Remember that video (that went viral) in which the distraught, weeping man/boy pleaded with viewers to “Leave Britney alone?” We’re seeing similar sentiments on our Facebook. Only this time, it’s “Leave Whitney alone.” From comedians, too.
We’re seeing it expressed, in so many ways, that making jokes about the recent death of a pop star is outside the boundaries of good taste. Well, yeah. Duh! Of course it is. That’s why we do it. We’re seeing some status updates that admonish members of the Facebook community for making cruel jokes about the fallen pop diva and threatening any offenders with “defriendization.” It is rather puzzling.
We don’t advocate anyone do such jokes onstage, in front of an audience. The “too soon?” factor kicks in. Some folks can handle that (some comedians, some audiences), but we don’t advocate it. We would never go so far as to say that a comedian can not do so. We merely advise caution.
But Facebook isn’t onstage. It’s a loose, rough-and-tumble, semi-public forum where people (comedians and civilians) race to the punchline and hope their jibes are “liked” or commented on or linked to. If we’re to further tweak the performing analogy: Facebook is not “onstage”– but more like the green room. It’s where comedians gather and brainstorm and throw things out. Where they top and get topped. Anything goes. The gallows humor is not only allowed, it’s expected.
To take the analogy further, imagine if, as you and other comedians are engaged in such dark, irreverent chatter backstage at a comedy club, someone in the group were to say, “Hey… enough of the jokes about (fill in the blank)… it demonstrates a callousness that I will not tolerate!” It’s the wettest of blankets.
Some folks on Facebook (some comedians!) have gone so far as to say that such jokes are “not funny.” And they go further and proclaim that not only are such gags “not funny,” but that they should be (or actually are!) prohibited.
But making jokes about the newly dead is something comedians do. You can analyze it all day long. Is it how we deal with death? Is it our way of separating ourselves from the non-comedians? Perhaps it’s our way of exercising our joke-writing muscles– after all, making light of the dark is perhaps the most difficult exercise a humorist can undertake. None of that matters.
We do it because we can. And we take offense at those folks who take offense. Especially the comedians who take offense. They have no excuse.
They demonstrate a shocking lack of how the mind of their fellow comedian works. No comedian should tell another comedian that a subject is out of bounds– especially in an environment like Facebook. Defriending is always an option. We defriend people all the time. And we’re fairly certain that we are defriended on a regular basis. (We watched “The Social Network” last night… the opting-in and opting-out of friendship is one of the devices that makes Facebook what it is.)
To go one step further and chastise the comedy community goes way over the line.
Are all the jokes good ones? Certainly not. Some are illogical. Some are painfully obvious. Some were most likely assembled in a hurry and rushed onto a status update without a bit of polishing. None of that matters. What matters is that comedians react this way instinctively.
Last week, we were listening to Lars Callieou‘s Kamikaze Komedy radio show (Wednesdays at midnight PST) when talk drifted into the subject of gallows humor. Callieou mentioned an incident in which comic Ron Vaudry was lustily booed for a joke that veered into “bad taste” for being too soon. Vaudry chastised the audience (and we’re paraphrasing), “Hey, I wrote a joke about the Challenger before the shuttle hit the water.”
