Letters to the Editor
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Asked and answered
This question was answered about 300 years ago. Is writing about eating Irish children any less potentially offensive or specifically offensive to one group? And yet we teach satire in school using "A Modest Proposal". The exclamation point was put on the answer by Sarah Silverman when she said she was raped by a doctor - which is bittersweet for a Jewish girl.
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funny thing
Humor is essentially an adaptive behavior that achieves social needs about inclusion, safety, control, group cohesion, and marginalization and neutralization of deviants. The subject matter is largely irrelevant to these functions. Observe comedy routines. Generally there is nothing witty, ironic, or even interesting in the subject matter. It’s all about manipulation of the relative worth and status of individuals and of affect and behavioral orientation of the audience to deviants as related to group safety and cohesion. Those who are not marginalized feel safer. Check out your own overt behavior and inner experience when laughing in a group – you make eye contact with others (why?), and it feels like relief. Silverman understands this.
The subject matter is always secondary because empathy is suspended – empathy would interfere with the archetypal and evolutionary element of humor, which is to marginalize and exclude others in order to establish safety for self. So when we ask “Is X ever funny?” or “Is it OK to laugh at X?” what we are really struggling with is our conflicted need for inclusion in group (to bond with others through laughter for safety) versus a capacity and courage to suspend the need for group safety and inclusion and risk marginalization oneself, in order to access, evaluate and operationalize some level of empathy with objects of humor.
That is to say, rape is never OK to laugh about, but our natural and healthy aversion to it may be subverted by need for group acceptance and, yes, innate propensities. Try not to laugh along with a group of peers the next time some unattractive, awkward, or deviant peer is singled out as the victim of cruel humor, even when it doesn’t feel right to laugh. Try it. That is the primal conflict between group safety and empathy. Male rape is more often the subject of humor than female because it is socially safer to marginalize homosexual behavior than women.
As Ms. Clark-Flory notes, humor has evolved to victimless forms that transcend its roots. It may reflect back on itself to exclude and marginalize the very need to marginalize. It may target ideas and behaviors, rather than individuals. And it may be self-deprecatory, a sublime ironic negation of humor’s original lethal function.
So, decrying the subject matter of humor is largely off track. The social meaning and import of humor become operationalized, and in potentially radically different ways, only through its interpretation by each individual’s internal cognitive/emotional templates – beliefs, attitudes, and most importantly insecurities and need for acceptance. Thus sketches in Borat would be likely to strengthen and operationalize tendencies toward racism, misogyny, and classism when viewed, say, by a group of Duke University lacrosse players. Conversely, viewed by an adult audience, the same sketches have the opposite effects, because the joke is on the joke, what is lowered in status and marginalized are the maladaptive attitudes aimed at the objects, not the objects. It’s an inside job.
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funny? not
any subject manner can be funny, even rape (see sarah silverman), but this sketch was amateurish, clunky and looked like it was written, filmed and acted by drunk fratboys. Not funny. Not because of the subject matter but because of the poor writing, acting, production values.
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everything is off limits
din't you get the memo. now back to your machine, citizen.
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Rape can be funny, but this wasn't.
And for anyone who wants to debate the first part of that thesis, allow me to offer the "Oh, Sweet Mystery of Life" scene from Young Frankenstein as evidence.
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I can only answer for myself
For those who commented without actually watching the skit ... since the skit was actually done by fairly famous actors/comedians and not a bunch of frat boys, it has a higher possibility of being seen in any case. So, whether someone makes a big deal about it or not, it's probably going to get a look-see by people who like those actors.
But that's really beside the point anyway.
I guess it is subjective to a certain extent. I've never really heard a 'funny' rape joke, but perhaps that's because I don't see rape as funny at all. I actually had a very squeamish feeling during that part of the skit. My stomach turned a bit. I was, in fact, truly repulsed by it. It wasn't just that the skit was kind of stupid (which it was) but it caused a physical reaction on my part. I was a bit sickened by it and wondered how someone who had been raped might feel watching the girl run out and scream 'Rape' after the three guys fled the scene zipping up their pants. I know it's supposed to be a joke, but it actually came out as a pretty skeevy non-joke.
Obviously, some people will feel differently. I don't really see anyone arguing here that rape jokes shouldn't be allowed. Freedom of speech is freedom of speech, and some people here will think it was hilarious.
I can only answer for myself. It made me think the actors involved needed to very seriously re-think the joke. (Maybe the skit, too, as it was kind of stupid.)
It also made me like them a bit less and want to see what they are working on in the future a bit less. I'm sure that matters to them not at all. I'm just one person. But, I didn't like what I saw. I think it was a dumb, pretty insensitive thing to do.
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Is rape off-limits for laughs? Let's consult the experts...
1) Monty Python's Life of Brian:
Brian: [asking his mother about the Roman Legionnaire who fathered him] You mean he raped you?!Brian's Mother: Well, only at first...
2) National Lampoon's Animal House:
Where-are-they-now caption over the villainous Greg Marmalard's face at the end of the movie: “Greg Marmalard ‘63, Nixon White House Aide [long pause] Raped in Prison ‘74."
3) Blazing Saddles
Wishing to deal a death blow to the town of Rock Ridge, the evil Hedley Lamarr (played by Harvey Korman) is conducting interviews with criminals who want to join his gang.
Hedley Lamarr: Qualifications?
Applicant: Rape, murder, arson, and rape.
Hedley Lamarr: You said rape twice. Why?
Applicant: I like rape.
Hedley Lamarr [to his lackeys]: Ha ha ha. He'll do.
So there you have it. Monty Python, Mel Brooks, and John Landis/Harold Ramis all say rape is fair game.