Bad Comedians

There are many different forms of comedy, and thus many different types of comedians, from Eddie Izzard to Peter Kay to Bill Bailey. Which humour is 'good' and which is 'bad' is, in my opinion, quite subjective though. In the lecture, some good points were made describing humour which is a reaction to things that the comedian doesn't agree with, which are sometimes quite racist or xenophobic.

One point that could be made though is that humour would not exist at all if there were no people to make fun of, as humour is almost entirely concerned with making fun of the outsider, whether or not the outsider is unfairly criticising a minority, or if the comedian is criticising the comedian for being prejudiced.

Personally, I don't like comedians that make racist, homophobic or ethnocentric and xenophobic jokes. It's hard to think of what to do with these people though. It was mentioned in the lecture that if you censor these kinds of comedians, you're just going to make them more attractive. Plus, there's the issue of free speech, whatever the person has to say.

On a larger scale, maybe we should just wait for 'bad' comedians to die out. As a country, we are becoming more and more tolerant of different cultures and lifestyles. It could be argued that 'bad comedy' comes from intolerance, so we have to just wait?