Offensive, or Cruel?
You may have noticed that, although I claimed the lack of a correlation between jokes being offensive and funny, I defended the first joke (which I thought was funny) while I tore the second one apart. This illustrates an interesting point: both jokes were offensive, but the second one was offensive in an unfunny way. The first one seemed cruel, but I argued that it wasn’t, and the second one seemed cruel, and I argued that it was. It is, however, possible for a joke to be both clever and cruel, and I try to appreciate the cleverness of such jokes while ignoring the cruelty. For example, think of any “blond” jokes you’ve ever heard. Such jokes can often be funny, although cruel. If you want to turn them into social commentary, take any blond joke and replace “blond” with “republican,” or if your audience is composed mostly of conservative people then replace blond with “liberal,” but it’s unlikely you’d ever find yourself telling a joke to a republican because they don’t have a sense of humor. Ha! Another example of topical humor!
In Defense of Offensive Jokes
Recently I watched a comedy special by a guy named Wyatt Cenac. He told the following joke: “I’m going to open a racist bakery called K-K-cakes.” I thought it was funny, so I set it as my facebook status, properly citing Wyatt Cenac as the source (I mentioned I take comedy seriously; I would never allow someone to think that I came up with a joke on my own if I didn’t). My Aunt and cousin, after reading this joke, expressed to me the fact that they were offended by it because they felt was disrespectful towards black people. If my Aunt or cousin is reading this (unlikely) then my message to them would be a deeply sincere apology for offending them, but the assertion that it wasn’t my intent. Certainly the joke was offensive, but was it disrespectful towards black people? I would argue that, if anything, the joke was disrespectful towards the KKK. Here’s an organization that takes their cause very seriously, and Wyatt Cenac was using the fact that the KKK are racist, something which everyone knows, and turning it into something silly. Who in their right mind would go to a racist bakery called K-K-cakes? What sort of ridiculous baked goods would be sold in such a bakery? If anything, this joke conjures up the image of some asshole in a white pointed hat sitting alone in a bakery filled with racist cakes that no one wants to buy, pissed off that their stupid idea wasn’t working. Part of what makes this joke funny, however, is the edginess. The edginess and ability for us, as adults, to look at it with a political perspective, are what make it slightly more clever. To illustrate my point, I’ll give an example of a joke that’s exactly as clever but is completely and utterly inoffensive: I heard that some of the deer in the forest are playing football. They’re calling it N-F-elk! The cleverness of the joke was that “L” sort of sounds like “elk,” much like “K” sort of sounds like “cake.” The absence of any trace of offensiveness and political statement makes the joke rather impotent. It is, by all accounts, a lame joke. It’s the sort of corny joke you might hear when you’re in first grade. However, the only difference between it and Wyatt Cenac’s joke is that his joke has an added element of humor which really makes the joke: the edginess and political statement.
Humor is something I really enjoy, and in spite of its whimsical nature, something I take very seriously. So, I’ve decided to analyze the nature of humor, and the reactions of certain people which deny them the opportunity to fully appreciate it in all its glory. When I talk about denial of the opportunity for enjoyment of humor, specifically I’m referring to offensive humor. A lot of really funny jokes are offensive, and a lot of people are easily offended, and I think the less easily one allows oneself to be offended, the more one can enjoy humor, and I think refusing to allow oneself to be offended is not necessarily detrimental to sensitivity, as you might believe. Throughout the course of this writing, when I say something is “offensive,” I mean it has the capacity to offend people. The distinction is between having the capacity to offend people and whether it should offend people.
When someone tells an offensive joke, there are many possible reactions. My least favorite is when someone gets offended and asserts that the joke shouldn’t have been told, using the reasoning that “it’s not even funny.” This drives me absolutely up the wall, because the argument the person is using is so diametrically opposed to what is obviously their initial objection to the joke. Allow me to clarify: a joke can either be funny or not funny, and it can be offensive or not offensive. There is not and should not be a correlation. If I tell a joke that you find offensive, and you think that it shouldn’t have been told because it is so offensive, then your objection should be “that joke is offensive, and I think you shouldn’t tell it.” Logically, this is an acceptable reaction to an offensive joke, but in my opinion, it doesn’t mean the joke is morally wrong. I’ll get back to that, though. A joke can either be funny or not funny, and a joke not being funny is a good reason not to tell it, but a joke being offensive does not imply at all that it is not funny. For instructive purposes, I’ll give a couple examples.
Today my office mate noted that I was wearing new shoes, from a company called “Toms.” I told him that every time you buy a pair of shoes from this company, they give a free pair of shoes to a child in a developing country. He said, “well that’s good, but the manufacture of my shoes give a job to a child in a developing country.” The implication here being that his shoes were probably made in a sweat shop. This is an example of a joke that is both offensive and funny. I think that most people would agree that this joke is offensive, but not everyone would agree it’s funny. It’s fine not to think it’s funny, but I’m arguing that the offensive nature of the joke shouldn’t affect how funny it is. I think the joke is funny because it’s clever: I made a comment about my shoes being beneficial to youth in other countries, and he satirically made the claim that his shoes were similarly beneficial, as if “giving jobs” to kids in other countries was something that’s good, rather than something akin to slavery, and certainly not benevolent. The next thing to address is whether the offensiveness of this joke means it shouldn’t have been told. I would argue that it isn’t the case. The wording of the joke doesn’t imply that my office mate doesn’t care about the plight of kids who are forced to work in sweat shops, rather it implies a definitive awareness of a real social problem and satirizes the tendency of people who live in affluent countries such as ours to act as if this problem isn’t there. It works in much the same way as Stephen Colbert does; he satirizes people whose point of view he doesn’t agree with by taking their belief systems to a blatantly absurd extreme, which satirizes the nature of those beliefs.
