Rowan Atkinson: ‘In a proper free society, you can make jokes about anything’
irishtimes.com
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The safety net of a failed joke is that it doesn't mean very much. Putting authoritative rules in place to prevent a failed joke makes it so much worse when a joke doesn't land, or accidently offends, because now it "shouldn't have been allowed in the first place" and the public senses a disruption in their own control over the world.
Just let jokes go people, they don't matter and that's the gorgeous, beautiful truth we can share together. The network effects of treating jokes like they have authority and governmental consequence is deeply unpleasant for everyone, except a few political groups which benefit.
There are social consequences to making certain kind of jokes. Like there always have been? But which kinds of jokes and what sort and degree of consequences are changing.
You can have an issue with that and resist it, but the mechanics of this institution are not new. These unspoken rules about who can say what and what will happen if you transgress them are the invisible infrastructure of social connection and ultimately society. The rules are changing fast and by different players than is traditional, but the fact that there are rules and consequences for violating them is as old as us.
Should they not have fought and won those victories? Should they have remained in vaudevillian repertoires only?
Your comment has an extremely sinister tone, I’m not sure if that was intended.
It literally illustrates my point? I don't like people making bad jokes about "people like" me, but in about 45 seconds I'll be over it.
Disobedience in intolerable.
Slavers are antithetical to truth, and vice versa.
SPEAK THE TRUTH.
It’s clearer to me if framed that way, what’s being complained about.
Everyone angling to be framed as the victim or deprived unjustly.
What actually worries is the cancel culture of lunatic lynch mobs continuously attacking people contacting their employers and trying to get them fired. I think good solution for this is to mandate real names and identification details in such contacts and then make each and every communication public. Thus opening chance to at leas civilly prosecuted these monsters.
Cancel culture isn't new, it only seems different now because the internet has created one giant market where there used to be many independent ones. When a comedian made an ethnic joke on TV, most people never heard the criticisms from the people being made fun of, their criticism stayed within their community. Now everyone can see everything. It was never the case that everyone laughed at all the jokes. The difference now is that we can actually see the people who aren't laughing, and that feels like a downer. You can tell any joke you like, but you aren't guaranteed that everyone will find it funny. Welcome to worldwide two-way communication.
Cancel culture indeed has always existed. But when John Ashcroft covered up the nude statues in the DOJ we made fun of him.
The less powerful have been "canceled" for decades, not just in the US, but everywhere. How many courses on Marxism/Communism do you see in US academia? In the meanwhile, US colleges have entire departments dedicated to Capitalism (Business school). In the Soviet Union, the opposite was true. (For the record, I'm extremely pro capitalism, and to the extent I criticize it it's because I believe that it can get better, whereas AFAICT, other economic systems have largely failed except in very specific and limited scenarios).
I was under the impression that was a bad thing. Are we saying it's not longer a bad thing if it affects other people? Or is it more a type of schadenfreude?
At least three from top tier universities [1][2][3], but probably many, many more [4].
> In the meanwhile, US colleges have entire departments dedicated to Capitalism (Business school).
The idea that communism or leftism is 'cancelled' in academia very unfounded, and one of the chief complaints by the right and points-of-pride of the left.
Business is not capitalism, and vice versa. Trade and the creation of companies happened well before capitalism was an idea. Likewise, business schools study the mechanism of business and its applications (eg. accounting, finance, HR, strategy), which can take place outside of capitalism.
[1] https://history.rutgers.edu/academics/undergraduate/course-d... [2] https://pll.harvard.edu/course/china-part-9-communist-libera... [3] https://polisci.berkeley.edu/course/selected-topics-comparat... [4] https://www.google.com/search?q=communism+university+course+...
Now we never hear people say this.
However I do think the younger generations are trying to tell us all that emperor has no clothes. I also think we are swinging too far the other way, where every detail of oneself is used to define our place in society, as evidenced by the proliferation of intersectionality in our culture.
