Honestly?
No.
For the most part anyway, some jokes just shouldn't be acceptable to make. People who make jokes that ridicule the plight of people starving in the civil war torn sections of Africa for instance are not being clever comedians, they are just being jerks.
Likewise, I have little to no respect for people who decide to casually drop jokes about rape and domestic abuse. Especially when they don't actually have to be in the context of what is being talked about (Jim Sterling, I'm looking at you).
To me, I have no problems with edgy jokes that tackle controversial subject matter, but if said jokes are going to happen they have to be done in a clever, well thought out and actually funny way. None of this 'LOL RAPE' or 'LOL HOLOCAUST' or 'LOL GENOCIDE IN AFRICA' shit. That's just being nasty, not funny, and it doesn't deserve to be defended by 'it's just a joke'.
Because ideally a joke is something that everyone can laugh at, if large numbers of your audience are deeply offended that you would take incredibly sensitive subject matters and ridicule them for shock value, then you have failed at joke telling.
As far as taking edgy subject matters and using them as the basis for clever satire, I have no problem with that either. However it would be nice if more comedians actually knew what satire was.
Satire is the art of social criticism using wit as a weapon. You are to mock one group in particular and try to raise disgust and criticism towards it.
For instance the episode of the Simpsons about Apu almost being deported because of Springfield's newfound hatred of immigrants? That was social satire, depicting the American people as idiots who are ready to agree to hate whoever they are told to hate as a scapegoat against real problems, and it was juxtaposed by the harshness of Apu almost being forced to give up his own sense of personal cultural identity just to stay in the country.
That was satire, mocking the people who oppose immigration. As well as encouraging us to actually be angry about the effect this has on people's lives.
That's why when people tell me Duke Nukem Forever is a satire of sexism, I don't buy that. Nothing about how the game was marketted suggests that they are criticising the idea of sexism or using women as sex objects, and the character Duke himself never becomes someone we are expected to dislike or pity. It certainly isn't critizing Duke, if anything it's celebrating all the sexist imagery.
Especially with that whole 'Capture the babe' thing. The game that makes a woman into a human equivilant of the 'flag' in a CTF gametype. One who you have to clam down by slapping her on the arse.
If this was meant to represent some kind of deep and important criticism of sexism, I'm not seeing it. And if this is some sort of joke, I, and a lot of women's rights groups, are not laughing.
That's the problem I have these days, too many people think the label 'satire' automatically acts as a 'get out of jail free' card. When really satire is a carefully thought out comedic style and can't be applied to everything. In the case of Duke Nukem, they aren't satirizing the idea of using women as sex symbols, they are just DOING it.
Albeit over the top but still...
To wrap this up, I'll give my views on stereotypes in comedy.
To my mind there are two kinds of stereotypes in this world, Apu from the Simpsons and the Mexican Cleaning Lady from Family Guy.
Let's have a look at both:
Apu: An indian man who works at a convienience store. He has a wife from an arranged marriage and eight children.
In essence these are all stereotypical traits, and the Simpsons have done a few episodes that make fun of India. But Apu is also an actual well rounded character. We learn a lot about him, like that he's a vegan, he was once part of the Bee Sharps, he at one point had an extra marrital affair and he's a close friend of Homer's and indeed the rest of the Simpsons family.
He has had whole episodes dedicated to him, most of which have nothing to do with him being Indian. In fact more often when jokes about Indian culture are made, it's at the expense of the Simpsons family themselves, not Apu.
Like when Homer dressed up as Ganesh to try and stop Apu's wedding and got beaten up. Or again when they tried to fix up Apu's marriage by dressing the kids up as Ganesh and ordering the Fudgemahal. Hence with all this characterization and general warm affection he's given by the rest of the cast and how most of the jokes about Indian culture aren't actually mocking HIM, all the little stereotypes don't FEEL as much like stereotypes.
Then you flip over to Family Guy and well:
Cleaning lady: A stereotypical annoying cleaning lady who can't speak english, who they bring in from time to time to pad out the length of jokes.
That's it. That's all she ever amounts to. That's her SOLE purpose on the show is to be the annoying character who they wheel out from time to time to make fun of the Latin-American stereotype.
But of course, given that she has no role in the story or characterization beyond it and is the butt of all the jokes relating to it, she feels much less like a JOKE on Latin-American stereotypes and so much more seems like she just IS a stereotype.
I don't like it, I find it racist and hell... it's not even entertaining to watch.
I guess to wrap this all up, sometimes racist jokes can be okay, but they had better be well told and given good context. If you want to use stereotypes try to give the characters involved a little bit more characterization so that it's less painfully obvious, avoid really controversial issues unless your jokes are actually in some way or another commenting on them in a well thought out way.
And for the love of god, stop using 'satire' as an excuse for everything.
