... or more specifically, offensive ones. I've been thinking in particular about Paul's question concerning the point at which the entertainment value of 'taboo' humour becomes outweighed by the offence it's likely to cause--or, maybe, where it crosses the line between being funny in itself, and relying entirely on shock value to get a response. I've noticed, for example, that a lot of so-called "politically incorrect" jokes essentially amount to nothing more than edgier-than-thou solicitations for their audience to join in with sticking it to The Man by smirking at grubby sexual or ethnic slurs. Neither funny nor subversive, in my opinion.
That's not to say that all humour poking fun at the often monolithic mores of modern multiculturalism¹ is un-funny by definition. In particular, Paul's Chris Rock clip highlighted how ethnic/cultural/sexual/etc. "ownership" of denigrating bad humour can make it good bad humour, and a lot of those jokes that we'd now consider off-colour² pre-date any formal notion of "political correctness" (or whatever the nom du jour is now) anyway.
Case in point: everyone knows that Jews have the best bad Jew jokes. My grandmother is a bottomless wellspring³ of bad Jew jokes, which I can only assume have been handed down through her maternal bloodline like ancestral treasures, painstakingly gathered over generations of Jewish life in notoriously anti-Semitic Hungary. Here's one of her favourites, no doubt first related to me long before I could form any words myself, and a good example of what Paul defined as "canny" ethnic humour:
Q. How was copper wire invented?
A. Two Jews fighting over a penny.
And here's a similar one, courtesy of my first Jewish roommate in New York:
Q. Why did the Jews wander the desert for three generations?
A. They heard someone dropped a quarter.
Obviously these aren't laugh-out-loud funny gags, but their humour value derives at least as much from their wry, self-deprecating context as from the fact that they're effectively taking the piss out of traditional Gentile prejudices regarding Jews. I think there's something to Paul's suggestion that a joke itself cannot profess an opinion... but the intent with which it's told, and the context in which it's placed, can certainly make a statement. The two examples I've given are jokes which might just as well be told amongst non-Jews, and might be funny in that context too--they wouldn't be the same jokes, because the nature of the humour itself would be changed by the context.4
I'll give you a more problematic example. About a month ago I overheard the following joke being shared between four depressingly stereotypical Sun-headlinesque Local Youths™ at the bus stop on Darlington Street:
Q. How many Jews can you fit in a Mini?
A. Two in the front, three in the back, and six million in the ashtray.
Now, they'd been talking a lot of shit--loudly--on a broad range of topics for a good while by then, and I've no real reason to suppose that the joke was made in any decidedly anti-Semitic spirit. Nonetheless, I'm afraid that at that point I intervened and suggested to them that they might like to consider closing their mouths before they got the dentist they deserved. I didn't really think about it at the time, and I didn't give it any further thought afterwards... but since last week's lecture I've started wondering,
a) if that was really the right thing to do, and
b) whether it was or not, if I hadn't inadvertently ensured that that joke would now echo through every future bus-stop those kids visited.
In terms of the first question, I still haven't made up my mind. I mean, I realise that, by any rational moral standard, I have no right to dictate to anyone else what is or isn't "fair game" for humour. On the other hand, it is a wholly different dynamic to the 'canny Jew' jokes I mentioned earlier. For example, I can't consider whether that joke would generate a 'different nature' of humour if, say, a Holocaust survivor was telling it--because I already know, beyond any doubt, that a Holocaust survivor would never tell a joke like that. That's an important distinction, and to me, it's as close as I'm going to get to that dividing line I started off waffling about. I don't see how anyone could derive genuine amusement--as opposed to hollow shock value--from something like a Holocaust gag unless they were profoundly ill in the head.
As to the second question: in reacting the way I did, and effectively reinforcing the taboo surrounding a subject like the Holocaust, have I not made those kids more likely to keep telling such jokes, in the belief that their very offensiveness in itself makes them funny? Ech...
I don't have any long depressing books to link you to this week, sorry. Instead here's a somewhat topically-segued clip of Ricky Gervais' infamous 'Anne Frank' skit. A lot of people were pretty offended by this at the time; I think it actually works about as well as any joke skirting the Holocaust can. I can't say I find it hilariously funny, but it's not grievously upsetting either.
While I was making notes for this post, I asked my grandmother--whose family in Hungary were literally wiped out in the 1940s--whether she thought that something like the Holocaust could or should ever be utilised for the purpose of humour. Her answer (and this is my summary of the discussion, not a quote verbatim) was that everything is guaranteed to offend someone, somewhere--and that you can't apply rules, or even enforce conventions, on humour anyway. I think I pretty much agree: trying to legislate certain types of joke as unacceptable, no matter how many people they offend, would not only be fundamentally hypocritical, but also totally self-defeating.
And on the topic of bad jokers... it was only a couple of months ago, when I finally saw
the movie myself, that I realised all the comparisons people have been drawing between
myself and the late Heath Ledger's character in The Dark Knight for the past 3 years
may not be entirely complimentary.
¹ It says in my module guide that we get bonus marks for alliteration.
(Seriously, I'm told that the "it says in my module guide" ploy re: assignment criteria and deadlines actually works on some tutors--the implication being that the poor student was somehow supplied with a copy of a module guide from a former year or something, and hence couldn't possibly have known that this essay was due in last week. And of course, the strategy is plausibly deniable, because if the tutor asks to actually see the bizarro-module guide, well, the student can always have 'lost' it in the interim.
Bear in mind that there are a lot of Law students at this school).
² In other news: possibly my worst unintended pun ever. I went back to edit that, but then decided that it was probably appropriate for this post after all.
