Originally published on Facebook 20 June 2013.

The biggest and most fallacious enemy of humor is that certain subjects are too serious to be appropriate targets for it. That there’s a list of such subjects. A fuckin’-ass LONG list.

Example: the suffering of burn victims is no fit subject for humor.

Response: Watch RICHARD PRYOR LIVE ON THE SUNSET STRIP. He will tell you what it felt like to be sponge-bathed when covered with horrific burns and you will laugh out loud.

Point: Between Murder and Rape, Murder is clearly the more serious crime. Am I right? This is no slight against rape. Murder is WORSE. And multiple murder is heinous.

Response: Any number of haunted-house comedies where bodies turn up in closets. Or, specifically, the absolutely hilarious ARSENIC AND OLD LACE.

Human Grief is not funny. And yet I recall any number of comedy skits where funerals went disastrously awry. Second City has one where the guy died by drowning in a gallon tub of baked beans and the mourners sit there politely and try without success to refrain from giggling at every reference to it.

The Holocaust is not funny. Honestly not funny.

I have heard drop-dead funny Holocaust jokes. Some of them from survivors. Who exchanged them in the camps, for crying out loud. (None come to mind right now, but I recall them and know they exist; and the point is never to yok at those silly, dying Jews; it is to find humor in other bits of behavior surrounding an unspeakable moment in history.) (I omit the several Holocaust comedies that were made in one year a while back, of which none struck me as advancing the idea that the Holocaust itself was funny; but that the behavior of human beings in unspeakable circumstances could be. And then there’s THE GREAT DICTATOR and TO BE OR NOT TO BE, neither of which knew that the Holocaust was a Holocaust but *did* know that the Nazis were killing people for being Jews, and used the human response to that for hilarity.)

Nuclear War isn’t funny. Oh, wait. DR. STRANGELOVE.

I was once told that homelessness is never funny.

Evidently, the person doing the telling had never seen Charlie Chaplin.

Now, I do happen to agree that the suffering of rape victims should not be made light of. And yet I have heard rape jokes that were honestly funny, and a number that were actually illuminating.

What do you think Harpo Marx is doing, really, when he chases pretty ladies up and down the decks of a ship? What is his character after? Does anybody actually NOT realize that in the real world this is a sexual assault? Does anybody really contend that what he’s doing is the real world?

Ringo Starr made a largely awful movie called CAVEMAN where his lust-driven character, who occupies the lowest rung on his tribe’s social ladder, attempts to molest a woman while she’s asleep. In fact, he is so inept about it — and her various sleepy movements so violent — that she beats the crap out of him. It was the few funny bits in a largely dreary mess. And yet, does anybody not realize that he was attempting a rape? The movie was widely criticized for glorifying rape, but no rape took place; nor did the character experience any glory from it.

I have even heard a couple of rape jokes that were appeals to absurdity. Years ago comedian Rick Ducommon convulsed me with this one.

“Did you hear about the passenger jet that fell ten miles and then pulled out of it less than a thousand feet above the ocean?

“They were falling, thinking they were all gonna die, for TEN MINUTES.

“That’s scary shit, man. And it’s my worst fear, because I’m ever on a plane and that kind of thing happens, SOMETHING’s getting fucked.

“And then you DON’T crash?

(Very sheepish look). “Sorry, ma’am. Apologize to your grandchildren for me.”

NOBODY took offense at the joke. It was a rape joke but it was less about the horror of rape than poor impulse control and the inadequacy of the apology.

One of the problems with such emotionally sensitive subjects is that you have to be personally very aware of what point your joke makes; such as whether it targets the victim, or (worse) suggests the crime for people (either bitch women or asshole men) who “deserve it.” What comedian Daniel Tosh did that was so offensive was respond to a female audience member who objected to a joke about rape, by jokingly suggesting that she should be raped herself. THAT was a terribly ugly moment. THAT is the kind of humor all too prevalent in stand-up clubs, where comedians often derive comic energy from their own aggression, and that aggression can take the form of the ritual verbal mounting of their targets. In the absolute worst examples, the result can be winking at rape. Or suggesting that such a person should be raped. THAT is objectionable and that is wrong.

This is my thesis: NOTHING is ultimately off the table for humor. NOTHING. Not rape, not murder, not people in wheelchairs, not people in deathbeds, not AIDS, not horrific crime, not catastrophes that kill thousands of people. NOTHING. EVER. PERIOD.

By definition, it is humor’s job to help us deal with upsetting shit. All that happens when a subject gets more emotionally wrought is that the target that renders humor defensible gets smaller and harder to hit. Anything outside that bullseye is either unfunny or more offensive than funny. But blanket rules about the things that should never, ever, ever be laughed at — if we start making that list, I promise you that by the time we were done, nothing would be on it but LOLcats.

Tags: Arsenic And Old Lace, Caveman, Charlie Chaplin, Dr. Strangelove, humor, Life Wisdom, Richard Pryor, Ringo Starr, The Great Dictator, To Be Or Not To Be | Category Commentary, Humor, Life Wisdom, Writing