Our London correspondent wants to know why people have forgotten that comedy is intended to upset the status quo.
Milan Kundera wrote a famed novel titled Laughter and Forgetting. Apparently some in Britain can’t do either. Recently, two jokes caused quite a stir. Here they are:
It’s a tragedy about soldiers coming home from Afghanistan minus limbs. Mind you the army can field a crack paraplegic team in the next Olympics.
It’s been disclosed recently that Anne Frank’s father was going to buy her a drum kit for her birthday.
The first one was from Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle on a topical BBC TV news quiz called “Mock the Week.” No description of that show is necessary, but it makes Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” look like evensong so we are already in edgy territory. That joke, along with a couple of others, got Boyle removed from the program. The second was from UK comedian Jimmy Carr at a gig somewhere in the north of England. Apparently in the full house there were a few complaints.
My question is: Who decides what's an acceptable joke? In the first case I assume it was the BBC. In the second no one can decide apart from line drawn by the respective comedian as to what’s acceptable or not. In each case a howling of disapproval came from the mouths of those who either never saw the shows or simply disagreed with the sentiments. I wonder if any of them had ever heard Richard Pryor – a comedian both of the above men admire, and rightly so. Pryor had a real and recognizable agenda, but that should not prevent others from getting close to the comfort line. Whenever you venture close to the line, you’ll inevitably find yourself crossing it from time to time. Were these two jokes over the line? Do they allow us simply to forget the attendant horrors in each experience? So what if we do? A joke doesn’t make someone a default member Al-Qaida, the Taliban, or the Nazis.
Isn’t comedy by nature offensive? There’s always a butt of the joke, even if it’s oneself. So what got Boyle and Carr in trouble? Is it because they upset the status quo? Is it because their humor challenged the values that power elites want us to hear dear? And in the grand scheme of things, isn’t the entire controversy ultimately worth less than a pocketful of change? (Who would remember either joke if they hadn't been deemed 'offensive' by those seeking to promote some other agenda?) What does everyone else think?
As for my opinion of the jokes, the first one is one is average and the second excellent. So I take Kundera’s book title and cut it in half in the spirit of forgetting. Or do I? How sick am I?
Milan Kundera wrote a famed novel titled Laughter and Forgetting. Apparently some in Britain can’t do either. Recently, two jokes caused quite a stir. Here they are:
It’s a tragedy about soldiers coming home from Afghanistan minus limbs. Mind you the army can field a crack paraplegic team in the next Olympics.
It’s been disclosed recently that Anne Frank’s father was going to buy her a drum kit for her birthday.
The first one was from Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle on a topical BBC TV news quiz called “Mock the Week.” No description of that show is necessary, but it makes Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” look like evensong so we are already in edgy territory. That joke, along with a couple of others, got Boyle removed from the program. The second was from UK comedian Jimmy Carr at a gig somewhere in the north of England. Apparently in the full house there were a few complaints.
My question is: Who decides what's an acceptable joke? In the first case I assume it was the BBC. In the second no one can decide apart from line drawn by the respective comedian as to what’s acceptable or not. In each case a howling of disapproval came from the mouths of those who either never saw the shows or simply disagreed with the sentiments. I wonder if any of them had ever heard Richard Pryor – a comedian both of the above men admire, and rightly so. Pryor had a real and recognizable agenda, but that should not prevent others from getting close to the comfort line. Whenever you venture close to the line, you’ll inevitably find yourself crossing it from time to time. Were these two jokes over the line? Do they allow us simply to forget the attendant horrors in each experience? So what if we do? A joke doesn’t make someone a default member Al-Qaida, the Taliban, or the Nazis.
Isn’t comedy by nature offensive? There’s always a butt of the joke, even if it’s oneself. So what got Boyle and Carr in trouble? Is it because they upset the status quo? Is it because their humor challenged the values that power elites want us to hear dear? And in the grand scheme of things, isn’t the entire controversy ultimately worth less than a pocketful of change? (Who would remember either joke if they hadn't been deemed 'offensive' by those seeking to promote some other agenda?) What does everyone else think?
As for my opinion of the jokes, the first one is one is average and the second excellent. So I take Kundera’s book title and cut it in half in the spirit of forgetting. Or do I? How sick am I?
—Lloyd Sellus
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