³ Or maybe 'septic tank', depending on your point of view.
4 Incidentally, I personally don't think that level and context of humour would qualify, in itself, as anti-Semitism--but I do know a lot of people who'd disagree with me, so I'm not going to attempt to offer a definitive rule on that.
(paraphrased).
That's not to say that all humour poking fun at the often monolithic mores of modern multiculturalism¹ is un-funny by definition. In particular, Paul's Chris Rock clip highlighted how ethnic/cultural/sexual/etc. "ownership" of denigrating bad humour can make it good bad humour, and a lot of those jokes that we'd now consider off-colour² pre-date any formal notion of "political correctness" (or whatever the nom du jour is now) anyway.
Case in point: everyone knows that Jews have the best bad Jew jokes. My grandmother is a bottomless wellspring³ of bad Jew jokes, which I can only assume have been handed down through her maternal bloodline like ancestral treasures, painstakingly gathered over generations of Jewish life in notoriously anti-Semitic Hungary. Here's one of her favourites, no doubt first related to me long before I could form any words myself, and a good example of what Paul defined as "canny" ethnic humour:
Q. How was copper wire invented?
A. Two Jews fighting over a penny.
And here's a similar one, courtesy of my first Jewish roommate in New York:
Q. Why did the Jews wander the desert for three generations?
A. They heard someone dropped a quarter.
Obviously these aren't laugh-out-loud funny gags, but their humour value derives at least as much from their wry, self-deprecating context as from the fact that they're effectively taking the piss out of traditional Gentile prejudices regarding Jews. I think there's something to Paul's suggestion that a joke itself cannot profess an opinion... but the intent with which it's told, and the context in which it's placed, can certainly make a statement. The two examples I've given are jokes which might just as well be told amongst non-Jews, and might be funny in that context too--they wouldn't be the same jokes, because the nature of the humour itself would be changed by the context.4
I'll give you a more problematic example. About a month ago I overheard the following joke being shared between four depressingly stereotypical Sun-headlinesque Local Youths™ at the bus stop on Darlington Street:
Q. How many Jews can you fit in a Mini?
A. Two in the front, three in the back, and six million in the ashtray.
Now, they'd been talking a lot of shit--loudly--on a broad range of topics for a good while by then, and I've no real reason to suppose that the joke was made in any decidedly anti-Semitic spirit. Nonetheless, I'm afraid that at that point I intervened and suggested to them that they might like to consider closing their mouths before they got the dentist they deserved. I didn't really think about it at the time, and I didn't give it any further thought afterwards... but since last week's lecture I've started wondering,
a) if that was really the right thing to do, and
b) whether it was or not, if I hadn't inadvertently ensured that that joke would now echo through every future bus-stop those kids visited.
In terms of the first question, I still haven't made up my mind. I mean, I realise that, by any rational moral standard, I have no right to dictate to anyone else what is or isn't "fair game" for humour. On the other hand, it is a wholly different dynamic to the 'canny Jew' jokes I mentioned earlier. For example, I can't consider whether that joke would generate a 'different nature' of humour if, say, a Holocaust survivor was telling it--because I already know, beyond any doubt, that a Holocaust survivor would never tell a joke like that. That's an important distinction, and to me, it's as close as I'm going to get to that dividing line I started off waffling about. I don't see how anyone could derive genuine amusement--as opposed to hollow shock value--from something like a Holocaust gag unless they were profoundly ill in the head.
As to the second question: in reacting the way I did, and effectively reinforcing the taboo surrounding a subject like the Holocaust, have I not made those kids more likely to keep telling such jokes, in the belief that their very offensiveness in itself makes them funny? Ech...
I don't have any long depressing books to link you to this week, sorry. Instead here's a somewhat topically-segued clip of Ricky Gervais' infamous 'Anne Frank' skit. A lot of people were pretty offended by this at the time; I think it actually works about as well as any joke skirting the Holocaust can. I can't say I find it hilariously funny, but it's not grievously upsetting either.
While I was making notes for this post, I asked my grandmother--whose family in Hungary were literally wiped out in the 1940s--whether she thought that something like the Holocaust could or should ever be utilised for the purpose of humour. Her answer (and this is my summary of the discussion, not a quote verbatim) was that everything is guaranteed to offend someone, somewhere--and that you can't apply rules, or even enforce conventions, on humour anyway. I think I pretty much agree: trying to legislate certain types of joke as unacceptable, no matter how many people they offend, would not only be fundamentally hypocritical, but also totally self-defeating.
And on the topic of bad jokers... it was only a couple of months ago, when I finally sawthe movie myself, that I realised all the comparisons people have been drawing between
myself and the late Heath Ledger's character in The Dark Knight for the past 3 years
may not be entirely complimentary.
¹ It says in my module guide that we get bonus marks for alliteration.
(Seriously, I'm told that the "it says in my module guide" ploy re: assignment criteria and deadlines actually works on some tutors--the implication being that the poor student was somehow supplied with a copy of a module guide from a former year or something, and hence couldn't possibly have known that this essay was due in last week. And of course, the strategy is plausibly deniable, because if the tutor asks to actually see the bizarro-module guide, well, the student can always have 'lost' it in the interim.
Bear in mind that there are a lot of Law students at this school).
² In other news: possibly my worst unintended pun ever. I went back to edit that, but then decided that it was probably appropriate for this post after all.
³ Or maybe 'septic tank', depending on your point of view.
4 Incidentally, I personally don't think that level and context of humour would qualify, in itself, as anti-Semitism--but I do know a lot of people who'd disagree with me, so I'm not going to attempt to offer a definitive rule on that.
(paraphrased).
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