The Five Faces of a Guy Who Was Born With Five Faces and He Doesn't Like It When People Mention It So Please Stop

My fellow Americans,

I could not, contrary to the instruction of the assignment, find one form of media or literature that I partake of that displays any more signs of oppression than any other. We have hit what can only be referred to as cultural rock bottom. I am convinced that most books, magazine articles, DVD’s, smoke signals, home videos, candy wrappers, or songs written by anyone other than Randy Newman (praise be his name) here in America are rife with racism, sexism, ignorance, bias, and somehow, ironically enough, communism.

Figure that one out.

But, I think we own it pretty well. And by that I of course mean we ignore it utterly and completely and hope it goes away.

Tragically, as much as I mourn this unfortunate set of circumstances, I still wake up every day. In America. As an American. And what helps me sift through the madness with an upturned chin? Well, comedy. Possibly the worst offender.

Comedy takes all of the stuff that it is scary for us to address and throws them out in the open for everyone to see. Typically this is considered hideously inappropriate by those who are said to “not have a sense of humor.” They cannot take a joke. They’re buzzkills. Curmudgeons. Sourpusses. Malcontents. And perhaps worst of all they are completely, utterly justified.

Comedy makes a mockery of our worst situations. It brings them up unceremoniously and suddenly, typically with a force so direct that you laugh purely because you’re taken unawares and shocked that the comedian, sketch, or TV show would “go there.” So, is this oppression in the sense that Young articulated in ‘The Five Faces of Oppression”? At first glance, it can seem like it is completely intentional and therefore not simply the byproduct of some classic cultural construction. A hallmark of Young’s ideas is the ignorance towards the oppression by the oppressors. However, I would argue it falls in a grey area.

People write and perform comedy for plenty of different reasons. They are quite diverse, so I will not list them here. However, the least common one that spawns any comedy we actually see is comedy that attacks. Sure, there’s some that brings up an issue and has bias, but very rarely is it designed to truly ream one camp or the other. In fact, it is quite widely accepted that the best comedy sprouts from a mockery being made of both sides of an issue simultaneously. In the end, I think it makes a lot of sense that truly excluding or damaging any one group from a joke will earn you less laughs, and that, ultimately, is what any comic wants.

Does that mean no one gets their feelings hurt? Of course not!

Someone will always be just a little too touchy. Not educated enough, not in the right mood, not in the right situation, or even just plain hungry. God knows I don’t find anything funny when I’m hungry. But the point is, when you’re manipulating the content that many writers from all disciplines (comedy or no) are dealing with, you will receive pressure from all sides.

So, is the oppression intentional? I say no. However, what makes comedy a grey area is its self-awareness. Namely, the writers’ knowledge that they will unintentionally “oppress” someone. That creates a new question: why bother? The answer is what inspires my fascination with it.

When we engage in comedy that deals with hot button issues (Ferguson, legalization of marijuana, gay marriage, the color/style of Justin Beiber’s new haircut, etc.) we enter the discussion through a very a unique outlet. Comedy is one of the only forms of writing that people prepare themselves for true contemplation. This is because they are promised an immediate and gratifying sensory reward, one of the few things left that truly motivates people to do anything. In order to understand a joke, you have to do some thinking. The better the joke, the simpler it is, but in the end we understand and accept intrinsically that we must engage in some actual thought to earn the payoff of laughter. So, when you do this with fart jokes, humanity doesn’t really get anywhere. When you do this with our shortcomings as human beings, than you’re getting the world involved in itself.

Everyone engages in some form of comedy. Poor, rich, old, young, the diabetic, paraplegic, and obnoxious. We all get it from somewhere, and when we do, we think. That is the bottom line.

So, I believe comedy is both the most innocent and the most egregious oppressor of them all. It upholds all that we hold to be evil and damaging in this world by virtue of its own need for content. However, if it didn’t, I wouldn’t want to imagine where we would be.