Nogget
Thursday 13th August 2009 9:39am
Brighton
6,626 posts
Quote: Timbo @ August 12 2009, 10:19 PM BST
If by gag you mean saying someone saying self-consciously humourous, .../
I'll explain the specific examples I mentioned. In Klang, it was a spoof documentary about a comedian who tells really 'bad' jokes. So the humour should come from us laughing at the character of the comedian, not with him. But of course, we are still being presented with 'bad' jokes, and it feels like a sneaky way to slip in 'bad' material; if we don't laugh, then that's Ok because it fits with the story, but if we do laugh, then is it a good thing (laughs are good) or is it not?
More difficult was 'A Series of Psychotic Episodes'. The sketch involved a group of friends finding a tiny creature, and wanting to keep it. But this creature wasn't a kitten, it was a comedian. The friends were enthralled to observe this creature's natural behaviour, as it started to do a 'routine', but came to the decision that they couldn't keep it because it was effectively 'diseased', in that it started to perform racist jokes. So now we are expected to laugh at the bizarre situation, but what if we start to find the racist material funny?
To be fair, they only really hinted at racism in this case.