Debating rape jokes vs. rape culture: framing and counter-framing misogynistic comedy

Pérez, Raúl; Greene, Viveca S.

doi:10.1080/10350330.2015.1134823

“…The fact that such joke-tokens have the potential to ignite political debates goes hand in hand with the political nature of humour that has the ability to unite or divide the audience and the stand-up comedian who makes the joke (Pérez & Greene, 2016). Hence, in the case of these joke-tokens, it is never "just funny or comedy" as one commenter suggested (see comment 20, Appendix D).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research on humour and stand-up comedy in relation to political correctness has focused on the history and philosophy of humour, ethics of humour, tensions and challenges related to political ideologies and social issues such as sexism, racism, and rape (Gaut, 1998;Healy, 2016;Miles, 2014;Morreall, 2014;Pérez, 2016;Pérez & Greene, 2016). This literature review unfolds all these topics and provides an overview of humour and comedy research.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This gives rape shock value, which can render jokes about rape taboo. Thus, Kramer (as cited in Pérez & Greene, 2016) states THE INFLUENCE OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS ON STAND-UP COMEDY 9 that stand-up comedians making jokes about rape can give the audience the impression that "rape, a brutal and violent act, can be funny, entertaining and unserious" (p. 266) and potentially result in controversy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Influence Of Political Correctness On Stand Up Comedy

Buehler¹

2021

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Over the past 20 years, stand-up comedy has been part of the public debate within a prevailing ideology of non-discrimination and inclusiveness – most notably in relation to political correctness. In this context, a trend seems to be emerging, in which a person’s taste in humour is defined by their political identity (Healy, 2016). In other words, a joke is not funny unless it meets a person’s taste conventions prescribed by a political paradigm (Healy, 2016). While the current humour and comedy research aided the analysis of this paper, they present dichotomous views that either allow or disallow joking about certain topics. This dichotomy suggests that the current humour and comedy research does not do justice to the complexity of the topic and that there is a need for further research. This major research paper examined stand-up comedy in an age of political correctness and argued that an ideology of political correctness, non-discrimination and inclusiveness influences the content of stand-up comedy performances and the audience’s responses to them. I analyzed YouTube videos containing race-based and rape jokes as well as jokes about gender stereotypes. Moreover, I examined YouTube users’ comments to the three different joke-tokens. Examining both the jokes and YouTube users’ comments gave me insight into how these joketokens are understood and perceived by YouTube users. None of the jokes can be considered politically correct. This implies that these jokes can ignite political debates, which was observable in YouTube comments about feminism, liberals, gender stereotypes, sexism, misogyny, racism, East Asian culture, rape myths and misandry. The YouTube commenters’ perception seems to be that political correctness has been attempting to influence the stand-up comedy environment with the aim to dictate the content of stand-up comedy performances. However, the YouTube users see political correctness as a “killer” of stand-up comedy and as a negative concept mainly promoted by liberals, the leftist society and feminists. The most dominant theme across all YouTube comments seemed to be the aversion to feminism. Regardless of the joke, feminism was the concept that commenters blamed for the existence of political correctness, the censorship of stand-up comedy performances, for a joke’s lack of funniness, and for the lack of awareness and importance of male rape in research and society. In stand-up comedy, it is an art and talent to convey the literal meaning of a joke so that the subtext is clearly derivable – and even then, the audience’s interpretation depends on experiences, emotions, values, beliefs and political ideologies.

