A response to Comedy Taken Too Far

A response to Comedy Taken Too Far?

               Your blog post was very interesting, I had never heard of this mock trailer before so I even learned something, but there are a few problems.  You seem to have gotten offended by what is obviously supposed to be satire.  This is the point of satire, to go over the top and make fun of something to show how ridiculous things are.  Satire can be hilarious to everyone even the ones getting made fun of, by showing how other people think of a group and how wrong that is.  Sometimes, like this time, people get offended by this, that is a good thing.  Without someone pushing the boundary and offending people, life would be humorless and boring.  Counter to that, we still need people to get offended to tell us where the line is and what goes too far over the line.

               Another problem is your trying to look at this from superiority theory but in your own post you explain how that doesn’t work.  What does work is incongruity theory.  It explains why your father finds it funny and why it would appeal to people from Boston.  The theory also can explain why you don’t find it funny.  You find it to over top, so it’s not funny because it just seems ridiculous. 

               Now to finally answer the question posed in title, to put in one-word NO.  There is no such thing as taking comedy too far.   The point of comedy is to break down barriers and expose new ideas.  It helps us grow as humans and as a species by showing problems in ideas or groups.  Therefore, to say comedy has gone too far or try to limit it, is detrimental to the development of humanity.  We need comedy go “Too Far”, so no there is no such thing as taking comedy too far.