Anyway, my point is that both cultures have distinct but different ways of approaching the hierarchy of power but both (arguably) going too far in “protecting” the lower in the social order. My fear is that this has the (hopefully) accidental side effect of reinforcing that very social order. The idea the “elites” need to make rules and laws to “protect” the non-elites is just way to paternalistic for me. For those being protected, it is easy to internalize the protection as being necessary to defend against an intrinsically unfair society. For others, it can “confirm” their belief that those being protected are intrinsically lower than themselves.
My overall point is that well-intended acts have undesirable consequences and the pace at which we move is faster than the pace at which we can account for these outcomes.
What does it mean to live under an ideal? Since "class migration" is so difficult, what is this meritocracy getting us that's relevant here? Why would we act within the context of something that we don't actually have?
> as evidenced by the proliferation of intersectionality in our culture.
Could you go more into that? I only know of intersectionality as an analytical framework, I'm not sure what it would look like for a culture to express it. But maybe you're talking about something else.
> The idea the “elites” need to make rules and laws to “protect” the non-elites
I have seen very very few if any expressions of a desire for laws to enforce these changing social standards. Mostly what I see is the general idea that expressing some ideas should come with social consequences. There is a growing american movement to use the state to directly ban certain forms and subjects of speech but I don't think there's much overlap right now.
> My fear is that this has the (hopefully) accidental side effect of reinforcing that very social order.
Treacherously close to the good old "the ones talking about racism are the real racists!" don't you think? I'm not trying to attribute that intention to you, but predicting that attempting to address an inequality will actually make it worse is a classic rationalism-lite technique to dismiss legitimate calls for change. If something is wrong it should stop; lack of a validated better alternative is not itself a good enough reason to resist its change.
What it means is that the narrative we tell ourselves is that society rewards hard work, no matter who you are. This is _prima facie_ not reality. But narrative is powerful at defining our sense of self. As such, a culture that sees itself as a meritocracy, whether it is or not, may not see that there _are_ systemic issues preventing the ideal from being reality. It is the whole "Americans all see themselves are temporarily disgraced millionaires" or some variation on that theme.
> Could you go more into that? I only know of intersectionality as an analytical framework, I'm not sure what it would look like for a culture to express it. But maybe you're talking about something else.
Academic analytical frameworks make their way from the academy into the the governments and corporations that define our social condition. What it looks like in society is the belief that a) "otherness" is additive and b) people internalize the belief that "otherness" is an inexorable aspect of oneself and thus will never allow them to succeed.
It also informs our language in how we discuss these things. Lantix being a term that a vast majority of hispanics do not accept or even want. BIPOC being a term that attempts to be inclusive but inadvertently groups many disparate peoples into a single monolith, when their challenges and cultural are not monolithic. These terms did originate in the academy and they do inform the conversation we have around Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (another term from the academy)
> The idea the “elites” need to make rules and laws to “protect” the non-elites
I said _rules_ and laws. We do have rules, corporations make rules about what can be said on social media. Yes, some of these are very important, some of them may be overreach. But what can't be argued is that there are rules being developed with the intent of protecting specific individuals and groups.
> Treacherously close to the good old "the ones talking about racism are the real racists!" don't you think? I'm not trying to attribute that intention to you, but predicting that attempting to address an inequality will actually make it worse is a classic rationalism-lite technique to dismiss legitimate calls for change. If something is wrong it should stop; lack of a validated better alternative is not itself a good enough reason to resist its change.
Nope, not at all. I _never_ stated or even implied that we shouldn't talk about racism. I am not rejecting calls for change. I am not saying that the rules and mores we put in place are necessarily destructive. What I _am_ saying is that much like the narrative of "the USA is purely meritocratic" informs our view of self and thus how we express ourselves, the idea that "the USA is fundamentally, systemically and intrinsically racist, sexist, homophobic or transphobic, and being in one of those groups means you will always be 'other'" can inform an internalization of that belief which can server as a means to reenforce the flaws in our society.
