That's Not Shock Humor- You're an Asshole
You don't know what shock humor is.
You don't! When I say shock humor, you think Daniel Tosh. You think that kid in your improv class who keeps saying "faggot". You think Jew jokes. When someone tells me that they don't like a local standup because "they only use shock humor" I know that what they really mean is that that comic uses a lot of offensive content. And as much fun as it is to act superior to people who use offensive content in their comedy, classifying what they say as "shock humor" contributes quite a bit to the continued creation of offensive material masquerading as comedy.
Calling rape jokes, taboo words and insensitivity to the less privileged "shock humor" immediately canonizes it- it's accepting in a whole lot of baggage, and saying "yeah, this is something comedians are allowed to do."
Let's imagine for a moment that I have recently found out that I have throat cancer. I go to a hospital, and they say "Oh, goodness, yes. We can help you with that!" I then enter an operating room, lay down, and am ready for surgery. A doctor comes in in his long coat, gloved hands and masked face, takes a scalpel and stabs my leg. When I start screaming that I'm going to sue him, everyone tells me that I don't have to like his particular methodology, but he is a surgeon, and that was surgery.
If this analogy seems inept, then consider that other people are not you.
When you are performing for people in any capacity you are doctoring them- you are trying to show them how they should think and act, what's appropriate and what makes sense. You should be making people feel better when they leave than when they came in- you should show them that from a different perspective, things are better. When you get on stage to make people laugh you're showing them what should be outside of their experience- the absurd, the impossible, the outrageous- the tragedy so tragic it makes their life look like a walk in the park.
When you show a scene of a woman being beaten by an abusive husband, you aren't showing something that doesn't happen, and the very fact that you consider this outside the realm of possibility, in the arena of the absurd, shows the distance you have from the people in this situation. And then, when someone who has been abused comes to your show looking to forget about their shitty day, you take out your scalpel, promise to help them, then stab them in the leg.
And what happens when someone is offended by a rape joke, or sexism, or an unnecessarily violent abortion you acted out? The overwhelming majority of comedians take what they see as a noble, even-handed stance: "well, maybe that comedy just wasn't really your style." Listen buddy, you came for a good time and I reminded you of your childhood abuse, sorry- I'm a comedian. It's allowed.
That's not shock humor. That doctor is not a surgeon, that actor is not a comedian. That person is an asshole.
No one wants to think of themselves as an asshole, and most assholes have reasons and arguments for why they can do or say whatever they did or said. I've heard a lot of people claim that they're using a character- that the character is sexist, not them. Others claim that they're saying sexist things ironically- the humor is that they're saying things they don't believe. Chill out, man. It's not real- I would never really say that.
You just really said that.
If you make a virus that steals people's credit card numbers and banking information, then you run it, you don't get to say that you didn't steal that information. A character you create is an extension of your psyche- it is your interpretation of something. If you use a character that is unremarkable except for the fact that it's a racist and expect it to be taken as a joke, you're a racist.
Similarly, a guy saying "tits or gtfo" to a woman online "ironically" is actually not ironic. Irony is when a typical script is reversed- when the opposite of an expectation happens. A lot of assholes latch on to this and say "Right, the irony is that I would never say that, but I did say it!" Bad news, assholes: if you say something that means you would say it. If you think you're a good person and then you say a bad thing, that doesn't make the bad thing ironic, that makes you a worse person. You don't have to be in a linching to be a racist, you don't have to be a 1950s cop to be a sexist. If you say racist or sexist things, you are racist or sexist.
Assholes don't seem to grasp how "being a good person" works. You don't get a free ride because you think you're a good person. Your friends' endorsements don't make you somehow allowed to say painful, aggressive things.
Being a good person is not like being a Supreme Court Justice. You are not a good person for life. When you say or do mean or offensive things, you are being a bad person. You don't have to kill someone to be a bad person, or rob things.
