― goole, Wednesday, 16 May 2012 14:48 (1 year ago) Permalink
you know what's conservative, that recent run of Mark Twain Prize winners. God Almighty.
I'm less bothered by the "conservatism" of the picks as much as the fact that the last three have been relatively young. Mort Sahl's not going to be around forever.
― Carrie Antwoord (jaymc), Wednesday, 16 May 2012 14:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
They want to make their picks "relevant," ie translate into a TV special. And Sahl would rant against Obama, we can't have that.
― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 16 May 2012 14:56 (1 year ago) Permalink
can't believe I missed the part where contenderizer explains lolcats
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 16 May 2012 17:37 (1 year ago) Permalink
the best thing about the internet is that i'm still doing it and will be forever, you only have to scroll back a little...
― The term or title antichrist, in Christian theology, refers to (contenderizer), Wednesday, 16 May 2012 17:40 (1 year ago) Permalink
http://www.suck.com/daily/97/11/07/index.html
― s.clover, Thursday, 17 May 2012 02:51 (1 year ago) Permalink
friend who is starting a feminist comedy troupe yelled at me for this kind of thinking btw so i retract it
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 16:33 (9 months ago) Permalink
huh, what was her line?
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 16:34 (9 months ago) Permalink
the psychological/physical rupture of a joke or gag, the very impulse to laugh, can be seen a model of the incompleteness or rupture of any system. not utopian but a spasm of happiness in a hard world etc maybe?
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 16:38 (9 months ago) Permalink
(not speaking for this person, just thinking about this again)
ergh i'm trying to think of a word that's on the tip of my tongue... social/lit theory about 'irruption' or a holiday, but it can't last. dammit my brain is fried right now. jubilee? that's not it
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 16:39 (9 months ago) Permalink
she was basically like, that is just the argument *entrenched comedy interests* make to excuse their sexist/racist/conservative jokes, and there's a way to be funny that could be loosely characterized as progressive. and then she used a joke a female comedian told in her presence about relief that a random street harasser called her fat and didn't rape her as evidence. (obvs not funny the way i've related it, but presumably funny in the actual delivery.) i don't know; i didn't argue further about whether that kind of joke still has a reactionary/conservative/whatever the fuck i think i'm talking about vibe, because i felt like a jerk doing it when she was so excited about the feminist potential of comedy. also i feel like i can't possibly be right; it's just too sweeping of a thing to think.
xxp actually i bet she would agree with that!
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 16:41 (9 months ago) Permalink
carnivalesque?
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 16:42 (9 months ago) Permalink
jouissance?
― contenderizer, Friday, 17 August 2012 16:47 (9 months ago) Permalink
like in barthes?
― contenderizer, Friday, 17 August 2012 16:48 (9 months ago) Permalink
CARNIVALESQUE!
yeah. shit.
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 16:49 (9 months ago) Permalink
bakhtin is all right as fucking assholes i had to read in graduate school go
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 16:51 (9 months ago) Permalink
oh i know all this stuff second- or thirdhand at best
it is a rule of thumb of mine not to trust people or institutions that don't get a joke (that doesn't make the opposite rule true tho)
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 16:53 (9 months ago) Permalink
we need to draw a line between "doesn't get a joke" and, "'can't take a joke?'"
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 16:54 (9 months ago) Permalink
i h8 people who try to make jokes
― lex pretend, Friday, 17 August 2012 16:55 (9 months ago) Permalink
A lot of conventional humor is based upon staid, conservative social stereotypes, such as the cartoons about women posted near the top of the thread by Abbott, but it is important to note that such 'establishment' humor rarely, if ever, provokes open laughter. Such jokes are similar to the plastic models of food that are sometimes displayed in the front windows of restaurants to give prospective patrons a more visceral idea of what is on the menu. They provoke recognition, as in "I can see this is a joke, because it is formed like one", but nothing more.
Real laugh-until-you're-crying-and-weak humor is never conservative.
