Words, usages, and phrases that annoy the shit out of you...

Fair enough, that!

the problem is that those jokes worked in the south but no one moving to the south is getting a primer like "hey down here ppl love if you punch down at these groups" bc the entire punch up/punch down framework is designed w/ a moral judgement in it (bc who doesn't think it's more ethical to punch up - afflict the comfortable - than punch down?) but it's masquerading as neutral performative advice.

I myself directly described it as an ethical issue and a matter of persuading people along those lines? And ime so do the people I've read on this matter, they do NOT frame it as neutral performative advice at all.

If anything disingenuously clouds the issue it's your refusal to engage with questions like this without seeing them in terms of "political correctness" and "control,'' and those only on the part of the critics. As if asserting the A-OKness of the punching-down jokes is not a political claim; as if the bully comics' screeds about ''political correctness'' are not an attempt by them to retain control.

You could just as easily ''go on your way'' and ''be honest'' by just saying ''the women and POC who brought in this language of punching-down to try and make the content and social scene of comedy less toxic and hostile to them are wrong and should all shut up.'' If that's not the position you want to defend, feel free to clarify as I have no idea how else to take your apparently very heartfelt concern on behalf of the comedians who will be shackled by this ''social control.''. (Which is sorta funny cause this whole thread is about asserting that certain language should be purged from contemporary conversation - I think we all accept that there is some valid push and pull around what we would like to hear people say, socially! God forbid it should be motivated by an ethical impulse and not just us getting IA around corporate blogospeak or whatever else.)

Like...I mean this language comes from a specific context and historical moment, which is why I found the West really helpful to fleshing out what's going on within comedy and why this would be important to people (as I am not a comedian). To me articulating that context is not ''other stuff'' but essential to understanding what ''punching down'' means and is about in 2017.

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the problem is that jokes aren't funny or not funny based on what direction they're punching. that's a misnomer meant to obscure that they can be funny or not based on the political leanings of the crowd hearing the joke. you can punch down all you want if you're punching down at the right group (like at neckbeard pepe memesters living in their parent's basement), and you can't punch up if it's at the expense of the wrong group. the honesty comes when you say "i find jokes funny when they don't upset my natural political sense of who are the victims and who are the violators in society" but framing it as a some kind of platonic rule is dishonest bc it's not true. esp since it clearly depends on the political commitments of the audience. you're confusing issues because we can talk about whether it's a rule for comedy (here are jokes you can tell in chicago vs. jokes you can tell in birmingham) or we can talk about whether ppl should censor themselves for the greater good (i.e. no matter how it plays anywhere) but they're two distinct conversations. one is pragmatic and the other is ideological. i'm ok with you making either case - i don't really care - but i'm not okay with making both cases at once and pretending they're the same case.

Did someone do that? I don't know if anyone did that.

ftr I'm ok with whatever its just joeks and ilx conversations

Yeah it doesn't seem like you guys are even disagreeing!

yes that's what happened upthread. i said that it's about who it's okay and not okay to punch and ppl argued that it's just about what is funny.

maybe i misinterpreted idk

I can't remember that but this threads been awful busy

idk Mordy, the problem, for me, is that finding those distinctions really interesting, and important to parse out, just seems irrelevant and weird in the actual reality we're living in, where the only comedians demanding freedom from this "social control" and requests that they "censor" themselves are the asshole bro comics telling rape jokes. i mean that's the actual real context in which the word, usage, and phrase that annoys the shit out of you comes from. so why die on this hill, what's so ethically important to you about making sure the lines are really clear between making a universal description of all comedy and an ethical claim about what kind of jokes people should tell?

anyway, it's like, look: nobody who says "rape jokes aren't funny, punching down isn't funny" means "no audience laughs at rape jokes, no audience laughs at jokes that punch down" - obviously tons of audiences do! comedians make a lot of money telling rape jokes! the people asserting "they aren't funny" are asserting this after having lived through being surrounded by people laughing at them. they know they are "funny" in the sense of jokes that fly in birmingham.

