different senses of humor and reactions to such difficult things?
So far the best I can think of is to simply be mindful of what humor works with certain people and what doesn’t work with others. The problem with even that is those telling the jokes and stories often interpret that “as long as I don’t say it around them its okay” or “as long as I don’t say it around them its funny”. Well that brings in the question of “If its not funny or is offensive to the people who are the butt of the joke (or may be seen as the butt of the joke) can you really say the joke is funny or okay?”
Or is the work just too serious to take the risk?
Honestly I don’t want to think that it’s too serious to try. Everyone should have access to humor that suits them. But that humor should not come at the cost of putting others down.
I recall a while back Carlos Mencia said something to the effect of, “If you can’t say a joke in front of the people you’re joking about then you might want to reexamine that joke.” But even then there is the issue of different people that make up groups. There are some black people that are fine with jokes about black people and some that are not. Gays that have no problem with gay jokes and some that won’t stand for them. Men that are fine with jokes about men and some that despise them. And so on….
I love that Mencia quote. And I think humor requires intelligence or skill, back to Media Hounds “are they laughing with me (skill and intelligence in the joke, the context, the timing) or at the group we are pointing at (more of an attack then a carefully crafted joke). But even then….attempts at good jokes can fail and horribly.
I think that humor is fine in places where it invites people in and moves the conversation forward. So, for example, in the Wanda Sykes video, what she is really saying is “Women are not defined by their sexual parts.” That’s an awesome thing to have a conversation about. In Chris Rock’s his main point is “take everything that is said in context.” To me, that too is worth discussing. And in both cases, they are inviting people into the conversation. I believe that what both of them are doing is a form of social justice, and I, personally think it is great. I know there are people who disagree with me, but I don’t think anything should be “off-limits” to talk about, or even joke about, as long as it is done thoughtfully and not with the intention of marginalizing others.
The place where humor shouldn’t be used is to reinforce negative stereotypes, with the intention of marginalizing other groups under the guise of “I was only joking.”
Rock also does something REALLY interesting — he engages in a huge criticism of himself and other comedians in the past. That you have to be careful whom you offend because of their spending dollars. He KNOWS he’s being offensive in ways to the LGBT community in saying F*****, and he’s making fun of the reaction of saying, “I have gay friends!” which is similar to Derbyshire’s “You have to have some black friends so you can say, ‘I have black friends’” … But then he goes on to say, “Thanks for the money!” which takes the piss out of the idea of being PC as a means for protecting oneself.
I also heard an amazing interview with the Farrelly brothers on NPR. They talked about the test viewings of Dumb and Dumber, when a snowball gets thrown in the face of the lead female. In the first version, they used a realistic sound effect, and when she cleaned the snow off her face there was a little drop of blood.
Then the laugher stopped. And it didn’t start again.
They redid the scene, took out the blood, and then as a sound effect they used an unrealistic sound effect – it was a really famous recording of a really famous pro baseball player hitting a really famous home run (sorry I don’t know the deets, but they did!). Then that scene got HUGE roars of laugher and people continued to laugh though out the movie.
But Dumb and Dumber (and the Stooges) is incredibly physical humor where people are hurt *all the time*. As is much of our humor. I really want to know where we draw the line, and I’m so glad Julie’s posing these important questions.
Is Sexual Harassment of men funny?
Is Sexual Harassment is School Funny?
Kyle Erby – Comedian may be able to get a few laughs, from some of the hardest to please.
It’s worth looking at his Youtube collection!
I find that Louis CK can make ANY topic funny — rape, racism, body shame, etc. It’s amazing how he does it. But I think what happens is you FIRMLY know where he stands on the subject no matter what he says. You know he’s a good guy. If Dane Cook made the same jokes, they wouldn’t work at all.
Remember William Hung of American Idol fame? In the audition round, he performed a painfully bad version of Ricky Martin’s “She Bangs”, and became famous for how painfully bad it was. Rather than debate whether that was funny or not (I vote “yes”), I raise the example of him and countless others just like him to make the point that very few people can sing at a Ricky Martin or above level, but we don’t usually go around saying some songs are just off limits because so many people perform them badly.
Comedy is art, or at the very least a talent that some people have developed much more than others. There are many William Hungs of humor out there, making terrible or failed jokes that create laughter for the “wrong” reasons, or none at all. It doesn’t mean that any subject should be off limits for jokes, just because so many people make us cringe when they try. The great artists do it so well that when you laugh at their jokes about some taboo subject – rape, nut kicks, the word “nigger” – you will convince yourself that “that’s different” because they can’t possibly be singing the same song you’ve heard so many William Hungs butcher. It is different, because they’re doing it well, and that’s the art of it. They don’t get there by appeasing the people who say they never should have joked about that subject in the first place.