― Aimless, Friday, 17 August 2012 16:55 (9 months ago) Permalink
i love you lex
xp
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 16:55 (9 months ago) Permalink
i am also pro people who can't take a joke because to me they are standing up for their DIGNITY and that is one of the most valuable things that a human possesses
― lex pretend, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:00 (9 months ago) Permalink
conversely making a joke at someone's expense is an attempt to take away that dignity and is inherently cruel
which is fine when you WANT to be cruel obv but you really can't take offence at someone not wanting to take it
― lex pretend, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:01 (9 months ago) Permalink
"take a joke" and "get a joke" are absolutely different qualities
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:02 (9 months ago) Permalink
the lex walks into a bar
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, 17 August 2012 17:03 (9 months ago) Permalink
i think goole was talking about when assholes say, "can't you take a joke?" after they've said something cruel/gross/horrible?
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:03 (9 months ago) Permalink
"what's this music that's playing?" he asks the bartender
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, 17 August 2012 17:04 (9 months ago) Permalink
"bob dylan," the bartender replies
"IS THIS SOME SORT OF JOKE," shouts the lex
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, 17 August 2012 17:05 (9 months ago) Permalink
precisely!
lol xp to hs
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:05 (9 months ago) Permalink
would lol @ a book of "a lex walks into a bar" joeks
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:06 (9 months ago) Permalink
i was thinking about this thread during the whole tosh rape-joke thing
― max, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:07 (9 months ago) Permalink
yeah my friend basically started her troupe because of the tosh "joke"
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:07 (9 months ago) Permalink
i thought a lot of the response that was kind of stupid. i dunno, all the liberal writers trying to like set up rules about "here's how to make a funny rape joke" and analyzing why tosh's joke was "bad" and this other rape joke is "good"... it was so
― max, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:09 (9 months ago) Permalink
ime ostensibly "progressive" or lefty comedy is maybe even more repulsively conservative than the dad jokes and stereotype-reinforcing unhumour that's the obvious subject of this thread
― lex pretend, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:09 (9 months ago) Permalink
the defenses of tosh were even stupider, obviously
― max, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:10 (9 months ago) Permalink
i had to drop out of the internet temporarily when the tosh joke happened...i can't really talk about it rationally tbh
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:10 (9 months ago) Permalink
no, progressive comedy was the subject of this thread! or comedy that's created with an anti-racist/anti-sexist intention but somehow seems to reify racist/sexist stereotypes unintentionally. or whatever.
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:12 (9 months ago) Permalink
"ostensibly 'progressive' or lefty comedy" isn't really what i'm talking about
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:13 (9 months ago) Permalink
what i really wanted to read was a kind of *historical* account of comedy & its relationship to transgression, like a "genealogy of comedy." a lot of the discussion was weirdly ahistorical, like this sense that stand-up is the purest form of comedy and not form that has its own culture and rules and history (culture and rules and history that lean really heavily on the bill hicks-doug stanhope-sam kinison damaged-man resentful misogynist archetype)
― max, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:13 (9 months ago) Permalink
haha i mean i guess what i wanted was someone to write the "Standup Comedy Sucks" article but no one did. i shouldve
u should write a genealogy of comedy nietzsche style
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:13 (9 months ago) Permalink
bob hope invented standup. it's not that old.
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:14 (9 months ago) Permalink
i was thinking about how most of the latest wave of successful women comedians have come out of the improv world. & the structural differences between improv and standup that might lead to cultural/political differences
― max, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:15 (9 months ago) Permalink
write it max!!!!
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:15 (9 months ago) Permalink
― goole, Friday, August 17, 2012 1:14 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
well, yeah, this is what i mean? the whole tosh discussion seemed to be identifying "standup" as this pure form of Comedy, like the Form of Comedy whose rules had been handed down by the ancients. instead of as a 50 yr old "art form" that has its own insular and generally p shitty culture
― max, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:16 (9 months ago) Permalink
― Aimless, Friday, August 17, 2012 9:55 AM (18 minutes ago)
wish this were true, but it just isn't. lots of people laugh their asses off at the most conservative comedy imaginable.
― contenderizer, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:16 (9 months ago) Permalink
http://www.suck.com/daily/2000/08/22/
"The Road to Vietnam" ranks with Bob's funniest work, if only for its sheer Brechtian blast of unreality in the midst of nightmare. You can almost hear Brando's Col. Kurtz whispering under the laughs, "The humor ... the humor ..."
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:16 (9 months ago) Permalink
lollll
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, 17 August 2012 17:19 (9 months ago) Permalink
i can't stop laughing at that
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:20 (9 months ago) Permalink