Does humor suspend moral?

[Johnny Novgorod]

Question comes to me from a personal anecdote not an hour old, but might as well remind you of the whole Penny Arcade "dickwolf" fiasco, or Yahtzee censoring his joke involving transexuality, or any other incident in which humor caused offense and for that the humorist had to apologize and/or censor himself.

You think of a good joke. It will offend someone somewhere sometime. Maybe this instant, maybe tomorrow you find yourself with Messages (89) cursing and insulting and demanding sincere apologies (emphasis on SINCERE - they don't want you to apologize for offending them, because that can be twisted into some sort of patronizing - they want you to apologize for the joke itself, as well as your poor, poor taste). Can you or can you not make it, and be morally OK despite of it?

To me, this should be a yes/no question. Obviously justified either way, but no "maybes" or "gee I dunno context". We shouldn't compromise humor - it defeats the purpose of humor, which is, life can be funny, let's find fun in every aspect of life. So can you make jokes about anything, provided they're funny? Even if it's TOO SOON, even if someone is personally hurt, even if you don't agree with it - can we not agree it's OK because it's funny?

EDIT: I'm obviously talking about jokes being offensive for the sake of being funny, not offense being offensive for the sake of offending (which is what McFarlane does, sometimes)

Captcha: "go further"
Wow.

 

[tippy2k2]

This sounds more or less like the "can everything be joked about" threads that popped up after Dane Cook's Daniel Tosh's[footnote]Thanks to both Smeatz and Asita for pointing out my whoops. It's Tosh, not Cook[/footnote] infamous "Wouldn't it be funny if like, five guys came in and raped that chick" incident...(I can't find the thread in question but I'll keep looking; it may have been locked because it got pretty heated and I can't find it at all)

My answer is the same as it was then: ANYTHING can be made funny. There are certain subjects where you need to be the funniest person alive to make funny but I feel that nothing should ever be off limits. Now there is knowing your audience (even the funniest dead baby joke is probably going to fall flat at a child's funeral) and people have the right to be offended at your joke but if I wanted to give my "Dead Baby at the Holocaust whom is raping a Nazi and...uh...other offensive stuff" joke, I should have the right to go for it.

However, I need to be prepared for the consequences (no matter how hilarious the Stalin punchline at the end may be). No matter how funny, there is going to be backlash and if you are not prepared to take the backlash, don't tell the joke.

 

[Soundwave]

This is kind of a throwaway answer, but hypothetically speaking, I think any subject matter is fine for humor. The caveat is that it has to be so funny that it overrides people being offended by it. Shock humor for shock's sake gets stale really fast, and lacks creativity.

 

[Rylingo]

If it's just a joke for humours sake, go for it. I might not like it, I might choose to stop watching, but more importantly I'd like humour to be free to break any limits.

As for my own taste, it depends on the purpose of the humour. I'm very likely to let jokes of poor taste fly if they are laughing at how stupid our own prejudices are. If they are in support of prejudices I am not going to let them fly. I am going to stop viewing your material.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Apparently nothing is sacred except offensive jokes.

Look guys, no one can MAKE you apologize to them for hurting their feelings. However, if you are incapable of taking the feelings of others into account because you prioritize the lulz in all walks of life then the odds are extremely high that you are an irredeemable asshole. If you're comfortable with that reality, by all means make your jokes. Just expect blow back.

 

[TehCookie]

Yes you can joke about anything, but you can't expect everyone to find it funny. So what if you offend some people? It's near impossible not to since everyone gets offended by different things. People should ignore it if they don't like it. If they insult and curse at the creator of the joke, they're being just as offensive if not worse for doing it on purpose.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

This sounds more or less like the "can everything be joked about" threads that popped up after Dane Cook's infamous "Wouldn't it be funny if like, five guys came in and raped that chick" incident...(I can't find the thread in question but I'll keep looking; it may have been locked because it got pretty heated and I can't find it at all)

Never saw that but I might as well point out Dane Cook isn't terribly funny to begin with. He couldn't get away with half of Louie CK's repertoire, and THAT guy handles some heavy source material.

