Remember that video clip last year that was posted and re-posted all over facebook? The one where parents videotaped their kids while playing a joke on them, telling them they ate all their Halloween candy? The kids were brokenhearted or threw fits. And the parents sent the videos in to be aired on TV, exploiting their children like Candid Camera. Everyone loved it! They thought it was the funniest thing! It made me sick. Although I never posted it directly on anyone's threads, I did say so on facebook. (And I lost a friend or two that way.)
I have never understood that kind of humor. I never cared for slapstick, but the kind of slapstick I saw when I was a kid was benign. Jim Carey movies were stupid-funny. Slapstick these days has become cruel-funny. I started noticing this when America's Funniest Home Videos seemed to be based on jokes at someone else's expense. It has only escalated from there. I think there was a TV show or Movie called Jackass, featuring people purposely getting hurt for laughs. How about the recently popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid? I never read the book, but saw a few excerpts and decided it was not for my son, who I later found out, read it at school and thought it was hilarious. And when I took them to see a free movie this summer, one of the previews was for the movie of that book. My jaw dropped as I heard laughter from a theater full of children who thought it was funny when the nerdy kid got bullied or humiliated. Really? My own son who had been bullied thought it was funny? (Naturally, that lead to a discussion at home.) And I wondered how many of these kids were, or would be, onlookers who laughed when another student was getting picked on at school. Which ones would snicker at the kid who answered the question in class wrong, or missed his chair and fell when he sat down?
Recently, a friend of mine posted about a real incident in which children in England went to the movies to see Madagascar 3 but were mistakenly shown Paranormal Activity. As the slasher started, the children screamed and cried and parents rushed them out the exits. I don't think he meant to post it in jest, but the comments on it were mainly about how funny that was. I didn't find the irony funny at all. I thought it was tragic. Whether it was the parallel they saw to the shooting at the Dark Knight Rises, or simply a silly faux pas, I thought it was sick. Sure, I know people were losing lives in the former while only scaring little kids in the latter. But I bet both audiences had nightmares afterward. Why is it funny to watch people get hurt? Intentionally or unintentionally.
That night, Rex told me that kids were late to school that day due to traffic congestion on the southside because a helicopter landed on the 1604 in case of a life flight. But it was too late. The 18-month-old was already dead when the mother accidentally backed over it as she was leaving for work that morning. Are you laughing? Why not? It must have been my delivery.
What ever happened to good clean gut-busting humor? I don't think Bill Cosby would have made it in today's society. No, now it has to be crass and mean to be funny.
Lighten up, Julie! You need to be able to laugh at life a
little! Sure, I do. That's how Rex won me over on our first date. I
may not be able to tell a joke to save my soul, but I love to
laugh. It just has to be something worth laughing about. And someone's
pain is no laughing matter.
Everyone has different brands of humor. But with all due respect, where do we draw the line between admissible and boorish? If I want to be offended, that's my business. But where do you think the Dark Knight Rises shooter got the idea? How do kids learn that it is okay to pick on someone if it elicits laughter? If James, who lacks contextual sensitivity, can learn (still in progress) when certain things are appropriate and when they are not, I think it only follows that contextual INsensitivity can be learned too. In another 10 years, will the Autistic individuals who were taught to overcome Mind Blindness be more socially aware than neurotypical individuals?
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