Hello, I'm the Nostalgia Critic. I remember it so you don't have to.
We live in an interesting time because of our internet culture don't we?
[music begins]
Most of us just go online for either business or pleasure, but then there's
another two groups of people we're all too familiar with. Those looking to
"offend" and those looking to "be offended". Admit it, we've all come across these
people and they're both pains in the ass.
Extremists trolls looking to get attention by pissing people off, and
extremist crybabies looking to get attention by acting like everything
everywhere is an insult.
We usually shrug or laugh them off and then go on with our lives.
But the combination of the two extremes has led to an interesting issue being
addressed, our humor.
Some would argue humor has gone way too far, driving too much into bad taste and
harsh stereotypes. Others would say humor has gone too soft, afraid to anger the
politically correct sensitivities of the world. Are either of them right?
Do any of them hold any water? Well first of all, offensive comedy is nothing new.
Comedians have been censored, harassed, even sent to jail for jokes that today
would be seen as pretty commonplace.
That's because, as mentioned by myself and others, all comedy is based on some form of misery.
So you always have to address something unpleasant in order to get a laugh.
George Carlin, one of the world's most beloved rule breakers, once said "comedy
doesn't work unless someone's getting offended", and he's right.
Puns are a mockery of language, goofy faces are a mockery of strange-looking people,
you really have to think about it, but yeah, somebody's pride has to be
challenged in order for it to work. But what most good comedians realize is the more truth
in pain you can emphasize, usually the more funny it is. "Tom and Jerry" is much
funnier than "Smurfs" because it really looks like the pain hurts.
"Malcolm in the Middle" is much funnier than "Full House" because they address
much harsher realities.
But of course, if you were to see any of these in real life, you'd probably be
horrified and wouldn't laugh at all.
Hence this is why comedy is a defense mechanism, which I go more into in other editorials.
But this begs the question: When does a joke go too far?
Why is it ok when Dave Chappelle uses the n-word, but not okay when somebody
else uses it like, uhhh...
Yeah. To many of us, this might seem pretty fucking obvious what the
difference is, but like in many cases, you need an extreme to understand an extreme.
So we'll just use this one as an example. When Richards used the word, it wasn't to
laugh at a problem or offer an interesting point of view, his intent was
to seriously hurt a person. With Chappelle, he uses the exact same word
but he's mocking such hate, he's using it as a means of satire and to get people
to look at an issue.
Both were trying to make the audience laugh, but one came from a place of trying
to do something positive, while the other came from a place of trying to do
something negative.
So does it simply come down to intent? Not entirely.
Gilbert Gottfried got in trouble when he made tsunami jokes shortly after a
massive Japanese earthquake. It even ended up costing him his voiceover job
for Aflac. Now, tsunami jokes were nothing new, but when it was made just after that real life event,
the pain was still too close for most people. This is why most people say
"comedy is pain plus time". We've all heard Titanic jokes or Lincoln assassination
jokes, but if you were to make those shortly after the event, it would be seen
as insensitive because you wouldn't be taking into consideration the pain
others are going through. This is where the phrase "too soon" comes from.
Gottfried eventually apologized as he realized he crossed the line. There wasn't enough
positivity to the joke in order to make people laugh.
That doesn't make him a bad person and his career would still do fine,
but many would agree the joke hurt more than it healed.
Some comedians however thrive on bad taste, there's people like Matt Stone and Trey
Parker, and to a lesser extent Seth MacFarlane, who make no qualms that they
want to try anything funny and don't care who gets offended in the process.
While both can be entertaining, most find themselves enjoying Stone and Parker's
humor more. But why? They both seem focused on shock value and what's
inappropriate.
Part of it may come from the fact that their most popular projects- "South Park" and "Book
of Mormon" -instill trust that its creators can be goofy, but also have a
balanced mind set. The extremism seems like an excuse to apply common sense
into a world of madness, something a lot of us can identify with and see a lot of
comedy in. Seth MacFarlane's work is always a mean crazy person in a mean crazy world.
So his comedy seems less balanced and more desperate to shock.
Nowhere is that more obvious than with the joke about Sarah Palin's child
I think, it's actually kind of confusing. On "Family Guy", Chris goes on a date with a
girl who has Down syndrome and she says her mother is the former governor of
Alaska. Palin got so pissed and caused others to make a big fuss about it, but
to me, the biggest insult is the joke doesn't make sense.
