[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by horn

Just to clarify, are you suggesting that you are indeed dealing with the "pain" felt at these events by laughing at them?

Well I didn't really have much pain to deal with. Personally there was very little "damage" on me personally (I had to have a quick ring round to check people were OK in a slightly self-consciously absurd exercise).

There was a slightly sinking feeling that this could escalate, or be the start of things to come - will there be an upsurge in racism or police "crackdowns", etc, etc. And even in an atomised/alienated city there still is a civil society and collective "mood" of sorts. So yeah, an opportunity to laugh probably helped a bit, but I'm not that emotional anyway.

Speaking generally laughter has some "healing" power I'd say. From what I've seen/know of Irish wakes, part of the point is to have a joke and laugh about the deceased to help everyone overcome some of the grief. Now, not every joke will be at the expense of the deceased, but if someone stood up and recalls an anecdote where the deceased (his brother) was slightly embarrassed then I suspect most people would think this appropriate and probably laugh. Now, if a random person who'd never met or knew of the deceased came in off the street and told abusive jokes about the dead then I suspect the crowd's response might be a tad different. No?

I'd suggest jokes about the London bombings were more likely to make you laugh because the London bombings got a lot more coverage than any Bangladesh equivelent.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's not the reason. I just find certain types of humour cheap basically. People confuse being "edgy" with being brave sometimes (sup Family Guy). Voltaire's satires of the aristocracy were brave, Little Britain's satire of chavs are merely cheap, from what I can tell.

So I guess there's three factors (although it's not conscious, obviously).
1. How genuinely brave is the humour? (it does not have to be).
2. How do I relate to the subject matter?
3. How does the person telling the joke relate to the subject matter?

I am a big fan of Bill Hicks but his entire trailer trash "bit" makes me want to be sick. I can't relate to it ("lol, it's true - I do sleep with my sister while living off welfare!") and Bill tells the routine from the perspective of someone not who grew up in a trailer park (or even poverty) but from someone who watches Cops. And it's basically spineless comedy, which from him was disappointing.

Now, it's possible to subvert these rules and be funny, but it has to be well done. An Anglo-Jewish comic does a bit along the lines of :

I'm sure you've all heard Chris Rock say how he feels about certain parts of his own community. As he says....he loves black people. But he hates nig*ers.

Now, as a Jew, I can totally connect to that. I mean I'm Jewish and I love Jews...but boy - do I hate nig*ers.

<waits for audience response to die down a bit>

Now, now wait a minute....I know what you're thinking...how can I say that? But it's OK beause I talked about it with my brother in law, and he said - you're 100% right.

...And he's Jewish too.

I found that mildly amusing because it subverts the expected pattern and so forth, but if the rest of his routine was about how he hates how black people messing up Golders Green and so on then that'd be less funny.

I can't think of something less funny than someone having to give you a power history lesson quickly before telling you a joke.

That applies generally - the way you appreciate a subject matter (if at all) will affect your appreciation of the joke. Well, duh! I remember telling the crappy pun from Porridge:
"Show me a man who laughs at defeat....and I'll show you a Jamaican chiropodist with a sense of humour."
But the person I said it to didn't know what a chiropodist was, so there was no humour at all.

Originally Posted by Milo

Can you clarify what you mean by 'abstractly about me'. If brown communists got blown up, would it be funny?

No one getting blown up is funny. Even if GWB blew up tomorrow that would not automatically be funny to me. But would it be possible to make a funny joke about it? Of course. Would I find the joke funnier if I could relate to it better? Of course.

Very simple example : The biggest fans I have ever met of the Life of Brian bit with the "Judean's People's Front" vs "The Popular Front of Judea" rivalry are extreme lefties because they know that is all so true, and despite the fact it's a tragedy (to them at least) that the far left is so fragmented and shit and something they blame (perhaps somewhat egocentrically) for the appalling state of (bits of) the world.

Any subject is suitable for humour as I have said many times, but context and timing is everything. I watched a Pilger documentary on Friday, large sections of which were describing various horrors, to which there was a dark humour to some of it. Some of the humour though stemmed from the fact you (as a bunch of lefties watching a documentary) were supposed to have an emotional connection with the lefties on screen (even if they were "brown"). That emotional connection to me is what makes humour possible (even when very dark humour).