"Did you know that if you are still telling the same tired jokes you were telling 20 years ago with no regard to the changing social and political climate that you probably wonât get tons of laughs on college campuses? ...[But] there is nothing more American than the ability to say whatever you wantâââno matter how vile and hate-filled, no matter the social consequences, no matter how steeped in the blood of people of color, trans people, or rape victims those jokes areâââwithout having to face any criticism." - Ijeoma Oluo You can be dirty, raunchy, and talk all about the taboo. But you gotta be really freakin' good to do it well. It's why Louis CK can get away with murder (or, in the case of his SNL monologue, a heinous yet hilarious joke about pedophilia). Lazy comedy is pointing at a stereotype or taboo topic and saying "HERE IT IS." Laughter because you made the audience uncomfortable is easy. Good comedy takes a taboo stereotype or problematic topic and inverts it, twists it, highlights its absurdity, and makes us examine an uncomfortable thing up close and observe the need for transformation. Itâs easy to say something offensive and provoke a response. Itâs harder to call out the offensive thing or stereotype and make a joke about why it's offensive that simultaneously barbs, is funny, and highlights why it's problematic. An imperfect example: I was playing a game where a fellow improviser and I were movie critics who narrated/set up scenes in a movie. Then, two of our other teammates would act out that scene. For a suggestion of a genre, we received Martial Arts film. I chose to narrate the scene with a British accent, because I had no interest in the low-hanging fruit of playing up my Asian-ness. The two (white) actors acting out the scenes however immediately made the choice of coming onstage and immediately doing stereotypical Asian/Chinese accents and talking about shaming the honor of their family, etc. Itâs a fine line. There is not anything inherently wrong with their choice to play the accents. Sure, their content was stereotyping - but itâs a genre game which often leans into stereotypes of genre for bits and jokes. Audiences laugh when they recognize tropes, and accents, dubs, and white-appropriated depictions. To me however, this is really beginner-level comedy and jokes, and also fraught with the easy danger of tipping into offensive/racist choices. Weâre reinforcing expectations instead of inverting them - the comedy comes solely from recognition, not from any element of surprise or intelligent inverting of expectations. My partner narrating the scene was obviously a little uncomfortable, and made a comment questioning the âhistorical authenticityâ of the movie. This was an amazing gift that I got to jump on. Instead of pointing out how inauthentic two white guys pretending to be Chinese warriors was, I instead asserted how deeply, amazingly authentic the film was, and how it wasnât at ALL weird or problematic having two white guys play all the Chinese characters through the film. The audience laughed, and then the game of our scene became the two white actors purposefully playing into horrible overblown stereotypes, my character embracing them ridiculously, and my co-anchor playing the straight man getting more and more uncomfortable and finally rebuking the whole thing. What couldâve been a generic scene of stereotyping and bad accents instead became a commentary on appropriation of culture and how Hollywood whitewashes Asian roles. The scene couldâve just been easy humor that was laughing at a cultureâs perceived other-ness. Instead it became a commentary on how white culture consume foreign stories, then grotesquely twist it to fit white cultural understanding, standards, and expectations by inserting white characters into non-white environments. Whine Less, Write Better Jokes People who complain about "censorship" in comedy sound a lot like the people who say we are âtoo politically correctâ as a country nowadays. I call bullshit. The actual case is, we as a culture are getting to be more inclusive and aware. Weâre also spotting lazy, discriminatory humor from our comedians, humor that enforces existing power structures, that âpunches down.â Comedy has the power to change minds, to talk about the taboo, to revolutionize how things are. George Carlin, Louis CK, Amy Schumer, all buck expectations and punch up and out against power systems, against prejudices and injustices. We are not too sensitive. We are saying we're not interested in lazy humor that picks on the disempowered. Punching a little kid is easy. Letâs tackle the 2 ton gorilla with our comedy. Same thing with people complaining about having to be politically correct. Political correctness actually just means âhey, donât be an asshole and completely dismiss or insult a group of people through ignorance or intentionally hurtful words.â If thatâs âtoo much troubleâ and âstupidâ to you, then youâre an asshole. And hereâs the thing - an audience might not be able to articulate that, but we as professional comedians need to recognize that and make smarter, better, more subversive jokes. We need to step up our game. The first stand up set I ever wrote had a bit about having dogs in jars in my fridge growing up. You know, because Chinese people eat dogs. How foreign and weird! The fact is, Iâve never eaten dog; itâs not in the culinary culture and regions my family is from. But it was an easy joke and got a huge laugh every time. Iâm more than a little embarrassed by that joke. Iâm trying to evolve past that. I hope that teachers and institutions and people in positions of instruction and power will encourage players to play smarter. Itâs not censorship; itâs not political correctness; itâs playing smarter and sharper and better. Because at the end of the day, thereâs a dick joke, and then thereâs a dick joke that illustrates what male privilege looks like while simultaneously kicking patriarchal expectations in the dick.
