Laughing at Terrorists

[Vortigar]

The stupid terrorist jokes were among the best material in the Postal movie. If even Boll can make it work I'm pretty sure a little English slant on this theme is going to improve it immensely.

In the end, that's understandable. But I'm also of the opinion that, even in cases such as these, declaring certain evils off limits to be joked about gives them more power than they deserve.

I agree completely.

Same goes for a little 6 letter word starting with the letter n, which use as an insult should've been relegated to history by now.

 

[Yan Hunt]

for real chris morris fans there's only one show - blue jam. this is utterly surreal and dark humour - monologues and sketches linked by ambient tunes from radio one in england. morris was seeming let completely off the leash here and goes to some pretty wierd and disturbed territory. blue jam was turned into a tv show too, but the radio version was just superb.

The gush - an exploration of death by ejaculation in porn is typical and guess what probaly not safe for minors, the easily offended or the office
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_mOf4kJ7dE

 

[WaderiAAA]

It makes sense that a lot of terrorists would be dumb. After all, most terrorism is political and the smart guys at the top of the pyramid (the ones who do not blow themselves up) use religion mostly as either a way to justify the cause or recruit dumb-asses who actually believes that blowing themselves up is a heroic act that would grant them a place in heaven with several docens of virgins and/or amusement parks.

Not always just religion. You look at the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and you see it also based on political nonsense--i.e., a revision of history, that Israel "occupied" their land, which hammered into them again and again until they never actually look at a map and see that the land in question was Jordanian (until Jordan attacked Israel and lost) and that they were Jordanian citizens before Jordan abandoned them.

I don't understand how that contradicts anything that I said. What I said was that in most cases it is political, and they use religion as an excuse and/or recruitment strategy - keyword being most (not all).

 

[Ryokai]

It makes sense that a lot of terrorists would be dumb. After all, most terrorism is political and the smart guys at the top of the pyramid (the ones who do not blow themselves up) use religion mostly as either a way to justify the cause or recruit dumb-asses who actually believes that blowing themselves up is a heroic act that would grant them a place in heaven with several docens of virgins and/or amusement parks.

Not always just religion. You look at the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and you see it also based on political nonsense--i.e., a revision of history, that Israel "occupied" their land, which hammered into them again and again until they never actually look at a map and see that the land in question was Jordanian (until Jordan attacked Israel and lost) and that they were Jordanian citizens before Jordan abandoned them.

I don't understand how that contradicts anything that I said. What I said was that in most cases it is political, and they use religion as an excuse and/or recruitment strategy - keyword being most (not all).

You're correct, my bad. I misunderstood. And yes, even in this, the recruiting is also done in the name of religion.

 

[Chrinik]

Well, "The great dictator" parodied Hitler at a time where he was just known as an obnoxious, always yelling german polititian...not as an evil satan who plotted the deaths of millions of jews like he is portrayed nowadays...

I always like making fun about things that others see as "taboo" or seeing comedy about it.
I have NO PROBLEM at all to see someone ridicule Jews, Muslims, Christians, the holocaust, Nazis, Vietnam, dictatorship, mass massacres, the crusades, terrorism (the opening of "Postal" was awesome to me), homosexuals, minorities, simply because I know it will tick people off. If the comedy is also good, I laugh.
No, I don´t laugh at pictures of dead jews in concentration camps (unless the SS Soldiers put them in funny poses for the giggles) simply because I can detach myself from all of this stuff and enjoy a piece of work for what it is.
This is also why I like Monthy Python movies, and Mel Brooks.

Also, when we stop being afraid of terrorists, and think of their futile attempts to scare us as weaksauce and laugh about it (what? You killed 3000 people with four planes? We can do that too, watch the fireworks!), we take their power from them...because even when we take great steps to stop them from bombing us, THIS is only what they wanted in the first place...we are scared shitless...so, do you want them to win?

 

[Anaphyis]

I just thought since musilms(what ever you call the crazy ones i know not all muslims are cranky old men with explosives(but all muslims take offence to stuff really easily)) blow everything out of proportion(no pun intended) they might bomb what ever studio made this film or the publishers or whatever.

