It's hard to be truly funny.
It's also dangerous. Someone--maybe George Bernard Shaw but maybe not--once said if you're going to tell someone the truth, you'd better make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you. These days, they might kill you for telling a joke.
So maybe the prudent thing is to be neither too truthful nor too funny. (Seems to work for a lot of people in Washington and elsewhere.)
To be truly funny you can't be risk-averse. You have to say things that people think but don't dare say. A lot of humor lies in uncomfortable truths. To be funny you have to be brave in that you have to acknowledge the unspeakable, to be willing to express whatever honest thought floats up from the murk of your subconscious. And you have to hope that your specific experience is somehow a universal one--that enough other people share your warped perspective on the world for your joke to work.
To be funny, you have to be willing to share your secret shame.
Most of us aren't willing to do that, and that's fine. A little hypocrisy keeps the world spinning. There's nothing brave about what most of us do day to day. A lot of us put a premium on being safe. So most of the time our laughter is polite and our jokes are mild, wry and amusing at best. Most attempts at comedy are half-hearted and unfunny because most of us don't have the talent to be properly funny. And even if we did have the talent, most of us would prefer to keep our jobs and our friends. Most of us would prefer not to give offense.
I sure don't want to give offense. So I limit attempts at being funny. I don't always say what I'm thinking. I don't acknowledge the irony of old white guys who look like they are built from mashed potatoes, Elmer's Glue and a dash through the menswear department of JCPenney ranting about the supposed superiority of their genetic makeup. (Except when I do.)
Still, while I don't have the guts for comedy, I appreciate those who do. We ought to license our comedians to be rude. Because rude can be funny, and funny is generally a good thing. And if it's the sort of funny that makes you think about your habits of thought and the petty orthodoxies to which you hew, then it's more than a good thing; it's a thing that refreshes and revitalizes our society.
Because we all hew to petty orthodoxies. We all fall into unthinkingness from time to time. You don't want to live a rote life.
That's not to say that some comedy isn't cruel. It is, and cruelty is never funny. But sometimes it happens unintentionally, when someone is simply trying to be brave and honest about something. Sometimes people who are trying to be funny miss spectacularly and reveal something particularly ugly about themselves, and everybody goes "whaaa?" or "oooh" or "hurtful" and people start calling for boycotts and talking heads appear on television to say how bad it was that what was said was said out loud in front of people.
And people say some bad things sometimes when they're trying to be funny. Sometimes bad people try to use comedy as a cover for their hatefulness. It's not always easy to tell when someone has made a clumsy mistake and when someone is actually a piece of garbage.
Most of the time, when people say they were only joking, I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I don't always, and sometimes that may be because whatever they said that I didn't like hit a little too close to home for me to be completely comfortable with in the moment. But I try not to be offended, which is pretty easy because I'm a cis white male who has some standing in the status quo. Most of my problems are manageable compared to what some people have to go through.
I still think comedians should be allowed to offend.
It's not just a First Amendment issue; it's a decent person issue. When someone makes a bad joke, feel free to groan or to say "that's not funny," but let's not over-react. Let's not chill free speech. Because we want people to take chances, to say the outrageous thing that might be truer than we are in the moment unwilling to admit.
And sure, more people are going to say dumb things than brilliant things--every generation gets only one or two minds like Richard Pryor or Bill Hicks--but we don't want to quash uncomfortable truths.
While smart people pretending to be dumb is the lowest form of humor there is (though the Three Stooges and Beavis & Butt-Head did it pretty well), it's the lingua franca of a certain kind of comedy. If you don't respond to it--if you think it's stupid--it's easy to avoid. Just don't listen to morning drivetime radio. Don't patronize Adam Sandler movies.
No one would ever suggest that you should laugh at what you don't find funny. Please don't try to use whatever feelings the person you don't find funny stirred up in you as a weapon. At least entertain the idea that they just made a bad joke.
We all ought to try to be respectful and kind most of the time. We shouldn't objectify people--not even those who seem to court objectification by making an effort to look attractive. We shouldn't make fun of the way people look (though it's probably OK to point it out when people who continually comment on the way people look don't exactly conform to man-made Western standards of beauty themselves).
But it's all right to make people mad, so long as they're the right people. I don't really care much that Nazis got offended--and they did get offended, they got all whiny and stuck-piggy--when I suggested that some people might feel justified in punching them in the throat. Because I admit I'm insensitive to the feelings of Nazis. (Though I do not advocate punching anyone in the throat unless they present as a clear and present danger.)
The thing is, most people fail when they try to be funny. But when they succeed, it's a beautiful thing. Even if what you're laughing at is the recognition of something horrible about our kind.
pmartin@arkansasonline.com
www.blooddirtangels.com
Editorial on 02/11/2018