MysterionMuffles Posted October 8, 2013 Posted October 8, 2013 I'm sure you guys are highly aware of Russell Peters, who does a good job at tearing down the wall of racism and prejiduce between cultures with his comedy. If you're not, have you been living under a rock? I enjoy his comedy routine as he was the first comic whose name I actually wanted to know and get more of his material. I find the stand up comic medium interesting as it is usually a one person monologue with great thoughts to express and is actually funnier IF those thoughts are anywhere near worth the mic they speak them into. Anyways, getting off topic, but for those of you who are familiar with Russell's routine, thankfully he has retired this joke because his dad died, and hopefully for moral reasons, but he used to have this act in his routine where he makes fun of how abusive his father was towards him and his brother. I won't go into detail about it here, but basically it's about how his father used to say "somebody gonna get a hurt real bad," before a beating, and when Russell learned from his friends that there are child protective services, he started using the threat to call them if his dad were to touch him. The punchline, sorry for ruining it is his dad saying "it takes 20 minutes for them to come here, so in that time somebody gonna get a hurt real bad." What I wanted to know if people can still find that kind of comedy funny despite of what we all know about the effects of child abuse now, or is it repulsive. To me I can STILL see why it's funny and how clever it is, but a part of me just turns away from it and knows how it does a huge disservice to child abusive victims and gives more power to the abusers. I ask this because yesterday I was watching a Donald Glover routine and he said how his family used to run a daycare center, so I thought he would have an innate respect for children. He didn't express any ill intent or admit to any enacting of abuse towards those children, just called them little Hitler's for being irrational angry little beings. The whole time I was thinking "but kids are only as bad as the parents who raise them." I still enjoyed the rest of his routine of course, but parts like that bothered me a little bit. Your thoughts?
Hannibal Posted October 8, 2013 Posted October 8, 2013 I don't think there are any rules to govern what is or isn't funny. Reality is reality, and that abuse happened whether or not he makes a joke of it. I think that people who take offense to it are not being rational. If the joke was suggesting that abusing kids is a fun thing to do, or right to do, or ok to do, then that's different. But clearly that guy, if anything, is using a joke to tell the world that his dad beat him and that it sucked. When I was a Royal Marine just over a decade ago now, there were 2 jokes in particular that I remember. Both in training. 1) one of the guys had an epileptic fit in the bath. This was obviously sad because that was the end of his career, but while we were "fallen in" around and down the stairwell inside our accommodation block, a corporal from the training team emerged as usual, and started giving us a huge bollocking, as usual. To paraphrase him: "You fuckers! what were you doing while <recruit's surname> was fitting in the bath?! Why didn't you get your dhobi and dhobi dust in there with him?!" Dhobis being an indian caste that specialise in washing clothes, so Dhobi meant washing (as in laundry) and dhobi dust was washing powder. That was an incredibly funny joke at the time. 2) Another recruit was shot dead by accident on a training area where live ammunition got mixed in with blank ammunition. A popular guy, only 16 years old from Wales (different troop to me). I happened to be in sick-bay that morning getting a chit from the doc so that I could wear trainers instead of boots until my tendonitis cleared up. I saw the helicopter arriving, and police milling about. Later that afternoon the whole camp fell in inside the drill shed where the adjutant briefed us all on what had happened and what to do if any press questioned us, and so i realised what the fuss had been about that morning. That evening we were being briefed about the following day, which included an inspection because of some other indiscretion, and the troop Captain, in his toff voice, said "and for anyone who fails inspection, we'll take you up to the common and have you shot!". Again a very funny joke at the time. Humor can be a strange thing.
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