it seems like you're imagining them po-facedly setting it forth as laugh-getting advice - "young comic, let me tell you a trick of the trade - never tell a rape joke, they never get a laugh with any crowd, you'll be dying of flopsweat on stage!" - when ime that is never how this claim has been delivered at all. "punching down is not funny" is a shorthand for a lot of things, yes, a theory of humor that does include a set of ethical claims. if i read you right, you find that shorthanding to be offensive, or you're bothered by it being sort of sloppy rhetorically, but for me it feels like, sure, sloppy rhetoric is annoying, but if attacking it puts you on the side of the rape comedians, again, what is really motivating you to be there going to bat against the sloppiness?

slogans and mottos always compact a lot of claims together. that this one has spread and found an audience and helped people express an inchoate feeling they had about comedy is, imho to be celebrated, because it is about reclaiming comedy as a space for all kinds of groups and people. i for one cannot stand going to stand-up nights for precisely the reasons West articulates, you basically are going to get at least one creep bro dude telling nasty punching-down type jokes at some point in the program, and it's alienating and it's uncomfortable and the world is less funny for all the great comic voices that have been pushed out by this. imho.

(one thing that is funny: loss of capitalization when i switch from posting on phone back to desktop. sigh.)

i don't think it's just "asshole bro comics" who have concerns about political correctness and comedy. again if someone's argument is "rape victims have suffered enough for their sake let's just not make jokes about rape" i think it's a very sensitive + empathetic argument (tho one that maybe is wrongly applied in comedy where transgressions + taboo busting are necessitated). it's an honest argument for sure. but the punching up / punching down rhetoric is not just limited to one particular case. it's a way of forcing an entire political context onto a field that should be primarily concerned w/ what makes ppl laugh, not what people + groups are okay or not okay to offend, or who really holds power in society (something that every good foulcauldian knows is a fluid + messy dialectic - not some equation that can be proven on a blackboard). what it leads to is a place where it's "okay" to "punch" cishet white men and pretty much no one else - which btw has had political consequences as well as now cishet white men are pretty sure they're a legitimate identity group w/ self-interests and idk i can't imagine how that could possibly go wrong.

again there is nothing remotely transgressive about a dude joking about rape. it is like a pledge of allegiance to established power structures. cis het white men are already pretty sure they're a legitimate identity group with self-interests (#MAGA), that is why they/we get so fucking defensive about this.

and again your claim of what this "entire field" "should be primarily concerned with" is also a political and ethical claim. i think you recognize this but you're not always writing as if you do. imho we are both advancing political and ethical claims and i think contesting those is sort of a valid thing to use language for. so this word/usage/phrase does not annoy the shit out of me.

comedy should be about making ppl laugh is some kind of claim but i'm not sure what kind of "political and ethical claim" it is. if i say that woodworking should primarily be about making quality wood products is that also a political and ethical claim? and if you live in a society where it's looked down upon to make rape jokes, then it sure is transgressive about making a joke about it. it sure as hell is transgressive telling racist or sexist jokes in particular crowds. it might not be funny or a good idea, but if there's a culture of taboo around it then it's transgressive.

Prince William making fun of 4Chan trolls. Punching up or down?

Ilx making fun of Bannon through jokes about his appearance in a body shaming way. That specific route is punching more down I think, because it probably hurts people in general more than it hurts him. And yes, I laughed at the body shaming jokes, shame on me.

Ilx making fun of Michael Flatley's appearance in a way it reflects his supposed douchiness. punching up or down?

I approve of Prince William making fun of 4Chan trolls as long as he doesn't make fun of perceived physical inadequacy or social inadequacy itself. It must be social inadequacy via douchiness.

if i say that woodworking should primarily be about making quality wood products is that also a political and ethical claim?

