{"id":60,"date":"2015-08-23T15:52:08","date_gmt":"2015-08-23T15:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/flyingscotsman\/?p=60"},"modified":"2015-08-23T20:25:46","modified_gmt":"2015-08-23T20:25:46","slug":"on-policing-the-boundaries-of-comedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/flyingscotsman\/2015\/08\/23\/on-policing-the-boundaries-of-comedy\/","title":{"rendered":"On Policing the Boundaries of Comedy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every week or so, outrage-junkies desperate for their next fix will seize upon the words of a comedian and send the denizens of social media into meltdown. It\u2019s a familiar sight, and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/entertainment\/ct-amy-poehler-s-show-gets-backlash-for-r-kelly-joke-20150821-htmlstory.html\" target=\"_blank\">latest target<\/a> of their derision is <em>SNL<\/em> alum Amy Poehler.<\/p>\n<p>Poehler is the creator\/producer of <em>Difficult People, <\/em>the comedy series at the centre of the controversy. The first episode includes a storyline in which one of the main characters deals with the backlash from telling an offensive joke on Twitter. Yes, it\u2019s all very meta-ironic.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the joke in question:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cI can\u2019t wait for Blue Ivy (the 3-year-old daughter of Jay-Z and Beyonc\u00e9) to be old enough for R. Kelly to piss on her.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>My interest isn\u2019t in whether the line is funny, but rather in the way comedy\u2019s purpose has come to be defined in such serious terms. One of the claims we inevitably hear whenever a comedian captures the gaze of the professionally-offended is that \u201ccomedy is about punching up.\u201d Right on cue, Ana Kasparian employed this argument throughout <em>The Young Turks\u2019<\/em> analysis of the controversy:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cAs a comedian, you\u2019re supposed to punch up, not down\u2026 It\u2019s OK when the joke is about someone who\u2019s in power. It\u2019s not OK when you\u2019re attacking people who have no power\u2026 You shouldn\u2019t punch down. Again, I feel like that\u2019s just a general rule.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Amy Poehler&#039;s Controversial Twitter Joke\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xi2cdSNTVGk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s just ignore the parody-defying claim that joking about the daughter of billionaires Jay-Z and Beyonce is \u201cpunching down.\u201d Nowhere is it written that comedy\u2019s only purpose is to lampoon the powerful. That isn\u2019t even a necessary\u00a0purpose. The primary\u00a0goal of every comedian is to make the audience laugh. Everything else, by definition, comes second.<\/p>\n<p>Comedy can be a vehicle for social commentary, but it doesn\u2019t have to be. Not every comedian is going to be George Carlin. Sometimes, even most of the time, a joke is just a joke. It doesn\u2019t necessarily tell us anything about the comic\u2019s worldview. Indeed, the offending line from <em>Difficult People<\/em> doesn\u2019t have a target. The intended targets are the malcontents who grab a megaphone and a pitchfork whenever someone stumbles over one of their many emotional tripwires.<\/p>\n<p>For the sake of argument, let\u2019s assume comedy\u2019s purpose is to punch up. From whose perspective should we judge the punch\u2019s trajectory? Is a joke\u2019s legitimacy based on the power\/privilege dynamic between the comedian and his target? I recently <a href=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/flyingscotsman\/2015\/08\/07\/pseudo-liberals-check-your-understanding-of-privilege\/\" target=\"_blank\">wrote about<\/a> the simplistic, self-serving conception of privilege that many on the far left subscribe to, and this notion of punching up is undoubtedly tied to that.<\/p>\n<p>Privilege is never as simple as \u201cGroup A is more privileged than Group B.\u201d If we insist on measuring the boundaries of comedy via\u00a0an ill-conceived privilege hierarchy, we\u2019ve got a lot of work ahead of us. We\u2019re going to need a team of privilege mathematicians. At the very least, we\u2019ll require some sort of privilege app to run our \u201cknock knock\u201d jokes through.<\/p>\n<p>Can a black person make fun of a lesbian? Does the punch\u2019s trajectory change if the black person happens to be a rich male? What if he loses all of his money and is diagnosed with cancer? The trajectory has to move at least 90 degrees north, right? Then again, what if the lesbian suffers from severe clinical depression, rheumatoid arthritis, alopecia, and has a lazy left eye? Get your privilege calculators out, folks.<\/p>\n<p>This approach to social discourse is exhausting. There seems to be a\u00a0belief in some circles that oppressed groups\u2014or those perceived to be\u2014are both infallible and exceptionally fragile. In a recent video about the sins of \u201cNew Atheists,\u201d the <em>Majority Report\u2019s<\/em> Sam Seder provided us with a textbook example of this obscenely condescending mindset:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201c[Sam Harris] is expressing a view that there is something inherently problematic in [Islam], this non-Western religion, that is problematic not just with those who commit acts of violence, but those who take a poll saying, \u2018Well, I subscribe to the same principles as these people do, short of ever acting upon it in a violent way.\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sam Seder Responds to Secular Talk&#039;s New Atheists \/ Progressives Peace Proposal\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/170qtumg5S4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Anyone can hold contemptible views, wherever they land on the privilege spectrum. Can you imagine the far left offering up the same defense for Westboro Baptist Church? The notion\u00a0that Sam Seder would ever say, \u201cI have no problem with those people or their views\u201d is comical. It\u2019s a closing bit.<\/p>\n<p>No group or individual is exempt from having their worldview scrutinized or satirized. You don\u2019t get a pass simply because of a misplaced desire to infantilize certain groups based on race, sexuality, gender, or religion. Comedy doesn\u2019t have to punch up, down, left, or right. It can punch in any direction or no direction. It isn\u2019t reasonable to think an entire art form should be tailored exclusively to your values. The sooner some people realize that, the sooner they can stop immiserating themselves through\u00a0manufactured outrage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every week or so, outrage-junkies desperate for their next fix will seize upon the words of a comedian and send&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":61,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,9,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-news","category-skepticism","category-social-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/flyingscotsman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/flyingscotsman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/flyingscotsman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/flyingscotsman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/flyingscotsman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/flyingscotsman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/flyingscotsman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/flyingscotsman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/flyingscotsman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/flyingscotsman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}