I realize there are brands of comedy out there that people don’t find funny for one reason or another. Being someone who saw and experienced dark things as a kid, I have a dark sense of humor, and it’s a sense of humor that some of my friends and family don’t get and other members of my friends and family absolutely do.
Some people find it funny or grotesque what one man finds inappropriate. The jokes doctors, nurses, military members, and police officers tell each other would make others believe they’re heartless. They’re anything but that, but humor allows them to deconstruct and deal with the massively unpleasant things they go through. It’s necessary to whistle in the dark when you’re in the dark quite a bit.
It’s all about perspective. Everybody has their own taste in jokes, just as they like different types of ice cream.
But let’s get a little analogous for a moment.
Let’s say that there are people out there who don’t like ice cream at all. It is something they hate and think anyone who consumes it is terrible. Of course, oddly enough, they come out with their own brand of ice cream and you quickly find that it doesn’t taste good at all. It’s bland, flavorless, and in a way, it almost tastes like anti-ice cream. You’re expected to like it, and people will go to great lengths to make it seem like it’s the greatest ice cream the world has ever seen. If you don’t like it, you’re just a bad person and made out to be a social pariah. It’s easy to remember when you had a wide range of flavor options. Without it, the world would be less interesting.
To make up for the lack of ice cream lovers, some brave and fed-up people create icecream. The flavors get a bit wacky, but they’re beyond delicious. The ice cream haters, of course, pull out all the stops to try to make these people stop making the ice cream, but it’s just so popular that they fail to stop it. Their non-ice cream has a small rabid fanbase, but for the most part, the pressure to make their ice cream popular through force isn’t having the effect it once did.
These raving fans of non-ice cream have begun throwing unproductive tantrums as their power wanes. Tantrums which fail to materialize and lead nowhere.
That’s effectively what’s happened in the world of comedy. The social justice and woke activists, for years, have tried to make comedy less funny, and more political friendly commentary. Laughter was to be replaced with “clapter,” a form of audience approval given to a “comedian” who made leftist-approved political commentary in a humorous tone.
It was a while before there was any great comedy.
The woke dominated culture. The approval process for most art was strict and had to meet a certain standard. Many comedians gave up telling truthful jokes for safe and watered-down paths. Was it safe? Anything the left deemed safe was okay to have fun with. Feminists could have fun with men and were often funny. White people are something that every comedian is able to make fun. The jokes could be made about any other group, but that was not the case for most others. The jokes about gays, transgendered persons, Democrats and women were too much.
However, people grew tired of this and the threat posed by the mobs became less and less frightening. People began to seek out comedy that actually made them laugh at the parts of life we weren’t supposed to.
Before we knew what we were looking for, Dave Chappelle came along and released a comedy special called “Sticks and Stones” on Netflix which defied the woke’s rules on what comedy is. It had people laughing at things they weren’t supposed to according to the left, and for that, the people loved Chappelle and gave his comedy special rave reviews. It was loved by everyone who watched it. Even though it received negative reviews, the audience still enjoyed it.
Chappelle would repeat the act, this time drawing a bigger response with Netflix workers protesting and demanding more. While it did generate some media attention, the love of Chappelle’s comedy poked fun at the things we weren’t supposed to was too great. Eventually, the outrage fizzled out and the people who thought they could intimidate others into compliance found they didn’t have the power they thought they did and gave up.
The anti-comedy folk attempted to answer with their own comedy and while the media did their best to promote it, no one wanted this bland style of “clapter” inducing nonsense.
That’s because woke comedy isn’t meant for laughter, it’s meant to make a point you have to agree with or else. It’s a reinforcer of sacred cows, but that’s not what comedy is. Comedy is a deconstructor of sacred cows, or as I like to call it, the “great societal disinfectant.” It makes you laugh with and at things, especially things that you’re not necessarily supposed to laugh at.
Comedy can take something that would normally be dark and make it lighten up. You might like one type of comedy, but you might like another. You have a wide range of options to choose from. Each flavor lets you look at your problems from a different perspective, making it easier or less frightening.
What I’m trying to say is that Hannah Gasby isn’t funny.
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