War Comedy - when will we go back to realizing how funny war is?

I think that any subject can be joked about. Serious/sensitive subjects may require the right context and execution to work and may be hard to pull off depending on who's making the joke, but I don't believe that any subject, regardless of how serious it is, should be off limits from comedy.

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This makes zero sense. So, say, a woman is raped, tortured & murdered, which happens goodness knows how many times a day all around the world, could be viewed as comedic?

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

Ha...actually I used the emoji because I didn't want to be too offensive!

I think there are a few ways where one could joke about rape. Yes, it's a very sensitive subject and it's a hard one to pull off (I don't know if I'd ever attempt it myself), but some of the rape jokes I've heard from my friends (both online and in real life) were made by people who were survivors of it, and joking about rape helped them to cope with it. Also, I occasionally joke about an abusive roommate I had in college and that helps me to cope with his behavior.

Or, if you think that rape shouldn't be joked about, then I think you should look at some other serious subjects which are commonly joked about. For instance, take a horror comedy that has a humorous scene of someone being murdered. Is that film offensive towards murder victims?

Really, any subject can be joked about. It just depends on who's joking about it, the context, the execution, etc.

If it was Ghislaine Maxwell, it'd be pretty funny.

There's that famous quote by french comedian Pierre Desproges, expressing exactly that. "We can laugh of everything, we must laugh of everything, but... not with everyone". He was saying that during a comedic radio show where the day's guest was the then leader of the extreme-right party, whom he loathed openly. And it's a very true thing. One complicated effect of the internet is that it de-contextualizes every quote or half-quote. An anti-racist joke, for instance, can easily become a racist joke, in the mouth of a racist, or in the eye of an anti-racist who missed the satirical intent. Because the intent is given away by the enunciation's often missing context, background, history.

So, jokes demand trust. They work among people who know each others enough to trust what is earnest and what is irony. And that is not the internet public. That's one major reason why, for instance, Charlie Hebdo's humor doesn't operate anymore (one reason among others, though). It used to be somewhat niche, written and read by progressive who had no doubt about the background ideology and the journal's fights. The same jokes, the same cartoons, in a xenophobic journal, could take a reverse meaning. The worldwide public, being shown a random picture, has no way to trustfully interpret it through the journal's implicit values. And also, doesn't have the background history of its very dark humor, very violent, shocking and cynical way to denounce the world's abominations. It comes out of the blue, like, "woah, they make jokes about that tragedy ? but that's shocking". And that's the point, a caricature to show how shocking reality is. But generally, the mindset of dark humor doesn't travel very well.

So, that's one archetypal example (it ceased to be a good example because Charlie Hebdo did indeed evolve a bit badly through the years, but I simplified). Humor is a strong weapon, to tame emotions, to deflate monsters, to convey outrage. But it's a fragile communication tool. It functions on shared backgrounds.

I still think that social networks encourage us to interpret things the laziest possible way, to jump at the nearest interpretation (with our background and sensitivities as a point of reference) and to fuel the most self-flattering outrage as fast as it can. With some sense of belonging (shared wrath) as a reward. And it's a trend that makes global humor very perilous, especially for those investing money in it. Moral backlashes become very knee-jerk, and very brutal. It's not gratuitous (there's always people who are too sensitized to a matter to find anything funny to it, and to not be hurt by what is -wrongly or rightly- felt as "not taking it seriously enough"). But it's still a inhibiting impact of our cyber-panopticon society, where, culturally, everyone is subjected to everything, ready or not.

So yes, Desproges hit the nail on the head. We should be able to laugh at everything. But laughing along with people who laugh for the opposite reason, laughing in front of people who suspect us to laugh for the opposite reason, plus the omnipresent demand for gravitas as a superficial "proof of awareness", makes it impossible. The issue being, we cannot choose anymore who we are laughing with. We're always in the same room as everyone, with the genuine direct victims of the subject matter, and with the giggling culprits.

If it simply meant reactions such as "okay, it's fine, but it's not for me, I cannot find it funny yet or anymore", it would be okay. But the reactions have become too much "this is evil, how dare they", and it ceased to be worth facing that backlash.

My admiration goes to people who always managed to laugh about life's worst cruelties, even when they befell them. I wish they would set the tone. As for me, I realized life had defeated me the moment I ceased to be able to laugh about everything.

Yeah, very well put.

I think a term like "rape joke" often leads to an almost knee jerk reaction by many people who see it and this causes them to arrive to the conclusion that it's offensive or worth cancelling someone over. However, the more one dives into how some people have joked about dark subjects, the more reasons this could be proved beneficial. As I mentioned earlier, it could be used as a coping mechanism which doesn't insult the victim but actually the perpetrator, or the ways which you list in your post. Like you, I also greatly admire people who find ways to make dark humor work.

For example, someone like Onision who has insulted victims of almost every single heinous act out there (coupled with him being a perpetrator of a number of them) backfires horribly. On the other hand though, a survivor of a heinous act who uses comedy to cope, to criticize the perpetrator, to express their disdain, etc. is a entirely different thing and I don't think the latter is invalid.

Did he use a condom?

Im in the corner of being unable to be offended by almost everything. I’ve lived, witnessed, read, told by elders about every topic imaginable. Humor is the only constant, to make a grin out of a frown. Like in the film “Happiness”, which makes pedophila funny or “True Romance” where beating the **** out of a woman is dealt with humorously.

So yes, everything is fair game. Whether it flies or not, is in the eyes of the viewer.

Well, we've spent decades retreading that old joke about men being raped in prison.



There are thousands of rapes a day in our prisons. Our culture has written this off largely as a joke. Switch the genders and sensibilities are suddenly reversed. But this is a political/religious sort of affectation. That which is sacred cannot be laughed at.



Tragedy is the enemy of comedy. If people are having too much fun, Tragedy can rear it's head and shame them laughter into piety. Comedy is the enemy of tragedy. If people are having too little fun, the Comedy can enter and turn a few sacred cows into cheeseburgers.

Your post suggests the tragedy card being played to shame your interlocutor into modesty. Well, we can't laugh about that, can we?
In truth, we can laugh at anything. Whether or not we should merely reflects a moral sensibility. Of course, part of what can heighten comedic effect is the seriousness of the occasion or the dignity of persons (laughing at a moment when one cannot laugh). Have you ever heard of the tragedy of Biggus Dickus, the hung?



We can and do laugh at everything. There is something unhealthy at the thought that we cannot laugh or that we must continually restrict the circle of comedy to "approved" topics. There is a dangerous assumption of word-magic here, as if joking about something is to actually do that something.

This is not to say that all jokes are appropriate or that it's your fault if you're offended by a joke. Comedy is contextual. Any joke is potentially off-limits in the wrong context. Any joke is potentially welcome in the right context. It's not categorical, with two bins marked, "good jokes here" and "forbidden jokes there." It is rather a mix of ethos, moment, audience, finesse, framing, directness, and a dozen other factors that fluctuate from moment to moment. Everything is potentially laughable. Everything is potentially obscene. Those who legislate by topic-area have missed the point, playing a losing game of whack-a-mole.

Half of the fun of comedy is the question of how close to the edge it gets. If it doesn't tease some sort of limit, it's not comedy. At the bottom line, laughing at death and misfortune is a big part of what comedy is, whether it's a Keystone Cop falling off the police car or a funny Nazi POW camp, or Jerry Lewis or Jim Carrey acting as though he has a mental disability. We can all sit back and think that at least we're not THAT dumb.

Dr. Strangelove