Could It Be You Killed Off All the Funny People

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ETHICAL CONUNDRUMS

Are some subjects unsuitable for humour?

Douggie, Edinburgh UK

• I am of the opinion that Jewish jokes should only be told by Jews - such as myself.

  Veronica Zundel, London United Kingdom

• Strange to hear from an Aussie, but yes. Death. And rape.

  Fiona, Brisbane Australia

• Death of particular individuals maybe, but not death in general, surely? What about those conversations at the pearly gates type jokes?

  Jonathan Rhoades, Reading

• I have done stand-up comedy for several years and the question prompted a quick poll among myself and colleagues. The following is the top five of taboo subjects: 1) September 11 2) Child molestation 3) The Holocaust 4) Rape 5) The Queen Mother (RIP)

  Robert del Valle, Detroit USA

• All subjects are suitable for humour - while some individuals may not appreciate jokes about death, rape, or jewish mothers (I believe that the one which ends "Just call me Sitting Shiva" should go in the Top 100 Jokes of All Time), we have the right to object to or not laugh at that which we don't find funny. We do not, however, have the right to tell others what they may not laugh at.

  Tony James, London, UK

• Suicide.

  Mary McGrath, Dublin

• There is no subject that is not fit for humour - but there is a question of taste. A racist joke will be funny but it is in such bad taste, that most right minded people would not want to hear it. However, the joke has humour. Think about it - how many times have you laughed and then said, "that's sick!".

  James Aarland, Binfield, Berks UK

• Fiona is patently wrong. I quote Woody Allen: "I'm not frightened by the prospect of dying. I just don't want to be there when it happens."

  Rob Lines, Worcester UK

• Surely not death. Remember all those princess Di, Paula Yates etc. jokes. They may have been in bad taste but some of them were very funny!

  Michelle, Darlington UK

• Yes. Humour itself is unsuitable for humour.

  Martin, Newcastle

• Surely David Beckham's Foot?

  James , London UK

• I suspect this depends on the comedian. If one looks at the work of the late, awe-inspiringly great Bill Hicks, one finds a catalogue riddled with cancer, riots, much blaspheming, war, death in general (the "Yul Brynner" routine is evergreen), terrorisation and, briefly, abuse of children. Yet it is absolutely exceptional, gut-aching comedy. Perhaps the old adage of a bad workman blaming the tools applies here; a bad comedian will cause offence where a good one will challange and provoke as much as he or she will amuse and entertain with the same topic.

  Alistair Crosbie, Glasgow UK

• I'd love to know where Mr del Valle has been doing stand up as this seems like a very strange list. September 11 may not appear funny, but how long did it take before we started hearing jokes about Diana, Kennedy Jnr, or the Space Shuttle? Give it time, and someone will make a joke about it, we'll laugh guiltily. Child molestation? You mean "What did Father O'Grady used to give for a handjob?" "A packet of crisps and a kitkat" isn't funny?? There is a gas bill-related holocaust gag which won't be repeated here, and my grandmother used to tell one about a nun being raped that her family stunned one christmas. Finally, the Queen Mum - quite right, Americans shouldn't be making jokes about her, she's ours and she enjoyed a joke as much as the next person. The Spitting Image skit when Diana was pregnant first time round, when they were talking about babies names "Gordon's a good name for a child. What about Gilby? Johnnie Walker?" indicates that she is a fit subject for humour. Perhaps Mr del Valle's colleagues are all a tad prudish to be doing stand-up..?

  Tony James, London England

• Nothing is, or can be out of danger of being made fun of, or be the subject of a joke. It is how it is said and by whom that matters indeed. I agree that you have to be a member of that group to be qualified to say a joke about it . I have heard stand up comics who are HIV positive and made fabulous jokes about the whole thing but I would not allow myself to make a joke about it. I have always admired people who are Jewish and have great sense of humour about the issues that they have had to experience. Equally as an Iranian woman I do make jokes about the whole issue of forced covering (hejab) and lack of human rights as a woman in Iran and the ever-unwanted presence of clergy in Iran. Now if somebody without any connection to Iran makes joke about that, my first re-action would be "how do you know anything about this experience and how dare you making fun of the pain of an Iranian who has to live in Iran and going through that?!" I would not allow myself to make jokes about the African American experience or Northern Ireland experience but I do admire those who are from those groups and can think of funny side of their circumstances as I can think of mine. Queen mother is not off this list. We can make jokes about any subject, it is just how and by whom. As long as there is no real malice and it is not comedy of hate, one can laugh at a subject with endurance and love.

