Are we getting too soft or too hard on today’s humor?
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Growing up as a fat Mexican kid (now I’m a slightly chubby Mexican adult), I used to take fat and Hispanic jokes to heart whenever they were told to my face, but I had no problem with comedians like Howard Stern and George Carlin making jokes like that since I knew they were only for entertainment purposes.
Personally, I’m not as offended by jokes in movies and entertainment because I know they only exist to rile people up for a quick buck. Yet, so many people declare World War 3 with the slightest slur.
To those people: Get over yourselves and learn how to take a damn joke.
Those NC videos rarely work on first try on the first day for me…
Clicking 5 times repeat was worth it though 😀
I wonder if the new service just isn’t ready to pack the load Doug’s videos generate. Not only had I to deal with lots of stutters again… halfway through, in the middle of a sentence, the whole stream just imploded and bounced back to the start. :/
The Family Guy joke went too far because it was offensive to people with special needs, painting them like they are unlikeable and horrible people, when in fact, they are not.
You are putting special needs people into the category of being the same though. They all have their own individual personalities and behavior. You can mock one person with special needs and it can be true without it being true with others. The moment you put a group ‘off limits’ to be made fun of, you end up being the one who is dehumanizing them. You have to know when to separate a joke about an individual from a group.
The Family Guy joke was just poorly done and not funny.
I disagree with that perspective. I think that Family Guy joke actually does make a good point: disabled or not, anyone can be a jerk and nobody likes a jerk.
And especially if you are disabled and being a jerkwad to another person, because you can use your disability to excuse your bad behavior. To me, that is very unacceptable.
*meant as a response to Tyler, sorry Purutzil for any confusion. xD
Ah, the martyr. He does whatever he wants then hides behind his chaperon’s skirt with a look that says “don’t hurt me”. If we so much as raise a voice or hand we get scolded or told ‘he/she doesn’t know better’ or some variation.
Way back in high school we all knew this boy all too well. Big mouth and did things that’d even make teachers stare dumbfounded at him. He’d fall back on his ‘condition’. We knew it was all bullsh!t but we knew for sure he was a different kind. Just an idiot. Spare no one, do what comes natural and logical.
Five years ago Family Guy featured Ellen, the girl Chris dated with Downs syndrome. It caused a stir, caused Sarah Palin to go ape BUT the voiceover actress who did have the condition took it all in stride, positively. Jokes can be about anything but it’s all about timing and craftsmanship.
There’s no such thing as a joke going “too far”. Why are you people such pussies? Either everything is okay to joke about or nothing is. Take your pick.
And south park that got contrasted in this video never did that?The show that has “CRIPPLE FIGHT” quote didnt do that?
To be fair with Palin – even though I don’t like her – I know TONS of democrats who hate her SOLELY because she’s female. They referred to her as “that woman” and “the sellout.”
As for her being feminist – seeing how if her husband cheated on her she’d kick him out into the Alaskan winter in just his underwear where Hillary stays married to Bill because she’s afraid no one will vote for her if she divorces him*, Sarah’s far more of a feminist than Hillary.
*An actual radical feminist told me that “Hillary knows no one would vote for her if she divorces Bill, therefore she’s really smart to stay with a guy who cheats on her constantly.” *sighs*
Or maybe Hillary decided he loved Bill enough that she felt it was worth enduring the pain and public ridicule to try and work through it. Just a thought.
Calling someone a sellout has nothing to do with their gender. I’m sick of these bloody feminists trying to make everything about them and the nonexistent “patriarchy”. They shout misogyny at anything they don’t agree with.
How does that make one a feminist?I know plenty of guys who forgave their SOs when they cheated.I on the other hand never do such a thing.That doesnt make me more MRA than them,but rather that I hate dishonesty more than them.
Wow… Doug you are a HUGE south park fan.
Family guy is not nearly as bad tasted or shocking than southpark where a crippled kid gets raped on a public toilet. It doesnt get lower than that.
it’s less that family guy is offensive (of course its less offensive, it’s on fox) and more that a lot of it is just lazy.
