8 ms·

Rowan Atkinson: ‘In a proper free society, you can make jokes about anything’

74 points by RickJWagner 4y ago

superb-owl 4y ago
I appreciate the sentiment, but I don't think such a society has ever existed. Every society has taboo and heresy. I imagine it's something of a structural feature, not something we could do away with the right policies or education.
techdragon 4y ago
You should be free to make the jokes, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to laugh, or ever give you any money ever again. So choose carefully… :-)
- M3L0NM4N 4y ago
  Fair point, but society should ask itself if it avoids laughing at jokes because they're not funny, or fear of others thinking they agree with the joke as if it were a factual statement. And did someone make the joke because it was ironic, or because they believe it? Some of us seem to have lost the definition of a joke, and if I make a joke that is deemed offensive towards a minority group, would you never give me money again because I now so obviously hate that group of people I made a joke of? Societal anecdotes would say yes, but this doesn't make sense logically.
  - UncleEntity 4y ago
    > … and if I make a joke that is deemed offensive towards a minority group, would you never give me money again because I now so obviously hate that group of people I made a joke of? Of course, and you shall be shunned like that Black Mirror episode where the people were blurred out.
- pvaldes 4y ago
  Rowan Atkinson could literally sit in a room watching their little toes and people still would give him money.
- goldenchrome 4y ago
  Comedians already know this from day 1. It’s incredibly difficult to say funny things for 5 minutes straight, let alone a whole hour special. The people trying to limit the speech of comedians aren’t the same people who are going to comedy shows usually. That’s the core of the issue. The people who don’t like comedians having free speech typically aren’t into comedy at all.
- joecot 4y ago
  There wouldn't be an endless series of unfunny comedians making "Comedy" specials called "Trigger Warning: How I'm Canceled by Snowflake Cucks" for Netflix if people weren't watching it. Our primary problem isn't that there's a bandwagon of male comedians whose whole show is crying about snowflakes cancelling them or making exactly one joke about trans people. It's that there's a ready audience excited to watch them do it. If there wasn't Netflix wouldn't keep making the specials. I'm still going to call the comedians and Netflix immoral hacks for cashing in on it, though. And I hope the cancellations keep rolling in so Netflix can see us vote no with our wallets.
- rowanG077 4y ago
  I agree with this. All these protest and cancel stuff is ridiculous. Just let the market figure it out. If people wouldn't watch, for example, Dave Chapelle then he wouldn't have a platform anyway.
- blub 4y ago
  What are you talking about? “We” aren’t just going to not laugh or not give money to “you”. No, “we” will harass, perform character assassination, boycott anyone associated with “you” and try to harm “you” financially and derail “your” career. Such concerted harm campaigns should be outright illegal, especially when stirred and directed intentionally, as they usually are.
barrysteve 4y ago
You shouldn't be disallowed from joking about anything. Clamping authority down onto jokes kills them before they've had a chance to fail. The safety net of a failed joke is that it doesn't mean very much. Putting authoritative rules in place to prevent a failed joke makes it so much worse when a joke doesn't land, or accidently offends, because now it "shouldn't have been allowed in the first place" and the public senses a disruption in their own control over the world. Just let jokes go people, they don't matter and that's the gorgeous, beautiful truth we can share together. The network effects of treating jokes like they have authority and governmental consequence is deeply unpleasant for everyone, except a few political groups which benefit.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  Who is making these rules about what jokes can be made, and by what mechanism are they enforced? I've never seen anything about that. There are social consequences to making certain kind of jokes. Like there always have been? But which kinds of jokes and what sort and degree of consequences are changing. You can have an issue with that and resist it, but the mechanics of this institution are not new. These unspoken rules about who can say what and what will happen if you transgress them are the invisible infrastructure of social connection and ultimately society. The rules are changing fast and by different players than is traditional, but the fact that there are rules and consequences for violating them is as old as us.
  - mc32 4y ago
    In the US, a long list of comedians have fought hard through the decades, first radio, then TV to be able to tell risky jokes, naughty jokes, anti-establishment jokes, uncouth jokes, etc. They all fought against the prudes and establishment culture back then. Should they not have fought and won those victories? Should they have remained in vaudevillian repertoires only?
    - kelseyfrog 4y ago
      Etc is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Racist, homophobic, sexist, and transphobic jokes are really what we're here to talk about. Was it an intentional omission or an accident? Just curious.
PraetorianGourd 4y ago
The idea of making jokes up vs. down seems to be predicated on there being a very hierarchical or class stratified society. While I realize my country (the USA) does have classes and class migration is terribly difficult, we also live under the ideal of a meritocracy. However I do think the younger generations are trying to tell us all that emperor has no clothes. I also think we are swinging too far the other way, where every detail of oneself is used to define our place in society, as evidenced by the proliferation of intersectionality in our culture. Anyway, my point is that both cultures have distinct but different ways of approaching the hierarchy of power but both (arguably) going too far in “protecting” the lower in the social order. My fear is that this has the (hopefully) accidental side effect of reinforcing that very social order. The idea the “elites” need to make rules and laws to “protect” the non-elites is just way to paternalistic for me. For those being protected, it is easy to internalize the protection as being necessary to defend against an intrinsically unfair society. For others, it can “confirm” their belief that those being protected are intrinsically lower than themselves. My overall point is that well-intended acts have undesirable consequences and the pace at which we move is faster than the pace at which we can account for these outcomes.