Punching Up Instead Of Down: The Art Of Finding The Proper Victim In Comedy

At some point in this movie, Seth Rogen maybe wishes he didn’t anger the American Sniper crowd.

My wife and I watched The Interview off Netflix recently.  It was funny in some places, not so much in others, but it got me to thinking about why it is considered acceptable to mock some figures in comedy and not others.  The basic idea is, it is OK to “punch up” and not to “punch down”.

To be clear, this has nothing to do with free speech rights or anything along those lines.  It simply has to do with what is and is not funny.  That’s highly subjective at the best of times for any number of people.  So, to make things as clear as possible, these are my thoughts on what is and isn’t funny, and that is not to stop anyone from making jokes at the expense of anyone anywhere.

Also, there’s going to be some MASSIVE SPOILERS below the cut for The Interview, so you’ve been warned.

So, How Many Can You Name?

This is probably one of my favorite videos on YouTube.  Someone took tons of clips from tons of movies and TV shows and made a rather good techno-kinda tune out of it.  I’ve seen lots of stuff, but even I can’t name all of them here.  I tend to skip to this whenever I want a quick smile at someone else’s cleverness.