Marcus – I agree with you 99% (Which is higher than our usual average of 75% agreement, haha.)
Don’t you feel that to some degree comedy is subjective though?
We discussed something earlier on the phone, you didn’t think something was funny enough to merit it’s fumbles, but I thought it was. So what do you do? How do people reach a consensus?
My feeling is that we cannot, we can simply attempt to consider the hearts and intentions behind something intended to be funny, and critique with compassion and with the intent to educate rather than attack or shame.
Comedy is definitely subjective. No disagreement there. I’m not sure I get the consensus thing, because I never think of that as a goal or purpose of comedy (or any art).
My intended point was more to answer Julie’s question, “When does humor go to far?” with: when it’s done badly, but that doesn’t mean it’s because the subject being joked about should be off limits. I don’t believe a person is flawed if they find a particular subject off limits to jokes *for themselves*. Most of us have subjects like that that just hit too close to home. What I personally disagree with is an attitude that says if I can’t laugh at something, neither should anyone else. I object to the uncritical judgment that often accompanies that attitude, which says that people who can laugh at a joke about something terrible or offensive are supporting or endorsing that terrible or offensive thing, just because they laughed. Maybe so, maybe not, but I think it’s unfair to make that accusation with no consideration given to the quality of the joke, who told it, and how. (I acknowledge that humor doesn’t always come in the form of someone “telling a joke”, but the same principle applies – laughing about an offensive thing should not be automatically equated with endorsing that thing.)
I’m ambivalent about your last paragraph, which I take as a call to be gentle with people who we don’t think are funny. I suppose that’s a context thing, too. For people I know and/or care about, or feel some connection with, I’m inclined to either let it slide or critique with compassion as you suggest. But this is also the Internet, full of people who don’t give a shit about me and have no interest in being gently educated about why I think they were more offensive than funny, so in those cases, I’ll either let it slide (because it’s usually not worth it or I don’t care enough) or come at them keyboard a’blazin.
I will say that as a group, GMP commenters are among the most sensitive I’ve ever seen about jokes, compared to any other online community I’ve been a part of. I’m including myself in that reduced capacity to think some things are funny if they’re published here compared to somewhere else, but that comes, I think, from being conditioned to a kind of mindset that says gender is never funny. I don’t particularly like that mindset, but I get sucked in, too.
For the record, I generally think guys getting hit in the nuts is slapstick gold. It’s not funny if there’s real assault or lasting injury involved, but it usually activates some schadenfreude reflex as long as it happens to someone else. (I’ve told people I might start routinely wearing a cup because my toddler daughters seem to step on or otherwise whack my balls about 8x/day, which usually gets a chuckle and I think is funny, too…except for those moments 8x/day when it’s actually happening.) If it wasn’t funny to a lot of people, America’s Funniest Home Videos would not have been one of the longest-running shows on prime time. That said, I didn’t think a joke of dubious sincerity about advising a daughter to kick men in the balls if they say they’re not like other men was funny. In a normal context, I’d probably shrug it off as just some other joke I didn’t happen to find funny, but since I’ve sipped the Kool-Aid from the GMP chalice, I got more worked up about it for a while than I probably should have. My outrage has now subsided to “Meh, so what?” levels again, but I’m thinking maybe I should wear a cup when I read GMP, just in case.
I will say that as a group, GMP commenters are among the most sensitive I’ve ever seen about jokes, compared to any other online community I’ve been a part of. I’m including myself in that reduced capacity to think some things are funny if they’re published here compared to somewhere else, but that comes, I think, from being conditioned to a kind of mindset that says gender is never funny. I don’t particularly like that mindset, but I get sucked in, too.
I wonder if this is the result of some sense of finally being able to say something is not funny going into overdrive. If you consider the way violence is used. For a long time its been some sort of rule that a man never supposed to feel offended over something related to his gender being made into a joke (for example how violence against women is serious business but violence against men is funny).
Well now that people seem to be coming around to the idea that violence against may not be so funny after all there is some sort of “making up for lost time” sense going on where some people may become too sensitive. (And also this may be a worthwhile place to say that when it comes to such gendered insults its interesting that its taboo to say that a woman is being to sensitive while its par the course to say that men are too sensitive and its just fine. Not that anyone here is doing that.)
In a normal context, I’d probably shrug it off as just some other joke I didn’t happen to find funny, but since I’ve sipped the Kool-Aid from the GMP chalice, I got more worked up about it for a while than I probably should have. My outrage has now subsided to “Meh, so what?” levels again, but I’m thinking maybe I should wear a cup when I read GMP, just in case.