It is if you're defending people building guillotines on the basis that their craftsmanship is good.

if i say that woodworking should primarily be about making quality wood products is that also a political and ethical claim?

yes! of course it is! e.g. one could say, alternatively, that "woodworking should primarily be a means by which the woodworker can make a decent living" or "woodworking should primarily be a ritual of giving and receiving the gifts of nature" or "woodworking should primarily be a means of getting the greatest number of useful wood goods to the greatest number of people." or any number of other things. some of which might align, some of which might conflict. people throughout history have argued over this - ruskin, for example, would not agree with the home depot company over what woodworking should primarily be about.

anyway you didn't just say "comedy should be about making people laugh," you said it should be primarily concerned with making people laugh, which indicates that other priorities might be in play, and opens a space where one can assert "these other priorities should be given more weight, such that at times the combination of these other factors might override the concern with making people laugh." basically i think it's actually a really forceful, and not at all self-evident claim to declare what a whole field is "primarily concerned with" or "really about" or whatever.

put another way, the use of "should" moves us from a descriptive claim ("comedy is a vocation that involves people making other people laugh") to a normative or prescriptive one ("comedians should have the following priorities") and once we're in that space, it's contestable precisely around the things that go after "should," which makes it ethical/political.

This is a good discussion about the tyranny of humour

Should note that there is the dr-casino-noted origin of punching up/punching down as a concept, the aims and sentiments behind this origin, the deployment of same in idk possibly useful ways depending on yr outlook on these things then varying degrees of pureness of same thru many gyres and filters until someone of middle-class public school extraction is using it on ilx the way that Mordy describes

So there's that, too

will this infinite jest ever end

You tell us

if i say that woodworking should primarily be about making quality wood products is that also a political and ethical claim?

Feel like this comparison would be more germane if there were people out there carving offensive bas reliefs all over the tables they're crafting and defending them on the basis that the finished product is still perfect for family dinners and card games.

Feel like not tbh

hey

calm thyself

It is if you're defending people building guillotines on the basis that their craftsmanship is good.

― emil.y, Thursday, July 6, 2017 9:30 AM (one hour ago)

if they make guillotines specifically for hanging babies and small children, then they are not only great craftspeople, but they are doing the lord's work.

making guillotines to use on the nobility is beheading up, making them for commoners is beheading down

The same guillotine used for either purpose is either a good or a bad guillotine regardless

xxp look if i pay for a handcrafted guillotine and all it does is hang people, I want my money back. Heads in baskets or no deal.

It just seems weird to me that comedians are being used as shorthand to talk about what jokes are okay and what is funny. And obviously people will laugh at different things in public, in the company of strangers, than in private, with segregated groups in public being an odd middle ground.

Are most of the jokes you hear in the context of a comedy performance? I mean, I'd imagine that most experiences of humor and comedy are in the context of friends, family, co-workers - not public comedians.

What jokes are ok conversation != What is funny conversation and I'm as yet unclear as to whether either is the punching up/punching down conversation tbh

The Simpsons "punched down" all the time and its widely considered one of the funniest shows ever made so there

Richard Spencer getting punched was funny, but I think that was a straight ahead shot, not up or down

I only punch down to hit smurfs

you're not allowed to call them that.

i don't care if they're black, white, or blue ...

I believe the politically correct term is 'testicles'.

One smurf can call another smurf "smurf," but otherwise Neanderthal is right.

Only if the smurf calling the other smurf smurf is of a lower smurf caste iirc

physical abuse is never the answer regardless of how you do it and to whom you're doing it to if you ask me

lots of sexists, classists and racists on ilx tbh

no rockists though

I would punch the shit out of a rock, tbh.

Rockists need to start their own country because they are drowning in the new age with no one to save them but themselves.

What the hell is going on

Trayce otm

"it is what it is."

especially at the end of the day

"this click could change the rest of your clicks"

To be fair...