how long before it's accepted by the mainstream to joke about a tradegy?

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

remember the seinfeld with the jfk assassination 'parody'? i think the media has a virgin/whore complex, if you joke too early you're a heartless bastard who should be killed, but if you're still upset by lincoln getting shot you're obviously some sort of freak. why assume everyone copes at the same rate, or that joking is not a perfectly normal method of coping?

― not dave q, Saturday, 15 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Theres too many stupid people who like to display outrage at something perpetually for it ever to be accepted properly

― Ronan, Saturday, 15 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

original thread title: 'what's the most unacceptable zing to come out of your crisis'. sorry, sorry.

― ethan, Saturday, 15 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well, one guy was joking about it on the internet at 9:05 am Tuesday. A guy I know in Green Bay posted, "I SAID I WANTED A BUD LIGHT!" as the title of his post. The message after you clicked on the poor-taste joke-title was, "How long til you can make jokes about this?"

― Nude Spock, Saturday, 15 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

uh, i don't get it.

― ethan, Saturday, 15 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I don't know, I mean for things like Diana dying and even the Paddington train crash, I was cracking jokes straight away. The Paddington one didn't even have anything obvious so I was making up really crap tenuous ones (what do a crashed train and a cartoon bear's lover have in common? They both have trouble getting into Paddington in the morning)

The reaction to Diana's death filled me with revulsion at the state of people in general, but why this affects me more than the train crashes, which are closer to home, I don't know.

Although having said that, I don't object to bad taste jokes about it really, I'm just not going to be the one making them...

― emil.y, Saturday, 15 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

black humour is a outlet faucet for those feeling the tradegy. Humour is a perfectly acceptable outlet. It's been studied!

― porch monkey, Saturday, 15 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Internet is geared for all types of discourse at a given second, so i think in this day and age - anytime is ripe, but that also depends on your audience...

― jason, Saturday, 15 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yeah, I remember thinking, "yeah yeah funny" but not being amused or angry with the guy. There's a guy at work that seems to be excited in a childishly ignorant way. He keeps saying things like, "Well, here comes world war 3" and "time to kill everyone and start over again" while he has a smile on his face. Maybe it wouldn't bother me as much if he wasn't "born again", but it just makes you want to slap the shit out of him. The guy acts like he's 16 as it is.

― Nude spock, Saturday, 15 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i just realized i'm is making everyone in this thread misspell 'tragedy'. an easy mistake to make, isn't it?

― ethan, Saturday, 15 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I don't know about the mainstream, but at work as we were watching the thing unfolding on the TV, I had to go and get some work done (a deadline's a deadline).

I shouted to the others for an update on what was happening and a colleague replied dryly "King Kong's just arrived".

That to me is off the scale on the poor-taste-omet

― Allen, Sunday, 16 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

overheard on radio - phone in joe public asked what he'd do to bin liner if he was dubya - 'id come down on him like a tunna brix' !!!!

― grdrcr, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I misread that as tuna brixx and thought this was some exotic new American foodstuff that could also be used for construction.

― Emma, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

It'd be a bit smelly though.

― DG, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"I misread that as tuna brixx and thought this was some exotic new American foodstuff that could also be used for construction."

I dunno, wasn't she the bass player in The Fall?

― Trevor, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Back to the initial question - the Seinfeld episode was distanced from the actual event not only by time but also in that it was a parody of a scene in the film "JFK", not the assassination itself.

I think you'll see once-removed parody like this right away - jokes about the press coverage and politicians' reactions seem fair game.

Bush pledging to "rid the world of evil" for instance. Jeez, I wish he'd thought of that *before* the 11th.

― fritz, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The jokes my friends and I have been making have been about the response to the event rather than the event itself - at a time when the world seems out of control it rather helps. So we have the various jokes along the lines of "We must do [something] or the terrorists have won" - usually "buy a round" or whatever. And yesterday in the pub every song that came on the jukebox we were trying to find something tasteless in it so we could berate it and call for censorship (which of course we've now got, well done clear channel). All part of the decompression process.

― Tom, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I find what Tom E says, immediately above, rather appealing. Why can't I be his fwiend?

― the pinefox, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.