There’s no such thing as “low”. Either everything’s okay or nothing isl. Get over yourself or go back to Tumblr where you belong.
family guy and south park are both full of rape jokes. although whereas south park often uses its position as a show about politically incorrect themes as a way of discussing controversial topics (ie, trans issues, gender bias in pedophilia, unhealthy obsession with celeb culture, the n-word) family guy is controversial for the sake of being controversial. the controvesial issues in family guy are almost never connected to it’s politics, so it just comes across as a show trying to be edgy with a talking dog that exists solely to shoehorn his politics into every episode.
True, but I’ve discovered Family Guy is much more enjoyable when you look at it as a sketch show with a loose plotline tied to it.
I don’t have an issue with ableist jokes, being an Aspie myself, but there’s certainly a limit for how a quirk can become flanderized. “The Big Bang Theory” obliviously takes the quirks to the extreme, making their characters not human enough to be sympathetic. Too much blatant prejudices written in the script to be actually funny.
That’s where “Community” wins. Everyone’s equal and the comedy stems from incidental actions rather than prejudices. The jokes shouldn’t define a character, it should spice them up.
Exactly, it’s why nerd comedies like The Inbetweeners are great and others like The Big Bang Theory are terrible.
Community is the best
Doug, for God’s sakes, get over your misconception that humor or comedy requires misery. That is so not true at all. There are tons of jokes that are funny in which no one suffers at all. You’re just misinformed.
name one
Puns.
Puns aren’t funny. When they are funny it’s usually ironic- laughing at the person who made the pun because of how bad the joke is.
Didn’t he just say that puns make fun of the spoken langauge and thus a form of mockery. Or something to that effect.
You know nothing about humor.
You literally have no argument without examples. People have challenged him on this and he’s proven them all wrong before.
No he hasn’t…
Wow, what a great argument.
Very well-said, Doug! I’m so very glad you mentioned John Oliver in particular — I love his appproach almost more than Jon Stewart’s, Stephen Colbert’s, and Larry Willmore’s because he does balance out comedy with giving us important information about not-often-discussed topics. For the most part Jon, Stephen, and Larry talk about current stories and headlines, from time to time dipping into out-of-the-box issues in a small sketch, but partly because he’s on HBO John Oliver takes twenty minutes or so sometimes to really examine an issue in a funny new way. I’m so glad he’s getting so much viewership on Youtube.
Jimmy Carr & Frankie Boyle, two of the best dark comedians, did an interview where they talked about their style of comedy. One of my favorite interviews of all time.
Highly recommend it to anyone interested in this type of discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5FxUKJBCwI
Political correctness has gone so far that these psychos are actually trying to ban the terms boy/girl, mother/father because it offends transgender people and gay couples respectively. We need another George Carlin or Bill Hicks to really shake up the US and wake people up from their PC apathy. Political correctness in its current form is the death of language, comedy and free speech.
I agree completely. Tumblr SJWs and feminists need to crawl into a hole and die.
We’re far too hard on today’s humor. Look at all those college SJWs trying to censor everybody. A joke can never go too far because the keyword is JOKE.
Humor that falls flat because it’s too harmless – yeah, Simpsons nowadays. Which, when they make an offending joke, explain it right away.
In the Stone/Parker vs McFarland comparison, I think another huge factor is Stone and Parker just drench their satire in absurdity. McFarland often does his as a quick aside that doesn’t make much sense, or isn’t even that absurd outside of the joke itself. Mix this in that there is a long standing history with South Park that NOTHING is sacred, they will pick on ANYTHING. McFarland however has shown to have certain views and leanings that he will not go against. (Like how you will almost never see him insult liberal democrats)
This was an excellent editorial.
Your timing was impeccable because recently Team Four Star launched the first two episodes of FF7MA, and it doesn’t seem to have gotten as good a reception as I think it ought to have.
Some of the complainers don’t like how their beloved FF7 characters are being portrayed; clearly some of them don’t get the point of parody: to poke fun at something, but with appreciation for the original.
But also there’s a scene in episode 2 in which Tifa coaxes a now fugitive (and whiney) Cloud to stay with the group rather than get caught by the police, rubbing salt in Cloud’s wounds by insinuating that if the police catches him he won’t last in prison, if you know what I mean.
Folks took offense at the reference to prison rape, but I thought the humor came from Cloud’s misery and whininess in response to Tifa’s style of manipulation. Also making fun of Cloud’s ridiculous spiky hair, and I’m pretty damn sure they’re making fun of some unsavory details that were in the original FF7.
Man I miss Duckman. Where is the nostalgic resurrection of that series?
