On the "Grinding Buttons and Pushing Axes" panel, briefly

[mrissa]

We forgot to discuss an important time when extremely overt message is fine:

When it's really funny.

This is the same principle as when we were sitting in the college cafeteria howling with laughter (on dozens of occasions), and somebody would manage to gasp out, "That's really mean." And somebody else would say, "Yah, but it's funny." And on we'd go.

Really funny doesn't excuse everything. But on the flip side, really funny doesn't have room for everything within it, either. A simple-minded "you suck you suck you suck" is hardly ever really funny.

Okay, back to it.

Comments

[atdt1991.livejournal.com]

Say hi to eposia and skzbrust for me! ;)

(it was weird to see two people on my list referring to this panel!)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Con reports! Yip!

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Hm. I'm with you 100% on the overt message business.

My tolerance for mean-but-acceptable-because-funny has gone way down over the years, in the same way my tolerance for --ist but funny has gone down. If it's, "I would have agreed with this but felt a little edgy because it was mean," then "really funny" can definitely tip the balance. But when it's "I would be seriously bothered by that," "really funny" doesn't help - I laugh, and then end up resenting having laughed at something that bothers me.

Overt messages really funny, on the other hand, not a problem. I'm a Pratchett fan, after all.

[aedifica]

Thank you. That's how I feel, but I haven't had enough sleep that I would have been able to say so. I do enjoy "funny though a little mean," but I also resent having laughed at something I find too serious to be funny. (I wonder if that's related to the popular perception of feminists not having a sense of humor? I do consider myself a feminist, and there are heaps of things I do find funny, but there are also the things that sober me up in a hurry because they're important enough to me that I don't want them misrepresented, even for the sake of a laugh.)

I can't be quite as sleepy as I thought if I remembered to close that parenthesis, though!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Do you think that humor about serious subjects always involves misrepresentation?

[aedifica]

No, but the more important the subject is to me the more likely I am to close down my sense of humor just to make sure nothing important is misrepresented. I don't think it has to be that way, but that's the way it is for me right now. Which is not to say that I don't greatly enjoy *some* humor related to subjects that are important to me. For example, how many Pagans [I'm Pagan] does it take to change a light bulb? Six: one to change it and five to sit around complaining that light bulbs never used to burn out before those damned Christians came along. (This makes me laugh because it's sadly too true in some circles.)

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Hmmm; yes.

Humor is short-form, and short-form treatment of serious subjects nearly always involves misrepresentation -- at least the sort of compression that actually changes the meaning of the data, even without evil intent.

I am not opposed to humor on serious subjects, but it's often edgy to people with some positions. I'm most comfortable with jokes that make fun of the funny bits, fringes, or glitches in my own positions, rather less with that actively making fun of entire positions. Jokes that capture one narrow aspect sometimes work for me -- even fairly nasty ones (the punchline "That's not funny!" comes to mind). I do not pretend to be entirely fair-minded or objective; and contrariwise and counterpoint I find things funny sometimes even when I see that they're unfair and nasty.

[aedifica]

I agree about the distinction between jokes about an aspect versus jokes about a position, but it's not something I had ever noticed. Thanks for pointing that out. And yet, thinking it over, I'm not sure where I draw that line--though I'm pretty sure it's there. This will bear further thought.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

This sounds like part of what you're thinking of is the "I was only joking!" defense. Which I find quite annoying, and do not accept. I find some hurtful things funny, but if I make (or laugh at, at least publicly) those, I have to own the hurt.

I *can* find something funny and be offended by it at the same time. I think it tells me something about values when I hit those occasions.