Humour about tragedy.

[Paisley]

Some folks here seem to think we're talking about laughing in the face of adversity. I don't think that's what H.Johnson is talking about at all.


B
T

I'm sure people understand the subject; they just haven't found much to say about it. As far as making jokes about specific people who have been dead for some 100 years, you either like it or you don't.

 

[Carlisle Blues]

Some folks here seem to think we're talking about laughing in the face of adversity. I don't think that's what H.Johnson is talking about at all.


B
T

Tragedy is subjective and in some cases preventable with the approrpiate prophylactic measures. :eusa_doh:

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think the point of the original post is that too much modern humor often comes at the expense of the unfortunate, rather than being directed at those responsible for the misfortune.

There was a lot of very grim, dark humor during the early Depression years, for example -- Wall Street suicide jokes were extremely common:

Stockbroker goes into a hotel, and says "I want a room!" Clerk says, "For sleeping or for jumping?

And on and on in that same vein. But you didn't have jokes about the people standing in the breadlines -- if anything, there was a sense that such Depression victims were noble underdogs, and when they turned up in a humorous setting they invariably were shown triumphing over the corrupt millionaries and evil bankers.

Or, moving to a wartime setting, mocking and ridiculing Nazis was seen as entirely appropriate. Mocking the victims of Nazism was never appropriate.

 

[Fletch]

This one may have been making the rounds in Des Moines in the fall of '41:

Q. What's the difference between Lindbergh and the Hindenburg?
A. One's a flying Nazi gasbag that went down in flames. The other was an airship.

 

[BinkieBaumont]

"Never mention Swine Flue, and Cocktails in the same sentance, I did once, caused a huge commotion!!!"

 

[Diamondback]

As previously alluded to, in some fields grim/dark humor is the only thing that helps you keep your sanity...

But then there's things like 8th AF bomber crews packin' empty beer-bottles to drop over Germany because "they make a lovely whistle going down, just like a block-buster"...

----------------
Now playing: Jesper Kyd - Main Title
via FoxyTunes

 

[Benny Holiday]

You didn't like the "Make a Realisitic Wish" Foundation? I thought the concept was amusing - but the execution could have been better


From Media Watch:
The Chaser wasn't the first to choose that particular target for humour.

"Hello Jasmine, it's Susan from the Reasonable Request Foundation, how are you love?"
— Web video, The Mansion, 12th June, 2008

The Mansion, on Foxtel's Comedy Channel, made essentially the same joke about the same subject last year.

No trip to Disneyland for you, kid, but 50% off your next set of prints from Photo Plus...

"I guess that's the difference between a wish and a request - you know you can say 'no' to a request.
What other, what other requests do you have Jasmine? A cure? No."
— Web video, The Mansion, 12th June, 2008


Well you may or may not think that was funny but the fact is The Comedy Channel got barely a single complaint.

Why? I'm inclined to agree with this comment on ABC Online's Unleashed:
"...it didn't actually feature dying kids in shot, whether actors or otherwise. As a result it felt a lot less offensive."
— ABC online, Unleashed, 4th June, 2009

No, just can't find the concept in the least bit amusing, nor do I want to. I don't think anyone with children could.

 

[davestlouis]

It's simple human nature to snicker about someone else's misfortune. In a sense it's life-affirming...I'm still vertical and that poor soul isn't. I work in the funeral trade and have seen or heard every sick, inappropriate joke imaginable pertaining to death or other unfortunate events.

 

[Diamondback]

I believe the word is "schadenfreude".

 

[davestlouis]

We bought an animated movie called Igor over the winter...when the "bad guy" came onscreen, and his name was Schadenfreude, I started laughing. My wife thought I had lost my mind, and when I tried to explain, she thought I had made up the word.

Sorry for going off-topic...

I do believe there's a difference in delighting in another's misfortune, and sighing with relief that it happened to someone else, not me. Schadenfreude implies delight, or glee, with what I would take as a meanspiritedness.

 

[Undertow]

I know what you mean, but I also find that far too many people treat everything as humour. Insult somebody, and if they complain, just go "I was kidding! Can't you take a joke?", and mock them if they keep complaining. Say an offensive statement? Just say it was funny, etc.

Oh my, yes; I do agree! I say, if you're going to have the stones to laugh at something that could be painful to someone, you'd better be able to take what you dish. Nothing is as awkward as a lying coward trying to push their offence off as a "joke" or "kidding".

I guess it's one of those, "Say what you mean and mean what you say," scenarios.

 

[MisterCairo]

Was it Mel Brooks who said "comedy is a guy falling down an open manhole. Tragedy is me cutting my finger"?

 

[Talbot]

Or, moving to a wartime setting, mocking and ridiculing Nazis was seen as entirely appropriate. Mocking the victims of Nazism was never appropriate.

Which, I guess, is why 'The Producers' is such a funny film, and understandable that they backed off the swastika's when advertising the remake in parts of Europe.

 

[Dreispitz]

Why did they have Coke on bord the Challenger?

Because, they could not get seven up.
:cry:

 

[ThesFlishThngs]

Here's how my husband found the Mel Brooks quote: "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die."
Mel Brooks

 

[marvelgoose]

To Kurt Vonnegut, laughing and crying are equally valid responses to misery. He preferred laughing because it was not messy and required less cleaning afterwards. To Vonnegut, dark humor was the only logical response to the hurt in the world. The darker the act, the darker the comedy required to combat it.

The underpinning of all humor is anger. It comes with the genre. Pick up any work of Twain and the subtext is seething.

There is a conceit in some quarters to view dark humor as "modern". Unless one is willing to count Jonathan Swift and George Bernard Shaw as modern, that does not hold.

The ba***rd cousin of Dark Humor is Obscene Humor. The only thing that is modern here is that the purveyors of "shock humor" are allowed to survive. Someone cracking wise about the slaughter at Antietam in a saloon in the 1860's would have just been shot.