The idea that a joke should be removed from public discussion because it might be offensive is juvenile.
Why? I think it’s juvenile to insist on doing things you know are likely to be offensive to other people in order to have a laugh, if the people who are thus offended have a legitimate beef with the joke.
But just so we’re clear, I’m not claiming that Jonestown references ought to be dropped because they are offensive
to unspecified third parties. I’m claiming that they ought to be dropped because they are wrong. The issue has to do with morality, not etiquette, and the problem is that the jokes are callous, not that they are rude. Contrary to the now-popular opinion, insensitivity in the name of humor is no virtue, and a certain degree of humanity, let alone compassion, about the murder of hundreds of children or the senseless deaths of nearly 1,000 people, is no vice.
… people make jokes about worse subjects every day.
People do all kinds of things. Do you have something specific in mind? If so, what reasons do you have for thinking that the common usage in that specific case has something to recommend it?
The answer to speech is more speech.
Yes, I agree. What do you think I’m doing here, if not answering speech with more speech
?
(Sorry.)
]]>Yes, knowing the backstory of Jonestown makes it a bit harder to laugh – but people make jokes about worse subjects every day. We are not far from a time when 9/11 will be lampooned or otherwise turned into humor.
The answer to speech is more speech. Criticizing people who speak out is well and good, but no subject and no criticism should be beyond the reach of humor.
]]>There were some people they hoped “wouldn’t drink the Kool-Aid,” because they might not be prepared to enter an altered state of reality.
I would think of the Bush Administrations Kool-Aid as radically altering one’s perception of facts/reality as opposed to leading to mass death, as Jonestown’s laced Flavor Aid did.
]]>p/s: you totally crack me up with your “general theory of humor” talk.
]]>For what it’s worth, I used to make joking references to kool-aid drinking, too, but I later thought better of it. My aim here isn’t so much to scold people as to encourage them to think about things differently.
As to your question, I don’t have any general beef with black humor, but I think there are specific features of Jonestown jokes that make them both callous and unfunny on reflection.
For example, I don’t buy the cathartic defense in this specific case. Maybe that’s what happens with some black humor, but drinking the Kool-Aid
jokes aren’t really used to cope with the horror at Jonestown; they casually invoke the horror at Jonestown in order to make a point about something else.
Similarly, the humor isn’t used (as it is in, say, Dr. Strangelove) to mock the follies and the vices of the powerful, or (as in, say, Candide) to encourage the audience to sympathize with and identify with the protagonist/victims as limited and fallible human beings. Rather, the joke functions to distance the speaker from the suicides and murder victims at Jonestown, and to dismiss them as a bunch of marginally human crazies.
I also think that even in the best of cases, black humor ought to be something that makes you uncomfortable. Things can be both funny and discomforting at the same time; but I don’t think that this is one of those cases. If anything, the effect of the joke is not to discomfort the intended audience, but rather to reinforce their comfort in their prejudices against both the cultists
at Jonestown and also against the primary target of the joke.
Jesse,
Aside from my complaints, it’s certainly true that the strip is also leaden and hamhanded. But anyway, I don’t think that matters are as simple as you claim. There are lots of different ways to use horrible events in humor; some of those are sensitive and others callous; and some events are much harder to joke about than others. Hundreds of murdered children are, or ought to be, one of the harder things to joke about.
Generally speaking, I think that many people tend to be a lot more callous than they might otherwise be when the victims of the event are easily distanced from both the joke-teller and the intended audience. One of the ways that people distance themselves from their fellow human beings is by projecting irrationality, stupidity, or insanity onto the butts of their jokes. But that sort of scorn borders on meanness even in the best of cases, and it ought to be viewed with an awful lot of suspicion when really horrible suffering and innocent victims are thrown into the mix.
]]>Unfortunately, in this case the joke has already been reduced to a cliché, so the Doonesbury strip is lame as hell. But should’t be offensive, except perhaps to the ghost of the young Garry Trudeau.
]]>Anyway, Charles, what’s your opinion on dark humor as a way to deal with tragedy? I think it’s too simple to dismiss any humorous invocation of tragedy as simply unacceptable (not that that’s your position, but it’s the logical extension of it). The reality is that the human experience is sometimes a bit more complicated, and for the living to cope with horrible events, I’m in favor of whatever mechanisms they need invoke to maintain sanity and perspective.
There’s probably healthy and unhealthy forms, but we’re never going to get the formula correct. Thank God for those immortal letters: IMHO.
]]>Though I appreciate that you’re trying to remind us to be compassionate in a culture that can be glib and flippant about suffering in the world, you might be taking this a bit too far.
I’ve used the term “drinking the kool-aid” many times. My understanding was always that it referred to San Francisco in the mid-60s, when LSD spiked kool aid was served freely at concerts. The idea was that you had to drink the kool aid to “get” the music and get in the groove.
That meaning predates the Jonestown massacre certainly, so in that sense it’s a bit unfair to hold people to one context when they may mean another. But furthermore, everytime I’ve heard and used the expression, I never meant it to mean “let’s all commit suicide”. Rather I (and I believe Trudeau) mean that the speaker wants others to arrest their critical faculties and simply go along with the speaker’s policies or ideas without question or doubt.
I realize there’s some overlap there, and I also realize you may simply be unaware of the other connotation. And, I have to admit that I’ve made some pretty dark jokes in my lifetime that probably aren’t tasteful. But I don’t think I can be fairly accused of dehumanizing anybody, nor can Trudeau. At least not this time :-)
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