I watched the first of the David Chappelle specials on Netflix and it brought something into pretty sharp focus for me: the entire concept of\u00a0\u2018punching up\u2019 is part of why the Discourse is so bad.
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Like, I don\u2019t know how many of you are old enough to remember Chappelle\u2019s Show when it first aired. I was in high school at the time, and it was beloved. White kids liked it, black kids liked it, everybody liked it. I\u2019m sure people would find it problematic as hell these days\u2013the usual suspects are picking over those Netflix specials because he does those\u00a0\u2018crosses the line twice\u2019 jokes that you\u2019re not supposed to do these days. But I think why it worked then was why it worked for so many comedians before him who were popular across racial and gender lines, and that is that he made fun of everybody.
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You couldn\u2019t complain that you were being picked on or singled out, because everyone got hit. There was even self-deprecatory humor where he made fun of things about men or black people or straight people that he found silly. So the only problem you could have was if you wanted no one to ever make fun of your people, and obviously that wouldn\u2019t be fair, since everyone else\u2019s people were getting made fun of too. It\u2019s almost like equality or something.
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So there was a bit of\u00a0\u2018all in good fun\u2019 humor to it. He didn\u2019t mean anything personal by joking about this group or that, just that something struck him as funny. If there was criticism, it was of institutions, not people. So he\u2019d make fun of racism itself by pointing out how stupid it was that, theoretically, someone like Clayton Bigsby could hate a group that they unknowingly were a part of. Not saying white people are stupid or black people are stupid, just that being racist is stupid.
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But now with this \u2018punching up\u2019 idea, you\u2019re only allowed to joke about people who you deem morally inferior, so the very fact that you\u2019re joking about someone is a moral judgment, no matter what the joke is. And I think that\u2019s contributed so much to how people have less of a sense of humor nowadays and they\u2019re more easily offended, because the internet\u2019s decided that there can\u2019t be good-natured ribbing, there can only be either\u00a0\u2018punching up\u2019 or\u00a0\u2018punching down\u2019*. Even if you\u2019re joking about something as inane as white people being bad at dancing or black people liking fried chicken, the connotation is\u00a0\u201cyou have it too good and I\u2019m taking you down a peg.\u201d Instead of just\u00a0\u201cI thought up a joke that I thought was funny.\u201d
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(*Which is ridiculous in the first place, because it requires a\u00a0\u2018sorting algorithm of oppression\u2019. Like who\u2019s more oppressed, white women or black men? Is a white woman allowed to make fun of a black rapper who writes misogynistic lyrics? You tell me.)
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\u201cBut now with this \u2018punching up\u2019 idea, you\u2019re only allowed to joke about people who you deem morally inferior, so the very fact that you\u2019re joking about someone is a moral judgment, no matter what the joke is.\u201d
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Oh my lord. Someone articulated the thing.
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I felt much safer when people were allowed to joke about horrible shit, and always felt like the people who said \u201cthat\u2019s your privilege talking\u201d were unaware of precisely how much horrible shit I have personally experienced, but I could never say why their rules seemed nastier than some cutting jokes.
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And that\u2019s it. That\u2019s exactly it. If I\u2019m joking about rape I might be saying victims are bad\u2026 but I might be saying perpetrators are bad, or saying why do things that might well not last long at all give us PTSD forever wow it sucks, or\u2026
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But if I joke about a privileged group because they are a privileged group, I ACTUALLY AM saying those people are bad, that is, being cruel rather than maybe just being absurdist.
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I am emphatically, gratefully in agreement with all of this.
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It\u2019s worth mentioning the flip side, though, the reason that we were expelled from the Paradise Garden of Good-Natured Roast Comedy and thrown into the Wasteland of Discourse\u2026
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\u2026which is plausible deniability for cruelty.
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Also known as \u201cgeez, man, can\u2019t you take a joke?\u201d\u00a0
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Which is, of course, what bullies will say when anyone tries to confront them about their bullying, assuming that they\u2019re allowed to say it.\u00a0\u00a0
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And so if a given group of people feels like it\u2019s being bullied beyond what it can tolerate \u2013 and it gets the power to enforce its social will \u2013 it\u2019s going to say \u201cnope, we can\u2019t take a joke, you\u2019re not allowed to joke about us, that\u2019s automatically an Abomination.\u201d\u00a0
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(I have some sense that, in the evolution of such movements, there\u2019s often a brief moment when the Bearers of Received Wisdom are more intent on being fair and even-handed, and they try to deal with this thinly-veiled-bullying problem by proclaiming that no one is ever allowed to joke about anyone.\u00a0 But of course this doesn\u2019t get even a little bit of traction; it definitely doesn\u2019t appeal to the movementarian masses, who love telling mean jokes about hated enemies as much as everyone else does; and so you end up with hollow-hearted distinctions like \u201cpunching up.\u201d)\u00a0
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I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a way to square this circle.\u00a0 I think the best answer is the old late-20th-century answer, the one that says \u201ceveryone is allowed to tell good-natured jokes about everyone,\u201d and the price you pay is that assholes are going to use this as license to tell jokes that aren\u2019t so good-natured.\u00a0 We\u2019ve seen the price of the Other Path, and it isn\u2019t worth it.\u00a0 But\u2026I wish there were a better plan.
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I agree with the description of the trade-off here but completely disagree with the assessment.
\u201cPlausible deniability for cruelty\u201d gave us /pol/ and arguably Trump.
Social justice norms gave us\u2026
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abstraction. \u00a0Nobody actually punches up - we make jokes that broadly can\u2019t be construed as punching anybody, and frankly I\u2019m fine with that. \u00a0Social justice\u00a0\u201cruined\u201d humour like photography ruined painting - forcing its practitioners to abandon an obsolete paradigm that had reached its limits long ago and explore the vast range of formal and expressive possibilities they had been leaving untouched
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Wait, wait, you think the SJ millennials are the ones making the absurdist memes? Because it seems to me that surrealism mostly comes from the chans, and on the other side we have, I dunno, unfunny late career John Stewart.
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do you even Weird Twitter
chans got it from Something Awful and Tumblr\u2019s done it better for years
Jon Stewart is not millennial humor. \u00a0the whole concept of\u00a0\u201cpunching up\u201d is not millennial humor, is what I\u2019m saying, it\u2019s\u00a0\u201chow do you do, fellow kids\u201d humour from dad comedians struggling to formulate a dilemma we\u2019ve resolved already
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dril can\u2019t be read as \u201cnot punching\u201d, come on. have you not seen his old flash stuff? there is quite a bit of a. wyatt mann there, and a. wyatt mann is q. punchous
\n\nthe only way that “it’s only funny if you punch up” is true is relative to where they “should” be, i.e. you also punch the uppity
\n\nthat’s why the only comedic type so universal as “the arrogant noble” is “the servant putting on airs”
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