Line between comedy and racism?

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"Stupid is what stupid dose."

It means that an intelligent person who does stupid things is still stupid. You are what you do.

The line is a blur and can be in different places for different people. Sadly, Adam Sandler crossed the line from comedy to anything but comedy a long time ago. I am not too surprised that he managed to be that offensive, which that was in my opinion.

Goken wrote: The line is a blur and can be in different places for different people. Sadly, Adam Sandler crossed the line from comedy to anything but comedy a long time ago. I am not too surprised that he managed to be that offensive, which that was in my opinion.

Another question is, will he keep the stuff in the movie? If does then he cares enough to correct a mistake.

If he doesn't then...he is what he is...and has to live with himself.

Given how much grief he has given the Jewish over the years, especially that he is one, it is not as if he pulls punches in regards to himself or his own ethnicity.

Personally, I like Adam Sandler movies.

I remember in regards to watching comedy, of any kind, which to say what is or isnt is extremely subjective, but some will take offense and others dont.

So where does the real racism lie?

You cannot control how someone will take anything you say of do, and truly, if you look at older movies and how indians were potrayed, it is not even as bad as that and obviously, in regards to the names, etc, it is obviously not serious.

Why is it these days, everyone has an agenda stick up there butt?

Perhaps you may not like Adam Sandler, or his work, but that is different than to anything here is racism.

I mean, when coming to work on a movie, you dont do so uninformed, so if they had a problem, why go in the first place?

Quinten Tarantino makes living off using Blackplotation, and lets not even get into Django Unchained. He caught some fair heat from some names in the celebrity black community, but ultimately, his movie made money and I am sure a fair amount of the people who contributed were African-American, if the word black is too offensive, which doesnt bother my black friends who refer to themselves that way.

Lol, I remember one time, we were exchanging racial insults in what we all thought was an obvious joking manner and someone took it upon themselves to be offended for them.

Everyones just gotta relax, its not always an issue, and I found it educational to learn all the racial slang used for White/Non- Hispanics

In my eyes the line between comedy and racism doesn't exist.

After all, who decides what is offensive and what is funny? That would be the listener. All the comedian can do is try to guess what his audience will think is funny.

So, what's funny?



-What's Funny by Bo Burnham

May the Force be with You,
Rai

i use specific human conditions as contextual basis for making fun of all human absurdity

when i tell a joke that has a particular "group" as a punchline - in my mind the particular group is merely a subset of the larger group "human" which include me

its important in personal development to be capable of breaking ones allegience to convention

breaking free of the social structure is a mandatory step within the individuation process

and this requires a healthy sense of irreverence

once the individuation has been achieved however, there also comes a part of the developmental process where one has to recognize the value of convention as an amalgam of social agreements which are made FOR GOOD REASONS

and with that recognition one engages in the process of sort of calibrating themselves to the convention in a deliberate way as a free thinking individual who willingly resepects the status quo to the extent that it does not actively impose itself on the individual in an overly restrictive way

basically there is a line to walk between ones own "right" to free speech
and ones desire just to be an insulting self important jerk in a way that is disguised behind the veil of humor

exactly where that line exists for any of us is kind of psychic space which is constantly evolving

First, I'm generally with Patton Oswalt in saying that all comedy is good. In fact, I love it when a comedian is blatantly racist or misogynistic, because then I know who he really is. If someone stays in the shadows it's harder to see them for what they really are - in Adam Sandler's case of course this has never really been an issue: he's always been a piece of shit.

You don't think comedy needs to walk a line in terms of who it attacks or what it represents though? Hmm. I'd say that the line was described pretty damn perfectly here by a Navajo named Alison Young who was working on this film. "I didn't want to cry but the feeling just came over me. This is supposed to be a comedy that makes you laugh. A film like this should not make someone feel this way."

Here's a clip from a piece Patton Oswalt wrote on a subject very close to this - rape jokes:

"See if any of these sound familiar:

There’s no “evidence” of a “rape culture” in this country. I’ve never wanted to rape anyone, so why am I being lumped in as the enemy? If these bloggers and feminists make “rape jokes” taboo, or “rape” as a subject off-limits no matter what the approach, then it’ll just lead to more censorship.

They sure sound familiar to me because I, at various points, was saying them. Either out loud, or to myself, or to other comedian and non-comedian friends when we would argue about this. I had my viewpoint, and it was based on solid experience, and it…was…fucking…wrong.

Let’s go backwards through those bullshit conclusions, shall we? First off: no one is trying to make rape, as a subject, off-limits. No one is talking about censorship. In this past week of re-reading the blogs, going through the comment threads, and re-scrolling the Twitter arguments, I haven’t once found a single statement, feminist or otherwise, saying that rape shouldn’t be joked under any circumstance, regardless of context. Not one example of this.

