Rebuilding Rob

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

Is there something you don’t think should be joked about?

Several years back, I had tried my hand at script writing with X2. She had entered some short film contests where I worked with her as a co-writer. Later on, we attempted our hand it create a movie/TV series/miniseries. In any of these endeavors, I always said that hardest genres to write are horror and comedy. I said this because both the idea of what is scary and the idea of what is funny are two incredibly subjective concepts.

As humans, our collective notions of what are funny and what are scary change not just from one culture to another, but from one generation to the next as well. This is why when someone turns on a comedy from the 70s or 80s, in the hopes of introducing it to a member of Gen Z or Gen Alpha, they usually don’t get the same thing from that previous generations did.

Humor is, for the lack of a better term, a strange thing. Although notions of “what is funny“ do change from time to time, there are some universal truths: humor is edgy. Comedy is able to say things out loud that people may be thinking, but don’t dare say for themselves. With that in mind, there are some subjects in humor that may have been appropriate in, let’s say, the 1980s that are considered taboo today.

Take a show like All in the Family for instance. Archie Bunker was racist, sexist, and homophobic. The real humor of the show wasn’t in celebrating these traits. In fact, the humor of the show lie in demonstrating how  much of an ignorant fool he was. But on a surface level viewing, modern audiences would be appalled about what they see and hear him say.

But back to the question at hand. How do you think that things like disease, illness, and recent tragedies are taboo topics for comedians. Today, it’s nothing to hear one joking about Pearl Harbor, or even the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Recent human tragedy 

But as it stands, in my opinion, jokes about 9/11 are out of bounds. I bring up 911 as a particular example because I do see members of GenZ and Gen Alpha posting memes in which they take a lighthearted stab at 9/11. However, someone who lived through 9/11 and witnessed that days events unfolding live on television, it’s something that I’m not ready to personally revisit; let alone joke about. I considered posting a couple examples of 9/11 memes, or even providing links to pages and include 9/11 memes. However, out of respect to the victims of that terrible day and their families, I’ve decided not to. in any event, 9/11 is one of the things that should not be joked about.

Contemporary diseases 

There’s an episode of the classic television series, Seinfeld, “The Butter Shave” in which Jerry, suspicious that rival comedian Kenny Bannion is “writing his coattails” and getting good reactions from the crowd only because Jerry is able to warm them up. So, Jerry decides he’s going to “bomb” in one of his routines. His thought process is that if his act is bad, the audience will realize how bad Banion’s routine is. I bring up this episode of Seinfeld because there is one line that Jerry says when he is trying to tank “ What is the deal with cancer?“ That strikes me. He says it on purpose because he knows it is not funny and it is going to elicit anger from his audience. 

The line “what’s the deal with cancer?” Has stuck with me ever since I first saw “the butter shave” episode. It’s tasteless, it’s not funny, and it’s something that one should never joke about. Clearly that’s the reason Jerry’s character says it in this episode – remember, he’s trying to bomb.

But this brings me to another point. Just like real human catastrophes, illnesses or diseases are nothing to make fun of. They should be off limits. Cancer is not funny. Lou Gehrig’s disease and AIDS are likewise not funny. These are all horrible illnesses. That still have no cure. 

However, there is an exception to making jokes about either real life you and catastrophes or illnesses: the statute of limitations. Just like in our criminal court system, there are certain crimes that would have to be prosecuted with any particular “statute of limitations“. To that end, once a disease or a human catastrophe has been with the world for several decades, it basically becomes OK to joke about For instance, today one can joke about the bubonic plague, and it would really ruffle too many feathers. Science found a cure to the bubonic place centuries ago. For the most part, it doesn’t affect many people today. Therefore, it falls outside of the statute of limitations for the joke ban. Covid would be another example of this – even in spite of how divided some people were on the mask mandates and vaccinations, it’s still too soon to joke about it. Too many people lost their lives as a result of it. 

But I think herein lies the rub with the statute of limitations on humor. I mentioned earlier how it is nothing to see Gen Z or Gen Alpha making lighthearted memes about the 9/11 tragedy. For people of those times, 9/11 is just an event in a history book. It happened 25 years ago. Even if they’ve seen video footage of it, they have no direct connection to the events of that day. Sure they can recognize that it was a tragic day and a lot of people died. But that’s about their only connection to it.

Humor and the generation gap 

Maybe this is just another sign that I’m getting old: I don’t appreciate some of the humor of the younger generations. Of course, I could say the same thing about the scary movie series. Those movies are supposed to satirize the horror movie genre. In my opinion, they are just not funny. I’ve never seen any of them and I have no intention of doing so.

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, 👍 comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related posts:

• Acknowledge Me: The Simple Art of Being Seen
• Rob’s Retro Movie Review: This is Spinal Tap (1984) – The Movie That Scaled to Eleven
• A Death in the Family (And My Disposable Income): My Life in Comics
• The Supporting Cast: Navigating the Eras of Male Friendship
• Life is What Happens: A Look Back at My Non-Existent 2025 Vision

The article “Tragedy, disease, and the statute of limitation on humor” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob