Comedy Analysis: Comedy and the Law

Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau

Comedy in many forms is a mirror to our society, often criticizing or parodying elements of our politics, religion and culture. But how far can comedy go? And do regular laws apply in comedy? Let's take a look.

Drugs

With drug law, especially in regard to marijuana slowly being relaxed in many countries, this is a hot topic. How does drug use, legal or otherwise, feature in comedy?

Drugs are commonly found in comedy and humoristic programming, particularly when aimed at a young-adult and older teenage audience. Shows such as American Dad, Family Guy, South Park, How I Met Your Mother and It's always Sunny in Philadelphia feature regular mention and depiction of drug use. Often this is not limited to marijuana or alcohol use and abuse, but stretches to crack cocaine or even crystal meth, which is often considered the most damaging and most addictive drug in existence. Usage of these drugs is sometimes condoned and sometimes is shown to lead to damaging effects, however it mostly serves a humorous purpose.

Racism

This is a sensitive topic. Racism is illegal is most countries but it still is a recurring element in humour. British humour has included racism (both to others and in self-deprecation) and American humour has included it more and more over the last decade or so. This can be in any form ranging from subtle remarks to outright racism towards characters or sometimes real-life people or groups. Generally this racism can be against any race, so a character may be derogatory against people of their own race, or against other races. More and more often however, racism is shown to backfire.

Pedophilia

Although in most countries pedophilia and the depiction of child-porn is illegal and generally frowned upon, some shows do tend to stretch the boundaries as far as they can. This often proves easiest for animated shows such as South Park since the depiction is obviously not real and no actual children are needed to portray the scene. This results in an entire episode centered around an 8-year old trying to get a blow-job from another minor and another show where 8 or 9 year olds are being treated for sex addiction. Family Guy features Herbert the Pervert as a recurring character, but he is never successful in his attempts to 'get' boys.

Generally it can be said that comedy does have a little more freedom than other forms of media, since there is often some form of legal protection in place securing a show's right to free speech, parody and ridicule, which is harder called upon when making a 'serious' show or film. Especially animated comedies can in some cases stretch the boundaries further, for the obvious reason there are no actual actors that might get involved in uncomfortable or dangerous situations. Shock laughs can also be used in comedy but is often frowned upon by the public as well as other comedians and writers.

There are many other laws which may or may not be broken or bent in comedy and humour but we can't discuss them all here, so we will cover those later in another post.