Androidparanoid complained that most stand-up comedy shows do not have any clean comedy in them here
This is what he says about one particular show:
* 60% of it was on sex or sex related.
* 35% of it was on the race, origin, ethnicity... most of it derogatory.
* remaining was what I would say normal jokes.
I agree completely. My issues with comedy not being clean and above the belt started in my undergrad years. Being very active in the inter-college competition scene, I would take part in numerous public speaking competitions and also would try to participate (and try to win) in stage competitions like 'Mad-Ads' etc.
But...but ...but alas, to win in stage competitions like MadAds, one HAD to be dirty. All the jokes had to be below the belt or at best on the belt. No clean funny jokes! And the worse part is that the audience and the judges enjoyed such stuff ! The fact that the judges were also students or from a comparable age group segment did really influence the way these competitions were judged and what it took to win in them.
I believed that to be able to be above the belt required real talent and a great sense of humour. To make jokes which were not clean was the easiest thing to do. I tried at times to win a prize based on clean jokes, but that never happened. I also grouped up with the best teams of other colleges to learn how to go about this whole thing, but would then drop out since all their jokes would be dirty.
For example, lets take the popular humourous stage event 'MadAds'. During my college days, the other colleges and their jokes for MadAds can be categorized as follows:
* my college - NIE -> we did not participate a lot in such events. (so did not win prizes in such events, so missed being the overall winners) I was personally against making dirty jokes on stage and wanted badly to believe that the event could be won based on clean jokes alone (talent where are you?).
* our rival college - SJCE -> they wouldn't mind being dirty on the stage. In fact they would go to such extents that their quiz teams would have explicit/dirty words in them, just to sound 'cool'.
* the medical college - MMC - well, what to expect from my Doctor friends, who read about human anatomy day in and day out!
And my BIGGEST complaint and point of frustration with MadAds was that the majority of jokes made would be based on feminine hygiene product advertisements !
I don't know what the scene in such inter-college competitions is these days. But I sure do hope, a bunch of really talented guys have changed the direction and steered it away from being dirty to good clean homour. I believe to be able to do so requires real talent. I hope the competitions are not swayed by the antics of the less-talented ones, who will always take the short-cut to success.
Or should humour be always dirty to be fun?
No, we just have not seen much of real talent. Most of the chaps have just followed the crowd.
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Sunday, December 10, 2006
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1 comment:
nice!!
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