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04 March 2011
It's time for another Friday Night Question! Chosen at random from The Book of Questions...→[More:]
#142: What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?
Honestly? I'm not sure I have one, but there are very strict requirements for situational timing and original humor. I mean, I have my trigger points and there are certainly things that I get absolutely devastated by the thought of, but humor is a great device for diffusing tension for me (in fact, it's my default, assuming complete withdrawal isn't an option).
But like I said, it has to be in the right situation/time and has to actually, you know, be funny.
I would add abortion & rape, but honestly, and maybe it's due to my background or where I've lived, but I don't hear those subjects joked about like I do race or ethnicity. I can't even think of a rape or abortion joke. I can remember distinctly the last time someone used the N word in a way they thought was humorous among friends, and it wasn't.
Man, that totally depends. I can joke about almost anything with someone, but I've got some pretty serius delineations of what I won't do somewhere that could be considered "public." So yeah I won't make rape jokes in a larger setting, or race jokes, or "retard" jokes, or those sorts of "too soon" jokes after a tragedy. A friend made a joke about Steve Jobs and the iPad both being thinner on Twitter and I, who am usually not easily offended, was surprised at how uncool I thought it was. Maybe this is because my mom has cancer? So there's nothing that I think should be always off-limits forever, but in a larger place like MeFi or even here, I'm not making rape/tragedy/holocaust/racism/sexism jokes. I don't usually make jokes like that anyhow, but I might, but not here.
Absolutely nothing. No topic is too serious to be joked about. The problem is that for sensitive topics, it's almost impossible to joke about them WELL.
I've made a few jokes about rape, but they were about my own rape (and they were FUNNNNNNNY). I own that history, and I get to reclaim it however I want. I don't joke about it in public, in part because I know how triggering that could be and I'd rather stifle myself than trigger someone else's anxiety.
I acknowledge that keeping those jokes private is a choice, not an obligation; other people may choose not to be so circumspect. (And I might chooooooooooose to tell them how thoughtless and unkind they're being. Hurray for choices!)
After my much beloved, dearly missed dad died, "Thank God your father's dead!" became a family punchline. And again for my sister after her husband (and daughter's father) died. When my partner was dying horrifically of AIDS, he joked about his condition --- and so did I, to a much lesser extent. In my family, as in so many, jokes are in part a mechanism for getting through grief and horror.
BOP and Elsa cover my position on this just about perfectly. People can and will joke about everything, if their circumstances lead to it, and if the person who is making humor out of darkness is actually funny. Making humor out of pain is like wearing a medal- if you haven't earned it, people will think you're an asshole. And you ARE an asshole.
Also, what ufez said- some humor is only appropriate in very specific settings, and nowhere else. People who are going through an awful experience together have license to make jokes that would never be right anywhere else. This is how humans survive. But once you're out of that setting, you have to know when to stop, and when the humor is gone.
Ooh, serazin also states my view succinctly. However, I do have caveat, a comedy club. If comedy is the point for being there, then you have to give the comedians license to go anywhere. If it blows up in their face (iow, not funny to start), that's their problem.
Oh certainly when it's your own thing that's different. Above people mentioned abortion for example. I'll joke about that, having had one that was not a big deal at all. However, plenty of people don't wanna hear about that, for whatever reason, so I'm not inclined to do so around ppl whose reactions I am not sure of.
In private, nothing is off-limits. My autistic step-sister and her autistic boyfriend who eats all the cream cheese in the house, my psychological problems, my grandmother's escape from the holocaust, etc.
In public, I don't like jokes that deprecate women or particular races, abilities etc. It sucks to misjudge a crowd and offend someone and it sucks to be offended.
ps- YOU can't joke about any of my family's crap. That is just for us.
My brother made some morbid jokes at his wife's funeral. Under his breath, to me, not to everybody. They were funny.
I couldn't come up with anything irreverent, morbidly funny, or remotely entertaining about my SIL's miscarriage. Didn't even want to. It was a strange and miserable experience all around.
I think the way BP has summed it up is about right for me. Humour is situational - who, what, when and where makes a difference on what is or isn't acceptable.
I'm torn between a variation on BOP's wisdom ("There is at least one good joke about every possible sensitive topic... but YOU probably don't know it.") and the rule of thumb "If Jay Leno, Howard Stern, Joan Rivers or Dane Cook think it's funny, it's inappropriate." (Your Choice of Inappropriate Comics May Vary)
Nothing is sacred, given the right environment. Picking when to tell jokes and when not to, though, can be a more difficult skill to master than telling jokes well in the first place.
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