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As per other comments, women being played by men was and is a venerable tradition in British comedy and not actually very transgressive at all. It feels more "t
by Joeboy 2y ago
As per other comments, women being played by men was and is a venerable tradition in British comedy and not actually very transgressive at all. It feels more "transgressive" now than it did then, I think because we imported US culture war stuff in the last decade or so.
I don't think HN actually hates humour, it just has a relatively high bar. Some of my most upvoted comments have been jokes. But I like to think they were reasonably good ones.
Regarding the Pythons and transgression, I think for me it's probably a case by case thing. There's obviously "good" transgression and "bad" transgression, but I suppose you have to have some support for the willingness to transgress, if you want positive social change to be a possibility.
Regarding specific things the Pythons said, the most actually transgressive-at-the-time thing I can think of is probably Graham Chapman's overt homosexuality and support for gay rights, which was no small thing in 1970s Britain.
Edit: Or you could make a case for it being the "blasphemous" Life of Brian, although I don't think the public outrage about that was really in step with mainstream opinion.
Edit2: I'm wondering whether Some Like it Hot, Milton Berle etc were considered transgressive in the US? Were these things not actually quite mainstream in the 20th century, even in the US?
- nonrandomstring 2y agoThat's insightful though I wasn't pitching that so much as humour being just part of life and removing/excluding it distorts discourse. I've heard many fascinating accounts of how sensitivity to humour indicates the "health" of a society, and when it vanishes that is prelude to conflict, even war. Yes, I think us Brits defused many of our internal tensions as a mult-cultural AND classist society in the 70s and 80s with the transition from vaudeville racism to new-wave "alternative comedy". It didn't change the status-quo but it did move the dial toward more progressive ideas. I do think HN is an odd place in it's intolerance of humour, and I don't see that "high bar" because TBH it's the lowborw geeky "knob-gags" that make the grade here in my observation. I think it's actually the old struggle of poets and philosophers (see Republic 2, 3, 5 [0]) is at play. HN adapts to filtering what it can't process. It's a bit like that AI brain in Blake's Seven that Villa causes to explode by feeding it riddles. I'm noticing even this "meta" talk about humour is being downvoted (and I hope those doing so are getting a good ironic laugh from that) :) [0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-rhetoric/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-rhetoric/
- rightbyte 2y ago> I do think HN is an odd place in it's intolerance of humour I've always seen this as a counterculture to Reddit, not as intolerance of humour.
- nonrandomstring 2y agoI'm not familiar with Reddit, but assume it descended into total clownery. Hence the rules "don't comment that this place is starting to get like Reddit" I guess.
- ryandrake 2y agoI wouldn’t say just Reddit. It’s counter to just about every other online forum out there. HN is pretty unique in its strongly enforced taboo against humor and silliness.