  Aryanaa, Tehran but live in Europe and USA British

• There is virtually no subject that should be considered unsuitable for humour, but the issue of "taste" surely lies mostly in the question of context. Jokes about social groupings can be offensive when told by someone from outside that group, because in the context it's based entirely on a notion of "otherness" that is borne of some kind of prejudice. Told from within such a group, a joke can illuminate the shared-experience within the group, and can subvert the prejudices purely by playing on them. By way of llustration, 14 years ago on Channel 4's FRIDAY NIGHT LIVE, a disabled comedian named Jag Plah did a routine based on the experiences of disability - he started off by dropping one of his crutches to the floor, looking down at it, and saying "look, bloody hopeless without me!". The rest of his routine deals with playing on common notions of disability (such as the speech patterns of "spastics"), and is very funny precisely because of the context of his own experiences, and his desire to make comedy from them (and, importantly, not to make light of them). If the context is right, there is no real barrier to any subject being used for humour. Of course, it'd be a brave individual who'd want to try and justify a context for humour in the paedophilia and Holocaust subjects cited earlier (note there was some controversy regarding Roberto Begnini's LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL, though it seemed that there was a misinterpretation of Begnini's project - he was making a comedy "within" the Holocaust, not out of it). Further, it does seem entirely unlikely that anybody would dare to make humour from September 11...

  J. Penn, London GB

• The equation, Comedy = Tragedy + Time remains an irrefutable truth. Some of the answers above who refer to September 11th or the Queen Mother in hush tones are simply imagining the smarting from wounds still open. To go to New York and start cracking wise about the attacks would, I imagine, be received as a tad insensitive and in bad taste - but you'd probably already get a laugh in London (see the recent Observer Morris/Iannucci Sept 11 satirical suppliment); I have already received several e-mails depicting Yoda in Queen Mother garb so I guess we're dealing there to... So taste and cultural sensitivity are paramount with the acceptance of humour. I was told that Jerry Sadowitz was booked at the Montreal Comedy festival and placed accidentally on the wrong (less alternative) billing. He opened his set with the proclamation "Good evening, Moose-fuckers!" and was promptly attacked by a non-plussed punter. Perhaps as a qualifying appendix to 'comedy = tragedy + time' we should add 'location, location, location'!

  Eddie Sauvant, London England

• Rob, your Woody Allen quotation was actually said by Spike Milligan. And if child abuse is an unfit topic for comedy, why was the BrassEye special so damn funny?

  Tom, London

• Sorry, Tom, but I understand that Spike was quoting Woody Allen from Allen's short play "Death" written in 1975. Allen also famously wrote "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying"

  Rob Lines, Worcester UK

• As someone who works for one of the companies affected by 9/11, I can tell you I've been sent 'humorous' material about it from people who used to work in the WTC. Perhaps in that there's a point; we find humour in things to make them less threatening.

  A Reader, London UK

• Yes, things that are not funny are not suitable for humour. Unfortunately however, this seems to have completely escaped the writers of the American comedy show "Mad TV", five minutes of which leaves you reaching for the nearest heavy object to hurl at your television.

  Guy Dowman, Tokyo Japan

• Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, have so far made it their business to lampoon every sacred cow they encounter - from child abuse to disability - and have yet to offend me or fail to make me laugh. I don't believe there is a genuinely funny joke in existence which isn't offensive to *somebody*. Surely true equality is when you can feel free to poke fun at anyone, if you're simply being light-hearted rather than mean-spirited?

  L Male, Swansea UK

• The assumption that the Queen mother is out of bounds is in itself a rather funny stereotype. Whilst travelling on a train between Rye and Hastings last weekend, a friend of mine pointed out the picture of the Queen mum's head on yoda's body. A middle aged woman passenger took offence to our resultant laughter, she subsequently was very nice and gave us directions around the town. Also whilst at a music festival an American comedian who was presenting had dressed up and was pretending to be handicapped, his reception wasn't the greatest. Humour has borders between cultures, I would make jokes about Sept 11 and the Queen mum but I wouldn't about the handicapped, so nothing is untouchable but timing and awareness of your surrounding are key.

  Darren, Dublin Ireland

• Don't really agree with all these pundits here - everything should be open to being the subject of humour - except of course, me and my accomplishments.

  Phil Lancaster, Winnipeg Canada

• Well. A fair number of comments, such as that by the Iranian woman, say that anything can be laughed at, as long as the joker is of the group that he is making jokes about. Hmm. So a Jew may make jokes about Jews, but a Gentile may not. My father is Jewish, my mother isn't. May I tellJewish jokes? My partner is of Indian extraction, and therefore so are my children - am I allowed to tell jokes about Indians? Or am I only allowed to tell jokes about white men from London? Surely it is a mark of a grown-up society that we can tell jokes about each other and judge them purely by how funny they are?