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  > does have classes and class migration is terribly difficult, we also live under the ideal of a meritocracy. What does it mean to live under an ideal? Since "class migration" is so difficult, what is this meritocracy getting us that's relevant here? Why would we act within the context of something that we don't actually have? > as evidenced by the proliferation of intersectionality in our culture. Could you go more into that? I only know of intersectionality as an analytical framework, I'm not sure what it would look like for a culture to express it. But maybe you're talking about something else. > The idea the “elites” need to make rules and laws to “protect” the non-elites I have seen very very few if any expressions of a desire for laws to enforce these changing social standards. Mostly what I see is the general idea that expressing some ideas should come with social consequences. There is a growing american movement to use the state to directly ban certain forms and subjects of speech but I don't think there's much overlap right now. > My fear is that this has the (hopefully) accidental side effect of reinforcing that very social order. Treacherously close to the good old "the ones talking about racism are the real racists!" don't you think? I'm not trying to attribute that intention to you, but predicting that attempting to address an inequality will actually make it worse is a classic rationalism-lite technique to dismiss legitimate calls for change. If something is wrong it should stop; lack of a validated better alternative is not itself a good enough reason to resist its change.
vannevar 4y ago
In a proper free society, you can also criticize anything. Including humor. Cancel culture isn't new, it only seems different now because the internet has created one giant market where there used to be many independent ones. When a comedian made an ethnic joke on TV, most people never heard the criticisms from the people being made fun of, their criticism stayed within their community. Now everyone can see everything. It was never the case that everyone laughed at all the jokes. The difference now is that we can actually see the people who aren't laughing, and that feels like a downer. You can tell any joke you like, but you aren't guaranteed that everyone will find it funny. Welcome to worldwide two-way communication.
- mc32 4y ago
  Sort of... The gist of what you say is true... One potentially has a world-wide audience. However, it's not always the case. If an Indian comedian tells awful ethnic jokes about Americans or Brazilians, do you think any one of us will get wind of it? Same with Chinese making jokes about just about anyone else in the world --the likelihood anyone in the rest of the world will find out, is very slim. There is the slightest possibility where someone with a foot in both worlds would be offended plus feel that they need to bring it to light.
  - vannevar 4y ago
    True, there is still fractionalization at the national level. And the 'cancel culture' argument as I'm familiar with it is associated with the US and the UK. But as you say, the gist is true, I just overstated the scale.
- asdajksah2123 4y ago
  The biggest difference is that cancel culture is slightly inconveniencing the powerful. The less powerful have been "canceled" for decades, not just in the US, but everywhere. How many courses on Marxism/Communism do you see in US academia? In the meanwhile, US colleges have entire departments dedicated to Capitalism (Business school). In the Soviet Union, the opposite was true. (For the record, I'm extremely pro capitalism, and to the extent I criticize it it's because I believe that it can get better, whereas AFAICT, other economic systems have largely failed except in very specific and limited scenarios).
thinkingemote 4y ago
It used to be common for Brits to defensively respond to some things with a quick "Well, it's a free country!" Now we never hear people say this.
flappyeagle 4y ago
I think when people rail against cancel culture they’re actually railing against victimhood culture. It’s clearer to me if framed that way, what’s being complained about. Everyone angling to be framed as the victim or deprived unjustly.
- mountainriver 4y ago
  Yeah this is well said, that’s really the distinction from the past. Yes we have always had a level of cancel culture but now we have victim culture on a whole new level
- yucky 4y ago
  I had never made that connection, but I think you're right. It really is the professional victimhood that grates on people.
- jfengel 4y ago
  Which is ironic, since they're presenting themselves as the victims (of being "canceled").
- Ekaros 4y ago
  I can just ignore the victimhood culture. Worst possible humans can play around being victims all I care. I might dislike them and ignore what they say. What actually worries is the cancel culture of lunatic lynch mobs continuously attacking people contacting their employers and trying to get them fired. I think good solution for this is to mandate real names and identification details in such contacts and then make each and every communication public. Thus opening chance to at leas civilly prosecuted these monsters.
3vidence 4y ago
I think jokes in general seem to land with audience based on the accuracy of the topic being made fun of. I think that's what allows some people to make jokes Md others not. For example I think the Dave Chappelle stuff isn't landing very well, because he doesn't seem to understand the topic of being transgendered. By contrast any of Rowan Atkinson's work making fun of the British elite seems so accurate and still able to find the humor and contradictions.
- bergenty 4y ago
  The Dave Chapelle material has landed extremely well. It’s probably my metric for how well received your jokes are.
  - aaomidi 4y ago
    And here we see an example of how subjective jokes are. Dave Chapelles jokes to me are effectively anti humor.
- yucky 4y ago
  >For example I think the Dave Chappelle stuff isn't landing very well, because he doesn't seem to understand the topic of being transgendered. I'm pretty sure Chappelle's joke have landed extremely well, which is why he is so reviled by those who find themselves the butt of his jokes. Anyway, as Voltaire once said "To find out who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize."
  - PickledHotdog 4y ago
    Ah yes, because we can't make racist jokes about black people, they must rule over us
    - yucky 4y ago
      I think like many things said hundreds of years ago, it requires a modern lens to see how it fits present day life. Also, Chappelle is black.
kayamon 4y ago
If they don't laugh at your joke maybe it wasn't funny.
PickledHotdog 4y ago
I find it curious that the group decrying cancel culture most prominently, conservatives, are also the group who tried to council rock music, rap music, gay people, gay marriage, abortion, people of colour, abuse victims, businesses making business decisions to change the names of their products etc

