Troy McNaughtonRantorama - Comedic Currency Index
April 28th 2006 06:34
“Would you like to hear an Offensive Joke?”
“Um… will I be offended?”
“No, it’s just an Offensive Joke.”
Welcome to the post-shock, post-political-correctness (P-PC) era.
Apoplexies at the inappropriate are no longer considered legitimate: feminism, racial hypersensitivity and censorship are passé.
To call such spectres back into the ‘modern world’ is worse than living in the past, it’s (gasp) lacking a sense of humour.
If you’re in mixed company, “I’m about to say something Offensive now” acts like a disclaimer, an SBS warning that nudity is about to appear, and that anyone who hasn’t changed the channel will be responsible for the consequences. Mostly, however, it works as well as, “Don’t look, I’m changing,” which always draws its own attention.
In the arena of amateur comedy in the Australian comedic tradition, whatever subject matter was once considered offensive, be it racially discriminatory, sexist, at the expense of the disabled or based on killing babies, has now been filed neatly under the category of “Offensive Jokes”.
As long as you read the label, loudly and clearly, it seems you are now welcome to open the Tupperware container and disseminate at will.
(NB: If you’re looking for one, they are stacked for easy access on the internet among the stamp collecting and fetish sites. Some even come with guarantees to offend.)
Offensive Jokes have not ceased to be offensive just because we call them by their proper name, and yet intelligent, educated, liberal-minded, progressive people have given themselves an outlet for their political correctness: propagating jokes they claim not personally to condone.
Perhaps it is the logical next step: humour has always been a status symbol in our culture, and like swear words, we need to keep pushing the boundaries of offence to up the effects in the face of an ever-increasing tolerance.
But at the same time, rules are tightening their grip. Hungary was considering banning blonde jokes; Britain’s comedians have been campaigning against a bill for a seven-year jail term for inciting religious hatred, which they claim will stifle humour.
Rowan Atkinson remarked, "It all points to the promotion of the idea that there should be a right not to be offended. But in my view the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended… The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed because one in my view represents openness - and the other represents oppression."
(Australian comedians are too Australia to get up in arms about sedition laws.)
You can’t publish this new breed of jokes except amidst the anarchy of the internet. Through censorship and anti-discrimination laws, company and institutional policies, it has become almost exclusively an oral tradition. Although John Brodgen was crucified for his ‘mail-order bride’ quips in public, it’s unlikely they would have raised an eyebrow if he weren’t speaking in an official capacity in public.
Prison welfare activists successfully pressured 7-Up a few years ago into removing an advertisement rolling out the old soap-dropping gag, but these and women’s groups will have a harder time dealing with the private Offensive Joke sessions with their innocuous pleas to interrupt or at least greet with a stony silence the assorted rape jokes that always seem to feature when race jokes have been exhausted.
On the flip side, one female commentator noted that if feminists want to politicise rape, then to censor jokes about rape is to violate our freedom of political speech. It’s an interesting argument.
But when did we lose sight of the legitimate reasons these jokes were set aside as taboo in the first place? Why is it that by acknowledging the nature of the joke, the teller is granted immunity from reproach?
Humour in the past has been successfully used to dismantle prejudices and undercut intimidation tactics and attacks; it is now being used as an impenetrable force field protecting un-PC ideas from reasonable criticism.
It is potentially more subversive and more insidious, because it steals the wind from the sails of any dissenter, and so we find ourselves laughing at jokes we know are inappropriate, not knowing how else to respond. Even worse, we are being slowly desensitised to serious issues, which, no matter the intentions of the joke-teller, are inevitably trivialised as punch lines.
If you’ve never been to an (unofficial, amateur) Offensive Joke Convention, interestingly, it is rarely the funniest than win the most kudos – better to be downright unfunny and incredibly offensive at the same time.
The same goes for Offensive T-shirt slogans, an industry in itself – the more pointlessly offensive, the better. You know who I mean.
Wilful offensiveness is very hard to criticise on a level of content.
