Building Momentum

Three new, if short, book reviews on CMS today.  Which, by implication, means I've been developing a reading habit again! Yay, forward motion.

That's not funny

I remember being about 10-years-old and laughing my ass off at Bill Cosby. I had stumbled onto his bit about his kids thinking their names were "Damn It" and "Jesus Christ" because those were the two most common things he shouted at them.

"Damn it!  Get in here!"
"But dad, my name's Jesus Christ!"

Which, for all of Cosby's sins, is still one of the funniest comedy routines I've every heard. Even at 10 I couldn't stop laughing.  My mother, who came into the room just in time to hear the end of that, said only, "That's not funny, James."

And it wasn't, not to her. I doubt any modern lefty would care or agree, but Jesus Christ was a topic sacred to her and not only was it not funny, not only did she feel it was unfair mockery of her beliefs and lifestyle (what she might have called "punching down" today), but she didn't want to even hear the joke. I wasn't allowed to laugh at it, Cosby shouldn't have said it, she just wanted it to go away because she found it uncomfortable and hurtful.

This is the story that pops into my head every time I hear the endless "kids are too PC to get humor" thing that's still going around. It's a little different than what people are talking about. Cosby isn't intending to make fun of Christians, but himself, and while he is using my mom's sacred cow to do it, it's not with the intent to offend her, he just doesn't find taking the lord's name in vain to be much of a problem. There's definitely a difference between that and a humor intended to diminish, belittle and mock a given human stereotype or identity.  So should Cosby not be allowed to make that joke because people like my mother think it's punching down at them? I think a large part of the problem is we're conflating too much in this conversation. Not all humor comes from the same place, with the same effect and for the same purpose.

So is making fun of Christians punching down, even if they have privilege?  What is the clearly delineated hierarchy of suffering by which we can universally determine what humor is punching down and what is in good fun? Can we make fun of conservative christians with whatever unkind mockery we like because they have historically operated from a place of privilege? What if they report back that they don't feel that way, and that the humor feels unfair? Who gets to decide that? Can we unilaterally declare ourselves off limits to jokes because we have suffered?  If so, how much suffering do we need to endure before we are safe from ridicule?

I think rather than focus on making sure no one is ever uncomfortable, which is both unworkable and unwise (sometimes people may need to point things out about us that are uncomfortable but important to hear), it's better to focus on intent. Some jokes are intended to be absurd, and maybe play too carelessly with people's sacred ideas.  Some jokes are pointedly meant to shock and skewer sacred ideas because the teller feels it necessary. Some jokes are meant to simply uphold power and privilege and dehumanize the already demonized. Those scenarios all need to be handled differently.  If an absurd joke would still be funny if they characters all had their identities switched around or changed for others, it's hard to get too worked up about it. Irreverent sacred cow skewering will always be controversial, but there's room for disagreement when it's institutions and ideologies being attacked instead of people.  Humor meant to demonize and dehumanize can simply be met with a flat, "that's not funny."

The mistake generally seems to be declaring topics off-limits, regardless of intent.  Or, from the other end, trying to pretend jokes that were clearly intended to dehumanize and demonize were "just a joke" i.e. absurdist.  It's fair to point out the intent and quality of a joke can be critiqued. It's fair to  point out you don't get to declare yourself off-limits from criticism or critique, whether it comes in the form of humor or not.

I look forward to dissecting humor until it stops moving with all of you in the coming months.

College Humor and other oxy morons

I don't know why I'm bothering to wade in on the "college kids are too PC to understand humor anymore," pseudo-controlversy, but there are a couple things I want to parse.

First, the idea of humor as necessary counterweight to one's own pride and hubris seems to be a little bit dead on certain segments of the left. There is this sense, especially among lefty types who seem grimly determined to have a firmer grasp of "what's going on" than everyone else, that it is known who the villains are (them) and it is known what is punching up (punching away from them) and what is punching down (punching down towards them) and that comedy acts should then comfortably re-affirm what it is they already know to be true. The kind of people who love the Onion until it hits too close to home in other words. So I do agree that there is kind of a generally obnoxious sense that for the educated left, the court jester could not possibly point out something uncomfortable that they are already not keenly aware of and have formed all the opinions that everyone has all decided are correct. Leaving me to wonder if comedy on campus is supposed to be something not so much laughed at as nodded along with sagely.

Yes, those are the sins of corporations. Yes, those are the sins of patriarchs. Yes, those are the sins of the majority and a rigged system.  Well done comedy man, you checked all the right boxes.

Which is all to say, of course some members of the left are sometimes over-the-top in their preening self-regard, lack of personal humility and generally annoying "know-it-all" self-righteous attitude. Hey, it happens to the best of us. The good news is it's a nice reminder how much we have in common with the right sometimes!

That said, some caveats.

One, I'm not sure how much of a plague this really is.  While yes I think the left could use some kind of lessons in not repeating the sins attributed to conservatism without the slightest hint of self-awareness, this certainly isn't all leftists and may not even be enough people to warrant the press coverage.  There are lots of very nice liberal types who are willing to entertain a comedian who doesn't 100% line up with their values.  The left contains multitudes. My "sense of things" written out above is just that, "a sense of things" and should not be considered worth more than the paper it's printed on. But I certainly don't think it's a dire emergency, I just want some people to tone it down with the self-righteousness and the un-ending purity crusades from time to time.

Two, it's not really true that kids these days hate comedy. Louis C. K. is filthy and pushes all kinds of boundaries and college kids love him.  True, he generally seems to punch in the direction they want to see comedians punching, but that doesn't make his work sometimes very challenging (see his most recent SNL monologue for some of that! Ooph, that was hard to sit through). But, "comedians" contains multitudes too. And it IS true that some comedians are hacks who rely on tired stereotypes that more and more people don't find too funny anymore. There is a growing sense of extreme exhaustion with the traditional lack of accountability for sexist, racist, and seemingly unaccountable patriarchs who all remain firmly at the helm of so much of our civilization and so comedy that just seems to reinforce the idea that "boys will be boys" (i.e. unaccountable to anyone else) is getting less and less play. And I can't say I blame anyone for being tired of a lot of those tropes.

I don't know if I have the wherewithal to parse this much further tonight, but there does seem to some mic grabbing going on, as who gets to define what is and isn't funny. And I get it, there is power in humor. There is power in who gets to decide who and what is worthy of ridicule and therefore who it is acceptable to treat poorly. Humor is a powerful tool in normalizing cultural stories about who the heroes and villains are in a given age. True power is exposed in who and what are considered beyond the pale to joke about. So while I understand the urge to keep comedians from punching towards oneself and one's allies who are perceived as vulnerable, and therefore to be protected, a movement that can't laugh at it's own foibles is in really dangerous territory.

Maybe we should focus less about laughing at other people, and focus more on laughing at ourselves.

A Festivus for the rest of us!

My thoughts on Alain de Botton's Religion for Atheists are here. Short version: I loved it. The questions he asks are important.