Ilyka, in comments about The Alphabet of Occasional Chuckles:
I’ve been thinking about this general subject of what’s funny vs. that’s not funny a lot recently anyway, and I don’t think there are any easy answers. For myself, it breaks down like this: I might laugh at a misogynist joke, but two conditions have to apply. First, it has to be really, really well done, and since the subject’s been mined so thoroughly, that’s increasingly difficult to do. Second, and even more importantly, my “I’m kidding, except I’m really not kidding” detector has to stay silent. If I sense that the dude making the joke really means it, on any level, that he really hates women–it’s not funny.
Yes! Exactly!
I hear the, “It’s satire!” thing a lot. Mostly in the special moderation cue.
Here’s the thing: I get offended on behalf of humor when someone tells a stupid joke. Nothing annoys me more than someone who thinks they’re hilarious but isn’t. It’s a disease common to trolls, like the one who showed up here a few days ago and tried to roast ginmar for her use of “petard.” Real wit is intelligent: a triumph of perception. Misogyny is not intelligent. It is therefore well-nigh impossible to say something that’s misogynist and funny at the same time, and very unlikely that any given misogynist will be intentionally funny.
Now, on to the question of satire: I know better than anyone the heartbreak of sarcasm received in earnest. It’s both frustrating and humiliating. But that’s not an excuse for being casual with satire, or with relaxing our standards. Amanda nailed a social epidemic some months ago:
I realize it’s very trendy to read books about sexual matters in an amoral way to maximize your fellows’ view of you as unflappable and sophisticated, but seriously–Lolita is a deeply moral and angry book, I’d say.
…Or, I would say, to read things as satire in order to maximize your view of yourself as sophisticated and non-sexist. Larry the Cable Guy? Satire! Sin City? Satire! “Gay or Asian?” Satire! “I don’t think women should be allowed to vote, no really, no, really?” Satire! Whatsamatter? Can’t you take a joke? If it’s satire, it can’t be bigoted! It also can’t suck, because no matter how trite, it’s clever. Self-referential, postmodern, ironic, all that good stuff. There are writers and artists who base their entire careers on this benefit of the doubt: John Currin, for example. When the satire is hateful, those writers and artists play both sides of the field: they sell to the misogynists who don’t get it, the wannabe sophisticates who do, and people in either group who want to seem to belong to the other.
I’m tired of it.
I will admit that it is possible to satirize misogyny–the aforementioned Amanda manages to skewer it daily. But when you’re riffing off of a group of people who say things like, “The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians,” and mean them, you’ve got a tough row to hoe. Alphabet sounds like a weak effort, just from the trailer-clips displayed in the interview.