What are you, some kind of Stiffly Stifferson?
I tend to agree with the OP, except that I’ve seen very few of the shows the OP mentions, largely because they don’t appeal to me and make me squirm more than laugh. As a couple of people have pointed out, some of these shows are more innocent, showing how people react to goofy, incongruous situations, and I’m fine with that, but I definitely don’t like the mean-spirited ones. (I think Letterman’s done some that fall on both sides of the line.) I think the distinction, as with real-life practical jokes, is whether or not the victim would sincerely join in the laughter once all is revealed.
That clip is the kind of practical joke that I do find funny. There’s no damage, no emotional distress, no humiliation and it’s short. It takes about 10 seconds for the mark to figure out that something strange is going on, they laugh and walk down the street to another mailbox.
I always thought this kind of comedy was funny, but I think it’s been worn out and taken to the X-TREME!. I saw one episode of Punk’d, and it involved stealing a guy’s new sportscar and then bringing it back with a dent. That’s just being an asshole.
Nope, I hate them too. I don’t find many practical jokes funny. I haven’t watched a lot of the shows mentioned here (because I knew what they were about, and didn’t bother), but I did catch an episode of “Scare Tactics” with Shannen Doherty once, and that was the worst I’ve seen. Rather than a harmless, fun little prank (which I don’t care much for, either), they made people believe that something seriously bad had happened (like going into therapy to get over it bad), then SURPRISE, just a joke. Hyuk hyuk. Not even in the area code of funny to me.
That’s a good way to put it, pendgwen. If there are any of the things you’ve listed, I don’t find it funny. I think it’s just mean.
Borat is hit-or-miss, but in the Bruno skits I’ve seen, I would have wanted to kick his ass too, and I’m about as unhomophobic as they come. Both times I saw it, SBC (as Bruno) started acting flamey, the dupes said (fairly politely) that they weren’t gay, and then he pushed and pushed and pushed them until they exploded on him, then he gives the camera this look, as if to say, “SEE? SEE the homophobia I have uncovered in the redneck heartland of America?” The “gun show” episode is the one that sticks in mind.
Bruno can suck my dick. Well…figuratively.
I don’t see much humor in humiliation, even when it’s scripted into a fictional comedy. Even when the characters are getting some richly deserved comeuppance, it pains me to watch.
Moving thread from IMHO to Cafe Society.
I’d also like to defend Improv Everywhere. For the most part, their pranks don’t harm the public, only confuse them at worst. In many cases, the general public walks away from the prank happier for having experienced it (my personal favorite is the U2 fakeout).
I get uncomfortable watching the other ambush comedy shows that humiliate random people, and I just don’t get that from Improv Everywhere. The only prank they pulled that was anywhere near that was when they made a local band think they were more popular than they really were. The hard feelings weren’t anticipated, though; being an amateur group, they can make mistakes.
I’m willing to withdraw my indictment of Improv Everywhere with the acknowledgment that I may not know enough of their pranks. However, the two that I have seen - the Best Buy one and the one where they approached the guy in the bar and showered him with gifts and drinks - did not appeal to me at all, for the very reasons I started the thread. In the Best Buy prank, I would have suspected some kind of large-scale theft was being planned, and in the bar prank, I would have feared that I was about to be either slipped a roofie, ass-raped and robbed, or just plain ass-raped and robbed, without the benefit of general anesthesia. If I’d been the Best Buy manager or the hapless schmoe in the bar, I would have lost it too. Why is either of those things cool?
Amen, bother.
I cannot understand why some writers and directors think an embarassing situation is inherently funny. It CAN be funny. But more often than not it’s just painful.
Liking ambush comedy constitutes admiring jerks and assholes. No can do.
I do dislike the pranks where they target people; that crosses the line into humiliation. What amuses me, and what Improv Everywhere tends to focus on, is the being-weird-in-public stuff. It’s meant to be entertainment for the people around them. Trigger Happy TV was fun to watch for the same reason; the guy screaming into his oversized phone in quiet areas was irritating, but the two people in bunny outfits just whaling away at each other cracked me up every time. Everyone needs a little surreality in their lives, IMO.
