We’ve had several joke controversies in recent memory. There was Tracy Morgan’s homophobic flap. Daniel Tosh’s rape joke controversy. Dane Cook made a joke about the Aurora, Co. mass shooting. Sarah Silverman’s “I love chinks.” Don Imus’s “Nappy headed hoes” And obviously the Onion’s Quvenzhané Wallis tweet
Inevitably, when people voice their offense, there’ll be strong a pushback defending “free speech”, telling various Francises to lighten up, bemoaning political correctness and whatnot.
My opinion is that being an edgy comedian means there’s an edge you can fall off of. And sometimes that’ll warrant an apology.
Sarah Silverman is the only one who didn’t apologize BTW. NBC and Conan O’Brien did according to Wikipedia. Also, according to Wikipedia, the original joke used nigger instead of chink. NBC asked her to change it. I found this surprising because I remember thinking at the time that she could have told the exact same joke using nigger instead and it would have been a much bigger story.
In all of your examples, if people laughed, the joke was funny. Your examples don’t show jokes going to far, they show political correctness going too far.
I am not in any way saying that any of these jokes were in good taste. The nature of humor is to show us our dark side and get us to laugh at it. Humor is a form of emotional release. The nature of political correctness, on the other hand, has a much more sinister agenda, as it is a form of emotional and ideological control.
It’s very hard to answer this because there is no objective standard for funny or offensive. Practically any joke can offend one person and make another laugh. Maybe the simplest answer is that an apology is warranted when the potential harm caused by the joke outweigh whatever fun people might have from laughing at it. Looking at the examples in the OP, I’d say some of the apologies were warranted and some weren’t. One of the unfortunate sides of mass offense/RO is that there is no subtlety involved, and even in transgressive humor, there is room for subtlety. That tends to get obliterated in these controversies, especially when they are boiled down to a single word (that’s the case in most of these examples).
So it’s fine to say anything, no matter how cruel, so long as someone is laughing at it? That’s crazy talk.
I don’t know exactly where to draw the line, but a line should definitely exist. I’d say that if most people in whatever group is likely to be offended are more offended than amused, then the joke is going to far.
E.g., if most Jews think your Holocaust joke is more offensive than funny, you’ve probably gone too far.
Yes. I’ll go so far as to say it is fine to say anything even if no one is laughing at it. Don’t listen to Don Imus’ show, don’t buy Sarah Silverman’s DVD, don’t read The Onion, don’t watch Joan Rivers’ television shows. That’s your right.
A joke that “goes too far” and people don’t like will die by itself due to lack of audience. I don’t necessarily like every aspect of edgy humor, but I like it a lot more than I like someone deciding for me that I can’t hear it.
There’s a difference between an outsider censoring a joke because they think it’s too “edgy”, and a comedian censoring himself so as not to appear to be a jackass. The first is obviously a bad idea, as you say, but I am definitely in favor of the latter, which is also what I thought the thread was about.
I tend to be of the belief that you can be as edgy as you want, but you have to take the consequences. And if people are really offended, that can mean lost bookings, cancellations, boycotts, etc. It’s up to the comedian to decide if the heat is worth it, or if she should apologize to cool things down.
There are certain subjects that I find extremely offensive, and no joke about them is going to be funny to me. That just means I’m not going to listen to a comedian who tells those types of jokes. I certainly don’t think no one should be allowed to tell jokes just because they might offend me.
tim314: “So it’s fine to say anything, no matter how cruel, so long as someone is laughing at it? That’s crazy talk.”
You seen to be conflating anyone saying anything at anytime to anyone with stubborn impunity with a comedian saying something to their audience or in their comedic metier.
Yeah, I’m not talking about what should be censored, I’m talking about what people ought not to say, because it’s hurtful. Or what people would rightly be called a jerk for saying.
Suppose, just to give an extreme example, that the comedian sees someone in the audience with a physical disability and starts making fun of them. Now, some people are perfectly happy to laugh at their own disabilities, but this person is clearly not one of them. They start to look very uncomfortable, even angry. But the audience is enjoying it, and so the comedian persists. Finally the targeted audience member bursts into tears, and yet still the comedian continues to mock them.
Even in this extreme example (admittedly more extreme than those in the OP), would you contend that the comedian did nothing wrong, because people were laughing?
If not, then we agree that there’s a line somewhere, and it’s just a question of where you draw it.
If the comedian’s schtick was to make fun of people with disabilities, and someone with disabilities attended the performance and was offended by the comedian’s normal humor, the person with disabilities was wrong to be offended, whether the schtick was aimed at said audience member or not.
If someone was in a wheelchair at a Bill Cosby performance (I am assuming disability humor is not a part of his act) and Cosby singled out the person and made fun of his disabilities, that would be offensive IMHO.
I don’t agree with you at all that there’s a line somewhere. There is not one line. There are many lines. Everybody in your situation has their own line, and they get to decide where to draw it.
There aren’t a whole lot of comics who work within a zone that is comfortable for everyone all the time. Brian Regan, maybe the only one I can think of, and I’m sure you could find something in his repertoire that would make someone uncomfortable somewhere.
Comedy is an art form. Like any art form it isn’t appreciated by everyone, and that’s fine. I don’t like modern art, so I don’t go to such museums. If you are easily offended, a comedy club is probably a bad idea for you.
To be clear, I’m not saying that anything that anyone would find objectionable should not be included in a comedy performance. I am saying that there are some things that are sufficiently offensive and hurtful that they ought not to be said, even in the context of comedy.
So if this was the first time they told that “joke”, then it could be over the line?
What if the comedian’s normal shtick was just to launch a 10 minute racist rant. No jokes, just non-stop racial slurs. Let’s say the whole speech was just lifted straight out of a klan rally. You wouldn’t conclude that perhaps the comedian is a racist? And that, being a racist, this makes them a bad person?
At some point, the fact that one thinks he’s being funny has to stop being an excuse.
I think that the only reason that “going to far” exists is because laughter feels good, and people feel guilty or angry about the prospect of some subjects causing it.
Comedy is just one art form and, like all the others, it attempts to offer criticism of life but does so by ridicule. And ridicule makes us laugh. So you can get away with expressing an opinion with drama or mawkish sentimentality but not with a joke.
So if this was the first time they told that “joke”, then it could be over the line?
What if the comedian’s normal shtick was just to launch a 10 minute racist rant. No jokes, just non-stop racial slurs. Let’s say the whole speech was just lifted straight out of a klan rally. You wouldn’t conclude that perhaps the comedian is a racist? And that, being a racist, this makes them a bad person?
Can you describe Chris Rock’s humor as anything but a 10-minute racist rant?
(OK - I never understood the term ‘strawman’, but this might be it, so let me try another track.)
Are you saying that if a white comedian stood in front of an all black audience and spewed racial invective in a way that had the entire audience rolling in the aisles, that this would be offensive, even if the audience didn’t think so?
Humor is edgy. Humor is playing with the dark side. If you don’t get it, fine …
You might say there is a “bell curve” of lines. There will be a handful of jokes that are so innocuous that almost no one objects – “Why did the elephant hide in the tree?” – and a handful that are so odious that nearly everyone does – and, if you don’t mind, no e.g.
The vast batable ground in the middle is up for grabs. Some of us like “edgy” humor – the old National Lampoon pushed awfully hard at the boundaries. Some of us prefer milder humor. If Doonesbury doesn’t please you, Peanuts might.