sadoeuphemist (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sadoeuphemist) wrote2017-02-18 07:49 pm
sadoeuphemist) wrote2017-02-18 07:49 pm
Entry tags:
PewDiePie Did Nothing Wrong (or, How to Take a Joke)
There's nothing funny except Nazis anymore. You know how this works, right? Subversion. Escalation. Let's take an example:
Q: What's worse than finding a worm in your apple?
A: The Holocaust.
The joke works by setting you up for the classic punchline ("Finding half a worm."), and then catching you off-guard with an unexpectedly morbid response. There are an infinite number of things worse than a worm in your apple, the world does not know limits to suffering. Why would you think so small, why would you be so self-obsessed? The answer unseats the basis for your existence. You live in a world where the Holocaust happened. What's eating half a worm compared to that? What's your entire life compared to that?
You may think, PewDiePie brought it on himself. You may think that a YouTube star signed up with Disney would be smart enough to avoid anti-Semetic humor and Hitler jokes, but c'mon, surely you can see the humor in it. Walt Disney hated Jews, or at least was rumored to to hate Jews, or at least hired anti-Semites, or at least was more or less as anti-Semetic than the society he lived in. That cartoon where the Big Bad Wolf dresses up as a Jewish caricature? That was funny for the time! Like all the classic cartoons with blackface! You can't blame Disney for that!
PewDiePie's the logical extension of a Disney classic, a cartoon himself, the high-pitched obnoxious id of our cultural imagination, corporatized and awful and inexplicably popular. Watch him play video games and shriek and spout vulgarities, watch him earn millions of dollars. He's the soul of the internet, of course he would inevitably turn to anti-Semetic humor in a desperate attempt to push the boundaries of his Disney-marketable imagination, of course he would start joking about genocide just to get a laugh. He's hollow within and hollow without, a millionaire for no good reason spawning a thousand unsuccessful imitators, capital unattached to value, the rotted-out void at the center of our global economy. PewDiePie might complain that people don't realize he's joking, but the real horror is that everyone else gets the joke. What's worse than a joke everyone's heard but we keep endlessly retelling?
A: The Holocaust.
Ha! Gotcha again! See, that's the joke! The universal punchline. Humor derives from absurdity, and that's the ultimate absurdity of the world, that Nazi Germany once launched into a campaign of genocidal extermination where they gassed and incinerated over six million Jews - say it again, six million, and know that's only a fraction of the dead - a nation of ordinary men and women complicit in the mechanistic slaughter of millions, and that we live in a world where this was possible and where it could very well be possible again. The Holocaust is not yet out of living memory and the Nazis have rebranded as the alt-right, they give seig heils in irony and exuberance, white nationalism is once again on the rise and Steve Bannon is in the White House, the chief strategist to the Donald Trump administration - It's absurd, isn't it? What else are you going to do but laugh?
Humor derives from absurdity, and absurdity derives from the sheer senselessness of the world. That's how black humor works, we laugh to keep from crying. Isn't the world ludicrous? What are you going to do, bitch about Hitler jokes, get all dramatic and sanctimonious? Bigotry's in the air you breathe, in the cartoons you grow up watching as a child, in the jokes that your children grow up hearing. It's what drives the economy, it's what gets clicks and views, it's what keeps the world turning. Might as well get sanctimonious about airline food! You've already bitten into the apple and are only now seeing the wriggling remnants of what you've swallowed whole. We are descending inexorably into fascism because we never really left to begin with.
Here's an old joke, retold:
A man goes to a doctor. "I'm depressed," he says, "and I've got no reason to be depressed. I've built a personal passion into an impossibly successful career. I'm adored by millions. But it's all so precarious, perched on a knife's edge. I have nothing original or meaningful to say. I just tell them what they want to hear. They'd abandon me, turn on me on an instant. They're ravening, doctor. I listen to them cheer me on and I feel nothing but dread."
The doctor says, "You're taking life far too seriously. Treatment is simple. Watch the great clown PewDiePie. He has a video of a guy dressed up as Jesus saying 'Hitler did nothing wrong.' That should pick you up."
