Satire and Rape Jokes, or I overthink everything forever.

Commenters start your engines! I’m gonna make your job really easy this week. How?

I’m going to be talking about rape jokes.

Okay. Let’s talk for a minute about the different kinds of jokes. Specifically, let’s talk about the difference between satire and farce.

Farce is a tool of oppression, it is the metaphorical circus of “bread and circuses”. Farce laughs at the oppressed and those who disagree with the prevailing ideas of society. Satire is the opposite of farce. Satire is the humor of the oppressed. Satire mocks prevailing norms and those who impose them.

Put more simply: Farce is Conan and Shakespeare. Satire is Colbert and Swift.

In this article from Jezebel Lindy West argues for her idea of what a “good” rape joke. She lists four examples, the last two of which I will be talking about today. If you don’t want to read the full article (and I don’t blame you, it’s from the Daniel Tosh Rape-comment/joke fiasco from December last year) here’s the link to the two comedy sets on their own (Ever Mainard and John Mulaney).

The point that Lindy West makes when she’s talking about making a rape joke is to not make the victim the butt of the joke, since it is highly likely that there is a person in the audience who is themselves a survivor and our cultural climate is really awful to these survivors so a “good” joke should not make this person the butt of the joke.

I want to make the distinction between a good rape joke and a bad rape joke a little more clear not by talking about the content of any one joke (Ever Mainard’s set gets what can be gently called “a little problematic” after a few minutes) or the concept of edgy and whether or not comics can or cannot say specific things (Lindy West deals with all of that much better than I could hope to).

            To be brief (since I’m already 300 words in) jokes that make the victims of rape the butt of a joke aren’t the whole of the problem. The problem with these jokes is that they’re farce. They’re not actually edgy, like some will claim. The jokes are in fact, the furthest thing from edgy. They re-tread common cultural tropes uncritically. They are farce. While these jokes are doubtlessly tasteless, they’re also uncreative and dull. Yes everyone giggled a bit when Nick-Bottom-As-Pyramus asked the wall to show him its chink (ye olde insinuation to lady-bits) but it wasn’t really a great joke.

            The comedy sets I’ve linked to are much more clearly satire. The culture is the butt of the joke, whether the obliviousness of men in a rape culture or the way women are socialized to expect rape. But it’s not even about whom the butt of the joke is, so much as how the joke is constructed. It takes more creativity and bravery to laugh at the culture. It’s braver to admit that you’re an idiot who can’t realize that women consider him a threat. It’s braver to say that women are trained to expect rape and then laugh at it.

But this doesn’t get to the question of whether rape jokes are ever really okay. If almost 25% of all women have experiences some sexual assault (without even accounting for the women who don’t label their experience assault or don’t want to report) and we know that the trauma of sexual assault can be triggered by references to it, then can we ever justify possibly triggering an eighth (or more) of the audience?

Yes, the content and target of the joke matter. Yes, people CAN say anything they want, but that doesn’t mean they should. Yes humor can be a tool to resist oppression and even handle trauma. But can people who’ve never been in that position make jokes that are not oppressive? Does that exclude men (who aren’t the primary targets of rape culture) or people who’ve never been assaulted? What about situations like Ever’s where the fear is there, but the actual trauma isn’t?

I’m not pretending to have answers here. Personally, I feel like a sense of humor is required for navigating the world and satire is a critical part of resistance. But I also feel that respecting the feelings of other people is important and throwing people under the bus is unacceptable. I’m not sure there is a 100% right answer here. So what do you think?