The old "it's funny - because it's not funny" routine

I have to say that my long standing dislike of Jimmy Carr is feeling pretty vindicated by the strong pushback to him trying to make some kind of joke about the Holocaust and its victims.   But is it a case of unfair, out of context, criticism?

At this link is a Youtube video of the joke and his subsequent discussion of it.  It would seem that the entire special (called "His Dark Material") is some sort of meta show about dark or offensive humour.  Here is an extract of a mixed review:

The fundamental difference between a comedian such as Carr, compared to say, Dave Chappelle or Ricky Gervais, is that you never wonder about Carr’s sincerity. He’s not trying to troll you or confuse you about his intentions. He may enjoy writing jokes about offensive subjects. “But these are just jokes. They’re not the terrible things.” He even tells a story toward the end about a charitable gig he has performed at for multiple years through Montreal’s Just For Laughs festival, performing for patients dying from cancer, and how exploring the darkest subject matter can free them and us from the most tragic of emotions.

“I feel sorry for the people that get offended. I feel sorry for the people that can’t laugh at dark s–t. Because when their life is terrible, they’ve just got to f—ing white-knuckle it.”

Now, the bit about the cathartic nature of jokes about death is understandable - but that's a case of the willing participation of the audience facing their own mortality.   

And I allow that dark humour has a "proximity" issue (in both time and place) that is sometimes a fine line that can be accidentally crossed - in Australia, perhaps even England, you might get away with a joke about a cannibal murderer in Germany in the news last year; but I doubt you're going to find any Australians yet willing to sit through a set on the Port Arthur massacre, whether you're in North Queensland or Tasmania.   And there's the example of Mel Brooks and The Producers, of course.   

People will say, in justifying Carr, that he is telling the joke because the shock value is what makes it funny: same as "Springtime for Hitler", really.

But there's a key difference here, and why it's a weak excuse for this particular joke:   everyone knows that Roma people are still seen as "a problem" to be solved in England and other parts of Europe.   Why could Brooks make an entire movie finding humour in the shock value of a modern neo-Nazi still loving Hitler?    I think it was because it both didn't reference the Holocaust itself, and at the time it was made, Jewish discrimination was a pretty much over in America - they were seen an essential and talented part of the American landscape. 

But, honestly, I find it hard to believe that a portion of the audience reaction to Carr's "joke" was not tinged with dislike of Roma people and the way they live today.   And Carr, in his post joke explanation, doesn't even seem to me give a genuine attempt at explaining that it is only ironically funny - he does say it's a "good" joke because it has educational value, but this is pretty pathetic and weak.   A significant part of his audience would know that the Nazi extermination policies extended well beyond the Jews, and even if they didn't, how does the educational aspect excuse the invitation to laugh at the group as the victims?

And let's face it, there's long been a lot of dis-ingenuousness about the ironic use of "edgy" humour - it's a good and mature thing to recognise that it has can work as a convenient cover to allow a significant part of the audience to feel their actual racism (or sexism, or insensitivity to disability) is endorsed.   (And how else can you possibly read obnoxious Joe Rogan's recently revived old clip in which he was clapping his hands in delight at a creep explaining how he forced women to give him oral sex in order to get a stand up gig.  How can you possibly interpret that as not his endorsement of the view that such obnoxious sexual politics is nothing serious?)

Yes, the "woke police" can go too far - and readers know that I find the trans community tiresomely hypersensitive on this issue.  Of course it's not even as if I believe Carr (or Chappelle) are personally anti-Roma, or anti-trans, respectively.   But that doesn't mean that making jokes that are clearly capable of being read by the audience as endorsing their worst impulses are excuseable on the basis that it's knowingly offensive, and therefore an innocent case of "funny because it's not funny".      

I note, by the way, that all of the comments I can see after the Youtube clip I linked to above are actually supportive of Carr.   David Mitchell's wife also supported him.   I put this down to an over-reaction to the alleged tyranny of "cancel culture".   But seriously, people - put some thought into what you - and the person next to you - find funny, or acceptable, in humour or entertainment.