Is sprinking Jesus with urine funny?
Although I haven’t watched the program (I’m in the UK and don’t follow the series anyway – perhaps my loss) I’ve had my Internet news feeds about Jesus dominated by the story of Larry David ‘urinating’ on Jesus painting in a ‘Curb your Enthusiasm’ episode.
From what I’ve read the event seems to have involved some splashed urine on a painting of Jesus that was then mistaken for tears. I think in some ways the idea was a clever one, although perhaps the idea could have been softened to avoid offense with someone washing their hands (perhaps there is something funny about urine that escapes me somewhat).
This is the kind of issue that constantly comes up in the UK with religion and religious characters (although Jesus and Christianity seems to be the main source for the fun) being the object of ridicule and innuendo on many TV comedy shows ).
So then we have the dilema. Do we laugh at it to show we are just the same as everyone else and can take a joke or do we make a stand to say actually this is really quite offensive?
Not just Christians, of course, see Jesus as a great religious figure and this is likely to be offensive to quite a large percentage of the worlds population.
There is always a fine line between using something for a joke and trying to squeeze some humour out of an offensive situation. There are certainly people who find any offensive remarks to be a great source of humour.
Personally I feel that with so many other things to laugh about (and I personally enjoy a good laugh) any humour that degrades other people is not right.
We already have some restrictions on free speech (and rightly so) where people are not free to say what they like about people of different races or genders. We don’t accept that it is ok to say anything you like about anybody (we don’t accept verbal bullying as being acceptable for instance). So at some point we want to draw the line. Personally I think we need to make sure we don’t draw the line so close that people are not free to express opinions – whatever they may be – as long as those opinions are not expressed in a way that is going to cause a riot. This is about the way opinions are expressed and not the opinion themselves.
So we come back to humour. Humour is not just about expressing opinion it is about the way it is done. People must be free to say Christians are wrong but not to piss on them (sorry for the language!).
I think this is a case of things going too far and perhaps we let too many comedians get away with too much – in the interests of free speech and being afraid we are going to be labeled as humourless killjoy spoilsports.
Perhaps comedians are sometimes themselves guilty of bullying others – how far is it from a good joke to bullying someone (those who have been bullied at school will tell you have most bullies use tactics to make others laugh at them).
Of course humour has been used in the past to make us laugh at: black people for being black, homosexuals for being homosexual, Jewish people for being Jewish, etc. And at the time we all collude with the claim that it’s just humour and people should loosen up and learn to laugh at themselves. I hope by now that we have come to see that humour can play a part in the way people view others. Of course it isn’t the cause of the problem but it certainly can contribute to making some pretty terrible things to happen. I hope by now that even those who hate Political Correctness would understand that some things are just too far.
I didn’t see the episode and we get worse in the UK but I want to make a plea for people not to degrade others (or their beliefs) whether in the name of a good joke – or otherwise.