In fact, every viewpoint I’ve read on this, especially from feminists, is simply asking to kick upward, to think twice about who is the target of the punchline, and make sure it isn’t the victim. "

That's exactly what Adam Sandler and his ilk do - they make the victim the butt of the joke. They're not in it to try and illuminate anything more than their own vapid egos and restrictive little viewpoints. I think "dark side" humor can be a really good, positive thing. It can be a way to deal with things that happen in our world which are otherwise too massive in scale, or simply too troubling, to touch otherwise. They can be a way to level the playing field and allow everyone to gain a glimpse into the dark world they've been afraid to look at - because again, if something is blocked off from sight you don't know where it's going or what it's doing, and you can't arrange any defense against it. I've never made a rape joke, because on several fronts that's too close to parts of my personal reality, especially in several women I've known and cared about. But I've made jokes about death and murder - including mass murder. Made jokes about animal cruelty. Appreciated jokes about racism even - because sometimes you just have to find a way to comprehend and deal with the fact that racism really does exist, and it has damaged and utterly destroyed not just individual lives and families, but entire ways of life and entire continents of people. So you don't think that this discussion is "worth having"? You think that the only point of comedy is "to be funny"? Well I've got news for you. Words hold incredible power, and laughter holds even more power, and what a comedian chooses to do with those tools says a whole hell of a lot about the comedian - and a whole hell of a lot more about the people who are laughing. Keeping in mind that there's a difference between "HAHA stupid indian's name is BEAVER" and that nervous laughter that comes from facing the uncomfortable truth that some people will say anything if they think they can get away with it, simply because they really believe what they're saying. A rape joke can be made to combat the suffocating darkness of the issue, or to spur on conversation, and that's fine. But it can also be made by a comedian for an audience that honestly see's nothing at all wrong with it, and will violently defend what they see as their right to see rape as normal. If this discussion is too damn confusing for you, maybe you should take a moment and think about just who you want to be, and who you are, way deep down inside.

I was pretty appalled when I read the article from Indian Country Today. This quote had me rethinking ever watching anything with Mr. Saddler ever again.

"The examples of disrespect included Native women’s names such as Beaver’s Breath and No Bra, an actress portraying an Apache woman squatting and urinating while smoking a peace pipe, and feathers inappropriately positioned on a teepee."


Im pretty thick skinned most of the time. I get a good laugh as much as the next person. I loved the Native portrayals in movies such as Maverick with Graham Green as the chief, Duddley Do Right, Wagons East, heck I even laughed really hard in Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles.

My husband laughs hysterically when someone calls me his squaw. Is it right? No. But my husband also knows his wife can kick some serious @$$ and if she was offended she'd let them know it. We can laugh sure, but what Mr. Sandier was trying to/is going to do is wrong.

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/04/23/native-actors-walk-set-adam-sandler-movie-after-insults-women-elders-160110

I think Adam Sandler has been around for some time now.

His method of comedy is well known.

Indians working on a Adam Sandler movie, one which again, they are obviously informed on, kinda makes me less than sympathetic to any sort of offense one may have.

It has nothing to do with ego, or his viewpoints

Comedians often make jokes out of things that arent there viewpoints.

You though, have, and then have offered an ultimatum of sorts, and so who is then the one who is caught up in there viewpoints?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTuT7D8VnMo

.

“But when a wrong, no matter how flagrant, has continued for a long period of time, people get habituated to it, and it becomes difficult to rouse them to a sense of their duty to resist it, and no less difficult to convince the world that it is a wrong at all.”
— Gandhi

i usually say "dont be offended" and i still stand by that
but
i belive adam sandler is being an ass
and i KNOW its possible to be funny without being DELIBERATELY insulting

some things are really funny and it just happens that they can be taken as insulting

but some things are essentially insulting, and every now and again they just happen to be packaged in a way that might be funny

I'm probably not the best person to ask this to as my buddies and I at work often try to come up with the worst "cut-downs" we can think of to "burn" one another. Childish, yes. But we laugh uproariously and get a huge kick out of our own cleverness. This is all in a jokesy, goofy environment as there really is no harm meant by our comments to each other: we just try to get a reaction and then laugh at ourselves.

When someone is seriously trying to insult me (which has happened you'll be shocked to know), I don't hang around them. I don't choose to associate with them. I don't get angry with them, i just walk away to do my own thing.

It's kind of how I feel about this question about comedy and racism: if you don't like it, by all means don't support it and use your Force-given rights to preach and campaign against it. I encourage it if that is your passion!

But don't tell me I should be offended by it, too. I'll choose what I want to be offended by

Comedy is comedy. Racism is racism. The line is subjective, and which side of it you stand on usually depends on how willing you are to be offended.

I'd be interested in examining why comedy writers feel the need to add satire based on race in the first place. What is the goal of it? Some people believe that making light of serious situations shows that people can laugh at themselves and others.

There is something to be said for having a certain reverence for a culture that is different from your own. You can debate the context of the joke ad infinitum but from the article it sounds like half of the disagreement came from sloppy, inaccurate set designs and names.

At least the movie is making some strides by bringing in cultural experts and appropriately responding to the concerns of their Native American actors.