  Tom, London UK

• Eddie is right about 'location', or to put it another way, "know your audience". I doubt that there is anyone who finds nothing offensive. But I disagree about the "tragedy + time" formula. All the bad taste jokes I have ever heard depend on familiarity with a situation for their effect, which fades with time. Emails of such jokes were doing the rounds on City dealing floors within hours of Diana, Concorde, 9/11. Private Eye's Armageddon edition came out within a week of WTC. I think these provide a seditious form of release: people who do not relate personally (and therefore feel no sense of bereavement) to tragic events may be subconsciously rebelling against the intensity of media coverage and may feel a state of mourning is being imposed on them. Media coverage of carnage in far-flung corners of the world, while serious, is far less intense than for the above events, presumably because it is deemed unlikely to affect personally many people in the audience. Yes, everything is a suitable subject for humour, for humour is a function not of the subject itself, but of mechanisms that can be applied to all situations: incongruity, absurdity, satire, distortions of the familiar ("Work is the curse of the drinking classes"), etc.

  Andrew, London UK

• If it is only acceptable for Jews to make jokes about Jews, or Iranian women to make jokes about Iranian women, surely only Queen Mothers can make jokes about the Queen Mother.

  Arthur Mounsey, Perth, Australia

• Every subject is suitable for humour.The more so in times of danger,desperation and imminent death.

  John Gielewicz, London, UK

• According to South Park it takes 25 years for something horrible to become funny.

  Clayton Coffman, Hector, Arkansas USA

• Self-deprecating jokes (eg the Irish telling Irish jokes) are EVEN MORE unacceptable than outsiders doing it, because it is an example of the insidiousness of introjection. So, an Irish person (or Jew, Pakistani, gay person etc) will prove his good sense of humour by joking about his own group, and we'll all laugh and think "what a good fellow". What we really like is these people being safe and harmless and not creating a fuss which makes us uncomfortable. We all have internalised racism (and homophobia etc)but the voice of the dominant can make the subjugated turn it on them/ourselves.

  Ged, Liverpool, UK

• Talking about how the passing of time makes something horrible more acceptable as joke material, I remember a Gary Larson cartoon, where there's a guy in a hospital bed, with his head missing, and someone standing next to him saying "Cheer up! One day you'll look back on all this and laugh!"

  Sue, Modena Itlay

• George Burns once said "There is nothing funny about seeing a woman fall down stairs ... unless it's a really OLD woman".

  John Royle, Beverley UK

• No one should make a joke about George Bush. He is doing a perfectly good job himself.

  Neil, Barnet

• On the South Bank tv special about Joan Rivers a couple of months ago, she was filmed doing a routine which included a very funny gag about the World Trade Center. ("Out of all the wives who lost their husbands in the WTC, are you telling me that at least 4 aren't REALLY happy?") Is that offensive?

  Jonathan, Brighton UK

• I used to live with an American stand up "comic" and, unfortunately, every "joke" he told was found by me & our Irish flatmate to be singularly unhumourous. This was for a number of reasons, the main being because he steered clear of any subject which could potentially offend some section of society. So, being frightened of offending someone with your humour may potentially be more hazardous to *true* comedy than risking a frosty reception. (Incidentally, after living with us, his humour did improve slightly, mainly due to the wealth of material he now has on the Brits & Irish.)

  Ellie Bennett, Brighton UK

• Yes and No. It depends.

  g, l p

• I liked this cartoon that I saw a few months ago: Yasser Arafat is looking at a kid with dynamite strapped around his waist and asks, "So, what do you want to do when you blow up?" This didn't follow the rule that time must pass, or that certain groups may only make fun of themselves - but it was funny! And that's what counts. People should be offended by what happens in the world, not the jokes that are made to help people cope with terrible events.

  Sarah, Anchorage U.S.A.

• Nothing should be beyond humour. But context, attitude and audience need to be considerred. In Trevor Griffiths' very good play 'The Comedians' he draws a very distinct line between comedy which is educational and displays empathy and crass humour that perpetuates stereotypes, hatred and suspicion. The former is an obvious power for good and a celebration of diversity and life. Whilst the second he believes ultimately prepares for the ground for xenophobia and ethnic cleansing. A play I would highly recommend for anyone intersted in comedy and its boundaries.

  James Gibbs, Cardiff Wales

• If it's not funny, you won't usually laugh. If it is, you will. Just why you laughed is for you to answer, not the teller of the joke. Should the person next to you find it unfunny or offensive, so be it. They won't die. There's more chance of my mother-in-law laughing herself to death at a good joke.

  Steven Beercock, Enna, Italy

• "It's better to laugh than cry", simple as. Kudos to all comedians who have no boundaries....or at least try to be controversial in a humorous way, expect Frankie Boyle, he just annoys me.

  Shane, Dublin Ireland

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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-23095,00.html