Black Comedy, Justified or Shameful?

So the other night you and your friends were watching a comedy and laughing your asses off(lmao) until someone gets hurt. Some people laugh just for the hell of it, but for others is it justifiable to laugh at a serious matter? When does it get serious? Can people take a joke or are there just some things that shouldn't be talked about? If we do laugh, could automatically label us as sadists right? Sadists in generally are bad examples in society but can we control it or are we just sadists down to the core?
Discuss your thoughts.

I sense you are insecure with your sense of humour, or with the sense of humour of those around you. I think you need to chill out and just go with the flow, and if you don't like where the river is heading, bail.

Black comedy, to me was always about a sad situation that rarely is a laugh out loud moment - a smirk or a laugh once or twice in the movie. Black comedy is always a miserable situation but by the end of he movie gets better in some form of way, even if the better doesn't change the person's or family's life, it just makes them understand something better or appreciate something new in their lives.

As a sadist, I think it's having a bad influence on me when I laugh at things people don't laugh about. Just had an experience yesterday when someone was hit by a car, I giggled and the crowd was staring at me. Man I'm such an asshole.

Because they're uptight assholes. It's not like you approve of people getting run over by cars, right? So you find it entertaining, and if they flipped in a certain way, so would I.

I wouldn't go as far as you do and call you a sadist though. It depends on how much pleasure you actually get from inflicting or witnessing another's suffering/pain and also on the context (Like in a fight where you enjoy your enemy's suffering. Maybe you could consider yourself a sadist for that moment, but you're not really a sadist at heart.). Try some introspection.

I dont give a damn what people think about me. If I think something is really funny, Im gonna laugh at it.

People naturally laugh at what they think is funny, so why should someone be insecure if their sense of humor differs from that of someone else?

It has to do with why you're laughing.

The group The Whitest Kids U'Know have a song called "Gonna Make Love" that's about knocking a girl unconscious and having sex with her. I find it funny for the same reason I find most of their stuff funny - it's crazy to make a joke out of something like that. The humor comes from it being unrealistic; (sane) people don't seriously like the idea of fucking unconscious women. A lot of the group's humor involves stereotypes, and it's the same sort of thing - they make a racist joke, and it's funny because only an idiot would seriously make that joke, and mean it.

I think laughing at "Gonna Make Love" for my reasons is okay. However, if someone laughs at it because they do like the idea of knocking a woman unconscious and fucking her, that's wrong. Just like with racist jokes; if a person honestly believes that a black man is lazy or stupid, he's laughing for the wrong reason. He's laughing to feel better about himself.

When it comes to seeing people get hurt, it's hard to tell whether it's okay to laugh or not. When it's pure fiction, like in a comedy movie, it's typically okay, because it's meant to be funny, and no one seriously got hurt. But with things that aren't necessarily meant to be funny, it's about why you're laughing. If you laugh at real footage of a person getting hit in the nuts with a beanbag ball, the laughter probably comes from that simple thing (whatever you want to call it) that makes things funny. The majority of the laughter isn't derived from the fact that the person was hurt. On the other hand, if, like you said you did, you laugh at someone in real life getting hit by a car, the laughter may come from seeing another person in pain, something that makes you feel better. I think that sort of laughter is wrong. If it was a simple injury (like the car running over the person's toes), it might not be wrong, but if the injury was severe, that's just not okay.

Think about it. Empathy is feeling another person's pain. If you are devoid of empathy, what does that make you? Now, if you see someone get killed or greatly injured right in front of you, and only find it funny, are you not devoid of empathy? Even if you can be empathic towards family members and friends, the inability to care about the pain of others is a cause for concern.

To try to wrap it up neatly, laughing because a person other than you got hurt (and not because of the situation) is like bullying someone - pleasure is derived from the pain of another, and you feel pleasure because something is lacking in your life. You may bully others because you lack control in other aspects of your life; you may laugh at the pain of others because you feel pain that you cannot deal with.

Everything has a reason, and it is very good to want to get to the bottom of everything. If you're conflicted about the reasons for your laughter, try imagining if a loved one was in the situation that made you laugh instead of a stranger. If imagining your mother or best friend getting hit by a car disgusts you or makes you feel ill, you're probably laughing for the wrong reason.

All things are funny from the right perspective. Sometimes it just takes laughing at how fucked up people are to find the humor.

There's a difference between laughing at a fictional bad or tragic situation and laughing at a real one. Sometimes even the lightest comedy can contain a situation that would be pretty horrible if it happened to you or someone you care about in real life. That said, you do sometimes find yourself about to laugh in the most inappropriate situations, just because you're not meant to. It was at my grandma's funeral, when they were about to cremate her, and everyone was crying around me, that I had to really fight the urge to burst out laughing.

