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2011-03-21 08:32:31
By Jon Kelly BBC News Magazine
Tasteless tweets about the Japanese tsunami have landed celebrities in trouble.
So what makes people tell sick jokes about terrible disasters?
Have you heard the one about the tsunami that killed thousands of people?
If not, someone might have told you a gag about the threat of nuclear meltdown.
Or any other horrific event that happens to make the headlines.
Death, destruction and widespread devastation may be the unfunniest subject
matters imaginable. Yet for some people they make up a comedy sub-genre.
Sick jokes have a habit of springing up in the immediate aftermath of any
catastrophe, and modern communications mean they are heard by more people and
closer to the event than ever.
Gilbert Gottfried and 50 Cent Gilbert Gottfried and 50 Cent have found that
their sense of humour is not universally shared
The rapper 50 Cent and the US comedian Gilbert Gottfried have faced an
onslaught of criticism after joking on Twitter about the tsunami that has
caused devastation in Japan.
The hip hop star was upfront about setting out to offend. "Some of my tweets
are ignorant," he wrote. "I do it for shock value. Hate it or love it. I'm cool
either way."
Gottfried - who had previously come under fire for joking about 9/11 shortly
after the attacks - could not afford to be so sanguine after he was fired by an
insurance company who used his voice in adverts.
Nor are they the first public figures to face such opprobrium. Football pundit
Rodney Marsh was sacked by Sky Sports in 2005 for making wisecracks about an
earlier Asian tsunami.
Continue reading the main story
A gag too far?
military
after the tragedy
Billy Connolly was roundly condemned for joking onstage about the death of Ken
Bigley, the British hostage killed by his captors in Iraq, Jimmy Carr was
attacked for material involving amputee British service personnel and Frankie
Boyle faced widespread criticism after a routine about the Cumbria shootings.
Of course, it is not only professional comedians who are responsible for this
type of humour.
Following any disaster, deeply offensive gags swiftly proliferate around
playgrounds, workplaces, pubs and, of course, the internet.
The website Sickipedia, which prides itself as "the world's best collection of
sick jokes", proudly displays dozens of user-generated contributions about
Japan.
Text messaging, too, means that some people can now expect the first off-colour
SMS to arrive within hours of any disaster.
Veteran comedian Barry Cryer says that he has long been "fascinated" by sick
humour.
Continue reading the main story
Start Quote
Barry Cryer
It's entirely normal that people want to laugh at times of tragedy
End Quote Barry Cryer
He insists that, although those cracking such jokes may be children in the
playground or saloon-bar braggarts advertising their cynicism, making light of
terrible events can be an entirely understandable coping strategy.
Observing that medical professionals and the police have always been known for
their gallows humour, he believes black comedy helps us make sense of
occurrences that would otherwise be painful and upsetting.
Indeed, Cryer recalls being approached by one young man who had recently lost
his mother to cancer and asked the comedian if he knew any good jokes about the
disease.
"It's a natural reaction," he argues. "It's entirely normal that people want to
laugh at times of tragedy.
"All that's new is that in the past you'd have to wait until you got to the pub
to hear these jokes. Now they're on your phone as soon as the disaster
happens."
Psychologist Dr Linda Papadopoulos worries that sick humour's popularity is
symptomatic of an unhealthy culture which has been desensitised to the
suffering of others.
"One of the reasons we laugh at tragedy is that it makes the enormity of the
issue easier to deal with," she concedes.
"But we do live in a society where tragedy has become something that we've
become conditioned to laugh at."
Continue reading the main story
How soon can you joke about a disaster?
Stephen K Amos
Stephen K Amos, comedian
"Unusually for comedy, I don't think this one is really about timing.
"It's the context, content and intent of a joke that are important.
"It can't just be cruel, it can't just be laughing at the victims. Anyone can
do that.
"All you have to do is speak to people caught up in disasters. I was in
Australia recently and my routine about the Queensland floods went down well -
it was about them triumphing over adversity, not about their suffering.
"The needed laughter as a release. They didn't want people tip-toeing around
them."
Any fan of Peter Cook or Bill Hicks will attest that dark humour predated the
internet, however, and none other than Sigmund Freud addressed the topic in his
1927 essay Humour (Der Humor).
In it, the father of psychoanalysis argued that sick jokes were the mechanism
by which the ego "insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the
external world".
