So I yelled out, “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!” ~ quote from an anonymous woman who heckled Daniel Tosh during his set for talking about rape jokes and then lived to blog about it.
Sorry, Jane Doe. Comedy is subjective and any joke can be funny. Note the word “can.” Any joke can be funny, but not any joke is funny. Any joke has the potential to be hilarious to you, but more importantly, the joke has the potential to not to be funny to you, but to SOMEONE ELSE. I think that people often forget that fact when watching comedy. Just because it is or isn’t amusing to you, doesn’t mean everyone feels the same way.
What lead up to the exchange between comedian Daniel Tosh and a female audience member at the Laugh Factory is another example of comedy being subjective. Of course, following the exchange, she blogged about it (a girl after my heart), and as things on the internet are wont to do, the blog post picked up steam and went viral. If you haven’t read her post, you can click here. Basically, Tosh was talking about how he thinks rape jokes are funny and Jane Doe didn’t agree with him, so she heckled him with the aforementioned quote. To which he responded with the following: “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now?” Then Jane Doe and her friends left the show. Yeah, that situation turned awkward.org/donations real quick. When I heard about it, I was immediately reminded of Dave Chappelle’s bit about Michael Richards (aka Kramer) and his n-word tirade at an audience member who heckled him during a stand up show:
