Bad Comedians

I think the thing with comedy is that it can divide opinions so much, something which is funny now might not be in five or ten years time.. It reflects social situations and observations, some things will always be true but others only for a short time, society moves on so quickly and comedy has to keep up

I think the thing with comedy and jokes is that people feel that they can allow things such as sexism and racism to be acceptable without any feel of reprieve. There are so many “blonde” jokes that actually are offensive to women but because they are supposed to be funny people can get away with. The thing with jokes is that they a way of making you feel superior to others. There are millions of Irish man jokes, Blonde jokes, and various ones about other stereotypes. All a way of letting the joke tellers/listeners look down on the person in the joke, in a way it’s making yourself feel superior to them, who wouldn’t enjoy that?

I think that the thing with jokes is knowing how far to go. Although playing on stereotypes can be funny they can also be deeply offensive to people and can cause a lot pain and hurt, especially as it enforces usually negative stereotypes. Most of the time people don’t take them too seriously and a joke is just a joke, but they can extend the longitude of social prejudices. If people think it’s funny to insult women and talk about them as inferior then that view will stick longer.

In the end there will always be jokes which play on stereotypes and that will offend some people, but to be honest there isn’t anything that won’t offend at least one person. Jokes can be funny but sometimes when they show out of date reflections of society they usually fall flat.

Reference
http://www.bananasinpyjamas.com/news/stories/2008/07/31/2319872.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3454319/Dead-Parrot-sketch-is-1600-years-old.html