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“…Over the past 20 years, stand-up comedy has been the subject of the public debate within a prevailing ideology of non-discrimination and inclusiveness -most notably in relation to political correctness. This debate implicates stand-up comedy as a tool to potentially disclose or conceal power relations and to promote political ideologies and inequalities (Pérez & Greene, 2016). In this context, a trend seems to be emerging, in which a person's taste in humour is an extension of their political identity (Healy, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence Of Political Correctness On Stand Up Comedy

Buehler¹

2021

Preprint

0

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Over the past 20 years, stand-up comedy has been part of the public debate within a prevailing ideology of non-discrimination and inclusiveness – most notably in relation to political correctness. In this context, a trend seems to be emerging, in which a person’s taste in humour is defined by their political identity (Healy, 2016). In other words, a joke is not funny unless it meets a person’s taste conventions prescribed by a political paradigm (Healy, 2016). While the current humour and comedy research aided the analysis of this paper, they present dichotomous views that either allow or disallow joking about certain topics. This dichotomy suggests that the current humour and comedy research does not do justice to the complexity of the topic and that there is a need for further research. This major research paper examined stand-up comedy in an age of political correctness and argued that an ideology of political correctness, non-discrimination and inclusiveness influences the content of stand-up comedy performances and the audience’s responses to them. I analyzed YouTube videos containing race-based and rape jokes as well as jokes about gender stereotypes. Moreover, I examined YouTube users’ comments to the three different joke-tokens. Examining both the jokes and YouTube users’ comments gave me insight into how these joketokens are understood and perceived by YouTube users. None of the jokes can be considered politically correct. This implies that these jokes can ignite political debates, which was observable in YouTube comments about feminism, liberals, gender stereotypes, sexism, misogyny, racism, East Asian culture, rape myths and misandry. The YouTube commenters’ perception seems to be that political correctness has been attempting to influence the stand-up comedy environment with the aim to dictate the content of stand-up comedy performances. However, the YouTube users see political correctness as a “killer” of stand-up comedy and as a negative concept mainly promoted by liberals, the leftist society and feminists. The most dominant theme across all YouTube comments seemed to be the aversion to feminism. Regardless of the joke, feminism was the concept that commenters blamed for the existence of political correctness, the censorship of stand-up comedy performances, for a joke’s lack of funniness, and for the lack of awareness and importance of male rape in research and society. In stand-up comedy, it is an art and talent to convey the literal meaning of a joke so that the subtext is clearly derivable – and even then, the audience’s interpretation depends on experiences, emotions, values, beliefs and political ideologies.

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“…Gender ideologies are also sought in sexist humour , which is often thought to seriously – rather than jocularly – disparage women and reinforce negative stereotypes about them (Bergmann, 1986; Kotthoff, 2006; Shifman and Lemish, 2011). The recent discussions of rape jokes, a salient manifestation of sexist humour, defend the generalising claim that these jokes promote patriarchal ideology and deny their negative implications (Pérez and Greene, 2016) or legitimise sexual violence towards women (Lockyer and Savigny, 2019). However, the sociological studies that are not evidently biased towards the feminist perspective rightly point out that jokes (and humour in general) should not be judged generically at face value, based only on their content; instead, they must be addressed within their micro- and macro-context, thanks to which even rape jokes may be considered amusing and ideologically innocuous (see Kramer, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ad libidinem: Forms of female sexualisation in RoastMe humour

Poppi

¹

,

Dynel

²

2020

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This article reports the findings of a qualitative and quantitative study of seemingly aggressive but inherently benevolent humorous jibes that involve the sexualisation of women in the RoastMe practice performed by a growing social media community on Reddit. Based on a corpus of jocular insults, six forms of sexualisation comments are proposed: hyper-sexualisation, de-sexualisation and meta-sexualisation, each concerning the female body or practices. We account for the distribution of these categories, offering conclusions about humour and sexist ideologies, which RoastMe insults jocularly echo. Although the RoastMe community operates with a humour mindset, producing and recognising sexualisation jibes as a playful activity within a humorous frame, RoastMe insults speak volumes about the contemporary sexist ideologies and the salience of sexuality as a topic arbitrarily invoked in humour performance.

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Debating rape jokes vs. rape culture: framing and counter-framing misogynistic comedy

Cited by 37 publications

References 31 publications

The Influence Of Political Correctness On Stand Up Comedy

The Influence Of Political Correctness On Stand Up Comedy

The Influence Of Political Correctness On Stand Up Comedy

Ad libidinem: Forms of female sexualisation in RoastMe humour

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