Everytime I look at Seth Macfarlane’s work, I just want to kill somebody. I mean, his humor has dried out that whenever I watch an episode, I don’t laugh, I just yell out how badly his humor is.
Stick with American Dad. He’s just another co-writer there (as opposed to the sole guy in charge) so the show has remained good.
Like you said, in comedy, someone’s going to be offended. The thing is, you need to choose the right people to offend.
And honestly, the groups of people plenty of comedians choose to offend baffles me.
“The right people to offend”? What the fuck are you talking about? Shut the fuck up, you know nothing. Nothing is sacred.
If you are able to make fun of yourself,you are able to make fun of anyone,and can never go to far.But if you cant take it,yet dish it out,you are a hypocrite.
What I found irritating about Seinfeld is that for a person who complained about people being to sensitive, he surely was too sensitive about not all his jokes being well received. He couldn’t just accept that the jokes didn’t go well , learn from it and move on to try with other jokes.
I was just waiting for him to make fun of Carlos Mencia. Am I the only one that thinks he wasn’t that bad?
There is no such thing, objectively, as “too far”. It’s all up to individual perspective. And as for jokes? It is a comedian’s job to find the line, cross the line, then wipe the line out with his foot.
Except in the case of 9/11 or Holocaust jokes. Joking about 9/11 is just plane wrong Anne Frankly, I do Nazi any humor at all in the Holocaust.
Well said, sir 😉
Also, I’m bothered that everyone always talks about Book of Mormon. No love for Cannibal The Musical? Lame.
One of the best things I’ve ever heard said about comedy is that it exists to mock the oppressors. If you’re making fun of a group that’s already downtrodden, then how is it funny?
Also I’ve heard the ‘comedy is based on misery’ thing a lot, and personally I always thought comedy was based on surprise and the unexpected. As I’m British maybe this is a particularly British attitude, and might explain why we do so well in exporting (for want of a better word) zany comedy – Monty Python, Black Books, Red Dwarf, etc that are based as much in strangeness and the unexpected as in misery
This is actually one of your most profound videos you’ve come up with yet. Yes, I do think that comedy should push the envelope and explore many different things. And I think knowing if it’s mean spirited or good natured is the essential of comedy and what works and lasts. I just wish all people could come to this understanding (*cough cough* extreme muslims *cough*)
Hola Doug, ¿cómo estas?
I want to share a story with you guys. I’m from México where comedy is dead, the humor shown on the mass media is more like the three stooges humor mixed with sex vulgar jokes without bad words, its really lame. Ok, this happened few years ago: a kindergarten caught fire taking the lives of many children, was a national tragedy. A few weeks later a comedian known as “platanito” who is basically a clown (i mean a real clown, that’s the kind of humor we got here) in one of his shows had the idea of make a joke about the tragedy, he said something like “we should change the name of Kentucky fried chicken to Kentucky fried children” and everybody went crazy to hell, the joke wasn´t even on a tv show, it was on a private performance but someone took a video and went viral… everyone demanded his head just for that joke in a private show… personally i think that the joke was funny but the poor platanito almost ruined his career…a days after the scandal platanito appeared on tv crying saying that he was sorry about the joke, the television station where he worked fired him and everywhere he goes people booed him, finally had to leave Mexico and went to live to usa… i always think that society over reacted to that joke, platanito still has the stigma of that joke, could this be a case of a joke going to far? i don´t think any joke go to far, comedy is the place where we can face the terrible and absurd of life and laugh about it because laugh makes our lifes easier.
I think the important thing to keep in mind is simply to ask yourself, “Is this joke punching up at the established and the powerful, or is it punching down at the downtrodden and disenfranchised?” If it’s the latter, you’re going to come across as mean-spirited and yes, offensive.
Doug, I really love your videos, but PLEASE stay away from getting any more political. Veering into that territory RUINED Confused Matthew and it’ll ruin your videos, too. At least for me. I watch you to hear your opinion on film and laugh at your looks back at commercials, etc. I’m begging you, don’t make me tune out the way CM did by insisting on dragging politics into it. I know this wasn’t the most egregious way you could have done so…but let me just say that I’ve not 100% known where you stood politically until this video. And really, I shouldn’t need to know that. At least not in a NC video. Now, a “Real Thoughts” video? That’s another story (and likely a more appropriate place for this vid).