What's the old saying?
Comedy = Tragedy + Time
Actually, this is exactly true. Forgive me for a moment whilst I monologue, as the study of comedy is something of a thing for me.
A friend & I were discussing this very point some years back while talking about
The Aristocrats. For those unfamiliar with the story, it's a documentary film about a joke that's been around since the vaudeville days. The premise is a man & his family (of varied composition) walk into a talent agents office. He says they have an act they'd like to audition for him. The agent agrees, the family disrobes, & then the teller begins to describe the most foul, filthy, vile acts you can think of. At the end, the people are covered in various fluids, filth & sweat while the agent asks what they call themselves, And the punchline is, "The Aristocrats!" The joke is not in the punchline (which is amusing by way of juxtaposition) but in the voyage, & how vulgar the acts described can be. It was Johnny Carson's favorite joke, which tells you how well-known & acceptable it is in the comedy world.
The movie came about due to an incident at a Friars Club roast some 3 or 4 weeks after 9/11. Gilbert Gottfried got to the podium & said, "I'm sorry I'm late; I missed my connecting flight at the Empire State Building." A groan went through the room & you actually hear someone yell, "Too soon!" Gottfriend bore up, gripped the podium & says, "OKAY!. A man & his family walk into a talent agent's office!"...7 there's a gasp that goes through the audience; they known what's coming. He pushes along with the joke & there's this enormous release of cathartic laughter. This incident prompted Penn Jillette & Paul Provenza (who were both in the audience that night) to make the documentary, which had its own controversies.
Now, my friend & I were talking about it & he made a very interesting point. Mel Brooks released
The Producers in 1968, which (again, for those who don't know) was a comedy featuring a musical based on the Nazi Party,
Springtime For Hitler: A Romp With Adolf & Eva At Berchtesgaden. This was 23 years after the end of the war. Now, just taking into account the 6 million Jews claimed in the Shoah--putting aside, Catholics, Commies, gays, Jehovah's Witnesses, Slavs, Romany, etc--JUST the Jews, & dividing that by 23 years, you get about 260,870 people a year; 21,740 people a month; 725 people per day. By that math, he claimed, 9/11 would've been funny around breakfast time on 9/16.
Sadly, this was not the case, & even today some people get butthurt at the macros that come on on 11 September to "celebrate" the internet holiday. Indeed, T-Shirt Hell was threatened with lawsuits some months after the event when they began selling shirts with
this image on them. The problem here is that we've become this "rememberance" culture, constantly keeping the memory of an event alive & refusing to move past it. Humor, dark as it may be, helps us as a people do that. It's needed. It's necessary. It's offensive because there is a grain of truth in it, & people don't like to admit that. That's why were still have funny stereotypes: black like fired chicken & watermelon; Jews are greedy; Southerners are lazy & inbred; the French are cheese-eating surrender monkeys; Asians can't drive. The list goes on & on. Yet we still use them, time & again.
Humor--GOOD humor--has always pushed the boundaries of "good taste", no matter where they may be set. Soupy Sales telling kids to "take all those pictures of dead presidents in your parents' drawers & send them to Soupy, care of your local TV station". Henny Youngman's famous "Take my wife. ...Please." Jack Benny being told, "Your money or your life!" & taking so long to decided that the mugger has to prompt him again & gets told, "I'm thinking it over!" Buddy Hackett...holy shit, Buddy Hackett. Even into the days of Andy Kaufman, Lenny Bruce, Richard Belzer. Richard Pryor & into the 80s. These people pushed limits, tested them. Now here were are, in the "inoffensive" Aughties & Teens, where people get in a kerfluffle over nothing. I had an employer tell me I was making "almost criminal" comments when I after a long day, I quoted Tony Curtis & said to a waitress, "Who do I have to fuck to get off this picture?"
There's a limit to "too soon." It's been a year since Newtown. Would I make school shooting jokes there? Yes, I would. It's been a year. Unless you were personally affected, get over it & move on. Same with Boston, same with London 2005, 9/11, any sort of event.
