arebelspy wrote: ↑June 13th, 2020, 2:32 pm
People certainly are harmed by joking about police aggression and their murder of black people, and making it more standard as something for us to laugh off and accept.
(I had started some comments about the soviet joke, infantilization, and my tongue in cheek comment on omission of characteristics from the list but I think that's pretty minor stuff compared to notions of what any of these jokes are actually
promoting or not)
There's a difference between a joke being "about" something and a joke mentioning something on the way to a comment about something else entirely, like the two original jokes do (or sometimes not really focusing on a comment, but rather being driven by wordplay like below). There's a difference between laughing
at a joke that
mentions something and
laughing off something mentioned in a wider context as if it isn't bad or isn't important.
arebelspy wrote: ↑June 13th, 2020, 2:41 pm
AdmiralMotti89 wrote: ↑June 13th, 2020, 1:33 pm
Years ago, I beat up my high school bully with a baseball bat. Both of his arms were broken.
Come to think of it, that's probably why I felt brave enough to beat him up.
That joke "ties into" bullying. But it would be quite foolish to say it's encouraging bullying or countering bullying with violence, for example.
Why exactly is that "quite foolish"? It seems exactly like it promotes violence to deal with bullying.
Those jokes no more "normalize" and "perpetuate" bullying or violence than the other two jokes "normalize" and "perpetuate" aggression or racism. What makes them funny isn't actually about bullying at all.
Right, what makes them funny is the unexpected twist in the punchline. Setup, pull out the rug. Just because it isn't the bullying that makes them funny doesn't mean they don't also encourage or promote it.
It sounds like you're saying that a person telling that joke is making a literal prescription for behavior, as in "I beat someone with a bat, go now and do likewise." "Promote" is a strong word. In my opinion, not only does it stretch the notion of plausibility, but also the notion of possibility that a person
saying that joke is
actively encouraging people to commit violence, It's the same stretch to think that a remotely sensible person would hear that joke and think beating people with a baseball bat is more acceptable than before they heard it.
The joke with the bat didn't make me think beating someone with a blunt object was any more acceptable than before I read it. I would guess it didn't do that for you either. Neither of the two original jokes made me think what happened to George Floyd was any less terrible, or any less unacceptable. I would guess it didn't do that for you either (I would be quite concerned about the moral fortitude of anyone reading those jokes who somehow took away the absurd notion that his death was not a big deal after all. That says a lot about the person who changed their mind, not about the joke or who told it). Perhaps instead of commenting on (much less diminishing) the injustice of what happened to George Floyd, the jokes might actually be commenting about the
attitudes of people toward current issues, specifically covid.