Sunday, August 31, 2008

hee hee hee

[Pic removed after reader objections.

While I agree somewhat with the nature of the objection-- "Joking about something potentially tragic is fine as long as the joking remains general in tone and doesn't involve anyone in particular"-- I'm curious about what it is that makes joking in general about tragedy all right.

We might agree, for example, that deaths resulting from drunk driving are a horrible thing. My own father was nearly killed by a drunk driver in 1997. If drunk driving is already horrible in the abstract, how is the sin compounded by making jokes that might involve specific people? I suspect the dark and uncomfortable rationale is that joking about tragedy is all in good fun unless it has a human face. As long as it's not somehow "my" tragedy, it's fair game. There's a deliberate "hear no evil" dynamic at work here: "Your joke is funny as long as you don't force me to think about it in specific terms."

The pic I removed showed a street sign that said "Please Don't Drink and Drive." I had photographed the sign with my index finger covering the "Don't." I hadn't bothered to read the sign below it, which said "Sponsored by the (X) Family." Two commenters felt my humor went too far because I seemed to be mocking that family's pain.

The objection works if we grant two assumptions: (1) that I made my joke in full awareness of the "Sponsored by" sign, and (2) that the family had indeed suffered a drunk driving-related tragedy, which is why they had sponsored that cautionary sign. As it turns out, (1) is false and (2) is unknown unless we ask the family.

Should we always err on the side of caution when we joke around? Should we always be at pains to make sure that we're not hurting anyone, or is it enough to unleash our humor as long as the potentially hurt or offended parties aren't in the same room with us? How do we determine when a line has been crossed, and is it possible that where that line is may depend on who's doing the joking and who's doing the listening?

Discussions about the nature of humor are almost always unfunny, but I invite you to voice your opinion on the subject in the comments.]


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9 comments:

desertchick said...

I love your sense of humor.
You always make us smile.
39? OMG!...
...Happy Birthday! hee hee hee

Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

But you would have done better to also block out the name of the Cortinas family.

Jeffery Hodges

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melancholy donut said...

happy birthday!

daeguowl said...

I normally like your sense of humour but in this case I think it is inappropriate. I can't help but think that perhaps the Cortinas family may have sponsored this sign due to experiencing at first hand the potential tragic effects of drink driving...as HJH said, you should have blocked that bit out

Kevin Kim said...

I hadn't even read the bottom part when I took the picture. But this does bring up the question of whether the text about the Cortinas family matters: isn't drunk driving the cause of tragedies in general? Why does specificity (i.e., the naming of a family) cross the line from appropriateness to inappropriateness?

I'm not defending the humor here (as I said, I hadn't even read the bottom of the sign), but if we grant that most humor occurs at someone's expense, why is it significant how widely or narrowly the humor is focused?

While we ponder that question, I'll ponder removing the post.


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Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Why not photoshop out the name of the family?

Jeffery Hodges

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Kevin Kim said...

J,

I'd gladly do that, but I'd need access to a computer with Photoshop-- something I don't have. I only rarely have access to a computer; when I do, it's often on a slow connection or not loaded with photo editing software.


Kevin

desertchick said...

It seems to me that censoring your pics and posts takes away from the spontaneity of your journey.

It also seems that having the constant thought, as you travel along, that this, or that might be too offensive, may quench the creativity of posting anything at all.

Should the rest of us therefore have to have our own blogs and posts censored for fear we also may have offended someone, somewhere?

Hmmm...

Kevin Kim said...

It's a good question, Lori. With something like humor, there aren't any hard and fast rules, so I'd say it's a case-by-case judgment call.

In this case, I decided that the other commenters may have a point. I normally don't joke at a specific family's expense if they've suffered a tragedy, so after sleeping on the matter, I decided to pull the pic. If I'd had access to Photoshop, I'd have simply cropped the picture.


Kevin