Seriously thoughtful When is HUMOR in "Bad" taste?

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

I'm interested though as to why 9/11 jokes are still taboo? I have heard some, but have never passed them on even in private conversations, and certainly wouldn't in a public forum like this - I consider myself quite unshockable in general and so I'm struggling to understand my own feelings on that.

Quite possibly not a subject for further conversation other than to say that perhaps we've found at least one boundary?

Possibly, because I, for one, still have the vision of those planes smashing into the twin towers seared into my brain.

I can still see the people jumping/falling from incredible heights to the street.

I can still hear the broadcasts, I can still see the firemen/policemen/civilians rushing into the buildings, knowing they would collapse soon, but hoping to save anyone that they could.

I can still hear some of the phone conversations from those in the towers before they collapsed.

I can still feel the shock, and see the shock and horror on the faces of those in New York.

I can still see the towers finally falling, and I can hear the screams in my head.

And I still feel an undying hatred for those who perpetrated this horrendous, senseless atrocity.

Anyone who feels 9-11 is a venue for jokes just needs a reality check.

[Nate the great]

Just in case someone wants a 11 September joke:
http://www.ooze.com/articles/9-11-jokes.html

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Just in case someone wants a 11 September joke:
http://www.ooze.com/articles/9-11-jokes.html

Why. Why in the name of anything decent, would you post such a link? Freedom of expression be dammed.

Are you an American? And you can post such crap?

I don't really give a rats ass what you think.

[nohmi2]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Just in case someone wants a 11 September joke:
http://www.ooze.com/articles/9-11-jokes.html

"When is humor 'bad humor'?

Congratulations..... you have managed to plumb the depths!!!



I still cannot believe that you would leave a link to such a tasteless and offensive site.

Unbelieveable.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

Why. Why in the name of anything decent, would you post such a link? Freedom of expression be dammed.

Are you an American? And you can post such crap?

I don't really give a rats ass what you think.

I've gotta agree with desertgrandma on this one.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by wodin

I've gotta agree with desertgrandma on this one.

ditto, and I aint even American ....

[smurphy]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

Bathroom humor? Did someone page me?

I love a good sick joke, preferably with potty jokes or rotten meat or jokes about death or just really awful puns. The gruesomer, the better.

I'm also partial to jokes about parrots. I keep a log of parrot jokes, it's over 100 pages long. Quite a few are duplicates, but it's my log and I don't care if it is untidy.

Uh-Oh, off topic. What was the question again?

I can second that. The more "unreal" and harder it is - the better.
However - I noticed - because I was not born into one language, but rather several ones (speaking 6 so far) - that the fine details, context knowledge make a whole difference in how Humor is perceived.

As my wife always tells me - to make me understand a "fine" joke, she has to wave the pale with "Humor" written in Large Capital letters on a Flag.

So - IMHO - my best definition of Humor is linked to the environment you are into, the context and how well you know these people you are sitting with and how they make you understand their Humor

[smurphy]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

Why. Why in the name of anything decent, would you post such a link? Freedom of expression be dammed.

Are you an American? And you can post such crap?

I don't really give a rats ass what you think.

Come on folks ...
9/11 happened, as did the second world war.
And people are still making jokes about Worldwar 2 and the Germans (I am German - and believe me - I have heard loads of Jokes about it). I don't find it amusing - but many do.
Just look at the Jokes done about the Irak War. I don't know how many Iraki people have been killed by US Troops - but the jokes are still all over.
I rather think that Jokes/Humor is the way some people are dealing with the horrors they have seen.

As I said before. Depending on the People and the context, the jokes may come in fine, or not ...

[Dr. Drib]

Thanks for the link. The jokes are horrible and in horribly bad taste.

I read all the material before the jokes, which attempts to explain before presenting. About the link, I think it's important that jokes in bad taste be accessible for anyone who wants to read them, and on a web site that caters to what anyone perceives as "bad taste."

I find it interesting to examine the passionate comments following the post, which is a goldmine for critical analyses. One writer feels it's bad because one is an American; what about the one's killed who are not American?

