Sick Jokes
I watched ‘Ricky Gervais: Science’ shown on Channel 4 on Friday, and I’m not quite sure how this comment sits with me. See the clip (taken from an American recording of the show, 11 minutes in) or just the quote I picked out:
“When we tell a sick joke it’s with the expressed understanding that neither party is really like that. I wouldn’t tell a sick joke to a known peadophile. ‘Here mate, you’re going to love this more than anyone!’”
The party telling the joke
I’m a big fan of Ricky Gervais and his creations with Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington. I find him to be very smart, thoughtful, up front, and willing to stand up for his convictions. I don’t take offence to much he says because I can see the angle it’s coming from. It’s said out of true character, either a character like Brent in The Office or the father in Cemetery Junction, or in conversation in obvious pretence for the purpose of humour, as we all do too. However, without the caveat of knowing/believing that somebody is genuinely decent and intelligent, it can simply be offensive. It can be acceptable for Gervais to push/cross a boundary because, as he states, there is an expressed understanding he’s not really like that. When people copy or think that the point is to say shocking/rude/hateful things, and haven’t established that they are doing so with any intelligence or good-natured purpose, that’s just plain offensive.
The party being told the joke
There are two different types of audience:
1) in a public forum, such as an audience watching a comedy show. In the example Gervais uses, how does one know there isn’t a peadophile amongst the audience? The larger the audience gets, up to millions on TV, the less understanding you have of the party you are addressing.
2) in person. Similarly, how do you know that the person you are talking to isn’t a perpetrator, or indeed victim, of peadophilia? People who tell jokes relating to someone’s race will take into account the sensativity of the subject when telling the joke to someone who is of the race in the joke’s subject. You can take it into account because the person’s race is usually visibly identifiable. But other subjects often at the centre of “sick jokes” – such as child abuse, rape, disability, illness – are not things you could easily identify the person you are talking to as being affected by. Even with someone you are well acquainted with, you cannot safely assume they have never been affected by something personally or through someone known to them.
Gervais says that these are the subjects, not the victims, of his jokes. Where they are the victims, it is being said out of character, as I described previously. However, I don’t think everybody understands the distinction between his characters and self, and those that re-tell such jokes often do not have the intelligence or indeed chance to distinguish their own character from what they are saying. Furthermore, the joke itself has to be especially well formed for it to be appreciated by somebody adversely affected by the subject, and if it’s not it’s really not worth taking the risk telling a lazy joke to get a cheap laugh when it may unwittingly be received by someone who will be upset or offended by it.
This is not to say at all that taboo subjects should not be broached and that everything should be kept as broad and safe as possible. Far from it. It’s nonsense to say we don’t have prejudices inside us. It’s far better to acknowledge that those prejudices exist and show that we don’t believe them to be true. Gervais and Merchant do this excellently, and I would say they are quite groundbreaking in UK culture. In The Office, Brent and Gareth say the wrong things and Tim is the voice of reason. In Extras, Andy and Maggie try to avoid an issue and end up in a more uncomfortable situation when it comes out than if they’d just openly acknowledged a difference to be superficial and unimportant in the first place. However, at times I think Gervais overplays this card in his stand-up and the laugh is at the joke of itself instead of any juxtaposition or greater purpose for telling it.
