Comedy by its nature, hell difinition is that it is a joke, a fabricated strectch of the truth, dissimilar to the reality of such things, I could go on but basically comedy is designed and as it would seem watching most American television manufactured to make people laugh. However its been a while since the Beverly Hillbillies and The Monkees made anyone really laugh. We all opt and favour a much more mccabre, controversial and ultimately more interesting and funny approach. Here is a short list of topics which with the wit of a comedian can be deconstructed for comedic purposes.
-Religion
-Racism
-Sexism
-Politics
-Sexuality
-Drugs
But this isnt really news to anybody, a talented comedian can with ease poke satire at all of those topics, but why is it we find this risque after all its only jokes right?
Of course I draw the line at any comedian who uses the stage and profession as a platform for propaganda, Roy Chubby Brown anyone? However I feel that some comedians can get unfairly painted as controversial through purely mentioning something political or racy. I mean is Chris Rock really controversial, yes he pokes fun at white people and trivialises the running of his country in poking fun at his nations leaders but is he really controversial? I mean after all, he is a comedian with no real voice in the world of politics and in an age where our polticians and global leaders are ridiculed and mocked on a daily basis be it by newspapers, television satire or the wit and sophistication of a standup comic, does one persons mostly unreletive views really matter?
An interesting article I found from the BBC's wesbsite discusses whether clean comedy can be funny.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6381909.stm I will let you have fun reading but leave you with this, my favourite comedian is Russel Howard, a twenty something man from bristol whose act mostly connsists of colloquialisms, jokes about curly wurlies and putting on a range of voices. So is the 'power' of so called subversive comedains like Bill Hicks, Chris Rock etc really valid?
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