I’ve gotten heated in similar ways but I think what keeps the fire hot for me at times is this still very existent idea that its still okay joke about things happening to men but still be off limits when it comes to women. And for some folks I think that is the problem. Its not that something happening to men is funny, its the double standard that its funny as long as its happening to men and not women.
Are black people sensitive for showing dislike for ni****** jokes? Are women sensitive for disliking misogyny jokes? Why are people surprised some men dislike misandrist jokes on a site that talks about male issues, where some of those men are victims of violence for instance so the jokes are less humorous as it’s a reality for them.
Plenty of people laughed at the fact you could have sex with a hooker in GTA, then beat her to death and take your money back. Plenty of people laughed at the 9/11 towers falling. Plenty of people laugh when islamic people suffer (with cries of payback). Plenty of people laugh at men being castrated (hell you can say this type of joke on TV AND keep your job). Hell I’ve played games where the enemy soldier has died in a horrible but funny way and I’ve laughed my ass off, but I wouldn’t dare even play that game around real soldiers n laugh about it out of respect for them.
There’s a time n place for everything but the “sensitivity” you probably see in many of the men is due to the double standard of violence against a gender being ok if it’s against males. Do you crack jokes laugh about rape in front of rape victims? No? Well realize there are many male victims of violence that visit this site and many of us don’t really like violence against men treated AS a joke. Gallows humor isn’t itself bad, what’s bad is where and how it’s used.
Where is the line drawn? I’ve seen people try to come up with the most sickening jokes, shock humor, I’ll give one hint as to the content of the most shocking: babies and violence. Is this acceptable, normal? Is it gallows humor? How extreme can the jokes be? I’m sure many parents would take offense to them, just as many in any group that is joked about or has some deep emotional attachment to a group in the joke would take offense.
The funniest things that make me guffaw are edgy, unexpected, and sometimes so offensive they’re ridiculous….and perhaps that’s the point….Are we always so rigid that we can’t laugh at something we think is beyond reproach? Why are the sacred cows so sacred?
I love TMZ (on TV), Kathy Griffin, Chelsea Handler, and George Carlin…they help me see things in a different light…and don’t we all need a little more laughter and lightness in our lives?
My ex said he hated sex jokes….it turns out he had a lot of hang-ups (surprise surprise…many of them had to do with sex)….I eventually had to dump him for the man who became my husband, who still makes me laugh and makes me relaxed enough in his company so that I can make my own funny jokes….isn’t that one way the two sexes get along…by making jokes and poking fun at things, instead of just getting angry all the time?
I agree on TMZ – the TV version. It’s somehow amazingly funny for ALL the wrong reasons.
Sometimes things are SO horrible, we almost have to make light of them. It feels like human nature. It’s a way of explaining things to ourselves and taking awful things out of the “untouchable” category – which is terrible – and putting them into the realm of the comprehensible.
Does that make sense? It won’t work for everyone, but it works for most people. And YES we should keep questioning what’s funny and what’s not.
If you want to be constantly challenged on what’s funny, watch the show Californication. No more than 10% of the jokes come without some price to a person in the scene. Hank Moody fucks up SO much, and almost always at someone’s expense or his own. He’s a self-destructive drunk, but he’s one of us… Most of us see ourselves in Hank Moody – whether it’s leaving a treasured script worth hundreds of thousands of dollars (and your reputation) in your car only to be carjacked because you are such a sex addict that you can’t walk away from the lure of a bait girl (which happened to Hank), or just the average one of us who feels tempted by something that would destroy us and either goes through with it (that “last” cigarette on the tenth time trying, that “last” email to an ex via Facebook whom you weren’t supposed to be emailing) or even who doesn’t go through with it, but feels the pull….
One case where I felt Californication went too far was in the jokey portrayal of the sexual harassment of Hank’s agent by Kathleen Turner… Because ha ha hah MEN can’t be sexually harassed by women, right??
People I know (not my husband) felt that scene was fine, because it’s so absurd… But it just bugged me.
Maybe because MediaHound’s voice is echoing in my head all the time now
Personally, I’ve never felt that humor can go “too far.”
I do, however, believe that a great deal of people are too sensitive.
Remember, if it’s patently false, why are you offended by it?
The best thing for people to remember, is that if something crosses the line for them, they have the right to just shut it off. Of course, people ignore this now because we have the “internet” where people go to voice their opinions if they found something that just rubbed them the wrong way. It kind of works out, too, because not many things out there that are truly offensive over being funny are going to gain any kind of hugely popular foothold. It’s just not in any creator’s best interest to make something that’s just plain offensive. Not saying such things don’t exist — that would be rather naive — just saying anyone that wants to be famous by just blindly doing and saying ignorant things might have 5 minutes on CNN, then that will be it.
In other words, if it’s really funny, it will survive and propagate through the web. If it’s not funny to the majority of the people who see it, it will go into a corner and die.
