"Physical assault definitely violates most society's [sic] idea of a moral order, which perhaps explains why aggression plays some kind of role in most humor."

"Freud theorized that humor serves as a way to dissipate sexual or aggressive tension in a socially acceptable way. Thomas Hobbes argues in the Leviathan that laughter arises from feeling superior, and that it's an extension of a feeling of 'sudden glory' arising from recognizing someone else's comparative defect or weakness.... The brain gets its wires crossed when confronted by someone else getting hurt. As a pain-filled situation unfolds, a witness doesn't experience the negative emotional valence that the person in pain does, but the brain still registers an emotional arousal. It can mistakenly categorize the sudden spike in emotion as positive....."

From "FYI: Why Is It Funny When A Guy Gets Hit In The Groin?" — a 2013 Popular Science article — which I'm reading this morning after blogging about last night's "SNL" cold open which featured "Joe Manchin" punching "Chuck Schumer" in the balls. There was a lot more in that sketch, and I didn't find any of it too funny, but in the comments to my post, Meade wrote: "in this era of That's Not Funny, at least we still have male-on-male sexual assault to laugh at."

Is hitting a man in the balls a sexual assault? It depends on the meaning of "sexual." I remember the definition of "sexual behavior" used by Rachel Mitchell (the prosecutor) in questioning Brett Kavanaugh. It specified the outward behavior and excluded intent. If you were doing the behavior — e.g., rubbing your clothed genitals against another person's clothed genitals — it didn't matter if you weren't doing it for sexual gratification. It could be mere "horseplay," and it would be "sexual behavior." That's adopting a broad view of "sexual," and that was done, I think, to take the perspective of the person on the receiving end of the behavior.

What about the man on the receiving end of a hit in the balls? First, are we talking about real life or a comedy scene? Getting hit in the balls is extremely common in comedy — it has a TV Tropes article* — and that's one reason to avoid it. But let's think about whether it should be avoided because it's not taking sexual assault seriously. We don't laugh to see a woman hit in the genitals. I don't think I've ever seen that used in comedy. It's not a cliché, but why isn't it a hilarious twist on the old cliché? We know it's not. Violence against women! And now, remember the 1970s feminist ideology about rape: It's a crime of violence, not sex. Rapists are not doing something sexual. See how that fits with Rachel Mitchell's definition of "sexual behavior."

Now, let's get back to the Popular Science article:

Besides the Freudian implications of the aggressive and sexual tension in the situation, there's also the suddenness with which a blow to the 'nads can take down even an otherwise big, strapping man.... Add that to the theories already at play with physical humor—benign violations, mistaken commitments, aggression, emotional arousal....

And you don't have women to tell you "That's not funny." It's male on male and the men are free to laugh fraternalistically.... until the women crack down on that too. And why wouldn't we? You're not taking sexual violence seriously. Or do you think it's not sexual? Maybe if we get you to think of it as sexual, you guys will stop laughing at other men's pain. And don't try to fend off the ire of women by purporting to take pride in man-on-man sexuality. The sexuality is on the rape continuum and therefore not funny in the Era of That's Not Funny.
_____________________________

* It was all the way back in 1995, that "The Simpsons" was trying to instruct us that this form of humor is so bad that only Homer Simpson is laughing:



ADDED: A reader sends a link to this example of a woman getting kicked in the crotch:



"King of the Hill" felt it could get away with that, I suspect, because: 1. It's a cartoon, 2. The woman is portrayed as stronger than men (not having balls is a super-power).

Read More

SNL's "Lindsey Graham" says: "Let's keep this horny male energy going 'til the midterms!"

The cold open shows GOP Senators celebrating their Kavanaugh victory in sports-locker-room style and "Chuck Schumer" weakly whining over the Democrats defeat and then getting punched in the balls by "Joe Manchin":





You can watch the whole sketch if you scroll back to the beginning, but I'm setting it to start at the depiction of Susan Collins, who, of course, can't be shown as a strong, principled woman who gave the best speech anyone can remember a Senator giving. No, she's a witless patsy, just vaguely realizing she's been had:



If it were funnier, I'd make a new tag, Kavanomedy. But it isn't funny. The main idea is that the American people were overwhelmingly opposed to Kavanaugh and are ferociously angry now and will let the clueless Senators feel their wrath in the midterm elections. If the Kavanaugh-haters who watch the show could really believe that, maybe they'd laugh, but there's no evidence that's what's happening out there in the real world. Oh, what am I saying? Who needs evidence?! Live within the fantasy for as long as you can, and "SNL" wants to be inside your bubble. Not much comic potential there, but who cares? It's the Era of That's Not Funny.

IN THE COMMENTS: gilbar — quoting my "SNL" wants to be inside your bubble — links to the "SNL" sketch that acknowledged the bubble within which it pictures its audience:

Read More

Shredded.

