Originally published at: Is sick humor dead? | Boing Boing
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I hope not. The stench would be very inconvenient.
Sick humour that manages not to punch down while still acknowledging the darkness is the exclusive domain of comedy geniuses. It takes talent, skill and timing to walk that concertina wire tightrope.
I don’t know if I buy the argument that sick humour is a young person’s game, either. Mel Brooks is still delivering on it well into his 90s.
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Isn’t this just another name for gallows or dark humor? Nothing new.
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I disagree; sick humor still amuses me, and I’m pretty old. There will always be a cyclical nature to any trend, and comedy is no exception. Sick humor hasn’t gone anywhere, and if it has, it will return.
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Sick humor sure ain’t dead at our place, and we’re a coupla old fuckers.
That author comes across as a fuddy duddy…and who TF actually believes that “sick humor” didn’t exist pre-Lenny Bruce? Oh puh-lease.
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And considering that, in addition to Bruce, Jonathan Winters, Elaine May and Mike Nichols, Tom Lehrer, Mort Sahl, and Shelley Berman were all put under the umbrella of “sick comics” it sounds less like a category and more of a catchall term for wildly different comics working at the same time.
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I agree. I was just watching a Whitest Kids y’Know bit the other day.
And Jimmy Carr is still doing stand up.
Sick humor isn’t dead.
I guess I do get their point “Sick humor is great, but it’s a young person’s game”. The older you get the more jaded and scarred you are, where a joke maybe hits different because of past trauma? I dunno. I usually just acknowledge these things are jokes and the unfunny IRL can be funny in the setting of a stage.
Sorta like in Loony Tunes or slapstick, there is nothing funny about whacking someone with a mallet or falling from great heights, or smacking people around IRL, but it can be funny in that context.
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Aha! I knew there was at least one Gross cartoon that was an all-time favorite, and that knocked it loose.
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Indeed.
Mercutio, “Marry, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door, but 'tis enough, 'twill serve: ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.”
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Tim and Eric’s humor is pretty sick. (They don’t have a show together anymore but are still both doing slightly less sick stuff on their own). Sarah Sherman on SNL has taken sick humor to the next level. Half the time it freaks me out and I like gross out stuff. Ha.
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What passes for sick humor in the 21st century usually seems to be someone who is deeply unhappy punching down at others who have it even worse.
Yeah, it’s a fair assessment to say that if not dead already, it is in its’ last throes.
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Uh…
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New season of I think you should leave with Tim Robinson is coming out soon! I dunno is that qualifies as “sick” but it’s pretty off the wall and hilarious.
Edit: his bits involving “mudpies” and coffin flops are pretty sick. LOL. I’m gonna say that qualifies and he does it without punching down. People who say you can’t make anything funny without punching down are just lazy.
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Or Tommy Cooper
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He wasn’t a one-trick pony, though, he only did that the once.
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And folk didnt find it convincing, much to his regret
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Or they are privileged assholes making piss poor excuses for why their humor hasn’t evolved in 20 years…
*cough * Chapelle *cough *
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“Sick” humor has gone mainstream. Some of the stuff Lenny Bruce dumped out became the stuff of after school specials and the modern equivalent of Reader’s Digest jokes. Homosexuality is more about wedding planning, not raising shocked eyebrows at nightclubs. Wearing a nun’s habit when having sex is something you buy online for a bit of spice, not a bold exploration of human sexuality. Sorry, Lenny, you won.
It was hilarious when Mad Magazine proposed, as part of an article on advertising everywhere, to put ads on barf bags. My last puddle jumper flight had ads on the barf bags. All those way out there ideas are taught in Marketing 203. You can probably grab an old issue of Mad and find a few good ideas for starting a new business.
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I say, anyone for sick humor?
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