I wish life were closer to Seinfeld. Imagine a world where every source of conflict in your life can get hand-waved with a bit of good humor.

 

[Smeatza]

This sounds more or less like the "can everything be joked about" threads that popped up after Dane Cook's infamous "Wouldn't it be funny if like, five guys came in and raped that chick" incident...(I can't find the thread in question but I'll keep looking; it may have been locked because it got pretty heated and I can't find it at all)

Never saw that but I might as well point out Dane Cook isn't terribly funny to begin with. He couldn't get away with half of Louie CK's repertoire, and THAT guy handles some heavy source material.

I wish life were closer to Seinfeld. Imagine a world where every source of conflict in your life can get hand-waved with a bit of good humor.

I would just like to point out that it wasn't Dane Cook. It was Daniel Tosh.
I know Dane Cook gets a lot of flak because of his flamboyant style but he's a perfectly capable stand up comedian.
That is unless his material has got much much worse since early on in his career.

 

[Asita]

Honestly, it's less a matter of topic and more a matter of delivery. Wishing death upon someone tends to be more disturbing than funny, laughing at people dying is horrible in and of itself. But I would more likely rate Mel Brooks' comment that "Tragedy is when I cut my little finger, Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die" as humorous rather than sociopathic. Similarly, we can look at a lot of Jimmy Carr's material to find things that are topically offensive, though it's still widely considered funny due to the how and why behind it. Then of course you get Jeff Dunham and his puppet Achmed...who is apparently very popular in the Middle East. Really it's not the subject so much as the way it's used.

This sounds more or less like the "can everything be joked about" threads that popped up after Dane Cook's infamous "Wouldn't it be funny if like, five guys came in and raped that chick" incident...(I can't find the thread in question but I'll keep looking; it may have been locked because it got pretty heated and I can't find it at all)

That was Daniel Tosh, not Dane Cook. Come to think of it, the Young Turks had a segment on that incident which is fairly topical to this thread.

 

[LetalisK]

Everything is fair game for a joke and can be funny. The difficult part is making it funny and just not dumb and offensive.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Everything is fair game for a joke and can be funny. The difficult part is making it funny and just not dumb and offensive.

Alas, what's fun and what's not changes from one person to another. While very few people can safely vouch for the humor in their jokes, I wish their was a social understanding that all material is joke material.

 

[LetalisK]

Alas, what's fun and what's not changes from one person to another.

No it's not. I am the final arbiter of everything humorous, god damn it! Respect my authoritah! >.<

 

[viscomica]

There is a literary term that I can't translate to English but means this: something that, when made fun of, is funny, but when you think about it seriously it's really just sad. The thing is, you can make a rude but funny comment and tell it in a way it's obviously a joke and not your own personal take on the subject. My point is: everything can be funny if you know how to make it funny. Funny does not equal politically correct or even polite and people need to stop taking personal offense in that.

 

[DementedSheep]

Well if it has to be yes/no then I?m going to say no. You can joke about anything but you can?t joke about everything in every context, it's not free pass to be an inconsiderate dick with no consequence and people can criticize you for what you say (this is not censorship).

Don?t joke about something traumatic to someone who?s been thru a similar traumatic experience unless you know them well enough for it to work. Don?t repeatedly target someone or a group, especially if they already get a lot shit from bigots in real life, you're using a negative stereotype for the joke that a lot of people actually believe or it is something you know the person who is the butt of the joke is insecure about. There actually has to be a joke in the joke. ?Get raped?, ?you?re such a fag?, "useless whore" ect are not jokes though I've seen people try and pass them off as one.

A lot of people seem to use the "but I was joking" excuse to justify being a dick and try and look they have a moral high-ground when people call them out on it.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

Eh. It's tricky.

I mean I've joked about suicide to a depressed person. I said "No don't do that. Cause if you do, it'll be a slight bummer for me. It would totally ruin my weekend, worlds not all about you, jerk.", then quickly following up with the exact opposite of that because obviously this person is very near and dear to me and it would be absolutely horrific if they died.