I 100% believe that things that are wrong should be fixed. I believe that where systemic racism does exist it needs to be removed. In some cases, like the Voting Rights Act (which was disappointedly repealed), this is done via _de jure_ laws. It can also be done through a (albeit more slowly) concerted effort to change opinions via education, outreach and normalization. For an example of this, I am very confident that, given the same Supreme Court balance as it was at the time Obergefell was decided, the decision would have gone the other way if adjudicated in 2000 or 1995. By the time Obergefell was decided gay marriage was supported by an even or majority of Americans, that was not the case in the early 2000s. This was accomplished via many slow things, such as increasing number of people being "out" and thus humanizing the discussion for those who had never been exposed to the concepts. Another example that I hope to see is that abortions continue to be legal, but becomes generally un-needed via the introduction of more comprehensive and reality-based sex education, access to quality health-care and access to effective birth control in a confidential manner. If the Republicans had focused on _preventing the need_ for abortions vs. trying to legislate abortion, I am confident abortion rates would have fallen faster than they already have.
Anyway, the whole point of that above paragraph is that there are many ways to address unfairness, racism etc. in our world and country. We should be aware of these approaches as well as the unintended consequences that come along with those approaches. To continue the abortion thought process, I have heard it said and read (though I do not necessarily agree) that if the Democratic Party had a place for anti-abortion voices within the party that the GOP would have a hard time winning many elections. This based on the idea that abortion is a single-issue issue for many voters, and the absolutist view of both parties results in many people who would otherwise vote democrat (due to economic policies, healthcare policies etc.) end up supporting the GOP candidate.
I appreciate you not trying to attribute intention to me, or anyone, in online debates. The "assume best intention" perspective really does make room for more healthy debate without descending into chaos and tribalism.
The people trying to limit the speech of comedians aren’t the same people who are going to comedy shows usually. That’s the core of the issue. The people who don’t like comedians having free speech typically aren’t into comedy at all.
Of course, and you shall be shunned like that Black Mirror episode where the people were blurred out.
“We” aren’t just going to not laugh or not give money to “you”. No, “we” will harass, perform character assassination, boycott anyone associated with “you” and try to harm “you” financially and derail “your” career.
Such concerted harm campaigns should be outright illegal, especially when stirred and directed intentionally, as they usually are.
Our primary problem isn't that there's a bandwagon of male comedians whose whole show is crying about snowflakes cancelling them or making exactly one joke about trans people. It's that there's a ready audience excited to watch them do it. If there wasn't Netflix wouldn't keep making the specials. I'm still going to call the comedians and Netflix immoral hacks for cashing in on it, though. And I hope the cancellations keep rolling in so Netflix can see us vote no with our wallets.
I think that's what allows some people to make jokes Md others not. For example I think the Dave Chappelle stuff isn't landing very well, because he doesn't seem to understand the topic of being transgendered.
By contrast any of Rowan Atkinson's work making fun of the British elite seems so accurate and still able to find the humor and contradictions.
Dave Chapelles jokes to me are effectively anti humor.
This is likely true, but is that "punching up" or "punching down" ?
You're saying that it's "punching up" but there's an element of punching up at "those comfortable middle-class white people, with their concern for a different minority to mine, who are having a hard time and are a political punching bag, let's trash that concern" which is not entirely "punching up", now is it? It's punching down by proxy.
Quite, the gay or trans people are not the target, just collateral damage, but never mind them, who cares about them anyway? I don't think that you have a solid argument here.
I'm pretty sure Chappelle's joke have landed extremely well, which is why he is so reviled by those who find themselves the butt of his jokes.
Anyway, as Voltaire once said "To find out who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize."
Also, Chappelle is black.
I imagine it's something of a structural feature, not something we could do away with the right policies or education.