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

The A.V. Club Toronto Interview: Ari Shaffir

Phil Brown: Was your comedy always so dark?

Ari Shaffir: Well, at first I wasn’t anywhere near that line. For the first while, you’re just doing an impression of a stand up comic. So I would do like Monica Lewinsky jokes and stuff like that. It was so bad. But over time everyone realizes their potential, and you start talking about the things you want to talk about. I was so religious for a while that I started making fun of it. I don’t care about things like race or religion, so I started mocking how everyone else cares about them.

PB: Do you think that to be a comedian who deals with your type of subject matter, you should be upsetting some of the audience?

AS: No, I don’t want to upset anybody. There are a few types of people who do those sorts of jokes. There are the people who are like, “Hey, I’m about to shock you or say something so disgusting that you won’t believe it!” Or there’s another type like Jimmy Norton, or the type of humor I do, where we don’t mean to be offensive to anyone, that’s just the way we think. Like, I’ve had thoughts about murdering a girl who I got pregnant while she’s deciding whether or not to have an abortion. I know that’s bad to do or even think about, but nevertheless those thoughts are there, so I’m going to share them with you. I think having children would be just horrible, and the worst punishment in life, and people get angry with me when I say that. I’m not trying to get you upset, I’m just expressing how I feel about it. I prefer that kind of nasty humor where the comics just can’t help it.

The A.V. Club Toronto Interview: Ari Shaffir / by Phil Brown / March 21, 2012