Troperville
Help us survive. All donations are anonymous on the wiki and unacknowledged, as we don't wish to create a hierarchy among Tropers.
Editing
Tools
Toys
|
And we're just getting started.
Do you know what's funnier than a dead baby? A dead baby in a clown suit.
A series which largely depends on its controversy. Whether or not all the jokes are funny, they're designed to be as potentially offensive as possible. There is no such thing as Too Soon.
Although this can produce some edgy comedy and become popular enough to get around the censors, it creates a self-defeating situation. Once society has caught up with the edginess (sometimes due to the show's own popularity) the show must either keep upping the ante or retool itself lest it be considered wearing itself out. Doubly problematic is the fact that the people who would be most offended by it (i.e. Moral Guardians) don't watch it, and those who do watch aren't offended by it.
A common pitfall is that some creators confuse simply being offensive with being both offensive and funny. The creators may throw anything onto the screen they hope will offend the Moral Guardians whether it has any humor to it or not. They might do this to get publicity or they might do it because they honestly think offensiveness is by and of itself funny. Fans who become emotionally invested in the show might not be able to accept that others simply don't think it's very good, and might assume that anyone who complains has to be a stuffy, pinch-mouthed Moral Guardian.
This is typically seen as the realm of the Fox network for basic broadcast TV.
The Dead Baby Comedy could be considered a version of the Gross Out Show, except it can't be marketed to children. (However, it often appears as a Subverted Kids Show.)
Sensitive members of the audience may look at a show like this and say Dude Not Funny. However, the creators may take it as a good sign that their show is offending people, especially Moral Guardians.
The Dead Baby Comedy probably has its roots in the infamous The Aristocrats, but may be (quite literally) related to Jonathan Swift's satirical essay A Modest Proposal, making it Older Than Steam.
Refuge In Vulgarity is often the reason some of these work, and others don't. Toilet Humour may also be present. Not be confused with Black Comedy.
Compare Gallows Humor, which is less on the offensive side and more on the "laugh so it doesn't hurt" side.
Examples
Anime
- Oruchuban Ebichu was outright designed to push the envelope as to what could be aired in the Japanese late night slot. As said in its entry, Ebichu has a long tendency of interrupting the protagonists in flagrante delicto...
- The Rapeman.
- Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is about a teacher who attempts to commit suicide, and has offered to take one of his students with him when he does as a "travelling companion".
Comics
- Belgian comic Violine definitely qualifies. Ten-year-old Violine has the ability to read people's minds by looking into their eyes. Her adventures include rescuing mice from being dissected (she even sees one cut open, and vomits), being thought of as a witch and chased by people who want her dead, hopping into a car with a pedophile (and seeing an image of herself bound and gagged and looking terrified when reading his mind), being thrown off a ship that she got caught stowing away on by a crew that assumes she's dead, witnessing the dead bodies of many birds caught in an oil spill, being chased by men with guns who then get eaten by alligators, and many more. All of this is played for very dark humor. Or you could possibly interpret it as a serious story that just has dark jokes scattered throughout, but either way, the sources of humor are pretty damn morbid.
Film
- The Tom Green-directed film Freddy Got Fingered, which actually features the star/writer/director chomping on a baby's umbilical cord, among other weird and gross things. Roger Ebert famously said of this movie:
- The intro segment to the movie Postal (based on the game of the same name, which is a bad sign, and directed by Uwe Boll, which is a worse one) goes like this, to quote The Other Wiki:
September 11, 2001. Terrorists are about to fly a plane into the World Trade Center when they realize that there can't possibly be enough virgins left in the afterlife, given the recent rash of suicide bombings. After a quick phone call to their leader confirms that they may only get twenty, they decide to call off the attack and fly to The Bahamas. Just then, the cockpit door is kicked open and the passengers struggle to take control of the plane. Veering out of control, it smashes into the Twin Towers - the fiery explosion revealing the film's title card.
- According to the few reviewers who managed to see the movie, this is the least offensive part.
- Sadly, it's also probably the funniest. The rest of the movie is feeble action sequences and stale jokes. The only possible exception are a few choice one liners. In a job interview Q&A: "What is the difference between a duck . . ."
- Meet The Feebles has the puppet form of Dead Baby Comedy.
- Fritz The Cat, period.
- Team America World Police from the creators of South Park.
- The Luis Buñuel 1930 classic "L' Âge d'or", The Golden Age has got lots of these jokes (and it's the most hilarious film ever), one of the main character's is a man working for a good will mission organisation, and is on a mission to spread happiness in the world. He randomly attack people, he kicks a blind man and Kick the Dog more than once. One scene also includes a man that shoot an annoying kid with a rifle.
- Norm Mac Donald's film Dirty Work, especially the last line when our hero explains that everything worked out and he got the girl "...and Dr. Farthing got the money to his bookies. But the bookies killed him anyway. So he's dead. Well, that's the end."
Literature
Live Action TV
Music
- Brian Eno's song "Baby's On Fire" is a cheerful uptempo rocker about... well, take a guess.
- Arguably it's about the consequences of being a celebrity in general or a model in particular. But on the other hand, Eno did have this habit of choosing lyrics for their phonetic value rather than meaning. So who knows?
