The Limits of Black Comedy and Dead Baby Comedy

I know this day and age people make a profit on comedy but where does it cross the line.Take for example Family Guy one of the reasons its so popular is because of that kind of humour however people have detracted when the writers cross a certain boundrary.Say,like their multiple rape jokes,their costant tendency to play child abuse for laughs,or when they do unfunny politcal take thats.I am more of the sensitive person who likes her humour to be a little more clean but I have a feeling a lot of you have a boundrary for when something immediatly becomes unfunny.

Black comedy is like verzion wireless.

Please.

My own boundary.....................when they make fun of a tragedy that has not ended yet, or has happened during the past week or two.

Asides from that, nothing really offends me. It's just entertainment afterall.

"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."

I dunno, for me it varies depending on what kind of black comedy. Sometimes the premise can be vile, but if it's delivered in the right way it can be passable.

There are some black comedy things that I laugh at, and others I just groan at. Though for me personally 9/11 is one of those things that's a boundary for me.

Funny you mentioned that. For me, there isn't enough 9/11 jokes. The only ones who bothered having fun with that incident is Family Guy, and even then, I could only think of 2 jokes...and the first is less of a joke and more of an Author Tract. People need to lighten up a bit.

Oh, and I think South Park sort of made fun of it a bit during the Ladder to Heaven episode, but it's more of a jab at artists cashing in on the emotions back then.

People exagerrated the seriousness of 9/11.

edit:On second thought...every single "airport security" joke can be considered a 9/11 joke if it's made after the event I guess...not sure if that still counts.

edited 30th Jun '11 9:47:12 PM by Signed

"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."

I'm not emo over it, I just find it in egregiously bad taste to make 9/11 jokes. That's just my personal boundary for black comedy.

I know I know, that might have been a little bit insensitive.

But I do find people are a bit too...antsy when it comes to 9/11. Plus, lots of potential for jokes.

...I need a better word than "antsy"

---

Regarding the opening post, I just remembered one very important rule.

NEVER joke about atrocities your own country committed........atleast never let anyone outside your country see you joke about it.

edited 30th Jun '11 9:58:16 PM by Signed

"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."

Nah, it's alright.

I seem to have few limits. There are things that set me off however. For example any form of abuse to cats tends to offend me greatly. Jokes about kitten crushing videos and the people who make them tend to anger me.

And make me cry.

With many other things it seems to depend on who the person making the joke is and the joke itself. Normally I'll be fine with it, but one can present a joke in such a way that I just won't be a happy camper.

edited 30th Jun '11 10:01:09 PM by Aondeug

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

I think the key to comedy is finding the distinction between audacity and sheer lack of taste, regardless of how offensive the joke actually is. Someone at the lunch table rasping "I EAT AND SHIT YO BABIES", not funny. A statue going to town on a gaggle of toddlers, hilarious.

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt." - Some guy with a snazzy hat.

I appreciate black comedy as long as it not personally targeted.

Who watches the watchmen?

1. A little more clean? That still leaves a lot of room for filth!
2. A bottomless pit?
3. But humor enlightens the dark moods! What's wrong about joking that X could have done a much better job if s/he had used Y while committing Z? Nothin'!
4. Guess the pilots that caused that missed the memo on not flying into buildings, eh?
5. ...perhaps they thought the World Trade Center towers were vertical landing strips?
6. ...planes have a nose wheel. Use that and the other two wheels, not the nose, to land on.
7. How many of the people in the towers would have been virgins and female? Enough to satisfy each of the terrorists in heaven?
8. The babies might disagree.
9. Such things are generally called "Cat-astrophes".
10. Of course, the former would be a lot more amusing if the guy had some baby-shaped food on his sandwich. And he'd start with the head. CHOMP.
11. That's devillish!

"That said, as I've mentioned before, apart from the helmet, he's not exactly bad looking, if a bit...blood-drenched." - juancarlos

Nowhere. It crosses various lines, but I don't think it ever crosses the line. I don't think there's any point where it can be said to be going "too far". A joke can be done well or done poorly, and that's something independent from how far it goes. There are things I may not find funny because I'm not in the target audience. But I don't think comedy has to be inclusive.

TBH I don't have strict limits for Black Comedy and Dead Baby Comedy. The internet helped me to develop pretty sick sense of humor. Anyway, those kind of jokes are inapropriate when they are Too Soon (of course what is Too Soon and what isn't is pretty much YMMV) or when done in front of people who have experienced a personal tragedy (if someone's baby died, it would be very dickish to tell that person a dead baby joke). Other than that, I don't think there should be Unacceptable Targets for humor - no sacred cows.

"Take your (...) hippy dream world, I'll take reality and earning my happiness with my own efforts" - Barkey

I do get offended by some of those jokes on Family Guy, but I don't make a big deal out it. The point of those comedies OP mentioned are to poke at our "good person" sensibilities anyway.

There are some that disgust me...like Anne Frank jokes. I'm not sure who finds them funny.

"Without a fairy, you're not even a real man!" ~ Mido from Ocarina of Time

The topics are not the issue for me. It's the distinction between a genuinely funny joke and simple lack-of-taste in the telling.

I love morbid ass humour, I think it comes with the territory of my job.

However, everyone has their personal weak spots. It's ok for other people in the military to make jokes about dead troops in a certain context, but god forbid I hear civilians making those jokes, I lose my shit.

I think it has a lot more to do with who's telling the joke, whom they're telling it to, and how they execute it rather than any particular topic. Anything can be made to be funny if it's the right time and place, and told by the right person to the right audience. Barkey's example is a good one.

"War doesn't prove who's right, only who's left." "Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future."

I don't really have a line, because I think having one and saying "this is OK to make fun of" but "THIS, this thing that matters to ME is off limits" is self-serving and hypocritical. If you are allowed to make fun of anything, you are allowed to make fun of everything.

It just has to be funny, to me, to justify the offensiveness it entails. I know that's equally subjective, but I'm not also advocating that we should punish people that hurt my feelings. Offensiveness in humor is a bad reason to justify censure, especially because so many people are irony-blind.

It's an art. Dark Comedy just has to be executed well to be aesthetically right and vindicated- artful.

edited 2nd Jul '11 3:07:13 PM by MatthewTheRaven

Guys, isn't the term dark comedy? I was thinking this thread was about comedy generally espoused by people of African descent.

There's no justice in the world and there never was~

It can be called black humor, black comedy, dark humor, and dark comedy, KCK. I most commonly use black humor.

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

@Aondeug My mind still mistakenly associates the term with black people.

There's no justice in the world and there never was~

I do that at times for whatever reason. Yet I still use black humor or black comedy. I rarely if ever use dark. Not sure why. Maybe I think dark is too silly a word. It's most likely that I am just accustomed to black ENTER WORD for it.

edited 2nd Jul '11 3:24:54 PM by Aondeug

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

I prefer "gallows humor" myself. I think it has a nice ring to it, and is a change from the generally accepted blackness/darkness = bad meme.

"War doesn't prove who's right, only who's left." "Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future."

Black=Bad is a meme?

Aren't we naturally averse to the color black(along with anything that's too suspiciously colorful)?

edited 2nd Jul '11 5:46:14 PM by Signed

"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."