It’s been always a controversy to make jokes about some particular issues on TV. However now, on TV, it’s evident that the most successful comedy shows are all going in with these taboos which were seen in red zone. This kind of a process happens step by step and in my opinion, HBO’s Six Feet Under was the one which revolutionized TV, at least the American TV.
The Show was circling around a family that runs a funeral house and every time an episode begins, the audience sees someone die, sometimes in a funny way and sometimes in a very dramatic situation. In five seasons, at some point, the deaths, sometimes more than one in an episode, become something very random for the audience.The show makes you to take your body as something material as it is and I think, for an instance when the family’s daughter Claire puts some corpse’s body part to her ex boy friend’s locker, it’s a very smart thing to do on TV. The whole show is a critic on our rituals towards death and how we take our bodies so serious. And of course, there is humor in it, because from death’s perspective, our lives are joke. Smallest differences in our lives may cause us to die, and after it’s just a corpse. However, the show doesn’t mix drama and humor crudely, it’s not a rough comedy, it also has the most delicate touch on the emotional side of the issue. Until then, 2001, when the first episode aired, death was some kind of a taboo on TV. The show challenged this taboo and succeeded with many positive critics.
After the Six Feet Under’s finale in 2005, The Office and Arrested Development, two situation comedy shows appeared on TV that deal with the most controversial taboos such as racism, terrorism, incest relationships. Or Sarah Silverman Program, in which the comedian Sarah Silverman literally takes a taboo in every episode as a challenge and brings a funny story about them. I think they all became successful, because Six Feet Under cleared the way from taboos by starting with the “death”. Now there are too many shows that mixes humor with drama, such as Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Scmidt or Orange is the New Black. The audience realized that it’s okay to laugh at and get ease with things that we are so afraid of, and maybe deal with them. I think it was a necessary step in the collective consciousness and I hope some day in Turkey, we won't get scared to laugh at anything. I want to put an end to this blog post with a quote by Joan Rivers on CNN when she gets challenged about her offensive jokes: “Life is very tough, and if you can make a joke to make something easier and funny, do it!”.
The Show was circling around a family that runs a funeral house and every time an episode begins, the audience sees someone die, sometimes in a funny way and sometimes in a very dramatic situation. In five seasons, at some point, the deaths, sometimes more than one in an episode, become something very random for the audience.The show makes you to take your body as something material as it is and I think, for an instance when the family’s daughter Claire puts some corpse’s body part to her ex boy friend’s locker, it’s a very smart thing to do on TV. The whole show is a critic on our rituals towards death and how we take our bodies so serious. And of course, there is humor in it, because from death’s perspective, our lives are joke. Smallest differences in our lives may cause us to die, and after it’s just a corpse. However, the show doesn’t mix drama and humor crudely, it’s not a rough comedy, it also has the most delicate touch on the emotional side of the issue. Until then, 2001, when the first episode aired, death was some kind of a taboo on TV. The show challenged this taboo and succeeded with many positive critics.
After the Six Feet Under’s finale in 2005, The Office and Arrested Development, two situation comedy shows appeared on TV that deal with the most controversial taboos such as racism, terrorism, incest relationships. Or Sarah Silverman Program, in which the comedian Sarah Silverman literally takes a taboo in every episode as a challenge and brings a funny story about them. I think they all became successful, because Six Feet Under cleared the way from taboos by starting with the “death”. Now there are too many shows that mixes humor with drama, such as Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Scmidt or Orange is the New Black. The audience realized that it’s okay to laugh at and get ease with things that we are so afraid of, and maybe deal with them. I think it was a necessary step in the collective consciousness and I hope some day in Turkey, we won't get scared to laugh at anything. I want to put an end to this blog post with a quote by Joan Rivers on CNN when she gets challenged about her offensive jokes: “Life is very tough, and if you can make a joke to make something easier and funny, do it!”.
I think there is a tendency in modern comedy to get darker and darker and that has to do with how our perception of ourselves change as human beings. We are in an era of inward exploration and coming clean with our flaws. We have been thought that acceptance is a good thing so we should take ourselves as we are, accepting the good, the bad and the evil. Of course Tv takes a big place in this process by normalizing it. This allows us to recognise the same flaws in others so it becomes a communal experience and mindset. We're getting bitter because we think we are getting 'bigger' so much so that our valuable time becomes too much to spend on 'just make me laugh' comedies. We should be able to multitask! Eat a precoooked ready meal while watching a dark comedy and laughing at our misery!
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