Dr. Casey Lawrence
1 min readMar 25, 2023

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Respectfully, I disagree. The thing about comedians like George Carlin and Joan Rivers (I'm not familiar with Pryor) is that their comedy always "punched up." They said things that were "disgusting" by revealing social ills, breaking down boundaries, and rejecting oppression. George Carlin's material was always fiercely feminist.

It's not about what we "should find funny" or policing comedy so much as it is about targeting groups that are already vulnerable. Young men may have male privilege, but the patriarchy also harms them, in the many ways I described in this article (e.g., assuming all boys want sex and therefore cannot be sexually assaulted/abused). This film's premise is that grooming and coercing a young man into unwanted sex with the help of his parents is comedic. It "punches down" at victims of sexual assault, at neurodivergent kids, at socially awkward and asexual people, and so on.

Comedy that targets vulnerable people and makes fun of the things that make them vulnerable isn't comedy. It's bullying.

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Dr. Casey Lawrence
Dr. Casey Lawrence

Written by Dr. Casey Lawrence

Canadian author of three LGBT YA novels. PhD from Trinity College Dublin. Check out my lists for stories by genre/type.

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