Palin has a son with Down Syndrome. Are they implying that former governors of
Alaska have Down Syndrome kids? Are they saying the son got a sex change and
suddenly became a teenager really fast?
The joke is such a cheap shot at shock humor that people got offended by it
before they even asked if they really got it.
That's an example of humor looking to shock just for the sake of shock value.
Now that's not to say it can't be funny or even downright hilarious at times, but
it's not going to hit as many bull's-eyes as South Park, as we've seen
in the past couple of years, because we relate with Parker and Stone's humor more
and therefore trust them more. So even the art of bad taste is still an art nonetheless.
But what about when it goes the other direction? When not being too offensive
kills the comedy, but being too politically correct kills the comedy.
Remember when they banned Speedy Gonzales for a while?
Yeah, this was actually a thing. So many people were offended and said he was a
bad Mexican stereotype. That is, except for one group of people. F**king Mexicans!
Yeah, they thought Speedy was fine, there was nothing wrong with him!
Eventually too many complained saying they wanted to see him back, that that's exactly what
they did. And now he's back in the regular Looney Tunes lineup. That was
getting offended for a group of people that wasn't even offended!
Jerry Seinfeld once made a joke about models looking pissed on the runway and people
were shouting "sexist" at him.
In fact, he stopped playing at college campuses because audiences were too
sensitive to his material. College campuses were too sensitive to the most
vanilla stand-up you can think of? I thought colleges were supposed to be wild and
crazy, a bunch of party people.
Jerry Seinfeld was too extreme for you?
Christ, they'd probably faint if Raffie went on stage.
Amy Poehler, one of America's funniest performers and feminist icon, did a
sitcom on Hulu about a comedian who leads the profession because her colleagues
say too many offensive jokes.
Guess what happened? Twitter got offended at the offensive jokes they were
supposed to find offensive. Christ, isn't that kind of like saying: "You know I know
I'm not supposed to like the Nazis but the way you represented them they just
seemed a little too mean,
these were a little too mean for Nazis". These aren't the only comedians that have noticed it.
There's a brilliant Key and Peele sketch where a company vice president asked a
black man, a white woman, and a gay man, to listen to a speech to make sure it's not offensive.
They made dozens of complaints about how offended they are before he even gets to
the speech. When he finally does begin the speech, he says "a Chinaman, a Pollock,
and an Arab walk into a bar", and of course the three of them have no problem.
And I think that sketch gets to why there is such an extreme between people
who are looking to offend, and people who are looking to be offended.
It all comes from where we place our emotions. We still live in an online
culture where you can be ambiguous and therefore your actions don't really have any punishment.
Now not everybody abuses this like a psychopath, but many use the internet as
a means to get out aggression and frustration that everybody feels in their lives.
Of course if you do it in a healthy way that's not hurting anybody, there's
nothing wrong with it. At least, if you realize that's what you're doing.
Socially awkward people looking for fast attention usually become trolls or pick
pointless fights in forums, and we all see them throw out swear words and
slurs and pretty much just ignore them. But then there's people looking to fight for a cause, which is fine.
Causes are good. They set change in motion and let the world know when it's
time to correct something. But if you go into a cause for a wrong reason, say to
fulfill an emotional, even selfish need, you're going to probably be making the cause look bad.
If you're fighting for something to fill a void and not because you want actual change,
you're liable to be more emotional and closed-minded to the subject.
This can also lead to seeing scenarios that aren't really there. Remember when
Michael Jackson said one of his albums didn't sell because Sony was racist?
Uhh yeah, that must be it.
Remember when Meryl Streep called Disney a "sexist anti-semite", even though there
has never been any evidence to prove so?
And not to bring up Palin again but:
Remember when she turned feminist for just a few minutes?
Claiming that the reason everybody was picking on her was because she was a woman?
Nailed it. You have given us no other reason to possibly make fun of you.
All of these are good causes: Race, religion, gender, the equality of all of them is worth fighting for.
But pent up emotion can explode at the wrong time and at the wrong people, leading
us to demonize perfectly good ideas or causes.
Don't worry, we're not going to be short of racist, sexist, bigoted assholes out there.
You don't need to go searching for them were they don't exist, and you don't need to
destroy good comedy for it either.