His analysis is shared by Dr Oliver Double, an expert in comedy at the
University of Kent who believes that tackling offensive subjects can be a very
effective tool of satire as well as a form of therapy.
For instance, Dr Double was in the audience for Connolly's Ken Bigley routine
and argues it was a carefully-argued attack on media prurience rather than the
opportunistic swipe at a family's tragedy it was portrayed as in the press.
But he has little time for performers who set out to do no more than shock -
and worries that the internet makes it harder to distinguish well-intentioned
satire from cheap nihilism.
"A comedian like Stewart Lee is fantastic because he takes on difficult
subjects in a way that is very challenging but is also, ultimately, extremely
principled," Dr Double says.
"When you think about someone like Frankie Boyle or Jimmy Carr, the appeal is
basically: 'I'm going to say the worst thing I possibly can.' I find that a bit
tiresome, to be honest."
And when it comes to subtlety and nuance, Dr Double notes, 140 characters makes
life difficult.
Below is a selection of your comments.
I think we have to take a view that either everything can be joked about, or
nothing. As soon as humour is censored, it's the thin end of the wedge.
Curtailing any form of expression towards the lowest common denominator is the
1st step to the complete erosion of freedom of speech and civil liberties.
Humour may seem banal, but it's still an important outlet.
Edward B, London
Jokes about any type of tragedy come from unhealthy, insecure, narcissistic
people. Just like 50 Cent said, he did it for shock value. It brings the
attention back to him. Anyone so insensitive that they lack compassion for
someone else's loss needs help.
Chase, Pittsburgh, PA
Telling jokes about disasters and tragedies is an expression of defiance. A way
to say: "We are not cowed or overwhelmed by what is happening."
Elwin Tennant, Halstead
For a person who has close family living in Japan, its not even remotely funny
to hear offensive stuff being said about Japan right now.
Anon,
When I was a pallbearer for my late brother, I joked about the tune to carry in
his coffin into the funeral service. The tune I remembered? He Ain't Heavy He's
My Brother. It helped to joke about the event as otherwise it would have been a
nightmare of a day. The joke helped lighten a desperately sad day for myself
and my family.
Paul G. Chapman, Mapperley, Nottingham
Text, Twitter and Facebook etc have a lot to answer for, it is the "say
something without care or consequences" attitude that is not right. If you
wouldn't say it to someones face, why say it? It just shows a total lack of
respect for those more unfortunate than ourselves. And if the so-called
comedians had respect, they wouldn't say it either.
Carl, Haverhill, UK
I served for 19 years in the UK military. I completly understand the dynamics
of sick humour as it predominates in the armed forces and is, in fact,
intrisnic to it. Life is complex, short, unpredictable, and really, quite
pointless in many ways. Who wouldn't want to laugh about it?
Garry Harriman, Labrador, Canada
If someone you knew who had just lost a loved one sat down opposite you, in say
a cafe for instance, you would not begin to mock their loss. Lets be real, it's
a case of choosing good or bad behaviour and should not be justified with
psychology jargon. These are real people who are experiencing real pain, they
should be given the space to grieve for goodness sake!
Floyd Woodcock, Bedford
I grew up in an occupied country during World War II. I'm convinced that black
humour was the one thing that kept most people going.
Renee Deutsch, The Hague, Netherlands
The only people who have been making these horrible jokes are people not
directly affected by the earthquake and tsunami. Jokes about tragedy is healthy
coping when they are made by the victims. It is incredibly narcissistic to make
someone elses devastation all about you and your coping.
Sun Yi, USA
It's the ones who would censor humour that make me more determined to laugh
about things like this. I have no intention to hurt anyone, but I'll be dammed
if I'm going to be told what I can and can't joke about.
Big Bad Man, UK
Never in all my experience of people telling sick jokes after a tragegy such as
this have I ever thought they were telling it as a way to deal with the
"trauma" (a word too often tossed about in relation to people who are a bit
upset)... they told it because they are ignorant and unable to care or
empathise with the people who are suffering.
John, Preston, Lancs
From the small selection of highly opposing views already shown on this page,
clearly some people love dark humour to help handle their grief whilst others
hate it. So perhaps it's best to keep these jokes to the pub or playground
where you can gauge your audience's reaction and pull back if it's clear you're
hurting someone, rather than sending them to all and sundry on the internet.
Ruth, Bucks