the awesome/terrifying freedom

last night i watched a bit of tv brilliance on the trio network that perfectly ties into the 'rent-a-negro' site i linked to. this network needs to be in every household in the country. check out 'uncensored comedy,' a series that looks at why we find some forms of comedy humorous, offensive, and/or both.

we watch as comedians deliver the most offensive jokes they know, while blue-screened behind them is newsfootage of the actual event they are joking about. it's a brilliant juxtaposition, erasing the usually required 'distance' between an event and the humor associated with it.

for example: over footage of a special needs elementary school class, a voice says "what's better than winning first place in the special olympics? not being a retard!"

i laughed. i admit, i laughed hard. then felt shame. well, a little shame. then the program immediately switched to a social analyist who deconstructed my exact reaction and traced it to an entire line of humor based out of superiority. aids jokes, gay jokes, jewish jokes, and polish jokes come from this same place.

the deconstruction was just as fascinating as the experience of analyzing my own reaction to each joke. did i laugh? did i groan? did i go "ooh. that's bad."? why? there were a lot of world trade center jokes - "how did customers at windows on the world order their food? burnt beyond recognition." "how long did it take people to get from the top of the WTC to the bottom? the rest of their lives."

the program rehashed the christa macauliffe jokes that troublemaker kids in my 4th grade class used to tell. i remember giggling under the jungle gym with a kind of secret defiant glee. "how do we know she had dandruff? cause her 'head and shoulders' washed up on the beach."

it was interesting to learn that tragedy-based humor was not prolific before television saturated our society. it is only after images are played over and over again, coupled with announcers telling us how to feel about it did we start the subversive rebellion of tragedy based humor.

the hate based humor was the hardest to stomach. i found the anti-jewish auschwitz jokes totally unfunny - "how many jews can you fit into a volkswagon? 15. 2 in the front, 2 in the back, one in the trunk, and ten in the ashtrays." my god. which made me question why i had laughed so hard at the special olympics joke. i'd like to think that it's because there's a fundamental difference between a hate joke and a superiority joke - but it's chilling to think that someone out there in new york city had just heard the auschwitz joke and was laughing his ass off. i guess it's all about perspective, distance, and social positioning.