Man bursts into tears. Says, "But, doctor ... I am Hitler."
Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drums. Curtains.
Q: What's worse than finding a worm in your apple?
A: The Holocaust.
The joke works by setting you up for the classic punchline ("Finding half a worm."), and then catching you off-guard with an unexpectedly morbid response. There are an infinite number of things worse than a worm in your apple, the world does not know limits to suffering. Why would you think so small, why would you be so self-obsessed? The answer unseats the basis for your existence. You live in a world where the Holocaust happened. What's eating half a worm compared to that? What's your entire life compared to that?
You may think, PewDiePie brought it on himself. You may think that a YouTube star signed up with Disney would be smart enough to avoid anti-Semetic humor and Hitler jokes, but c'mon, surely you can see the humor in it. Walt Disney hated Jews, or at least was rumored to to hate Jews, or at least hired anti-Semites, or at least was more or less as anti-Semetic than the society he lived in. That cartoon where the Big Bad Wolf dresses up as a Jewish caricature? That was funny for the time! Like all the classic cartoons with blackface! You can't blame Disney for that!
PewDiePie's the logical extension of a Disney classic, a cartoon himself, the high-pitched obnoxious id of our cultural imagination, corporatized and awful and inexplicably popular. Watch him play video games and shriek and spout vulgarities, watch him earn millions of dollars. He's the soul of the internet, of course he would inevitably turn to anti-Semetic humor in a desperate attempt to push the boundaries of his Disney-marketable imagination, of course he would start joking about genocide just to get a laugh. He's hollow within and hollow without, a millionaire for no good reason spawning a thousand unsuccessful imitators, capital unattached to value, the rotted-out void at the center of our global economy. PewDiePie might complain that people don't realize he's joking, but the real horror is that everyone else gets the joke. What's worse than a joke everyone's heard but we keep endlessly retelling?
A: The Holocaust.
Ha! Gotcha again! See, that's the joke! The universal punchline. Humor derives from absurdity, and that's the ultimate absurdity of the world, that Nazi Germany once launched into a campaign of genocidal extermination where they gassed and incinerated over six million Jews - say it again, six million, and know that's only a fraction of the dead - a nation of ordinary men and women complicit in the mechanistic slaughter of millions, and that we live in a world where this was possible and where it could very well be possible again. The Holocaust is not yet out of living memory and the Nazis have rebranded as the alt-right, they give seig heils in irony and exuberance, white nationalism is once again on the rise and Steve Bannon is in the White House, the chief strategist to the Donald Trump administration - It's absurd, isn't it? What else are you going to do but laugh?
Humor derives from absurdity, and absurdity derives from the sheer senselessness of the world. That's how black humor works, we laugh to keep from crying. Isn't the world ludicrous? What are you going to do, bitch about Hitler jokes, get all dramatic and sanctimonious? Bigotry's in the air you breathe, in the cartoons you grow up watching as a child, in the jokes that your children grow up hearing. It's what drives the economy, it's what gets clicks and views, it's what keeps the world turning. Might as well get sanctimonious about airline food! You've already bitten into the apple and are only now seeing the wriggling remnants of what you've swallowed whole. We are descending inexorably into fascism because we never really left to begin with.
Here's an old joke, retold:
A man goes to a doctor. "I'm depressed," he says, "and I've got no reason to be depressed. I've built a personal passion into an impossibly successful career. I'm adored by millions. But it's all so precarious, perched on a knife's edge. I have nothing original or meaningful to say. I just tell them what they want to hear. They'd abandon me, turn on me on an instant. They're ravening, doctor. I listen to them cheer me on and I feel nothing but dread."
The doctor says, "You're taking life far too seriously. Treatment is simple. Watch the great clown PewDiePie. He has a video of a guy dressed up as Jesus saying 'Hitler did nothing wrong.' That should pick you up."
Man bursts into tears. Says, "But, doctor ... I am Hitler."
Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drums. Curtains.