I had unknowingly primed myself for the 8 o’clock show at the Comedy Cellar just a few minutes prior to the start of the event. Around 7:55 p.m., I coincidentally came across a sticker stuck onto the back of a street sign.
It read:
“Dear Comedian,
Stop using racism & sexism as a crutch for your comedy. Get more creative. It ain’t that funny…
Lovingly,
Cuntrol”
I chuckled at the snarky sentiment, but the weight of its message really began to set in as I sat inside the comedy club.
The lineup for the night included comedians Judah Friedlander, Michelle Wolf, Nick Griffin, Lenny Marcus, Modi Rosenfield, Gadel Maleh and Cipha Sounds.
Rosenfield, a New York City based comedian, delivered a joke on the subject of political correctness during his set. He described his struggle of trying to stay “PC” by replacing certain politically and socially charged words (ex: “white” or “black” with “African American” and “Caucasian”) with less racy terms.
Though lighthearted in nature, his joke sheds light on a growing trend in which audiences are seemingly becoming “addicted to the rush of being offended.”
When defending Trevor Noah in a 2015 article in Time, Jim Norton said, “Western culture as a whole has become an increasingly reactionary mob of self-centered narcissists who all have their own personal lines drawn in the sand.”
“A comedian is fine unless he crosses their particular line, which, of course, in the mind of a self-centered narcissist, is the only line that matters,” he continued.
The issue is only amplified when technology is thrown into the mix. The very nature of an offensive joke means it’ll either be a hit-or-miss with the audience. When a “miss” is taken to an open platform, like Twitter or Facebook, it’s easy for a comedian to become a target of public crosshairs.
A recent debacle between Kevin Hart and a Twitter user serves as an example:
In an effort to appease an increasingly critical audience, some comedians have decided to filter the content of their gigs, while others, such as Patton Oswalt, continue to argue that the heightened level of sensitivity may hurt “the progressive movement in this country more than anything.”
“…one of the best weapons against conservatism is satire and offensiveness and bad taste...,” Oswalt said in an interview with The Daily Beast.
While this ongoing debate surrounding comedians won’t cease anytime soon, most people at the Comedy Cellar seemed to share a relatively neutral standpoint on the subject.
“I think you can make those jokes, but the key is to tell them in good taste,” stated one patron. I think it all depends on who is telling it and how it’s delivered."
Sources:
1) time.com/3766915/trevor-noah-tweets-outrage
2) thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/06/patton-oswalt-on-sith-lords-and-fighting-conservatism-with-satire.html
