Stand-up crossing the barrier of political correctness

What is your opinion about a stand-up crossing the barrier of political correctness?

Firstly, the principal goal of a stand-up is to make people laugh. In a perfect world, we should have the possibility to laugh about everything. A stand-up crossing the barrier of political correctness can be a stand-up about something sexual, about the establishment and authority, racist or sexist humour or humour about death/disease.

Even if there are rules, political correctness is defined by our society.

We don’t have all the same limits of political correctness. For example, some people can find sexual humour provocative, whereas some people are not chocked at all. However, we all know that humour about sex, politics, discriminations or death causes different opinions depending on the people.

On the one hand, provocative humour can be funny by its unconventional side. The “Innuendo” humour can get a laugh because it can be chocking and dared.

The shift between political correctness and jokes about sex or satire make some staging very funny.

Moreover, to say “forbidden” things often make people laugh. For example, parodies of presidents are liked by a lot of people because it enables to destroy the sacred aura surrounding the politic power, to make important things less serious and to be more relaxed faced to serious subjects.

On the other hand, even if black humour can be funny sometimes, it can reveal actual problems of society. In fact, jokes that we can find “light” can have real impacts on the society. When I say that, I refer to racist or sexist jokes. For example, jokes about women who can not drive well, or about blond women who are not intelligent are not really funny in my opinion. It enhances the clichés about women or Arabic people for instance. I even find this kind of humour totally out of date.

The problem of those jokes is that it is often the same people who are targeted. And those people are often already discriminated by the society. That is why I think that we should not encourage discriminations by humour. Or in an exceptional way.

To conclude, I understand that a stand-up crossing the barrier of political correctness can get a laugh because of the provocation. The shift between what is acceptable in society and the jokes can be very funny for some people. But it must not turn into inappropriate jokes. That is why this is not the humour I want to favour. I prefer less-direct humour such as deadpan for instance.

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