the-pi-guy said:
Dramas do get criticized. 13 Reasons Why got criticized about how it was depicting suicide. But I think in general, dramas tend to show the consequences of something. Which is the biggest concern. Rape doesn't tend to be glorified in a drama, it tends to be a heavy experience that makes people feel bad about it. Whereas the comedy people are concerned about belittles that trauma. As I've said multiple times in this thread, you can absolutely joke about anything, what matters is how. Does your holocaust joke make fun of Nazis or does it make fun of people who think Nazis are bad? Does your drama convince people that rape is good or that rape is a bad traumatic thing? What is the message you're giving people? The thing that gets me about all of this is that plenty of people who understand that the message matters, suddenly don't think it does when it's hypothetical. Lots of conservatives are concerned about the messages that Hollywood, the gaming industry, news media is putting out. Ben Shapiro, on multiple occasions, has made a big deal about how the tv show Will & Grace has brainwashed people into accepting gay people in society. Yet somehow, when you ask the hypothetical question about comedians, it is now unthinkable that comedy could potentially have any kind of impact on people's behaviors and beliefs. I would say that most people don't actually believe that, when you really got down to it. I think that they're just concerned that these things will start to negatively impact them. |
You're totally right here. They act as if they are not influenced by the message of the jokes just because "it's a joke so we don't have to take it into consideration". And this is so common nowadays. Take these jokes where women are the target. A lot of young boys are led to think they are funny and consume them day and night. Soon these boys are likely to become those kind of misogyny men we've seen popping up constantly in the last year.
Fool is the one who can't see that comedy is used as a strategy to co-opt people into believe in certain ideals and beliefs, and it is one of the best stretagies exactly because of the "inoffensive" façade it carries with it. If you want to shape peoples opinion about something, go with jokes. Your target audience won't see it coming and they will be more willing to accept your message because what you said was fun to hear.
And before someone says, "oh, I know to separate things. One thing is a message in a joke, another thing this message in a serious context", know that, first, not everyone is willing to separate things, and, second, the more you get exposed to these types of jokes the more you get desensitized to the target of the joke and without noticing, starts to accept the message of the joke. Hypothetically, if you live in a society in which there's a marginalized group of people and jokes about them raping kids for examples starts to pop up, just wait and see the increase of people who will actually believe in this