You know what you call a good person who spends 5% of their time telling rape victims that they shouldn't dress like that? A bad person.
Your fellow performers might know you, and might say that since you volunteer in a soup kitchen your joke about how all homeless people are just lazy was ironic. Your director might tell you to back down a litle next time on the glass ceiling jokes, but hey, you killed it out there tonight.
The man who spent $10 of his money to see you perform and make him forget that he's going to lose his job in a week and then he has no idea how he can make ends meet was not helped. The female manager who has been passed over for promotion for 4 years was not helped. You just stabbed them in the leg, and made a whole room full of people say "your problem could never really happen and I don't take it seriously." Congratulations, asshole.
"Well, listen, those people shouldn't even be there. If you're going to be offended by every little thing then maybe comedy isn't for you."
Fuck that attitude, fuck whoever said that. That's such ridiculous bullshit.
People don't come to comedy shows because they think you deserve more money, or to feel the seats on their asscracks. People come to comedy shows because they trust that you can make them feel better than when they walked in. People want you to show them that the bad things in life are something they can laugh at, that can be trivialized. People want you to help them out because every fucking one of them has something that's worrying them, stressing them out, or ruining their life.
That is a humorist's job. You help people. You make lives better. You might not have thought about that in an academic sense, but if you intend to do comedy you need to know that in a visceral way. If someone came up to me after a show and said, "You did a scene about being locked in a basement by your parents. That happened to me." And they're hurting, that's on me.
But that doesn't happen. Is that because I'm a perfect comedian? Because I never offend anyone in a serious way? Absolutely not. I'm sure I've hurt more people with words than most of my friends- and 99% of them will never tell me, or mention it to anyone. Precious few people will tell a room full of people who are laughing, "The thing you're enjoying hurt me." No one wants to be the party pooper. But that doesnt' mean it didn't deeply hurt them.
When I was in 5th grade I had a friend who would make fun of me all the time, and I would make fun of her. We had a friendly rapport going- she would call me a freak and I would call her a whale (she was somewhat overweight), and we would go back and forth with it. It was a good time.
We weren't in any of the same classes in 6th grade, but in 7th grade we ended up being really close. We talked on the phone a lot, we weren't doing the back-and-forth any more, just venting about middle school drama. At some point in one of these discussions, she mentioned that she couldn't believe how close we were considering how much she hated me in 5th grade.
Yeah, she had hated my guts. She told me about how often she would go home crying because of what I'd said about her at school. How she'd asked her mom for a treadmill so she could lose weight because she couldn't take being called fat any more.
I thought we were friends! I was shocked, and I told her so.
Her parents had forced her to go see a therapist when they found her cutting her wrists in 5th grade. She didn't tell her parents why she was doing it, but she told the therapist- there were kids at school making fun of her.
Why didn't she say anything? Why didn't I know? I was just a kid so I must have been an idiot and boys will be boys and all of that, right?
No, not right. She didn't let anyone but the therapist know because she thought that if she showed me how much I'd hurt her or let anyone at school know, then it would only get worse. That it would egg me on, that I would smell blood.
People who you offend aren't often going to tell you that they're offended. They're going to avoid you and hate you and hate the parts of themselves you made a mockery of. Whether they're in 5th grade or 55, no one wants to be the crybaby in public. Everyone would rather hurt themselves and lick their wounds in private than take on an aggressor.
When your character casually hates Mexicans, when your standup ostracizes someone, when your skit calls rape "surprise sex," when your friends pat you on the back for pissing off those thin-skinned idiots, you are not engaging in humor. You are being a fucking asshole.
None of that is shock humor. It is not any kind of humor at all. It is a form of verbal torture, of bullying of the weak or marginalized. And convincing other people that this should be accepted into the halls of comedy is fucking vile.
Next time I'll talk about what shock humor actually is, and how to use it, because it does exist. And I will offend you with it.
Recommended Reading:
Words Mean Things by Patrick Chapin
