What Is “Offensive” in Comedy? A Complex, Messy Question

Of course the question comes up, among comedians, audience members, entertainment industry executives, journalists and whoever else- what makes something too offensive in comedy? What constitutes going too far and breaking through the wall from comedy to hate or incitement or just causing gratuitous harm with words? The answer is nuanced and complex and requires some elaboration.

First of all, what is meant by “too offensive”? If one is talking legally, such a transgression is rare. The First Amendment is broad and allows for most speech, no matter how seemingly distasteful or controversial. Comedians can run into legal trouble for slander- defaming a real person- but such is very rare, even among cases of a comedian getting castigated for offensive content in a bit.

While the law is rarely the issue when a comedian crosses lines of public outrage and offense taken, what's a lot more common is consequences regarding the comedian's financial bottom line. In many cases, comedy clubs, TV shows, movie productions and other companies with which the comedian is involved are contractually free to drop the person in question from paid work. And the public can turn on the comedian, exerting a social or even economic force, which can secondarily cause those other financial dominoes to fall. Scathing columns and blogs may be written. Accusations of prejudice and hate may be thrown around. The experience can be very unpleasant for the comedian and for those who feel that they were on the receiving end of the comedian's destructive words.

And then there is just the issue of what is “right,” as judged by those with a firm grasp on such philosophical matters, or the comedians themselves. Many comedians- perhaps most- do have a sense of decency, of ethics and morals, regarding the effects of their word when on stage. Often times, in the pursuit of laughs or transcendence beyond the conventional way of approaching an issue, an otherwise respected and non-malicious comedian can say things which cross a line with regards to sex and gender issues, race, ethnicity, religion or other sensitive subjects. The joke may be taken as injurious or hateful. One of the big immediate questions is context.

Context Is Sometimes Everything

What is considered normal in a “clean” environment- a corporate show, a church, a PG-13 comedy club, a family restaurant- is very different from what is considered normal in a dark, late night comedy club. In the standard full time comedy club, comedians are given a tremendous amount of latitude regarding their acts. Even more so if the act is very successful or famous. Explicit sexual references and pointed mentions to race and other demographic divisions are considered acceptable and are even lauded- as long as the material is met with laughs or at least focused silence. When a comedian starts getting groans and boos, looks of disgust on patrons' faces and complaints grumbled allowed, that is when the comedy act ceases being effective, or taken as “comedy” in the desired sense.

Often times, in the societal debates about a comedian's allegedly “offensive” bit, those commenting are so removed from the context, the parameters of comedic language, it's as if they were scouring the words of pirates or kindergardeners or cyborgs, yet applying the standards of acceptability of common every day middle America. Comedians are often celebrated in our culture because they defy the everyday, acceptable discourse, in order to shock us into hearing a fresh new perspective, or make fun of existing prejudices, or even just to get cheap laughs. The question for me is, are the comedian's words specifically and purposefully hateful? If you removed the comedy context, could the bit in question be considered a vile insult or fighting words? Comedy that just dishes out personally held bigotry is, to me, not effective comedy. And arguably not comedy at all.

Sometimes a comedian may be able to explain and justify their potentially offensive words and show how their intention is not to cause psychological harm, or even physical harm, were listeners to go out and act on an emotion riled up by the joke. Thus becomes a fine line. I believe that if a comedian can be shown that a comedy bit of their can quickly lead to real hatred and negative effects in the world- no matter how uproariously funny it may be to crowds- he or she should consider the mission of an artist and entertainer, which all comedians are, and weigh out the destructive force their joke could be spreading as opposed to the potential benefits.

Does any comedian need a joke so bad, that causes repercussions of bad feeling in the minds of some listeners? Might it be better just to remove that bit for the sake of the overall act and not causing easily avoided contention? I would generally argue in favor of removing the gratuitously offensive bit and offering an explanation if not an apology, unless the bit addresses a deeply held conviction that makes a valid political or other point and strives to right a perceived wrong in the world, and not just to victimize a demographic of people that may already feel persecuted.

Whatever the exact line that you or I or anyone else may agree upon, one one hand I believe that standup comedy should not be purposefully, specifically hateful. I believe that ethnic jokes, for instance, can be funny and make for good comedy if the jokes A.) poke fun at stereotypes in such a way as to lessen the burden of hatred and accusation, not increase it, and B.) are evenly, fairly spread around to various groups, the way that expert 'insult comedians' do. When in the context of a known insult comedian's act- say a Lisa Lampanelli or Don Rickles- or a Comedy Central Roast, almost no one takes a word spoken in a serious, emotionally impacted way. These settings are a sort of safe de-sensitiziation chamber into which crowds immerse themselves to hear the nastiest stereotypes and ethnic slurs delivered in a more superficial, entertainment value manner, so that there's a wink and a caricaturing going on, a meta-comedy rather than something taken as dead serious and hateful.

Comedy In Different Settings & Situations

When custom writing funny personalized speeches for my clients, I always ask upfront for the general tone or sensibility of their audience. With corporate or business audiences, I assume it will lean toward the cleaner and more tame, with sexual, ethnic and other hit-button topics off the table, but you never know for sure. There are some workplaces that want to get loose and wild and trust that the level of tolerance (or appreciation) for such is pretty much unanimous. And I have had clients for birthday or wedding speeches who wanted to the jokes to be very soft and extremely safe, lacking in any edge. The bottom line for me, is respecting and accommodating their needs and desires, a standard to which I think professional comedians would also be wise to adhere.

I ask my clients to rate the sensibility of their audience on a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being Disney cartoon, squeaky clean, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and 10 being HBO comedy special, Comedy Central Roast, Andrew Dice Clay. I have had wedding roasts and birthday speeches where the client was afraid of jokes poking fun at the honoree (which is what roasts are about) regarding relatively run-of-the-mill, down-the-middle topics, and on the other extreme I've had some very ribald and irreverent clients (often in New Jersey, for some reason) who want me to go as harsh as anything you'd hear in a basement New York comedy club at 1am or in a conversation between ex-Navy SEAL truck drivers sharing a bottle of vodka round a campfire. Whatever the appropriate context, I strive to make their audiences feel joyous and at ease and I aim to make it laugh out loud hilarious, with whatever tools I'm given to work with.

Comedy is fundamentally linked to freedom of language, and some transgression, at whatever level, is almost inherently required to make a joke. As I sometimes tell clients who want to play it extremely safe with every reference and detail of every joke (thankfully, these clients are very rare), you have to break some eggs to make an omelet. That's the nature of a joke. Technically, there is a “victim.” But that doesn't mean it's offensive or hurtful. The recipient of the joke could be laughing the hardest.

What I'm able to do, when the need occasionally arises, is pull back the subject matter and the severity of the punchline so that even the most sensitive honoree can easily laugh along with everyone else, no matter any perceived sensitivities. In these cases, the joke is not “cutting to the bone” and hitting on some core issue about which there may be great embarrassment.

Much more often, though, the clients, the honorees and the audience enjoy jokes which carry a slight sting and bring some impact with the punch. After all, there is no greater tribute or display of bonding than to playfully include someone in a very funny joke.