No. A vocal minority takes offense to stuff easily. Take note that I left the "of Muslims" out of that statement intentionally. If I'd go by this vocal minority to form an opinion on Christianity, politics or pretty much anything, that picture wouldn't be nice either. For example, the poster child of US politics in European media right now is the Tea Party because blithering morons make for better headlines. Think about that for a second.

 

[Callate]

Louise Richardson's very astute What Terrorists Want makes the case that most terrorism is driven by the desire for the "three Rs": Revenge, Renown, and Reaction. It might well be helpful in culling the renown terroists get for their crimes to start recognizing that the typical terrorist is not a shadowy, uber-capable villain. In that regard, I'm all for movies like Four Lions.

 

[solbadguy37]

waj was the stupid one with the "camel goes to mosque" sorry bob but i had to call you on this one. please dont hate me

 

[stdragon]

The terrorists who are poorly educated are not often living in the West and don't know much about Western decadence. They are only poorly educated because they were raised in madrassas where the only education was to memorize the Koran in Arabic, which they don't even speak -- they simply memorize the sounds and are able to recite them. They are not necessarily dim witted either. They are in a low position not because of ineptitude on their own behalf, but because of the evils of the religious leaders who train them to be terrorists and their parents who often sell them into this slavery.

Terrorists who live in the West are often well educated and hold respectable positions in society. The fact that they are willing to die for their religion does not make them stupid. They are engineers, business analysts, psychiatrists, etc.

I understand this is supposed to be a comedy, but I don't get what makes it funny. The reality is very sad and the approach taken sounds incredibly unrealistic. What's the connection? I don't see how it's brave either. The review claims it doesn't apologize for terrorism, but that's not what I see. It may not apologize for the characters in the film, but as I said they are not realistic anyway. In reality, the film is telling us terrorists are dumb, don't understand Islam (real fundamentalists are peaceful apparently), and we really have nothing to worry about. How is that not an apology?

I also don't get what makes it brave. If you want to give the finger to terrorists, do something like Terry Jones did. That's brave. He gets death threats from real terrorists.

 

[catalyst8]

It's funny because it's taboo?

The only thing worse than pretending to be funny by joking about an intensionally touchy subject is laughing at it and defending your doing so.

Make a funny joke about 9/11 and it's funny - but not because it's 9/11.

Make a joke about 9/11 and you're trying too hard.

No-one said that it's funny because it's taboo. As for 'joke about 9/11 and it's funny - but not because it's 9/11' - relatively quickly there were jokes & sketches in the media about the London bombings, particularly involving buses & how passengers were more frustrated about the delays to the service than the fact that bombings had taken place. In Great Britain we've been subject to terrorism for nearly a century from the IRA, yet we have enough maturity not to whimper, whine & cry about it. During the Second World War Britain was continually bombed in the Blitz from September 1940 to May 1941 (well over 40,000 people, mostly civilians, lost their lives), yet that didn't stop people joking about it & getting on with things: http://www.information-britain.co.uk/historydetails/article/19/

What is offensive is the apparent obsession with US media for calling our French allies cowards, when they & Britain were the only two nations on Earth prepared to come to the defence of Poland after Germany invaded in September 1939.

'Make a joke about 9/11 and you're trying too hard.' Really? Surely that would depend on whether the joke's funny or not. As Aristotle pointed out in the Nicomachean Ethics, humour is inevitably the result of someone's misfortune, & it's irrelevant whether it's at your own, your allies', or your enemy's expense. If you allow someone to bully or intimidate you or your friend, regardless of whether you'll win or lose a fight against them, then you have no spine, no honour - The same goes for if you feel inhibited by their actions in any way, & that also applies to being inhibited from joking about those actions.

Well, "The great dictator" parodied Hitler at a time where he was just known as an obnoxious, always yelling german polititian...not as an evil satan who plotted the deaths of millions of jews like he is portrayed nowadays...

The Great Dictator was 1940, WWII started in 1939, & Hitler was a known psychopathic megalomaniac as early as 1936. Other than that I utterly agree with your post.

 

[catalyst8]

You missed my point.

A funny joke is funny, regardless of it's topic - 9/11, rapists, paedophiles, murder - you name it. Humor is universal.