Apparently, if you often laugh in such situations, you're probably schizophrenic. Something to bear in mind.

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die. -- Mel Brooks

While sometimes it is true that laughing at someone is a coping mechanism, it isn't always true. That slapstick and visual gags are timeless sources of comedy disagrees with this analysis. 50 years from now, Daffy duck getting his face blown off or Curly getting his eyes gouged will always be funny to somebody, not just bullies.



Anyway, anything can be made funny. The holocaust. Rape. Narm. In the same vein, something that should be funny can be made unfunny. I'm pretty sure all of us have heard jokes delivered so ineptly that no one laughed. It all depends on delivery and audience. If any person can actually define what is funny and what isn't, that person would likely be the wealthiest man in the world. In that regard, _all_ comedy is black. Like opinions, there will always be someone who _won't_ find situation X funny.

I would say its a relative thing, at times you'll never know what can piss a person off or what s/he would find funny or even sweet and you cant really blame them for getting hurt, nor can you for others laughing at something thats hurtful. We cant impose our own sense of humor on others but we can try to be more sensitive to how others may feel.

Like looking at the dead body at a funeral, you notice something funny on the corpse, are you gonna laugh your heart out in front of the grieving family? Youre not a monster for laughing inside your head but if youd...

Tri, dont feel bad for being this way, its just the way it is. Its not something that is a choice, how can you be blamed for being what you are. You must have seen faces of death...

2nd! If you believe it is funny laugh if you don't then don't.

I think a good number of people just have a disgustingly vile sense of humour and will laugh at the most worthless and stupid of things; above all people who find injury in-cre-di-bly funny.
FACT: #1 road to emotional beheading by your truly: laughing at the wrong[size=10][1][/h] fucking[size=10][2][/h] shit[size=10][3][/h].

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To me black humour never was about injury (and thus sadism), but about

the juxtaposition of morbid and farcical elements (in writing or drama) to give a disturbing effect

which can indeed be funny if done right (this is rarely the case). Black humour centres upon the satirical element, transcending pure shock - this is its redeeming quality.
[size=10][1][2][3][/h] do not and focus solely on the element of shock, and thus have no worth in my eyes whatsoever and anyone getting a laugh out of them is a horrible and shallow person and should feel terrible, forever, commencing...NOW.

I honestly don't care why i laugh at anything. We had a black comedian come to our local theatre, name was Roy Stone. Real small scale thing, but I didn't mind, tickets were cheap and i like comedians. Anyhow, the majority of people that went were black or at the very least, minorities. I kind of felt strange, and for good reason. This Roy fella picked me out like nothing, "Looks like we have a white boy here tonight, someone grew some balls huh?" This got a laugh from the audience and a roll of the eyes from me. He generally didn't say much to me after that, but he would make comments after I would laugh at jokes, "Whoo! Even the white boy liked that one!" you know, that sort of stuff. He did one particular joke concerning how he's glad he was brought over by 'my people' because Africa's quote "a bitch". I snickered at this and then HE started laughing, "Good lord do you have a fucking death wish or something? Laughing at a slave joke in the middle of a bunch of black guys?" I then shrugged and said, "Would they feel bad laughing about how much bigger their penises are than mine?" It was at this point that the black guys around me had finally turned to actually look at me, then one shouted, "No! We wouldn't!" and then we all laughed.

I find that minorities don't TRULY care if you laugh at these types of jokes. They're jokes, they're meant to be funny, there's not hing wrong wiht finding humour in anything, it's healthy and is a reason why you are able to laugh in the first place. To deny this basic biological function just because you're afraid someone might be offended is rediculous, regardless of your reasoning behind the laughter.

I have a very dark sense of humor, and no pity for stupid people. so if some one gets hurt by doing something foolish, i will laugh hard and long. for example, i was once told a story about a man who was cutting branches off trees in the forest. he cut a branch on the wrong side of the ladder. when it broke he fell and the branch crushed his skull. the person who told me got very angry and statred yelling that i wouldn't be laughing if i was there. he was right, i would have stopped the guy before he cut the branch, but i didn't say that because the person telling me was traumatised enough. i also see humor in bleak and hopless situations, like the movie 'castaway'. i laughed at several parts that no one else laughed at. if you can't see the humor in everything, even the dark stuff, i feel sorry for you. don't try to make me out to be some kind of monster because you are too up tight or ignorant to be happy.

edit: when i say stupid people, i don't mean retarded. i mean people who should know better but do stupid shit anyway.

That's not really a joke about STDs though. It's a joke about how stupid Peter is. The AIDS song Peter and his barbershop group sing, now that's a joke about STDs! Then again, I guess it could be seen as a joke about how horrible Peter is.

just one thing to say... i love the boondocks XD