(bolding mine)
Good points. This is why the Retarded Policeman videos are funny (well, some of them): the cop is presented as cartoonish at the start; his actions are ridiculous and the humor stems from the absurdity not only of the cops actions but from the fact that such a person is a cop in the first place.
The OP’s video attempts to retro-actively make the cops out to be absurd, but only after the dire situation (from the protagonists view) has ended.
Ummm, no? If I were a passenger on an airplane where the entire crew was sick and we were being piloted by an inflatable dummy getting a blowjob, I also wouldn’t be amused. Yet I laugh out loud at Airplane.
Humor often takes a situation that has some grounding in reality and escalates it to absurd levels. Yes, cops abuse authority frequently. So the idea they would actively play jokes on people and drive off firing their guns wildly plays to our already negative view of cops, but in an extreme manner that we typically wouldn’t expect.
I completely understand why you and others don’t find it funny. You are looking at it from a different, but still valid, perspective. So let me ask you - do you understand why some people do find it funny? Is there a right and wrong answer here, or are different opinions OK?
As noted in my last post, this is a different tone: the entire movie is one absurdity after another; there is nothing realistic at all that happens.
Now that some people have explained that they find some cathartic release, sure, I understand their words. I don’t understand who they are identifying with or why they think it’s funny, no.
Are you really asking if I was just trying to pick a fight over this (i.e. trolling)?
As far as humor goes, I think that well-conceived humor causes many people to laugh and poorly conceived humor does not. IMO this was poorly conceived humor, and I’ve been able to explain why I think that. I never said anything about a right or wrong answer, only asked for people’s opinions and to explain how they arrived at them.
Anyone remember that episode of King of the Hill where Bobby went to clowning school, where his instructor explained to him what was and wasn’t funny?
Is it punching down? I’m not sure. The protag is most assuredly the victim, but the butt of the joke is the behavior of the cops, the people in power, behaving like irredeemable assholes. We feel sympathy for the vicitm. We are not encouraged to side with the cops, to sympathize with them, or to like them.
I thought it was funny. So much so that I showed it at the beginning of weekly training of police officers a couple of years ago. The vast majority of them thought it was funny, too. I know, I know “Of course cops find that sort of thing funny. It just confirms what asshole they all are”". Stereo-typical cops and a stereo-typical snowflake. The whole thing was over the top. If that type of humor is beneath you, so be it. BTW, YouTube shows about 28,000 thumbs up to 1000 thumbs down. A very small but representative sample of the 3.5 million views.
Here’s a couple more police-related vids that you may or may not find funny. The second one has some NSFW language - Chris Rock.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0mtxXEGE8I’m kind of humor-impaired.
I’m capable of finding something funny and still making critical analyses of problems I have with the piece. But I didn’t find this one funny and I suppose having not found it funny to begin with, I was more harshly critical of it. I’m capable of enjoying humor that basically shows one party setting up another and making a fool of them, perhaps leaving the victim rather upset, but it has to be clever and cutely done. This one for example.
Ultimately I just don’t have a particularly well-developed sense of humor. My friends who like to watch sitcoms and romcoms like Bridesmaids and Pitch Perfect often find me annoying to watch movies with.
Since it was staged, I just don’t see it as that funny. It might have had some (dark) humor value if this was shot from an IRL event on someone’s cell phone or something. Otherwise, hey isn’t this skit I made up funny? Not really.
Is it even supposed to be funny? Or are we supposed to think: Wow, that is how cops actually behave!!
Bits were amusing on their own. The juxtaposition with NPR added a certain disconnect to the rest of the scene, and dissonance is the essence of humor. The turning around with the scone still in his mouth was a bit of slapstick, not to everyone’s taste, but still can be an unexpected difference from expectation.
As far as the main bit, the cops abusing their power, I see that as more of a gallows humor type of deal. Not a “that was so awesome and funny” ‘haha’, but more of a “yeah we’re all gonna die (all screwed)” form of ‘heh’.
the creation of a tense situation, that is then diffused in an unexpected way is the release that makes some people laugh, even if they are laughing at something that does not actually bring them pleasure.
I had an interesting mix of emotion of both anger, from the portrayal of bullying abuse of power and the helplessness that the victim feels, and amusement at the unexpected resolution of the situation.
There are some jokes that can keep me laughing for hours, or even days, when I think of them again. This was not one of them, just a bit of a “heh” at the “there’s the little girl” line, and a slightly more amused laugh as they drove off shooting their guns while being played out by Ira.
Also note date, from 2011. Certainly not before the cops were abusing their powers, but before it became quite the same national conversation. Producing this video in today’s climate would be a bit more tone deaf.
I laughed.
I appreciated the small details. The scone in his mouth. The coffee in his hands that he drops. It is absurdist humor and I accepted it.
[Moderating]
TroutMan’s post that you quoted there might be characterized as being a bit abrasive, but no matter how I squint at it, I can’t see an accusation of trolling in there. He might be accusing you of being insufficiently flexible in your viewpoint, but an inflexible viewpoint does not constitute trolling. Nor do I see any other violation of the rules, here.
Please keep it that way, and if you believe that someone is behaving inappropriately (including trolling or accusations of trolling), report it and let us mods sort it out.
It was on the video.
Making “little girls” out to be some sort of weaklings is what kind of rubbed me the wrong way. It sucks that being a girl is still used as a punchline for weakness and being scared. This especially rubs me the wrong way because I don’t want my own young daughter to think this way (or my son for that matter).
Or maybe I’m just not understanding the humor here.
I think it spends way too long on the abuse setup for it to work as satirizing the cops. The part at the end seems too little, too late. The joke seems to be more that we’re supposed to cringe with the guy, and I do not find cringe humor funny.
I definitely could laugh at the same joke if they’d not played it so long, and had some context to let me in on the fact they were satirizing cops before the joke started. This is the type of comedy that is made better by dramatic irony.
It comes across to me like it’s trying to have two different jokes in one: one that actually embraces the sexism and bullying, and one that doesn’t. Kinda like how some people thought Archie was right in All in the Family.
Lefty liberal as they come. It wasn’t the funniest thing ever, but the punchline caught me by surprise (even though I knew some kind of punchline was coming), and I laughed.
Totally agree. I didn’t find the thing funny, but I’d be willing to say that was just my taste if it wasn’t so insulting to little girls and men who cry when being bullied.
I still don’t know why they put an actual little girl into one of the frames in the video. That was just creepy. Was that an “Easter egg”?
Yep. (post 14)
That’s an interesting take. Editorial cowardice.
Yeah. At first I thought it was just kind of ugly, but the presence of the girl just makes it bizarre and unsettling as well. The point seems to be that there was a girl missing, but the police had no thought for her, other than as an excuse to bully and degrade someone, and took off celebrating once that mission had been accomplished, maybe? And that’s as much thought as I’m willing to give it.