The Off Topic Topic

[Sheilbh]

Catching up on Past Present Future and just got to an episode on Kinnock's Militant speech

Edit: And details on all the splits on the British hard-left (I am going to be shouting corrections at my podcasts...)

[Jacob]

Is anyone following the brouhaha about Chapelle, Bill Barr et. al. performing for the Saudi royal clan at the Riyadh Comedy Festival (or whatever it was called)? Do you have any opinions on the topic?

[grumbler]

Is anyone following the brouhaha about Chapelle, Bill Barr et. al. performing for the Saudi royal clan at the Riyadh Comedy Festival (or whatever it was called)? Do you have any opinions on the topic?

At first I was mildly outraged at what I saw as hypocrisy, but on reflection I decided that these are folks that need to get paid for their labor. They were not shilling for the monarchy, so they are just doing a paid gig.

[HVC]

Is anyone following the brouhaha about Chapelle, Bill Barr et. al. performing for the Saudi royal clan at the Riyadh Comedy Festival (or whatever it was called)? Do you have any opinions on the topic?

Only thing i really learned is that Marc Maron is now shrill and annoying. I used to enjoy his stuff, but its been a few years since i saw any of it.

[grumbler]

Is anyone following the brouhaha about Chapelle, Bill Barr et. al. performing for the Saudi royal clan at the Riyadh Comedy Festival (or whatever it was called)? Do you have any opinions on the topic?

Only thing i really learned is that Marc Maron is now shrill and annoying. I used to enjoy his stuff, but its been a few years since i saw any of it.

Ditto Chapelle

[HVC]

Is anyone following the brouhaha about Chapelle, Bill Barr et. al. performing for the Saudi royal clan at the Riyadh Comedy Festival (or whatever it was called)? Do you have any opinions on the topic?

Only thing i really learned is that Marc Maron is now shrill and annoying. I used to enjoy his stuff, but its been a few years since i saw any of it.

Ditto Chapelle

He's more hit or miss now, yeah. Some comics don't age well. Don't mean their old stuff, but that their current stuff goes flat.

That being said, while not that new, his  jussie smollett bit was one of his funniest.

[Admiral Yi]

I still like Dave.  Only guy who had the balls to make a trans joke.

[Valmy]

I still like Dave.  Only guy who had the balls to make a trans joke.

Trans people make trans jokes all the damn time. His were just really unfunny.

[Josquius]

I still like Dave.  Only guy who had the balls to make a trans joke.

Trans people have been a subject of comedy since forever.
Gervais heavily joked about trans people, I remember an old Chris rock bit, Little Britain heavily did it, I remember an early always sunny episode, in Friends it was a pretty prominent recurring joke, various other sitcoms over the years going back to the 70s at least have. Though often lines get blurred with drag.

[Sheilbh]

This was literally a Simpsons episode about 30 years ago

WFH police detective jammed button on keyboard to look busy
Niall Thubron has been barred from policing after tricking his superiors by 'key-jamming' at home when he was supposed to be investigating organised crime

On the twelve days he was WFH that they looked at he appears to have been away for 45 of his 85 working hours

[grumbler]

I still like Dave.  Only guy who had the balls to make a trans joke.

He is hardly the only comic that punches down rather than up.

[HVC]

I still like Dave.  Only guy who had the balls to make a trans joke.

He is hardly the only comic that punches down rather than up.

I never really got the whole punch up punch down thing. To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a joke is just a joke. Funny can just be funny for its own sake. Now, you can not like a joke, because comedy like many things can and is subjective, but I don't get not liking it just because it punches down.

[Josquius]

I still like Dave.  Only guy who had the balls to make a trans joke.

He is hardly the only comic that punches down rather than up.

I never really got the whole punch up punch down thing. To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a joke is just a joke. Funny can just be funny for its own sake. Now, you can not like a joke, because comedy like many things can and is subjective, but I don't get not liking it just because it punches down.

There is a moral factor of not kicking those who can't defend themselves vs. striking at authority.
But punching down also to my mind does have the problem  that it just tends not to be funny. This is seen as quite a difference in American and British comedy.

Thats not to say jokes about minorities are forbidden. But its quite a needle to thread. You have to laugh with them rather than just position yourself as an outsider going "That lot over there, aren't they shit"

[Jacob]

I never really got the whole punch up punch down thing. To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a joke is just a joke. Funny can just be funny for its own sake. Now, you can not like a joke, because comedy like many things can and is subjective, but I don't get not liking it just because it punches down.

I have a potential explanation...

Consistently laughing at people who are worse off than you and getting joy from their suffering can come across as bullying. The current US administration notwithstanding, there are many people who think bullying is a bad thing.

"Punching down" does not inherently mean bullying, of course, but there's definitely a chance of accidentally coming across as a bully (or doing it on purpose, of course). "Punching up" or "speaking truth to power" as it's sometimes called is less likely to accidentally straying into bullying.

So that's one potential reason.

Another potential reason is that laughter and humour serve a number of social functions, and that those functions shift as the context shifts - including who is making fun of whom. Some folks think about this, while others don't and view it through a "it's just a joke, it's not that deep" lens.

But for the people who do think about the context and social functions of jokes, a significant number of them conclude that they don't want to contribute to the social functions that various "punching down" jokes serve. At the same time, some people decide that they absolutely do want to contribute to those social functions and embrace "punching down" jokes for that reason - some of them will do it openly, while others will do the thing where they deliberately use jokes to put whatever group "in their place" while claiming that "it's just a joke man, it doesn't mean anything."

So there is a political element to the "don't punch down" approach to humour (as well to the "deliberately punch down" approach, of course).

This is all, of course, mediated through our perception of who actually holds power. Maybe making jokes about immigrants or trans people is really speaking truth to power against the politically correct elites who wield power recklessly to pursue their various agendas; or maybe it's victimizing already vulnerable groups and reinforcing a social hierarchy where some groups of people can do what they want and other people have to pay the price; or maybe those jokes are clever juxtapositions that allow us to release pent up stress by allowing us to address absurdities and insecurities that we otherwise couldn't speak to, even though they cause us stress.

When is it one and when is it the other? That changes with context. "Punch up, not down" is a map for navigating the shifting landscape of context.

In short, who is laughing at whom and why is political whether you intend it or not.

[crazy canuck]

I just read that New York schools offer gifted programs for kindergarten.

How precious