So me and my wife had been saving up to pay for our @Utah_Football tickets in cash. We pulled our money out yesterday to pay my mom for the season... Well we couldn’t find the envelope until my wife checked the shredder. Yup. 2 year old shredded $1,060. pic.twitter.com/93R9BWAVDE

— BB (@Benbelnap) October 2, 2018

Via "A 2-year-old shredded $1,060 of his family’s cash. His mom cried — until she laughed" (WaPo). Strangely, these people are better off. They got their cute-kid story in the press. They got offered free football tickets, and:

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing...  has an entire “Mutilated Currency Division,” which is devoted to “redeeming” burned, waterlogged, chemically altered, rodent-chewed or deteriorated money — a free service to the public. It handles approximately 30,000 claims per year, redeeming more than $30 million in mutilated cash, according to its website....

ADDED: When I was a child, my Uncle Henry gave me and my brother a 5-dollar bill for raking his leaves. I took it to my father and asked if he could split it for us. My father took the bill and tore it in half and gave me the 2 halves. That made a huge impression on me at the time, when I had no idea that the money was not destroyed. You always hear about parents who want to teach their kids about "the value of a dollar." My father taught me something else. Not sure what. But he did it with a smile and thought it was pretty damned funny.

AND: I know what it taught. You just have to focus for a second to get it. It's that money isn't that important and don't take everything so seriously. You can have fun with stuff, impishly. Including money, and including language. I did tell him to split it. Sometimes by taking language seriously (i.e., literally), you end up with something funny.

Read More

A closer look at my sense of humor.

As you can see in the previous post, I saw a George Bernard Shaw play — "Heartbreak House" — at a lovely outdoor theater yesterday. The excellent cast gave a fine performance and got quite a few laughs. I laughed. It was a comedy, based on the style of Anton Chekhov and also inspired by the 1874 painting "The North-West Passage/It might be done and England should do it."



Anyway. Though I laughed a sort of abstracted intellectual laugh during the play and appreciated it silently much of the time, there was something I saw and thought after the play that reduced me to flat-out hysteria.

I was walking down the path from the theater in the woods on the hill, down toward the parking lot with the rest of the crowd, and in front of me was a young man in a leather jacket that has 2 words painted on the back of it. He had a blanket or something slung over he shoulder. (It was a bit cold, and many people had blankets.) So I couldn't read the entire words, just the ends of the words. I saw "-ORM" above "-OW." I tried to think of what he might have written there, and I figured that "-OW" was "NOW," and it was a political slogan. He wanted something, and he wanted it now. Like Jim Morrison:



So what was it he wanted with this primal urgency? "-ORM"? I thought: REFORM. And the idea of "REFORM NOW" as a political slogan cracked me up to the point of insanity. It's like shouting "Give me moderation or give me death!" "Reform" is just too dull of a wish to demand it NOW!

I was lost in hilarity when the man whipped the blanket off his shoulder and revealed the 2 words. Suddenly the impossibly dull political demand was a blatant, far-off mistake, which only made it funnier to me, especially in contrast to the real words, which were for me nonsense — "STORM CROW." Nonsense is funny too.  You don't get nonsense when you always have the internet at your fingertips, but I did not have it there as I was dissolving in laughter on that hill. To me STORM CROW was just a new way to shout REFORM NOW!

In the clear light of morning, internet at my fingertips, I see the boring information that Storm Crow is a character in "Magic: The Gathering," and "Magic: The Gathering" is a trading card game. There are over 20 billion "Magic: The Gathering" trading cards out there. That's all news to me.  Maybe if you saw "-ORM/-OW" on a young man's leather jacket, you'd figure right off it was "STORM CROW." But I had my 2 minutes of high amusement trying to think what sort of person would get so intense about reform, that he might caterwaul — in the Jim Morrison mode — We want reform and we want it... NOW!!!!!

Read More

"At the time of the assault, I was 30 years old, and a fit confident athlete. I was strong, and skilled, with great reflexes, agility and speed."

"Instead of being able to run, jump, and pretty must do anything I wanted physically, during the assault I was paralyzed and completely helpless. I couldn't move my arms or legs. I couldn't speak or even remain conscious. I was completely vulnerable, and powerless to protect myself... After the assault, I wasn’t sure what had actually happened but the pain spoke volumes. The shame was overwhelming. Self-doubt and confusion kept me from turning to my family or friends as I normally did. I felt completely alone, unable to trust anyone, including myself.... Bill Cosby took my beautiful, healthy young spirit and crushed it. He robbed me of my health and vitality, my open nature, and my trust in myself and others."

Today, at the sentencing hearing, reported in The Daily Beast.

ADDED: The judge has sentenced Cosby to 3 to 10 years in prison. And he "must undergo monthly counseling for the rest of his life and report quarterly to authorities. He'll be in the sex offender registry. The LA Times reports.

Let's remember that Cosby had gotten away with it until a comedian named Hannibal Burress made some jokes in 2014:

“Bill Cosby has the fuckin’ smuggest old black man public persona that I hate,” Buress said at the time. “He gets on TV, ‘Pull your pants up black people, I was on TV in the ‘80s! I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom!’ Yeah, but you rape women, Bill Cosby, so turn the crazy down a couple notches.” Buress also asked members of the audience to “Google ‘Bill Cosby rape’” when they got home, joking that it would have a whole lot more results than a search for his name, “Hannibal Buress.”

Read More