In reality, the best way to cause change isn't to soften humor, but rather
increase humor. Great comedians like John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, and Jon Stewart
have become the most trusted people in media not because they wave their
fingers and complain but because they apply humor, satire
and common sense to facts that really matter. But let's be honest, it's the
comedy that draws us in. We listen to them first because they're funny
then because they're dealing with hard truths. Look at John Oliver on YouTube,
he's fucking exploding!
Lots of people are getting interested in subjects that they never would have been
interested in before, but because he makes them so funny and so interesting
you'd rather listen to him than some stick in the mud on Twitter. But, if we're
to go by the "no comedy can be offensive" guidelines, then not only would we lose
these incredible truths, but also the great comedians that made it possible.
So then, should we never be offended by anything? No. There are people and jokes
that are trying to spread more hate and despair rather than joy and change, and
we should call them out on it. But does that mean we should list the things we can
talk about and the things we can't talk about?
Of course not, that'd be against free speech and limiting our growth.
Remember when we were offended by Bart Simpson on TV? Or Madonna? Or any of these other people?
These were shocking icons that were going to destroy our generation, and now
they're just commonplace, people barely even give a shit about them anymore, but
they evolved us to an area where this could be commonplace and talk about
subjects that need to be talked about.
So then, how do we know who to get offended by and who not to get offended by?
Well sadly, the answer is not in any book and it's not online,
you just have to use common sense. I think most of us get a pretty strong
feeling that Louis C.K. and Chris Rock don't use their offensive comedy out of
mean-spiritedness, they use it to make you laugh and bring out a strong point.
Where comedians like Carlos Mencia and Andrew Dice Clay probably do use it
out of mean-spiritedness, aren't funny, and that's why they didn't last very long.
You just have to use your intuition. Does your gut say that deep down they're
really prejudiced or sexist or whatever.
Will we always be right? Probably not. There's certainly people we have trusted before that have let us down.
And there's even good comedians that cross the line because comedy is a tricky tightrope.
But it's a tightrope that needs to be walked, and we need to slip up sometimes,
Every comedian does. It shows how far we could go, and how far we probably
shouldn't go. And it also shows that we can make wrong steps, but through the
positivity that made us likable to begin with, we can get back on track.
Some do this beautifully, others not so much, but if the alternative is fear and judge everything,
then comedy will be dead very quickly. So, still push the envelope of what's not
accepted and still fight for what's worth fighting for.
Just be sure that you're communicating it with the right intention. Because
the cost isn't worth the price. Of all things the 90s show "Duck Man" might
have made the most brilliant comments about comedy ever,
It's when a comedian comes in claiming he wants to do humor that doesn't offend anyone.
"So this medical care giver of indeterminate gender, because nurses can
be male or female, says to his or her disabled or should I say differently
able patient..." You get the idea. But when he surprisingly becomes a big hit, our
hero comes along and says some of the most poignant words ever about the importance of comedy.
They're actually so good, that I think it only fits to end the editorial with it.
"It's precisely when humor is offensive that we need it most!
Comedy should provoke! It should blast through prejudices, challenge
preconceptions! Comedy should always leave you different than when it found you! Sure,
humor can hurt, even alienate, but the risk is better than the alternative.
Demand to be challenged! To be offended! To be treated like thinking, reasoning
adults!" a duck voiced by Jason Alexander just said one of the most important things ever.
This is why comedy is so great. I'm the Nostalgia Critic. I remember it so you don't have to.
["The Review Must Go On" plays]
Hey guys! Doug Walker here, as I said in the past I'm going to end these videos with
a shout out to a different charity each week, and this week we are doing the
"Ronald McDonald House Charities".
This is actually a charity we've worked with a couple times in the past, and they
they do wonderful work in supplying people and children, especially who need help, who are
sick, and they do their best to give them a place where they can go and they
can have help, and they can have medical attention, and they can have
support, and they can have people who are so kind and so caring, and again we've
seen a lot of this firsthand and these are just such kind,
awesome, wonderful people, and as I said before, we've we've done work with them
before and we've done charity drives, and they are just a wonderful group that are
working for such a good, good cause just to give children as well as adults just
a place to feel home, a place to feel safe, when they're going through all
sorts of really tough things and it's a wonderful fantastic foundation to check out.
You can check it out at the address here, they do wonderful work they are so
awesome at what they do, and you know you can of course just give at the McDonalds,
You know they always have the little box there, but it means so much more if you
go to the website, see what they do, and maybe open up your heart a little bit
more, because they definitely do very, very good work.
So definitely, if you get a chance, go check them out.