There are plenty of types of jokes that do nothing for me, but that’s a far cry of saying that they’re wrong or should be discouraged. The only thing I actually find offensive is when humor is chained to a “social justice” purpose, i.e., you can’t tell jokes about this unless it highlights a societal wrong that needs correcting and respects the victims, etc. etc. The Norman Solomon book “The Trouble With Dilbert” is a perfect illustration of this sort of anti-humor.
I think joking about someone dying or being maimed is usually pretty tasteless. Especially when you see those same jokes over and over and over. and. over.
Whenever I see a man get killed by a woman, or castrated, or maimed in revenge for something as trivial as breaking up with her, I fully expect women to make cruel jokes about it, because every single time it happens, they do.
What do you think that says about women?
When I was a kid (and a pretty angry kid at that) I wanted to buy a t-shirt that had a picture of a woman kicking a guy’s genitals. It was my mother who explained to me why that wasn’t funny at all. She’s the one who said something along the lines of – if you’d seen the same thing with a man kicking a woman it wouldn’t be funny. Violence isn’t funny. My mother is a woman, and she didn’t think it was funny. I’m a woman and I don’t think it’s funny.
The cultural and societal norms that downplay the seriousness of violence against men were not created by women, and they are not perpetuated by women. They were created and are perpetuated by people, both men and women.
You’re right that not all women joke about violence against men. But to give you an example, when I went and checked out that article about that poor man in Poland whose ex girlfriend ripped out all of his teeth because he broke up with her, the comments from the women were unanimously congratulating her and ridiculing him. And this is far from an isolated case. I see women on huffpo joke about and condone violence against men. I see women on facebook joke about and justify violence against men. I see women I work with joking about violence towards men. I even see my sisters joke about violence towards men. I don’t see very many men joking about and condoning violence against men, and when they do it is true gallows humor, that we are all totally fucked because we are men and we are grimly joking on the way to the slaughter. When women joke about violence towards men it’s different, it’s cruel and hateful.
If you want an analogy look at racist humor. Basically *we* can say it but *you* can’t.
I’ve seen all kinds of nasty humor about women from men on the internet. Check out Reddit for starters. There are many others and if you’d like to trade links, we can do that off line. I’ve seen nasty humor about men from women on the internet. I’ve seen nasty racist humor on the internet. I’ve seen nasty homophobic humor on the internet. I’ve seen jokes about retarded kids.
I say “jokes” and “humor” because really all that is is nastiness cloaked in a tacky outfit.
Exactly.
Yeah, gotta disagree with you too Jimmy. There are tons and tons of jokes about men beating up women, racist jokes, etc. Check out all of Youtube, for instance. Or comments around Chris Brown.
As the others have said the “We can but you can’t” mentality runs in multiple directions.
I think the difference is a matter of what hits home with people and out experiences with being able to talk about what hits home.
Trust that’s a multi-car pile up of on the Instersectionality Highway if I ever saw one.
I would like to respond to the first part of your comment Jimmy, the idea that “making jokes over someone dying or being maimed is usually pretty tasteless.”
I personally hate humor of *other people* being maimed or killed. But — here’s a great example of humor used wonderfully.
We had a post on GMP recently about a guy who had been blinded in a fight with some guys in an alley. “Maimed” as it were. And *he* got up and did a performance where he talked about his blindness. He said he was doing a reading, but since he was blind he had sewn the text of what he was saying as Braille into his shirt. And he wanted to let the audience know so they wouldn’t think he was just touching himself when he performed. It was funny. I laughed. Here is the link http://goodmenproject.com/good-feed-blog/belo-cipriani-on-being-a-good-man/
This is what I was saying in one of my other comments — that humor used with the intention of connecting with people, with moving the discussion forward, is what’s important. In this case, it’s perfectly appropriate to joke about one’s own maiming — wonderful in fact. But if the sole reason for making those jokes is to laugh at the expense of someone else less fortunate, than no, that’s not funny at all.
I think humour is contextual, and requires an understanding between the humorist and the audience. I think comedy can be technical. It’s about finding patterns. It’s about delivery. Timing. Inflection. Shared understanding. A show like “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is technically brilliant comedy, because of how every episode incorporates a callback, and character development is central to where the jokes come from. You put those characters in a room and give them any object and it will be funny.
I also wrote a response piece recently that addresses satire, which I think can be a very powerful tool. So here I am tooting my own horn:
http://www.gender-focus.com/2012/04/28/a-response-to-the-pitfalls-of-satire/#comment-3930
Ultimately, I love comedy. I think it is cathartic, powerful, and can bring people together.
Two Paedophiles walk into a bar.
One says I feel like a child.
The other one rapes him!
Discuss.