74 points by RickJWagner 4y ago

I appreciate the sentiment, but I don't think such a society has ever existed. Every society has taboo and heresy. I imagine it's something of a structural feature, not something we could do away with the right policies or education.

techdragon 4y ago

You should be free to make the jokes, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to laugh, or ever give you any money ever again. So choose carefully… :-)

M3L0NM4N 4y ago
Fair point, but society should ask itself if it avoids laughing at jokes because they're not funny, or fear of others thinking they agree with the joke as if it were a factual statement. And did someone make the joke because it was ironic, or because they believe it? Some of us seem to have lost the definition of a joke, and if I make a joke that is deemed offensive towards a minority group, would you never give me money again because I now so obviously hate that group of people I made a joke of? Societal anecdotes would say yes, but this doesn't make sense logically.
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  > … and if I make a joke that is deemed offensive towards a minority group, would you never give me money again because I now so obviously hate that group of people I made a joke of? Of course, and you shall be shunned like that Black Mirror episode where the people were blurred out.
pvaldes 4y ago
Rowan Atkinson could literally sit in a room watching their little toes and people still would give him money.
goldenchrome 4y ago
Comedians already know this from day 1. It’s incredibly difficult to say funny things for 5 minutes straight, let alone a whole hour special. The people trying to limit the speech of comedians aren’t the same people who are going to comedy shows usually. That’s the core of the issue. The people who don’t like comedians having free speech typically aren’t into comedy at all.
joecot 4y ago
There wouldn't be an endless series of unfunny comedians making "Comedy" specials called "Trigger Warning: How I'm Canceled by Snowflake Cucks" for Netflix if people weren't watching it. Our primary problem isn't that there's a bandwagon of male comedians whose whole show is crying about snowflakes cancelling them or making exactly one joke about trans people. It's that there's a ready audience excited to watch them do it. If there wasn't Netflix wouldn't keep making the specials. I'm still going to call the comedians and Netflix immoral hacks for cashing in on it, though. And I hope the cancellations keep rolling in so Netflix can see us vote no with our wallets.
rowanG077 4y ago
I agree with this. All these protest and cancel stuff is ridiculous. Just let the market figure it out. If people wouldn't watch, for example, Dave Chapelle then he wouldn't have a platform anyway.
blub 4y ago
What are you talking about? “We” aren’t just going to not laugh or not give money to “you”. No, “we” will harass, perform character assassination, boycott anyone associated with “you” and try to harm “you” financially and derail “your” career. Such concerted harm campaigns should be outright illegal, especially when stirred and directed intentionally, as they usually are.

