Dark Comedy: Immorality, Perspectives and Amusement
Wednesday, 14 May 2025, 16:00-18:00
Senate House, Room 261 (Click to register)
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How does the immorality of a joke affect its funniness? Comic moralists believe that immorality can make jokes less funny, whilst comic immoralists believe immorality can make jokes funnier. In this paper, I argue that both are true. I begin by developing a new understanding of what makes a joke immoral. It is often thought that jokes are only immoral if they endorse immoral deeds, and that merely representing immoral deeds without endorsing them is not immoral. However, I argue that a joke which does not endorse an immoral deed can be immoral if it represents that deed according to an immoral perspective: one which pushes to the background morally significant features of what is being represented. Moreover, jokes with such an immoral perspective are thereby funnier, because they avoid triggering amusement-blocking emotions such as moral outrage. Finally, I argue that a joke’s success at distracting hearers from morally significant features of a situation is not necessarily a function of the comedian’s skill, and may instead reflect the hearer’s socio-historical context. This, I argue, supports relativism about funniness, and thus that whilst immorality sometimes makes jokes funnier, it also sometimes makes them less funny: both moralism and immoralism are true.
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Following NHS guidance, all attendees are strongly encouraged to be vaccinated (including boosters) against Covid-19, unless medically exempt. Our group is diverse; please continue to be considerate of those who wear face coverings and those who don’t. Thank you.