Pulling punchlines: Comedy can be offensive. But should it be reined in?
Stand-up comic Dan Crohn is telling a joke about the first time he flew Spirit Airlines. It’s Comedy Tuesday at Night Shift Brewing in Everett, Massachusetts. Standing on a spotlit stage, Mr. Crohn forms a wishbone with his arms – elbows lifted high and hands pressed together – as he holds the microphone.
“Imagine the Maury Povich show at 31,000 feet,” riffs the comedian. “The flight attendant comes up to me, and she’s like, ‘Got any food?’”
Mr. Crohn’s subject matter is fairly innocuous. Well, apart from an oceanic joke about cuttlefish having sex, which is probably a first in the annals of comedy. Nonetheless, in an interview prior to the show, he says comedians are suddenly hyperaware of getting in trouble for saying the wrong thing. On the same day, nearly 3,000 miles away, a small group of Netflix employees staged a high-profile walkout at the streaming service’s Los Angeles headquarters. They were protesting Dave Chappelle’s latest comedy special, “The Closer,” for its subject matter about transgender people. It’s a third-rail topic.
“I had a joke in before where I said, ‘Do you think transgender fetuses should get angry at gender-reveal parties?’” says Mr. Crohn, who has appeared on NBC’s “Last Comic Standing.”
“And I go, ‘Guys, that’s not offensive. That’s pro-transgender, pro-fetus, and pro-parties.’ But I haven’t done it in a while.”
Is it safe to laugh anymore? There’s long been a tradition in comedy of joking about taboo topics. But in recent years, comedians have either embraced or run away from making light of gender, race, and the #MeToo movement. They’re very conscious of the occupational hazards. Famous people and ordinary citizens alike have been fired from jobs, stripped of opportunities, and banished to a social-pariah wilderness for transgressing new language conventions or for expressing heterodox views. There’s some argument about just how widespread cancel culture is and whether it’s predominantly a left-wing phenomenon. But there have been sufficient examples that many people now self-censor