I’m not drawing lines in the sand but I think it’s worth remembering that, like the universe, black humour has its limits out there somewhere. Even the Sydney Law Revue stopped short of Holocaust jokes.
Laughter is collusion. Silence is complicity.
Offensive Jokes: just say ‘No’… or I’ll tell you the worst dead baby joke I’ve ever heard.
“Um… will I be offended?”
“No, it’s just an Offensive Joke.”
Welcome to the post-shock, post-political-correctness (P-PC) era.
Apoplexies at the inappropriate are no longer considered legitimate: feminism, racial hypersensitivity and censorship are passé.
To call such spectres back into the ‘modern world’ is worse than living in the past, it’s (gasp) lacking a sense of humour.
In the arena of amateur comedy in the Australian comedic tradition, whatever subject matter was once considered offensive, be it racially discriminatory, sexist, at the expense of the disabled or based on killing babies, has now been filed neatly under the category of “Offensive Jokes”.
As long as you read the label, loudly and clearly, it seems you are now welcome to open the Tupperware container and disseminate at will.
(NB: If you’re looking for one, they are stacked for easy access on the internet among the stamp collecting and fetish sites. Some even come with guarantees to offend.)
Offensive Jokes have not ceased to be offensive just because we call them by their proper name, and yet intelligent, educated, liberal-minded, progressive people have given themselves an outlet for their political correctness: propagating jokes they claim not personally to condone.
Perhaps it is the logical next step: humour has always been a status symbol in our culture, and like swear words, we need to keep pushing the boundaries of offence to up the effects in the face of an ever-increasing tolerance.
But at the same time, rules are tightening their grip. Hungary was considering banning blonde jokes; Britain’s comedians have been campaigning against a bill for a seven-year jail term for inciting religious hatred, which they claim will stifle humour.
(Australian comedians are too Australia to get up in arms about sedition laws.)
You can’t publish this new breed of jokes except amidst the anarchy of the internet. Through censorship and anti-discrimination laws, company and institutional policies, it has become almost exclusively an oral tradition. Although John Brodgen was crucified for his ‘mail-order bride’ quips in public, it’s unlikely they would have raised an eyebrow if he weren’t speaking in an official capacity in public.
Prison welfare activists successfully pressured 7-Up a few years ago into removing an advertisement rolling out the old soap-dropping gag, but these and women’s groups will have a harder time dealing with the private Offensive Joke sessions with their innocuous pleas to interrupt or at least greet with a stony silence the assorted rape jokes that always seem to feature when race jokes have been exhausted.
On the flip side, one female commentator noted that if feminists want to politicise rape, then to censor jokes about rape is to violate our freedom of political speech. It’s an interesting argument.
Humour in the past has been successfully used to dismantle prejudices and undercut intimidation tactics and attacks; it is now being used as an impenetrable force field protecting un-PC ideas from reasonable criticism.
It is potentially more subversive and more insidious, because it steals the wind from the sails of any dissenter, and so we find ourselves laughing at jokes we know are inappropriate, not knowing how else to respond. Even worse, we are being slowly desensitised to serious issues, which, no matter the intentions of the joke-teller, are inevitably trivialised as punch lines.
If you’ve never been to an (unofficial, amateur) Offensive Joke Convention, interestingly, it is rarely the funniest than win the most kudos – better to be downright unfunny and incredibly offensive at the same time.
The same goes for Offensive T-shirt slogans, an industry in itself – the more pointlessly offensive, the better. You know who I mean.
Wilful offensiveness is very hard to criticise on a level of content.
I’m not drawing lines in the sand but I think it’s worth remembering that, like the universe, black humour has its limits out there somewhere. Even the Sydney Law Revue stopped short of Holocaust jokes.
Laughter is collusion. Silence is complicity.
Offensive Jokes: just say ‘No’… or I’ll tell you the worst dead baby joke I’ve ever heard.
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Comment by Cibbuano
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It's like a 'Huzzah!'
Comment by Stanley
Comment by amy
As for how it reflects on you... see above... you're clearly going to political/cultural/good taste hell =P