A joke about a sensitive topic, purely for the 'oh look, I'm edgy' title, is not funny. It's pathetic.

And you've obviously missed mine (unsurprising since you managed to read, digest, & then reply to my post in two minutes). You seem to be under the misapprehension that Morris' film is funny because it's supposedly a taboo subject. The first sentence of my post said: No-one said that it's funny because it's taboo.

Though it does seem that you're deliberately misrepresenting the whole argument by pretending otherwise.

 

[catalyst8]

Me - "Make a funny joke about 9/11 and it's funny - but not because it's 9/11. Make a joke about 9/11 and you're trying too hard."

You - "'Make a joke about 9/11 and you're trying too hard.' Really? Surely that would depend on whether the joke's funny or not."

You see how you missed the point there?

You've contradicted yourself:
By saying that a joke about something, in this instance 11th September attack in the US (even though that has no bearing on the subject of this forum i.e. Morris' film Four Lions), can be funny, but then asserting that it can't because it's 'trying too hard' you have utterly defeated your own argument.

Have you even seen 'Four Lions'?

EDIT: I removed the edit because by the time I'd posted you'd already done my work for me.

 

[catalyst8]

You still don't get...

Saying something funny, is funny.

Saying something that isn't funny, doesn't become funny because you're edgy and trying to make a point of yourself.

Get it now?

As I keep explaining, when you say "Me - "Make a funny joke about 9/11 and it's funny - but not because it's 9/11. Make a joke about 9/11 and you're trying too hard." it is a self-contradicting statement.

However you've still utterly missed the point of my post, the first sentence of which I'll repeat for the third time:

"No-one said that it's funny because it's taboo." This qualifies the second sentence which takes issue with your misguided assertion that making a joke about something supposedly taboo is "trying too hard". you really need to read the whole post, or at least the whole paragraph, to get any context.

Now please answer my question: Have you actually seen the film? If you haven't then it seems very unlikely that you have any grounds to consider yourself in a position to make a valid criticism of it. Certainly it seems unlikely that you've seen it because of your apparent obsession with the 11th September attack with regards to the subject of this forum.

 

[catalyst8]

SNIPPY

Last time. Okay. Read carefully.

Making a joke about something, regardless of its topic, has the potential to be funny. After all, it's a joke.

Making a joke about 9/11 -- for the sake of example -- can be funny. However, the joke ins't inheritably funny because it's about 9/11. It CAN be funny. But it's subject matter doesn't automatically make it funny.

Being edgy and whining about media backlash when you say something or mock something that is held as a sensitive topic doesn't make you a deep thinker, and it doesn't automatically make for a funny joke. It CAN, but it isn't automatic, like some people think and try.

Thus, with this knowledge in mind, read the following and understand it:

"Make a funny joke about 9/11, and it's funny - but not because it's 9/11.

Make a joke about 9/11 and you're trying too hard."

Notice the distinct lack of 'funny' in the second sentence. Relying on shock makes you a try hard. Telling a funny joke about a topic that just so happens to be about a sensitive topic, doesn't.

I notice you still refuse to answer my question about whether you've actually seen the film you're attempting to address. Admittedly your refusal to answer is, in a way, an answer in itself.

Regarding your above-quoted argument, you still seem to be oblivious to the inherent self-contradiction you're attempting to champion. I shall try to engage with it as clearly & succinctly as possibly, so my apologies if it seems that I'm being patronizing:

Your argument consists of two parts.

Statement One
You assert that "Make a funny joke about 9/11, and it's funny - but not because it's 9/11." I take this to mean 'Make a joke about 9/11 if it's funny, not because it's about 9/11.'

Statement Two
You contradict your initial assertion (Part One) with "Make a joke about 9/11 and you're trying too hard." By saying this you are stating that to make a joke about the subject is futile, because the very act of making that joke robs it of its humour. It's irrelevant whether there's a "distinct lack of 'funny' in the second sentence" because they are both mutually referential.

Statement Two contradicts Statement One, yet due to the context of your original criticism from which these statements have been taken, Statement Two relies on Statement One to be valid. Therefore these statements are self-contradictions which invalidate one another & your argument.

Now seriously, have you even seen Four Lions in order to be able to make any criticism of it?