- Ween's 'Spinal Meningitis' complete with a squeakily sung impression of a terminally ill child would seem to be in the worst possible taste, although the chorus, sung in an adult voice; "Shine on mighty Jesus, spinal meningitis got me down" indicates a touch of religious satire. Maybe...
- Schaffer the Dark Lord's "Clone-(expletive deleted)," tells of a post-apocalyptic future where robots are at war with mankind, and humans send clones of themselves as soldiers to fight in their place. One cloner decides to take advantage of the situation... It would be an understatement to say that it doesn't end well.
- Stephen Lynch's "Baby", which is about realising how ugly his newborn daughter is. Contains the line "I always wanted kids / Is it wrong to hope for SIDS?"
- also, Stephen Lynch's entire career.
- Devo songs often contain underlying dark humour, but a select few sound almost like they're not joking.
- Particularly songs from their early demo period: "I Need A Chick", "Baby Talkin' Bitches", "Bamboo Bimbo", "I've Been Refused", and "The Rope Song" may offend some.
- "Mongoloid" and "Jocko Homo" might seem controversial for their titles alone, although they aren't particularly offensive songs themselves.
- Contrary to some misinterpretations, "Jocko Homo" has nothing to do with homosexuality.
- "Triumph Of The Will": 'It is the thing females ask for/When they convey the opposite' (The whole song can be interpreted as being about a rapist or a player who knows girls want him but are afraid to show their sexual side).
- "I Desire" contains love lyrics written by would-be-assassin John Hinckley Jr. The joke may have been on Warner Bros. Records, who had to pay royalties to an inmate.
- Sometimes Devo were controversial for their music videos - i.e. a talk show host refused to feature them after seeing the video for "Whip It" which she thought was offensive to women. In one case, the Hendrix estate forbid them from including their video for "Are You Experienced" on a DVD because there's a shot of a Jimi Hendrix look-a-like coming out of a coffin to play guitar, which they assumed was making fun of him.
- Gerry Casale's alter ego, Jihad Jerry. Also, in a very early Devo performance, Jerry donned those "Chinese" toy glasses as a character called Chinaman (you can see a brief shot of him in their "Secret Agent Man" video).
- Australian band 'The Self-Righteous Brothers' have a whole string of songs which fit this trope, often sung in a pleasantly melodious fashion. A couple of examples — from 'Now You're Gone':
Now your family want to take me to court
Just for having sex with your rotting corpse.
I love you so much more
Now that you're gone.
and responsible for such gems as 'Daddy Drinks Because You Cry' and '(Too Much) Sperm In Your Eyes'.
- Seanan Mc Guire's lullaby "You Would Fit In the Microwave" is another literal example.
New Media
- Although many stories from The Onion don't involve Dead Baby Comedy, quite a lot do. Their book Our Dumb World is a landmark in the history of Dead Baby Literature, as it succeeds in brutally mocking every nation on the planet. It even made a joke about the Rwandan Genocide... and it was actually funny.
- This very page showed a Google ad for a pregnancy calendar for this troper.
Print Media
- Gary Larson's Far Side comic strip at least skirted this trope at times. In one of his book-collections, he printed some of the ones that got rejected by his editors because.. they stopped skirting and plunged right in.
- In one literal case, a snake was crawling through a crib, with a huge bulge in its center. Gary Larson commented, "No, you didn't see this. Turn the page."
Theatre
- This guy will maintain to his dying day that Romeo and Juliet is a shining paragon of this trope. They kill themselves over a problem with the postal service.
- Indeed. In earlier drafts Shakespeare had apparently intended the play to be a comedy rather than a tragedy.
- Avenue Q. About three across-the-line jokes per song. Assuming the line is pretty far away from "tasteful". "The Internet Is For Porn ..."
- Used regularly by Christopher Durang, and quite literally in his play The Marriage of Bette and Boo, in which one of the title characters repeatedly bears stillborn children; the doctor, announcing their births, drops them on the floor.
- Sarah Kane's play 'Blasted' takes this trope one step further: Ian, one of the main characters, eats a dead baby. He is also a racist, alcoholic rapist who has had his eyes eaten by a soldier who raped him with a gun.
Videogames
- Conker's Bad Fur Day includes, among other things to offend, a literal mountain of excrement.
- This is, of course, present in the videogame version of any of the above or below, especially Happy Tree Friends the game.
- Dead Space subverts this: When the dead babies become terrifying zombies, it's treated COMPLETELY seriously! (Three back-tentacles that shoot explosive ammo.)
- However, if one jumps on your face you do get to throw it on the floor... AND PUNT DA BABY! (Which is pretty funny if you're desensitized enough).
Web Comics
Web Original
- The "weird Christmas song list" video of the Nostalgia Chick contains a song which tells a story of domestic violence. While the song is played, the viewers are treated to a reenactment of a southern hick beating his wife. The clip starts as serious and somewhat realistic, but then, out of nowhere, the husband starts giving his wife the "stop hitting yourself" treatment and giving her Indian burns. The scene turns from not funny into silly and then outright hilarious.
Western Animation
Other
|
|
