When feminist jokes aren't so funny anymore

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I confess first that I don’t know enough about stand-up comedy. I haven’t watched the biggies of the world live or on YouTube; I can’t even name a few of them. And no, I haven’t watched Radhika Vaz perform though I intend to at some point. It goes with Pramada Menon’s ‘Fat, Feminist and Free’and Nidhi Goyal’s ‘Can you see me now?’ —  both of which I only recently heard about.

I have been to several stand-up shows in the city. Friends performed sometimes, friends of friends other times, and at open-mic shows I would know no one, but I’d still go, like everyone else, because I think it’s important to encourage new talent. The sets were abundant with jokes on boobs and butts, rape jokes and weirdly enough, feminist jokes.

It would have been great had rape and patriarchy been the butt of the jokes, but it that was not to be. To have the audience in splits the comedians would resort to what is the easiest, if under-researched methods. An example would be a joke on Delhi and rape, and a woman driving. And there was a lot of ‘Tam-Brahm’ humour, which by the way has been all the rage for a while and is considered ‘self-depreciatory humour’ — I’ll need a good five columns to say why it is problematic, but for now I’ll leave it at this.

The trial in this wasn’t the ‘joke’ itself; it was that the comedian always walked away with the desired effect to cheer and applause. I began to wonder who is to blame here — the comedian sinking low with easy humour to give the audience a run for their monies or the audience who seem to leave a part of themselves back home to have a good evening out.

I agree that some sets were fantastic — great performances with great humour and content. But they were so few and far between at a show with about 10 performances that it was like trying to find a grain of rice in a box of saw dust. It grew so tiring, that I stopped going to these shows.
I tell myself that I’ll go back to watch stand-up comedy when the sets are more sensitive, when comedians are diversified, and we all agree that a ‘feminist’ will not say, “You deserve it”, to a friend who has been dumped by his partner. It’s a joke, mind you.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m no killjoy, and I enjoy humour — all kinds. I just ask for it to be responsible. A joke on women-driving just needs to be buried for how old and regressive it is. A rape joke goes on to foster rape culture. A misunderstood feminist joke undermines the significance of the entire movement.
Comedians have people watching, listening and taking in everything that is being said — they are the influencers of the day. There’s power there, and that power needs to be used with care. Correctness, creativity, and comedy surely can’t be mutually exclusive. I’m positive that lots of funny can happen even if we don’t go for the lowest hanging fruit.