We’re rude little fuckers.
We know it. We can’t help it. We’re crude. We’re callow. We think it’s funny.
But don’t think we don’t discuss it. Frankly, we go back and forth on it. Are we being too rude? Too crude? How many people can we afford to offend? Given some of the stuff I read on the net, or some of the things 12-year-olds say to me on Xbox Live, are we really making that big a splash? Or, are we crossing a line? Will we threaten our already meager readership? Or will they sense us holding back, with our timidity dooming us?
Example.
Chapter 9: The Grassy Knoll. In this chapter, we have the following:
The bluebird appeared again, this time hunkering down in Grebok’s dreadlocks.
“OK,” the bird tweeted. “I went to the mall! I can haz tampons? Pillow Cat is watching your vagina bleed! LOL! Girls are fun! See you in math class!”
“Fuckin’ bird!” he yelled, swatting it off his shoulder. “Make sense, bird! And stop sharing intimate details with me!”
The bird laughed, and dissipated into a pinwheel of 1s and 0s.
This passage warranted lots of discussion down at Storyverse Headquarters, here beneath the crust of the Titan Moon. The original passage actually had a slightly different course: the bluebird alighted upon Grebok’s head, said the tampon thing, and then Grebok punched the bird’s head off.
Why the change?
Well, we worried about that being offensive. See, we’re not making fun of women or tampons. We love women. Sometimes, one of us (and I’m not saying who, coughcoughMarty) wears a beautiful sundress. And we know that tampons aren’t weird. Hell, one of us (coughcoughChuck) likes to clean up spills (biological and otherwise) with tampons, because damnit if they aren’t super-absorbent.
Rather, the joke is that people hop on Twitter (bluebird? Get it?) and spill intimate details, and further, that sometimes people are sort of retarded on the Internet. By having Grebok punch the head off the bird, we worried that it would be misunderstood as “violence against women,” when really, it was “violence against inanity on the Internet.” So, beheading the bird violently was downgraded to just slapping the bird, and the bird laughing as it dissipated it.
And yet, even as the joke stands, we still worry. It references tampons. It references vaginas. Is that offensive? Probably to some. The irony is, some might call this “humor for mature audiences,” but really, a part of it tickles our 12-year-old reptilian brains — truly mature humor probably features jokes about pensions and Merlot and NPR and comes together in an inexplicable cartoon in the New Yorker. In this week’s Wednesday chapter (13: Please Be Patient While We Upgrade), we have our one character Gunther replaced by a literal interpretation of an Internet Troll. Trolls say horrible things. They’re racist. They’re sexist. It’s almost absurd. So, once more, we have to figure out how to milk the Funny out of that while still managing not to make Gunther’s offensive troll-talk emblematic of the authorial voice. If he says something mean about Some Group Of People, will you think we’re saying something mean about Some Group of People? It’s tricky shit, people.
See, we always try to walk the line between “What’s Funny,” and “What We Can Get Away With.” Cultural sensitivity is a living, breathing thing. Sometimes it’s right. Sometimes it’s off-the-mark (though one could suggest it’s never exactly wrong). The balance is, what’s more important? Cultural sensitivity? Or a good joke? How do you balance the two off each other?
Obviously, you can have a good joke that doesn’t rely on offending anybody, but, to be honest, we like to offend. Not because it’s edgy. Not because we want to be extreme-with-three-X’s and get all up in yo’ face, but because offensive material handled a certain way can be funny.
This leads to a larger discussion of What Is Funny, which we don’t have the time or patience for at this moment. But, in short, funny is a subversion of the normal. Funny comes from a mismatched place, a place of surprise. Alastair Clarke’s theories on this are interesting, and I think he makes some compelling points. Humor as being something based on patterns of surprise is right in line with what I’m saying. Context is everything. Offensive humor therefore operates on this principle and — when serving the proper absurd context — takes you out of your comfort zone and can be jarring in a funny way.
Hopefully.
It can, of course, go the wrong way. Shock for the sake of shock doesn’t work. Shock designed to evoke a humorous response by pairing two unexpected patterns might, and that’s more or less what we try to do.
…
Okay, okay, sometimes we just like to make dick jokes and say words like “vagina,” and we do so without thinking of any grander purpose or theory of What Is Funny. Sue us. (By which I mean, please do not sue us.)
So, Internuts, how we doin’? Too far over the edge? Not far enough? Are we being funny? Do you hate us? Give us a shout. Let us know if we’re tip-toeing the line just right, or all wrong.