barrysteve 4y ago

You shouldn't be disallowed from joking about anything. Clamping authority down onto jokes kills them before they've had a chance to fail. The safety net of a failed joke is that it doesn't mean very much. Putting authoritative rules in place to prevent a failed joke makes it so much worse when a joke doesn't land, or accidently offends, because now it "shouldn't have been allowed in the first place" and the public senses a disruption in their own control over the world. Just let jokes go people, they don't matter and that's the gorgeous, beautiful truth we can share together. The network effects of treating jokes like they have authority and governmental consequence is deeply unpleasant for everyone, except a few political groups which benefit.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
Who is making these rules about what jokes can be made, and by what mechanism are they enforced? I've never seen anything about that. There are social consequences to making certain kind of jokes. Like there always have been? But which kinds of jokes and what sort and degree of consequences are changing. You can have an issue with that and resist it, but the mechanics of this institution are not new. These unspoken rules about who can say what and what will happen if you transgress them are the invisible infrastructure of social connection and ultimately society. The rules are changing fast and by different players than is traditional, but the fact that there are rules and consequences for violating them is as old as us.
- mc32 4y ago
  In the US, a long list of comedians have fought hard through the decades, first radio, then TV to be able to tell risky jokes, naughty jokes, anti-establishment jokes, uncouth jokes, etc. They all fought against the prudes and establishment culture back then. Should they not have fought and won those victories? Should they have remained in vaudevillian repertoires only?
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    Etc is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Racist, homophobic, sexist, and transphobic jokes are really what we're here to talk about. Was it an intentional omission or an accident? Just curious.

PraetorianGourd 4y ago

The idea of making jokes up vs. down seems to be predicated on there being a very hierarchical or class stratified society. While I realize my country (the USA) does have classes and class migration is terribly difficult, we also live under the ideal of a meritocracy. However I do think the younger generations are trying to tell us all that emperor has no clothes. I also think we are swinging too far the other way, where every detail of oneself is used to define our place in society, as evidenced by the proliferation of intersectionality in our culture. Anyway, my point is that both cultures have distinct but different ways of approaching the hierarchy of power but both (arguably) going too far in “protecting” the lower in the social order. My fear is that this has the (hopefully) accidental side effect of reinforcing that very social order. The idea the “elites” need to make rules and laws to “protect” the non-elites is just way to paternalistic for me. For those being protected, it is easy to internalize the protection as being necessary to defend against an intrinsically unfair society. For others, it can “confirm” their belief that those being protected are intrinsically lower than themselves. My overall point is that well-intended acts have undesirable consequences and the pace at which we move is faster than the pace at which we can account for these outcomes.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
> does have classes and class migration is terribly difficult, we also live under the ideal of a meritocracy. What does it mean to live under an ideal? Since "class migration" is so difficult, what is this meritocracy getting us that's relevant here? Why would we act within the context of something that we don't actually have? > as evidenced by the proliferation of intersectionality in our culture. Could you go more into that? I only know of intersectionality as an analytical framework, I'm not sure what it would look like for a culture to express it. But maybe you're talking about something else. > The idea the “elites” need to make rules and laws to “protect” the non-elites I have seen very very few if any expressions of a desire for laws to enforce these changing social standards. Mostly what I see is the general idea that expressing some ideas should come with social consequences. There is a growing american movement to use the state to directly ban certain forms and subjects of speech but I don't think there's much overlap right now. > My fear is that this has the (hopefully) accidental side effect of reinforcing that very social order. Treacherously close to the good old "the ones talking about racism are the real racists!" don't you think? I'm not trying to attribute that intention to you, but predicting that attempting to address an inequality will actually make it worse is a classic rationalism-lite technique to dismiss legitimate calls for change. If something is wrong it should stop; lack of a validated better alternative is not itself a good enough reason to resist its change.

