Comedy and Bigotry

[Tithed_Verse]

I've often heard people claim that the first rule of comedy is 'punch up, not down'. However, my long experience with comedians and comedic TV shows and Cartoons have shown that the first rule of comedy is the exact opposite: Punch down, not up.

From the near Oscar host Kevin Hart and his 'joke' that if he caught his son playing with dolls he would say 'stop that's gay' and break the dollhouse over his son's head... A reality of violence for perceived femininity that both straight and gay young men live with in their house to Jeff Dunham's plethora of racist puppets ranging from a small homophobic purple gorilla with a euphonic (black chicago) accent to a grumpy old man who's racist and sexist musings are treated as the wisdom of age. From Seth MacFarland's casual rape comedy in which he has Quagmire harass and rape Marge Simpson to Louis CK Black taking great pleasure at masturbating in front of women without their consent. From Dave Chappell joking about kicking a woman in the pussy to Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat which, while it appears initially to mock those of us who are racist, appears to actually embolden them. Comedians, especially those who are big on netflix right now, have recently taken to mocking pronoun choices and 'manginas'. From The Office's casual endorsement of harassment and bullying at the workplace to Arrested Development's intense and disturbingly real bad family dynamics at home.

This sort of humor would have been unacceptable 30 years ago. But that was a fairly brief period in the history of American comedy, look at the extremely racist 'comedic' shorts released by Theodor Seuss Geisel against the Japanese as part of our war effort, or the older 'minstrel' shows in which Americans dressed up in blackface and performed silly acts.

Comedy appears, from the context I've seen, to serve a few different purposes to different groups of people. One group, the one that modern culture is catering towards, is to create a safe space where they can say offensive things and pretend they're joking... so that they can avoid the ego pain of being rejected for saying offensive things, and still get to feel the 'joy' of saying them. Listening to other people say such things and get away with it emboldens them as well, and I believe that there are strong ties between the modern comedy industry and the American Right... For example take how Fox News has lately begun defending itself in court by saying that they're not a news program, they're an entertainment program. Other major conservative voices, such as Rush Limbaugh have made similar claims to protect themselves.

And that works and doesn't lose them listeners because that's exactly what these people are looking for. Entertainment.

The other type of comedy, which is less catered for, is a form of stress relief in which silly things happen and people laugh at them. You can see this mostly in children's shows. Not so much in Adult Comedy.

A third type, of course, is the personal humor that signals membership in an in-group... nerd jokes and the extremely death laden senses of humor used by doctors and nurses come to mind. This is related to the first type, and in fact the same jokes that the racist comedians tell make their way around the police force with regularity.

Finally the fourth type is mostly useful in historic terms, as I've not particularly witnessed it in the modern day. Jesters lampooning their rich king masters in the middle ages, often to much political acclaim. Often times the first type of humor claims it's this sort of 'speaking truth to power' but I suspect that this form of humor was actually more about finding ways to tell medieval bully-boys that they're incorrect, in a way that they will actually reflect upon, without getting killed for your trouble... certainly a challenging and important task, and perhaps we should assign similar court jesters to rich and powerful men such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Certainly the fool who ran SEARS into the ground could have used one... but it's not one that finds much application in the modern day. It is, however, the closest to 'punch up' comedy that I tend to see... actual examples of 'punch up' comedy are often told to tone down their acts due to fear of offending white males. While this is frankly equally unacceptable to me as mocking any other group... the difference in cultural reaction is astonishing.

Despite this, I have been warned against making lighthearted jokes about cisgender heterosexual men on the grounds that I might come across as hostile, or run the risk of alienating my audience. Coming from a position of less power and privilege, I do not pose a threat to cishet men. My jokes do not perpetuate harmful narratives with real consequences. And yet while I would be deemed too sensitive for criticizing some of the disturbing and frankly terrifying "jokes" I have been exposed to, I also have to walk on eggshells so as not to offend, or worse, be perceived as bitter or "bitchy," a word often used to describe women who stick up for themselves.

Click to shrink...

There is a problem with comedy. The problem is not new. It's not modern. It's a long lasting and persistent systematic problem with the US comedy industry, and the roots of it need to be discovered and removed.

 

[firefossil]

The heart of humor is being transgressive and violating expectations, but transgress against what, expect what? While "Garfield looks like a cat but he doesn't act like a cat" is admittedly low on political content, much of if not most humor does have political elements.

Meanwhile laughter is an outright social activity. I'm pretty sure everyone has had to nervously laugh at something they didn't think was funny. Just as humor is often used by those with power to test the waters for what is socially acceptable and what they can get away, laughter is used to affirm the acceptability of their stance and their authority.

Then there is the inevitable reality that the establishment is more powerful and more normative than the anti-establishment. Even with anti-establishment types being disproportionately inclined to go into creative industries and express themselves, the establishment still largely controls entertainment content and often limits takes to superficial messaging the authorities can backpat themselves on while vetoing anything that would genuinely threaten them.

Things like the alt-right openly weaponizing "its just a joke man" and their broader efforts in the so-called culture war has just made the political subtext of humor more obvious.

 

[Kadmus]

The comedy industry is almost certainly deeply right-wing and racist/transphobic/bigoted etc., simply as a consequence of being an industry.

Comedy itself, as an artform, is not. Due to, you know, being a massive and complicated subject that covers a bunch of things, including the wide and varied world of left wing comedy. Which tends to be, you know, actually funny? As opposed to most of the people you've listed, who aren't? Ricky Gervais, for example, has literally never been funny. He's always been a creepy, odious bully. (Much like James Corden).

The main problem you seem to be having is that you're looking at a bunch of old establishment comedians - Jeff Dunham was already a cringy racist back in 2001, for fuck's sake, 20 years ago! Newer comedians, the ones who aren't on TV all the time, tend to be better, because, you know, they're not fossilised?

Of course, the fact that these bigots are establishment indicates a problem with the establishment, and the culture thereof, but, like, the establishment is not the artform. A landscape painter isn't part of the mafia just because the art sales industry is primarily used for money laundering. A comedian is not a bigot just because they are a comedian.

Also, there are entire fields of comedy that don't even really touch on things like race or gender or orientation. There are one-liner comics who get by entirely on clever wordplay, or absurdist comics who manage to make you laugh by subverting your expectations. There are observational comics who just talk about funny things they've seen - hell, Billy Connolly's the only standup that's very nearly literally killed me from asphyxiation via laughter, like I was the villain in Who Killed Rodger Rabbit.

And sure, not every comic you find funny is going to be a paragon of virtue. Certainly the older ones will have, at the very least, dodgy parts of their old routines that do not look good in the modern context. But if you can't separate the art from the artist then you will be unable to experience any art at all, because nobody is perfect. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be discerning, or that you shouldn't avoid people because of toxic views, but it also doesn't mean you're a bad person for enjoying a comic that might have problematic personal views.

Of course, the ones with problematic personal views tend not to be funny, so that helps!

(Also, the reason so many right-wingers are 'comics' is because it's an easy legal defence, not because it's true.)