I mean that's a style of humor I think goes over most people's heads. That something is funny because it's not funny, it's actually horrific, god awful, and depressing.

 

[Yopaz]

Honestly, it's less a matter of topic and more a matter of delivery. Wishing death upon someone tends to be more disturbing than funny, laughing at people dying is horrible in and of itself. But I would more likely rate Mel Brooks' comment that "Tragedy is when I cut my little finger, Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die" as humorous rather than sociopathic. Similarly, we can look at a lot of Jimmy Carr's material to find things that are topically offensive, though it's still widely considered funny due to the how and why behind it. Then of course you get Jeff Dunham and his puppet Achmed...who is apparently very popular in the Middle East. Really it's not the subject so much as the way it's used.

This is what I wanted to say, but lacked the words for.

Any topic can be joked about, but not every joke has the potential to be laughed at. Since it's been brought up "wouldn't it be funny if 5 guys raped you like now?" is not a funny joke and if I didn't know it was supposed to be one I would have thought it was a threat or an insult.

So to answer your question, humour doesn't suspend morals, but that doesn't mean there are some subjects you shouldn't joke about. You should consider what you say, but not censor yourself.

 

[Korolev]

Look, it's difficult. Jokes about sensitive matters are always going to cause some problems for some people. And often the best jokes are pretty dark.

One of my favorite books of all time is Catch-22. I think that book is hilarious. But there are military folks who think the book is disrespectful, mocking the military (which it does). Should the book be banned? We've found humour in murder and employee abuse (think of the Office and any movie or TV show that ever involved anyone being killed off in a funny way - there's too many to count).

Rape jokes are not good. I'll defend your right to tell them, sure, but keep in mind that there are people who are going to get pissed off at you for using rape as material for comedy. And they have a right to get angry, just as much of a right as you have to tell the jokes that make them angry.

Does humour suspend morality? Not really. It certainly doesn't suspend taste or good judgement. Using rape as comedy material is dangerous and offensive - you can use it, just as you could feel free to brush your teeth with liquid TNT. Wouldn't recommend it.

 

[norashepard]

I say you're still morally sound IF AND ONLY IF you sincerely had no idea the joke was offensive in the first place, and then you work to make right what damage it does. But people who use offensive stuff in jokes on purpose are losers who can't think of anything better than picking on people who already have enough shit on their plate without some douchecanoe adding to it for a quick laugh.

 

[TheEvilCheese]

Everything is OK, nothing is sacred. That's the way it has to be IMO because pretty much anything will piss somebody off.

That said, context is golden. If people hate you for telling a joke they find offensive, that's fine too. If you're using 'jokes' to disguise being a dick, you should be ready for the hate you get.

 

[DestinyCall]

Personally, I don't like it when a comedian or jokester defends an off-color joke by basically saying "It's okay because it's funny". Whether you find the joke funny or not funny, someone else can find it offensive (or not offensive). If the person didn't mean any offense, that helps take some of the sting away, but it was still a bad joke that didn't have the intended effect on at least part of its audience. It's not the offended person's fault that they didn't find the joke funny. They have a right to their opinion and when a comedian picks a sensitive or dark subject to joke about, he or she should know that they are taking a risk. That's not a "safe" topic for joking.

That's not to say that all humor needs to be safe or easy or clean. There's a time and a place for offensive jokes. Some of the funniest jokes play off our expectations and make light of serious subjects. But when you make a joke about suicide or race or domestic abuse or pedophilia or rape or any number of other touchy subjects, the line between a good joke and a terrible one is razor-thin. Don't act surprised when your audience decides that you crossed that invisible line.

You CAN joke about any subject. Whether or not you SHOULD is going to depend on your skill, the composition of your audience, and how much risk you are willing to take if you fail to amuse. When you misjudge any of those things, that's when you end up with a "dickwolves" fiasco and the need to sincerely apologize.