Steve Bryant wrote:It would be the most boring-ass comedy club in the world if the comics had to adhere to the rules this board is espousing, with jokes fit only for Reader's Digest or the back page of your Sunday School bulletin. Give me offensive any day to the sanctimonious crap I am reading here.
I hear you, but it's about being
funny.
George Carlin was funny and clever and offensive. Mincing about pretending to be a flamboyant homosexual isn't
clever comedy. It's crude, it's easy and it's cheap.
Andrew Dice Clay, not funny. Just shouty.
Sadowitz, rude, not funny.
Be as offensive as possible. But remember to be funny too.
Interesting bit from the guardian about this subject:
I will never forget the very scary moment I experienced at a stand-up gig a few years ago. A man in the front row had made the mistake of telling Scott Capurro, high priest of bad taste, that he worked in child protection.
"Do you put the kids to bed at night?" Capurro asked. Yes, the man said he did. "Do you help them put on their pyjamas?" Yes. "Do you ever stroke them a little, just to say good night? Do you ever, you know, want to do a little bit more ...?" By now the man had stopped answering. The laughter had been replaced by tense silence. But Capurro prodded ever onwards, his victim growing more red in the face. I remember bracing myself for the violence that seemed about to break out at any moment.
What Capurro was doing was obvious to everyone in the room. He did not really believe that the man wanted to abuse the children in his care, he was only suggesting as much because it was the most dangerously tasteless thing he could think of. As well as being funny about Islam, paedophilia and the Holocaust, Capurro was asking us all an important question: am I allowed to say this?
It is the question that it has always been comedy's job to ask. And though the likes of Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor and Jerry Sadowitz have never ceased to chip away at the boundaries of taste, the last decade, in particular, has been a golden age for the comedy of offence. South Park, the Office, Sacha Baron Cohen, Extras and Little Britain have all thrived by turning taboo subjects into mainstream entertainment, while the likes of Capurro, Brendon Burns, Stewart Lee and Doug Stanhope have provided some of the stand-up circuit's best, and most dangerous, laughs.
And yet, for the first time, I find myself wondering whether the offensive comedy boom might have run its course - not because it is going out of fashion, but quite the opposite: because everybody's doing it. Graphic sexual descriptions and mockery of sacred cows are now so de rigeur among new acts coming through that many of them seem clearly quite uncomfortable with their own lines. Some themes, about which one supposedly cannot talk, seem to be almost compulsory. For instance, I have lost count of the number of shows I have seen this year (it is certainly the majority) which make fun out of the Madeleine McCann case.
As a result, even the more polished performers are suffering. Though Jim Jeffries has clearly not lost his power to shock - he was attacked on stage in April by a man who took offence at his remarks about paedophilic grandparents - the shocks he delivers this year have lost most of their power to make me laugh. Brendon Burns, whose act I have loved in the past, has built his whole show around the idea of offensiveness. So weary of the subject have I become, that I don't think I am going to go.
I should stress that I have no problem at all with supposedly tasteless gags. On the contrary, I fear I may have enjoyed them too much over the years. It's just that every joke has a sell-by date.
Eras must end, and new ones must begin. Indeed, what greater sign of success can a comic wish for than seeing the taboos he bashes start to disappear? "You have to be so careful what you say nowadays," said Scott Capurro at the end of his act, having avoided violence by a whisker. Perhaps soon, because of his act and others, we will all be able to speak a bit more freely.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatre ... offensivec