vannevar 4y ago

In a proper free society, you can also criticize anything. Including humor. Cancel culture isn't new, it only seems different now because the internet has created one giant market where there used to be many independent ones. When a comedian made an ethnic joke on TV, most people never heard the criticisms from the people being made fun of, their criticism stayed within their community. Now everyone can see everything. It was never the case that everyone laughed at all the jokes. The difference now is that we can actually see the people who aren't laughing, and that feels like a downer. You can tell any joke you like, but you aren't guaranteed that everyone will find it funny. Welcome to worldwide two-way communication.

mc32 4y ago
Sort of... The gist of what you say is true... One potentially has a world-wide audience. However, it's not always the case. If an Indian comedian tells awful ethnic jokes about Americans or Brazilians, do you think any one of us will get wind of it? Same with Chinese making jokes about just about anyone else in the world --the likelihood anyone in the rest of the world will find out, is very slim. There is the slightest possibility where someone with a foot in both worlds would be offended plus feel that they need to bring it to light.
- vannevar 4y ago
  True, there is still fractionalization at the national level. And the 'cancel culture' argument as I'm familiar with it is associated with the US and the UK. But as you say, the gist is true, I just overstated the scale.
asdajksah2123 4y ago
The biggest difference is that cancel culture is slightly inconveniencing the powerful. The less powerful have been "canceled" for decades, not just in the US, but everywhere. How many courses on Marxism/Communism do you see in US academia? In the meanwhile, US colleges have entire departments dedicated to Capitalism (Business school). In the Soviet Union, the opposite was true. (For the record, I'm extremely pro capitalism, and to the extent I criticize it it's because I believe that it can get better, whereas AFAICT, other economic systems have largely failed except in very specific and limited scenarios).

thinkingemote 4y ago

It used to be common for Brits to defensively respond to some things with a quick "Well, it's a free country!" Now we never hear people say this.

flappyeagle 4y ago

I think when people rail against cancel culture they’re actually railing against victimhood culture. It’s clearer to me if framed that way, what’s being complained about. Everyone angling to be framed as the victim or deprived unjustly.

mountainriver 4y ago
Yeah this is well said, that’s really the distinction from the past. Yes we have always had a level of cancel culture but now we have victim culture on a whole new level
yucky 4y ago
I had never made that connection, but I think you're right. It really is the professional victimhood that grates on people.
jfengel 4y ago
Which is ironic, since they're presenting themselves as the victims (of being "canceled").
Ekaros 4y ago
I can just ignore the victimhood culture. Worst possible humans can play around being victims all I care. I might dislike them and ignore what they say. What actually worries is the cancel culture of lunatic lynch mobs continuously attacking people contacting their employers and trying to get them fired. I think good solution for this is to mandate real names and identification details in such contacts and then make each and every communication public. Thus opening chance to at leas civilly prosecuted these monsters.

3vidence 4y ago

I think jokes in general seem to land with audience based on the accuracy of the topic being made fun of. I think that's what allows some people to make jokes Md others not. For example I think the Dave Chappelle stuff isn't landing very well, because he doesn't seem to understand the topic of being transgendered. By contrast any of Rowan Atkinson's work making fun of the British elite seems so accurate and still able to find the humor and contradictions.

bergenty 4y ago
The Dave Chapelle material has landed extremely well. It’s probably my metric for how well received your jokes are.
- aaomidi 4y ago
  And here we see an example of how subjective jokes are. Dave Chapelles jokes to me are effectively anti humor.
yucky 4y ago
>For example I think the Dave Chappelle stuff isn't landing very well, because he doesn't seem to understand the topic of being transgendered. I'm pretty sure Chappelle's joke have landed extremely well, which is why he is so reviled by those who find themselves the butt of his jokes. Anyway, as Voltaire once said "To find out who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize."
- PickledHotdog 4y ago
  Ah yes, because we can't make racist jokes about black people, they must rule over us
  - yucky 4y ago
    I think like many things said hundreds of years ago, it requires a modern lens to see how it fits present day life. Also, Chappelle is black.

kayamon 4y ago

If they don't laugh at your joke maybe it wasn't funny.

PickledHotdog 4y ago

I find it curious that the group decrying cancel culture most prominently, conservatives, are also the group who tried to council rock music, rap music, gay people, gay marriage, abortion, people of colour, abuse victims, businesses making business decisions to change the names of their products etc