Betsy Borns differentiates the dick joke from sexual jokes as based on “what makes the joke funny: if people laugh because the word ‘fuck’ is used, that’s a dick joke (and an easy laugh); if people laugh in reacting to an insightful observation about sex, that’s a sexual joke” (45). Sexual jokes might include obscene language, the point is that there’s more to it (more reasons to laugh) than that.
The difference seems to be based on the idea that the utterance of a word invokes a simple release of tension, versus complex grouping of other types and sources of humor that better jokes invoke.
To give an example, let’s take a Sarah Silverman joke from her special, A Speck of Dust (2017):
“So now I have a new dog, Mary. I, um, I rescued her – or I’d like to think she rescued me – I don’t know which is the less ‘cunty’ way of putting it, but…”
Yes, we can laugh that she said, “cunty,” a release of tension when we realize what she said. She could have said “douchey” and the effect would be similar.
We can also laugh at the incongruity that she would refer to herself that way (or that the addition of the “-y” sounds odd).
However, she could have also said, “yuppie,” “self-absorbed,” etc. and we might still laugh – these words just wouldn’t be as funny. This is because we can also laugh out of our superior position or knowledge, as we look down on people who act like that. But further, there’s also a smart moment of incongruity at the realization that both types of people (“rescued her”/”she rescued me”) might be equally bad. And there are other possible reasons to laugh.
In the hierarchy of comedy, sexual jokes are generally considered “better,” as dick jokes are “lazy” ways to garner cheap laughs. This is one of the reasons many clubs and corporate gigs won’t let you “work blue.” If you can’t get laughs without using it, your jokes aren’t that good.
However, changing a word in the interest of making an already funny concept funnier isn’t a horrible idea – as long as the word isn’t too wrong (Bill Maher’s N-word problem is a guideline here). So maybe you should be able to tell the joke both ways.
Political Potential?
Dick jokes generally upset people and make news. Politicians in particular seem averse to obscenity. However, as Lenny Bruce famously said, “If you can’t say ‘fuck,’ you can’t say ‘Fuck the government!'”
There are contemporary political, social and cultural struggles over what words we can and cannot say, and who cannot say them – beyond the use of the N-word or other racial terms – that are meaningful.
But many of these struggles overlap with the area of sexual jokes. Is the problem that a female comic said “Fuck,” or that she, as a woman, was “talking about fucking?” Is it that a black man said “Fuck,” or that he sounded angry? John Limon argued was the real problem with Lenny Bruce was that he was talking about the pope and public figures in ways that were not flattering.
For some, the language can obscure the point of a really good joke about a social issue, so we should probably use it with caution.
Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?
References:
Borns, Betsy. Comic Lives: Inside the World of Stand-Up Comedy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.
Limon, John. Stand-Up Comedy in Theory, or, Abjection in America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000.
