tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-546919408935718289.post678288922898785171..comments2024-03-27T00:13:29.831-07:00Comments on Humbabella's Gamery: Brutal HumourHumbabellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16113648850586073091noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-546919408935718289.post-72089783556855501922014-03-19T16:31:01.634-07:002014-03-19T16:31:01.634-07:00That's fair in a way, but it doesn't reall...That's fair in a way, but it doesn't really address the problem I've got here. Most jokes are bad jokes and many people who take offense are just people who enjoy being offended. But even if there could be an objectively good joke it would still objectively hurt people. The best we can hope for is to lurch through agony.Humbabellahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16113648850586073091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-546919408935718289.post-66226585598096366712014-03-17T11:30:21.491-07:002014-03-17T11:30:21.491-07:00Some comedian, I can't remember who, was talki...Some comedian, I can't remember who, was talking about comedy's role as transgressor and said that a transgressive joke ought to be as good as it is transgressive. A bad joke about, say, rape* (or as is usually the case, an entirely bankrupt joke) tries to use rape as a punchline with the implicit assumption that rape is inherently funny. But rape isn't inherently funny. It's inherently horrific. A good joke about rape uses the transgressive nature of the topic to unsettle the listener so that they are caught even further off-guard than normal when the punchline comes.<br /><br />Screwtape talks about this too. The kind of bad joke I mentioned above he mentions as a consequence of the general attitude of flippancy.<br /><br />"Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it."<br /><br />I think that's what I'm getting at. Transgressive jokes don't necessarily trivialise the subject they transgress. Flippant transgressive jokes do, by encouraging the listener to treat the subject transgressed as funny.<br /><br />Josh<br /><br />* but say it good.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13364701168184068095noreply@blogger.com