As an audience, where do we draw the line on what is not allowed to be joked about? It is a tricky question that most people think is a solid line, when in reality I think of it as a staircase. What I mean is that there are things that are off limits at the top of the staircase and then at the bottom are topics that could be off limits but are usually not and there is a bunch of gray in the middle.
This is a complicated topic with so much gray area so I tried to pull three big questions I have that are somewhat current.
Should comedians be expected to be moral leaders?
Right now in the comedy space the biggest thing being talked about is Joe Rogan. He is under fire right now because of a video compilation of him saying the N-word. I am sure most of you have heard about this by the time you read this so I don’t need to get into it. Anyways, former comedian and Rogan’s friend, Whitney Cummings made a few statements on Twitter in defense of Rogan.
Cummings raises a great question: should comedians be expected to be moral leaders? It is a good question and I believe comedians need the freedom to be on that edge in order to bring the best material out of them. If you want to read more about this situation I believe this Vox article does a good job.
Back to my staircase, making fun of something a person is wearing is funny when the person making fun is creating a joke and not picking on the person, and there is a huge difference. This difference is important because there is malicious intent when someone is picking on another.
This brings us to the more sensitive material. I am not sure how your relationships are and have been but the people I am closest with are people that I am able to mess around with and shoot the shit with. This is an aspect I fear is trying to be forced out of comedy, when I believe it is a key part. I believe that every time you laugh you live longer, and that is the thing that comedy can bring us. Whether it has been the best day or the worst day ever, being able to have content that can make you laugh and brighten up your day is precious. I personally don’t want a person with the demeanor of a politician telling me jokes because that would be boring.
Should old content be punishable?
The Joe Rogan situation works perfectly for this question. Rogan is trying to be so called “canceled” for saying the N-word on his podcast The Joe Rogan Experience (JRE). I cannot speak for others, however my personal experience with the N-word as a white person is that society didn’t understand the gravity of the word until the Black Lives Matter movement. Think about how much our culture has changed just from the start of 2020? I am not asking you to side with Joe Rogan, all I am asking of you is to think about the time and what everyone else in society was doing. I also understand that in these situations there is always a lot of emotions involved but context is a very important aspect as well. Were you at the show, or did you watch the special at home, or did you see a clip on youtube? The context of a joke can be lost even if you watched the whole special, it is different than going to the physical show.
Who decides?
The answer to this is complicated because it depends on how you look at it. I will use Dave Chappell and his most recent special called The Closer as an example. In Dave’s special he jokes about the transgender community in which he received massive backlash for. Not only him but people were demanding that Netflix takes down the special. A more detailed breakdown of the situation can be found here.
This brings us to the first part of the answer. Yes, the platform has the power to host certain content and that decision is usually based around money in my opinion. In this case, unless Netflix saw a massive drop in subscriptions, I don’t believe they would take the special off. However for the sake of the answer continuing lets say that Netflix ended up taking Chappell’s special off of it’s site. This would mean that he would now need another place to host his content. That is the tricky part to this. Nowadays there are so many different platforms to post content to, and if every single one of them doesn’t take it, there are still independent options.
My point is that the creator decides when they are canceled. If no one wanted to host Dave Chappell’s content he could create a website that people can watch his stuff on. However, the day he stops posting is the day he is canceled.
Conclusion
I don’t have the answer. I can tell you for sure what a comedian can’t say, but that gray area is where I believe society decides. This is interesting because how is a comic supposed to know they are wrong if they don’t know until after? Obviously there are situations we could go round and round about but I am talking about the ones listed above. The power that we hold as a society is special and we use it for good a lot but we need to remember to be just as critical of ourselves as we are of others.