I think smurphy hit upon something interesting: The more unreal the incident, he writes, the harder it is to take. I take "unreal" to mean actual reality, as opposed to (for example) a zombie doing something distasteful such as eating intestines in the famous "Night of the Living Dead." Smurfy also mentions that we need jokes of this nature, sometimes, in order to deal with the horror of the act[s]. I agree with this. Jokes of this nature - these horrible jokes in bad taste - do indeed offer (in my opinion) reality checks - but not on the person telling them - but on the pulse of a national psyche.

I think it would be truly interesting to read a dissertation that examines mob-developed fear and humor (in "bad taste" or not) when personal disasters occur at "home." I'm wondering if the more passionate we feel about something, perhaps the more illogically we argue for something?

Don

[Nate the great]

@nohmi2 @desertgrandma

Guess what? I thought some of the jokes were funny. The people who wrote the jokes thought they were funny. The site hosts think they were funny. You two are not the be-all and end-all of good taste. Get off your high horse.

I didn't post the jokes becuase I knew most people wouldn't like them. Had I known I would be yelled at for simply posting a link, I would have.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

@nohmi2 @desertgrandma

Guess what? I thought some of the jokes were funny. The people who wrote the jokes thought they were funny. The site hosts think they were funny. You two are not the be-all and end-all of good taste. Get off your high horse.

I didn't post the jokes becuase I knew most people wouldn't like them. Had I known I would be yelled at for simply posting a link, I would have.

I thought some of them was funny also. I think not accepting joke about an event is negatively correlated with how willing you are to think critical about it or how willing you are to analyze the event and look at it from different perspectives.

[yvanleterrible]

This proved my point.

Bad taste is in the memory of the listener.

If we think 9/11 jokes are in bad taste, just cross over to an other continent and you'll hear street people laugh and applaud to the same jokes.

[smurphy]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

This proved my point.

Bad taste is in the memory of the listener.

If we think 9/11 jokes are in bad taste, just cross over to an other continent and you'll hear street people laugh and applaud to the same jokes.

what would you do if the invaders came in, taking you whatever you had, and kicking whatever was important to you ?
Always check the other side's view first ...

[astra]

I will not even read them.
You cannot joke about 9/11. It was and in a sense still is a tragedy. I would send anyone who thinks it is funny to live 1 year with people who commmitted the crime...
It is like jokes about holocaust...

[tompe]

Here is an interesting article discussing this:

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/News/911doniger.html

The philosopher Ted Cohen writes that "laughter is an acceptance of the world, like god's laughter," standing the doctrine of lila on its head; but he also writes that "joking is almost always out of place when it is a kind of avoidance; a laugh should not be a deflection from something else that needs to be done."[26] Here we must again distinguish between the use of humor and masquerade as a temporary repression of reality and as a way of working through reality.[27] Black humor is designed precisely to uncover the naked truth, however painful that flaying may be. Terry Southern reported a conversation he had with Stanley Kubrick about Dr. Strangelove, in which Kubrick told him that he was going to make a film about "our failure to understand the dangers of nuclear war." He said that he had thought of the story as a "straightforward melodrama" until one morning when he "woke up and realized that nuclear war was too outrageous, too fantastic, to be treated in any conventional manner." He said he could only see it now as "some kind of hideous joke."[28]

Gallows humor presents us with a world that is hopeless but not serious. After September 11, many people whose initial, quite understandable disinclination was never to get into an airplane again, overcame that nervousness by saying, to themselves and others, "If we stop flying, they win." This formulaic statement became so common that Chicago's Second City comedy troop developed a sketch in which a "clay arts" teacher insists to his depressed class, "If we don't glaze our pottery today, they win,"[40] while the producers of Fox's MADtv rejected a stronger version about "sleazy lawyers declaring that they should defy terrorists by living their lives normally and so it was their patriotic duty to sue their mothers."[41] I want to say, if we stop laughing at our own tragedies, they win. But if we can laugh in the face of the bullies who would destroy us, then we have won. To do this is to say, "Your grim, humorless world is not going to destroy our fragile world of self-mockery. We can still mock ourselves, and you. You are not going to get us. We win." The situation is hopeless but not serious, and, if war is play, peace is all that is serious.