Here is an example of an offensive joke that isn’t funny. In one of my classes, my teacher said something about how much she disliked working in an environment in which she had to deal with drunk people, and one of the students said something to the effect of “well, you don’t have to be nice to them anyway, since they’re homeless.” The joke was satirizing the fact that alcoholism is common among homeless people, but not in a clever way. Really, it was just a cheap, uncalled for shot at homeless people. It’s not clever to point out the fact that alcoholism is common among homeless people, and in the way this person did it, it was really just making fun of a group of people for a genuine problem they have. You may have noticed that, although I claimed the lack of a correlation between jokes being offensive and funny, I defended the first joke (which I thought was funny) while I tore the second one apart. This illustrates an interesting point: both jokes were offensive, but the second one was offensive in an unfunny way. The first one seemed cruel, but I argued that it wasn’t, and the second one seemed cruel, and I argued that it was. It is, however, possible for a joke to be both clever and cruel, and I try to appreciate the cleverness of such jokes while ignoring the cruelty. For example, think of any “blond” jokes you’ve ever heard. Such jokes can often be funny, although cruel. If you want to turn them into social commentary, take any blond joke and replace “blond” with “republican,” or if your audience is composed mostly of conservative people then replace blond with “liberal,” but it’s unlikely you’d ever find yourself telling a joke to a republican because they don’t have a sense of humor. Ha! Another example of topical humor!
In Defense of Offensive Jokes
Recently I watched a comedy special by a guy named Wyatt Cenac. He told the following joke: “I’m going to open a racist bakery called K-K-cakes.” I thought it was funny, so I set it as my facebook status, properly citing Wyatt Cenac as the source (I mentioned I take comedy seriously; I would never allow someone to think that I came up with a joke on my own if I didn’t). My Aunt and cousin, after reading this joke, expressed to me the fact that they were offended by it because they felt was disrespectful towards black people. If my Aunt or cousin is reading this (unlikely) then my message to them would be a deeply sincere apology for offending them, but the assertion that it wasn’t my intent. Certainly the joke was offensive, but was it disrespectful towards black people? I would argue that, if anything, the joke was disrespectful towards the KKK. Here’s an organization that takes their cause very seriously, and Wyatt Cenac was using the fact that the KKK are racist, something which everyone knows, and turning it into something silly. Who in their right mind would go to a racist bakery called K-K-cakes? What sort of ridiculous baked goods would be sold in such a bakery? If anything, this joke conjures up the image of some asshole in a white pointed hat sitting alone in a bakery filled with racist cakes that no one wants to buy, pissed off that their stupid idea wasn’t working. Part of what makes this joke funny, however, is the edginess. The edginess and ability for us, as adults, to look at it with a political perspective, are what make it slightly more clever. To illustrate my point, I’ll give an example of a joke that’s exactly as clever but is completely and utterly inoffensive: I heard that some of the deer in the forest are playing football. They’re calling it N-F-elk! The cleverness of the joke was that “L” sort of sounds like “elk,” much like “K” sort of sounds like “cake.” The absence of any trace of offensiveness and political statement makes the joke rather impotent. It is, by all accounts, a lame joke. It’s the sort of corny joke you might hear when you’re in first grade. However, the only difference between it and Wyatt Cenac’s joke is that his joke has an added element of humor which really makes the joke: the edginess and political statement.
One unavoidable consequence of being raised by my father was that, while I was growing up, I spent a lot of time around him. One consequence of that was that I inherited his affinity for silly, corny jokes that are a play on words. For instance, when my Dad thought you weren’t telling the truth, he’d say “You lie like a rug!” A silly, inoffensive joke, but I find it classically hilarious. It was this love of the play on words that steered me towards my affinity for “That’s What She Said” jokes. The possibilities are endless: thousands of simple, innocuous statements can be interpreted as being said in sexually explicit situations. All you have to do is watch out for certain key words: suck, big, push, stick it in, hard, wet, etc. Part of what makes “TWSS” jokes so funny is their inherently risque nature, not to mention the cleverness of being able to interpret a sentence in two completely different ways. One of my favorite examples of an inoffensive joke of this nature is a joke my Calculus teacher used to use. I’d say I have class and he’d say “oh, you must be a classy guy!” The concept is exactly the same, but the inherent naughtiness and sexuality is completely removed, making the joke less edgy, and therefore, less funny.
The point is, appreciate humor for what it is. If a joke is offensive (meaning it has the capacity to offend), don’t automatically be offended by it. If you hear a racial joke, avoid the knee jerk reaction of being offended. Rather, assess whether the joke is cruel (something which affects the humor of the joke) and also assess whether the joke is clever. Remember, just because a joke addresses a controversial issue (like sweat shops or racism) doesn’t mean it’s blatantly cruel; it’s possible for an edgy joke to be satirical and clever if it’s interpreted in the correct way. With that, I’ll end with a comic I thought was relevant:
