When It Comes To Comedians, Where Is The Line?

Chris Rock explained the problem to The New York Times last week: “When you’re workshopping [material], a lot of stuff is bumpy and awkward. Especially when you’re working on the edge, you’re going to offend… Just look at some of my material... ‘Niggas vs. Black People,’ probably took me six months to get that thing right. You know how racist that thing was a week in?”

Comedians like Rock take a sensitive subject and hammer on it until it changes shape, becomes funny. If you can find humor in racism, you make it manageable. Take the adage about getting over public speaking by imagining the audience naked; imagine a group of klansmen naked and what do you have? Whatever it is, it’s not particularly threatening.

Jim Norton, whose standup special, “Please Be Offended,” came out on June 30, put it this way: “We take these knots in society — like, you know how you get a knot in your neck — and our job as comedians is to take our knuckles and kind of work it out.” Jeffrey Ross, who made headlines just this week at Comedy Central’s “Roast of Roseanne” for telling an Aurora-related joke, suggests that allowing that process to happen serves a greater good. “I think it’s our job to go too far. That way we know as a society what too far is.”

When It Comes To Comedians, Where Is The Line? / By Carol Hartsell / 08/08/2012 / www.huffingtonpost.com