My opinion, Comedy

Throughout this entire assignment I have seen comedy used in many different ways, from insulting the entire city of Philadelphia, to showing absurdities in religion comedy takes many forms. It's pool of subjects is limitless, you can and should be allowed to joke about anything. What makes a joke offensive whether that comedy comes from a good or a bad place. Comedy is meant to not be serious, it's meant to take it down a notch from serious. Some people who take themselves to seriously need a good roasting every now again, sometimes more than others, but as long as it's done in good spirit. If you happen to take offence to someones lightheartedness to something you may hold dear to yourself then the only thing you have to do is not watch it. you can control what you hear, choose not to listen. No one shouldn't be allowed to not talk about something just because you don't like what they have to say. Someones always going to be offended no matter what you say. If I said cat's suck, I just annoyed every person who likes cats. "How could he possibly hate the thing that I love so much?" "I don't hate it, so I shouldn't have to hear anyone talk bad about something that I love so much" That's generally what I think goes on in ones head when hearing a joke about something they like. But I'm not saying you shouldn't be allowed to disagree you have that right, I just think you shouldn't try to stop everyone's enjoyment just because you didn't care for it. You can joke about anything.

Same subject, Different style

So for this blog post I was supposed to find 2 articles that were about similar topics. I found two separate ways to use chat-roulette (I'll assume you're all familiar with it.) Anyway while these two are not traditional articles they do get across different points in comedy. The first Post was made by an Australian humorist, author, and internet personality David Thorne. David decided that he wanted to test out the site and see what the craze was about at the time. All for the purpose of comedy he braved his way through the horrors of the site and humorously chatted with some people he found. Pulling their legs with little comments about their surroundings or what they were wearing or their appearance. He quickly got bored of the site and never went on again. This used the actual chat-roulette as a tool for his comedy. The next blog was a video from the tv show The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Here Jon merely uses the idea of chat-roulette to mock the style that it's just a place where some people go to get their "entertainment". However instead of just taking screenshots of his endeavors and posting them on his blog Jon did a 6 minute set on his tv show.

A question I don't care to answer right now.

OK, this may seem a bit religion focused but at it's roots this is a problem related to comedy. The article I read was an Op-ed by Ricky Gervais where he talks about his faith, or lack of there of, in god. Ricky is an atheist comedian who routinely puts god into his routines. He has taken passages directly from the bible, interpreted them and tried to understand them. He was... I'm actually not sure of the right word to use in this case so I'll just list all the possible words that I think fit what he was doing: Mocking, disproving, scoffing, breaking it down, wait... that works. He broke down the bible as seen by a modern day atheist who doesn't believe in the bible. Now in the article he's asking why should he have to believe in a god in which he's already disproved to himself. He points out the hypocrisies of how depending on your religion, that god is the one and only god. From the article Ricky gervais asks.

But what are atheists really being accused of? The dictionary definition of God is “a supernatural creator and overseer of the universe.” Included in this definition are all deities, goddesses and supernatural beings. Since the beginning of recorded history, which is defined by the invention of writing by the Sumerians around 6,000 years ago, historians have cataloged over 3700 supernatural beings, of which 2870 can be considered deities. So next time someone tells me they believe in God, I’ll say “Oh which one? Zeus? Hades? Jupiter? Mars? Odin? Thor? Krishna? Vishnu? Ra?…” If they say “Just God. I only believe in the one God,” I’ll point out that they are nearly as atheistic as me. I don’t believe in 2,870 gods, and they don’t believe in 2,869.

. The crux of how this relates to comedy is that should he be allowed to joke about something that so many people hold dear and close to their hearts. My personal answer is a wholehearted yes. Oh I almost forgot... here's the article

Start the show.

Hello, my name is Hunter Rosenthal, and I'm an appreciator of comedy. First though we have to ask, what is comedy? Is it that moment when someone trips, falls down, and hurts themselves? Is it when after carefully retelling a story with such skill that the audience is captivated enough to completely relate to your situation and find humor in it? Or is it just a fart joke? The answer is it's all of them and none of them. Comedy is relative to the beholder. Some people would be dying on the floor of laughter at the person who fell down, others would be horrified and try to help that person back onto their feet. Comedy has many forms: Television programs, movies, jokes, how you're dressed, a simple noise, and much more. It's everywhere, and it's impact is greater than one can suspect. George Orwell once said each joke is a tiny revolution, and I believe he's right, within the right context. Comedy can be a weapon to unsuspectingly disarm your opponents before they even notice. In 2007 during an Opie and Anthony comedy tour, the tour had stopped in Philadelphia, and throughout the entire time they were there the crowd was drunk, rude, booing every performance while enjoying themselves (kind of like how like pranks in the classroom are funny to the students and not the teacher). After every other comedian before him was booed, comedian Bill Burr was already pissed off, and as soon he got on stage too boo's and hisses, he wasn't going to take any of their crap. He started insulting the whole audience. From criticizing their weight, to their mothers, to their sports team, if people started cheering he'd insult something else. He took a group of people who were booing the whole day and got the biggest cheers of the night once he was finished. Comedy slayed this audience before they even noticed. I'll leave the link to the bashing right here... Viewer discretion is advised for people who appreciate certain language.