I think that “ambush comedy” is absolutely hilarious. It’s my favorite type of humor, even though I acknowledge how stupid and often mean-spirited it is.
Candid Camera was one thing, but Punk’d really made it an art with ridiculous productions like buildings exploding and cars being totaled and so on.
One of my favorites was the short-lived Boiling Points on MTV, in which the pranks were specifically devised to piss people off until they exploded in rage. I’d laugh until I was crying while watching that show. Scare Tactics was inspired, but too many of the pranks were so obviously either heavily edited or simply staged that they’d fall flat. But when the show stuck to more believable, real-life situations (well, compared to an alien or monster appearing) like finding a body in a hotel room, it was absolutely gut-busting. The Bigfoot prank was believable enough for a group of teens that I’m shocked none of them had full-on panic attacks and needed medical attention! I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the people needed actual therapy afterwards; I’d probably have a literal heart attack if I was set up in some of those situations!
However, stuff like Girls Behaving Badly is just too lazy or uninspired and usually falls flat.
I find it hard to put Candid Camera into the same realm as many of the other shows mentioned. For the most part, Candid Camera went for goofy and they were the ones doing the stupid shit, while the marks were just reacting to the stupidity of others. I’ve never found CC funny, but I also don’t find it offensive. In fact, I find it interesting how often people react as if the dumbass things the CC people do are weird but not so weird that they seem fake. How bad, stupid and random must fast food service be in America that people will actually believe that stuff is real?
I didn’t catch the gifts one, but most of them are amusing and I would’ve found funny sitting around watching it in real time. The Moebius is really quite an amusing read and no one is harmed. Some of the train ones are kinda wtf moments, in amusing ways (such as No Pants which is apparently now a yearly event) or really sweet (Will You Marry Me? and mostly amusing to passengers or trying to get them to participate and have a good time.
Otherwise, I do agree with you. 
I haven’t seen Borat, I probably won’t, just because comedy that makes me squirm more than laugh is not comedy to me. It’s also why I can’t watch stuff like Meet The Parents and There’s Something About Mary (though they are obviously fiction whereas the ones you speak of involve real people and reactions).
I agree with the OP for the most part. In particular, I’ve always hated Tom Green because his brand of “comedy” is nothing more than filming himself acting obnoxiously in public, often to targeted individuals, until they get sick of his crap and try to leave. That takes no ingenuity or talent; anyone can act like an ass and drive people away.
I do, however, like Jackass, because as others have noted, they really only hurt themselves, and they display some creativity doing it. Sometimes they do odd stuff to get a double take, and really what’s the harm in getting some people’s reactions to seeing an Oompa-Loompa skateboarding down the street? But they don’t pick on people, and there’s the difference.
In a nutshell, the Jackass guys will kayak down a flight of concrete stairs, looking really odd and probably hurting themselves; Tom Green will stumble around a crowded street with a kayak, swinging it around and hitting people with it, bellowing at the top of his lungs that “I’m a kayaker! Watch me paddle!”
Yes.
Really, really not seeing the funny in any of that.
I like Max Torque’s and others’ distinction: if the joke is on* the players***, I’m fine with “unexpected performance”, however brilliant or lame; if OTOH the joke is on the innocent bystander, meaning, yes, that it could have been on ME, then sorry, that’s not cool. People should have a right to expect to lead their lives w/o being involuntarily and needlessly placed in pain, fear or distress for the amusement of others.
As someone mentioned upthread, the only reaction Punk’d got out of me was a desire to hurt Ashton on general principle. Scare Tactics at first I just found to be conceptually despicable, for all the things that some consider “gut busting” about it (BTW: a “Panic Attack” is not just being very, very scared; it’s a very real medical emergency), but then it went down to merely too lame to live.
What next, folks, switching people’s lab results with false positives for HIV?
They tried to get me, once, and I find I have little patience for gags in which a well-meaning member of the public gets recruited to help someone out and ends up being ridiculed for it.