[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I think it's worth remembering that making jokes -- successful or
otherwise, tasteful or not -- about painful, unpleasant, disgusting,
and distressing situations is a normal human response to those very
situations. The famine in Ethiopia, the Challenger disaster, the
schoolhouse massacre in Lancaster county -- just to name a few. All of
them were subjects of humor not long after they occurred.
And if you do the research and go look at the material in Joe Miller's
Joke Book (1738), or the stories told by Chaucer's travelers to
Canterbury, or those from Boccaccio's "Decameron", what'll you find?
They're making jokes about equally painful, albeit more personal,
situations like unfaithful spouses.
It's a coping mechanism, a way of deflecting the pain and stress and
horror of events that are outside one's control...and also a way of
saying to the uncaring universe that permits such things to happen,
"Fuck you! Despite this, I will survive!"
The human race has been doing it for centuries, and is unlikely to
stop now.
And one of the finest examples of this principle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txj-t1mDOVA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41L2Tl0bJ4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjJ_Gy1gOOU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CfpWQFRpJA
(Ir's an episode of a mid-1970's situation comedy, and perfectly safe
for just about everybody.)
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