In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Too Soon?”

Can anything be funny, or are some things off limits?

There isn’t an easy response to this question, because there are so many variables involved that it’s simply impossible to state with certainty that “X is always okay to joke about, Y is never okay to joke about”.

There are certain topics that are commonly accepted as being “taboo” for joking about, but even these have contexts in which they’re appreciated or even welcomed. Jokes about AIDS, 9/11, rape, cancer, disabilities — all of these are fair game in the right context, so part of it is a matter of knowing your audience and determining whether or not now would be an appropriate time to deliver that zinger you’ve had brewing in your mind for months now. By the same token, of course, one person’s completely inoffensive, “safe” subject matter might be shocking and offensive to another person — this is a particularly hot-potato issue when it comes to anything involving religion.

Just to complicate matters, whether or not a joke is “appropriate” for a particular context isn’t simply a matter of “don’t make jokes using a subject that is personally relevant to the person you’re talking to”, because that ignores the existence of “black” or “gallows” humour, whereby humour is used as a means of coping with difficult, even horrific things. Just because someone has AIDS, say, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t joke about AIDS with them, though naturally your relationship with that person should be at such a point whereby you’re absolutely sure they won’t mind you making a joke about AIDS with them. To simply make a joke about one of these “taboo” subjects without establishing whether or not your prospective (and perhaps unwitting) audience is okay with you is insensitive, and can leave you looking like a complete asshole.

Aside from this consideration, though, I honestly don’t think that anything is particularly “off-limits” for comedy in general. I personally wouldn’t pepper my own conversation with words like “faggot” and “nigger”, but there are people out there who do, and manage to be genuinely amusing — i.e. not just provoking shock value — in the process. Louis C.K., for example, does a great bit about the words “faggot”, “cunt” and “nigger”, which tend to be regarded as the most awful words in the English language, at least in part due to the baggage that at least two of them carry from history.

And I say that I wouldn’t pepper my own conversation with words like that; I mean I wouldn’t pepper my own conversation with words like that if I was with people that I didn’t feel particularly comfortable being offensive with. When I’m with my closest friends, meanwhile, all bets are off; we hurl the most hideously offensive insults at one another while we’re playing games or just hanging out, but none of us mean any of them, nor do the things we say reflect the way we actually feel about issues such as racism and homophobia — it’s simply something we do to let off steam when we’re around each other. Modern society — particularly these days — is so concerned with the appearance of propriety and not offending anyone that it can actually be quite liberating to just let rip with a string of the most awful, horrible, disgusting things you can think of when you’re in an environment where it’s safe to do so. It is, of course, when you start taking those words seriously or using them in inappropriate contexts that you need to take a bit more of a look at what you’re doing.

So my answer to the question, then? Yes, anything can be funny, given the right context. Nothing is off-limits — or nothing should be off-limits, anyway. Because if you can’t laugh at awful things, the world would be a very depressing place indeed.