Taboo and Pain in Humor
This has been going on since the invention of language, but before I get into the meat of the discussion, let me give some backstory.
Slightly rapey right-wing social media troll Mike Cernovich has been trying to blow away the left’s more prolific creatives under the impression that by suppressing them, the attacks on the right will at least be less humorous.
Some of the more noteable things said by Cernovich:
“It’s also anti-rape game. After abusing a girl, I always immediately send a text and save her reply.[66]”
“You can’t rape the willing.”
“The hotter the sex, the more closely it resembles rape.”
“Have you guys ever tried “raping” a girl without using force? Try it. It’s basically impossible. Date rape does not exist.[70]”
“Do a Google image search for “lions mating.” That’s basically rape and it’s also the natural form of sex.[72]”
He’s also big on conspiracy theories like the ones on InfoWars. Pretty much a douche nozzle.
Most recently he signal boosted some old tweets by James Gunn that were jokes about pedophilia. This led to Disney firing Gunn. He’s now trying to do the same with comedians Michael Ian Black and Patton Oswalt. This particular article won’t be defending them specifically, but explaining humor in general.
Offensive Jokes
The argument here, which I’ve seen used repeatedly by both people on the right (the well renowned bastion of civility of actual Nazis and pedophiles) and non-comedians, is that anyone who would make such trashy, offensive jokes must somehow be acting on them.
That’s ridiculous. And if you think about it, you know it too. I’ve worked with pedophiles before. And none of them, either before or after getting caught, made pedo jokes. They’re committing some of the worst crimes society can offer up. They are dead serious about hiding that. When you heard the word “pedophile,” they do not want you, in any way, associating it with them.
People who make these horrible jokes want to shock, not recruit.
As a kid we had the dead baby jokes. And those monstrosities are still around (the one below I heard from a high-school kid yesterday).
How are a Trojan horse and a dead baby different? I don’t have a Trojan horse in my closet.
I don’t know if it’s been a thing for girls growing up, but men have always interacted with shock jokes. Racist jokes have dropped away as people realized a racist joke often means you’re racist. But the cruel, horribly offensive jokes are still there. Partly because men like to shock each other, and partly because it’s gallows humor and we blow off stress over things we can’t control.
How are dark jokes and kids with cancer the same? Neither of them ever get old.
Some would argue that gallows humor usually just applied to in-person interactions. And that is often true. But that’s only one reason these jokes have been around so long, and why shock can sometimes be funny (Howard Stern has made a living off of this).
Taboos in Humor
Taboos. The things people aren’t supposed to talk about. Things so horrible that we dare not speak its name. These are often areas comedians and artists seek to explore, to pull apart the soft under belly of society and see why it is what it is.
Inter-racial marriage was once a taboo. Homosexuality was once a taboo. Criticizing the government was once a taboo. And as long as they were taboos, there were shock jokes about them.
How do you separate the men from the boys in San Francisco? With a crowbar.
This isn’t to say all taboos are things that should be approved of by society. Many are taboo because they are horrible transgressions that should be buried in the deepest hole imaginable. But that doesn’t happen by ignoring the taboo. It happens by pulling the taboo out into the light and beating it to death. By discussing it, finding out if it should really be a taboo, then doing something about it.
Pedophilia, for example, should always be bad. It’s a shitty thing for a human to do to a child, no matter the excuse. But that does not bar it from humor or discussion. These are painful injuries to society’s body, and they will not go away on their own. They need to be excised by discussion, and as often happens, by humor.
Pain in Humor
This leads to the second component of humor. Think about any really funny joke you’ve heard. Odds are pain is a component. The pain of embarrassment, the pain of loss, the pain of injury. Most good comedians already know this, but if you think about it, it gets really depressing.
It goes back to gallows humor, I suppose. Life is hard and cruel, but you need to get through it somehow, and one of our greatest defense mechanisms has been humor. For a comedian, nothing is off limits. They show you the pain in your own life — often by encasing it in their own pain — and let you laugh at it. It’s their job. They get you through one more day by pointing out the sheer absurdity in even being alive.
It takes a special type of person to do this. Not everyone who tries makes it, and not every joke is a jewel. Some fall horribly flat, some offend more than they enlighten, and some turn evil when taken out of context of the moment. But that’s what comedy is, folks. Humans are the animal that laughs at itself. Because if we stop laughing, we start dying.
When people begin attacking comedians for saying things that are offensive, they’re attacking both the foundation of free speech, and the foundation of one of mankind’s oldest redeeming skills. Comedians learn just like everyone else, by success and failure. If no one laughs at the pedo joke, they learn that we aren’t ready to open that wound up right now.
Maybe tomorrow.
