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I think it should have been taken in the spirit of a dark joke. Which sort of matches their aesthetic. But Jack Black is a big star and can't afford to have that kind of baggage.
It is interesting to see cancel culture changing valences once again.
The guy peaked at the VMA when Sarah Michelle Gellar ripped the one ring from his dick. I don't think he was ever A lister.
Jack Black is the 37th highest-grossing leading actor of all time. He's top 100 by just about any objective metric. His biggest stuff is voice acting in kids' movies (lead villain in a $1B+ movie last year) so he doesn't have as much face recognition as most of his peers, though.
I don’t think that’s accurate. I would say he’s every bit as well-known for films like School Of Rock, Nacho Libre, The Holiday, Saving Silverman, and Peter Jackson’s King Kong as he is for his family-film voice acting, even if the latter has certainly made him the most money.
I loved School of Rock more than any animated movie he's ever done, so I want to agree, I just don't see how to justify that with data.
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I don't know who Sarah Michelle Gellar is. Jack Black played alongside Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson in Jumanji. And honestly his was the best comedy performance in that movie. Add to that being the star voice actor in a major animated movie (kung-fu-panda) that has grossed over 2$ billion dollars internationally in ticket sales. If those things don't make you an A lister, then I have no clue what does. (by your standards who even is an A-lister other than maybe Tom Cruise?)
Well someone with a name that could pull audience on the name alone. No one watched Kung fu panda because of jack black. The same way no one watched puss in boots because of antonio banderas. Jack black hasn't been lead man since the mid 2000s. He is solid B lister - always reliable, doesn't attach himself to shitty projects, works very good in ensemble cast, but doesn't have the gravitas to carry a project on his own the same way Jim Carrey did in days of old, or the Rock, Tom Cruise and (maybe)Chris Hemsworth can do now.
I like him a lot and I still can't forgive Tim Shaffer for fucking up Brutal Legend so tremendously with the absurdly idiotic strategy game instead of giving us straight up action adventure, but this wound will never heal.
I agree that he’s not a Jim Carrey level comedy star, but he clearly carried films such as School Of Rock and Nacho Libre, as well as the supremely underrated black comedy docudrama Bernie. (And if he’d stayed relatively thin, he could have had more everyman-style leading roles like Shallow Hal.)
Bernie is super underrated. By far Jack Black's best role, IMO.
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What's the joke? What's the setup? What's the punchline? Explain the humor behind it.
It's a "joke" in the same way someone might be "joking" about your body odor, and then backing off when you take offense. It's plausible deniability for a thing they really believe.
I suppose when it comes down to it I just want a maximum punishment for the spoken word. And cancellations often go way beyond my nebulous line for what a maximum punishment should be. People should suffer social embarrassment for a day, maybe a week for really bad things. And then it should be let go. The written word can maybe receive twice as harsh of punishments. If they are some form of sociopath that isn't really punished by social embarrassment then we can work something else out as a punishment that is about equally as harsh.
Humans aren't perfect, and sometimes they slip up and say dumb things without realizing they have crossed a line. I don't know if you think you've lived a perfect life and never said anything wrong before, but I know I've certainly said things I shouldn't have. I would like to not lose my livelihood over saying those things. I specifically remember one of the earliest instances of me saying a wrong thing, I was bullied by a kid in Elementary school, in middle school that kid committed suicide, in Highschool I made an edgy joke to a friend about being glad he wasn't around to torment me anymore, the friend winced and didn't laugh. I felt mild social embarrassment, and learned not to joke about that. That is an easy one to describe that I feel safe sharing because I can say I was an idiot in highschool, but I've made dumber and worse speech decisions in my adult life that I'd absolutely not feel safe sharing.
Humans also sometimes hold views that are not socially acceptable or within the Overton window. We are specifically on a forum that has been chased out of a larger social media site, because we want to allow people to say things outside of the Overton window. I am very uncomfortable with social rules that make it impossible to state anything outside of the Overton window. My own Dad often says things that are not acceptable on wider social media. He has been temp-banned on Facebook a few times for things he has said. He isn't really willing to not say some of his thoughts. Banning him from social media doesn't really remove him as a person, he is still out there thinking those forbidden thoughts. "Jokes" are one way to tease out the limits of the Overton window. The attempt to use humor, even if the attempt fails, shows that the person in question cares about social conventions. This is a sign that you don't need to punish them as harshly.
It seems like the simple and obvious solution would be for social media companies to set user post visibility to friends only by default, though with something like Twitter its basic premise is that you are posting for everyone to see.
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"Nice business you have there, friend, it would be shame if it caught fire. Fortunately, you can easy prevent it for a reasonable price"
"I found some not so nice pictures of you, friend, it would be shame if your wife saw them. Fortunately, you can easy prevent it..."
Nothing than spoken word out here, no big deal, people talking like might be socially embarrassed, but no more than for whole week.
edit: bad typing
The first is a threat, and the second is blackmail.
But also you just said those things and I don't think you expected to be persecuted (nor should you be). So as words they are fine to say. Its when they are paired with a context that the underlying meaning is the problem.
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I haven't, and I also would like to keep providing for my family. But the only way out is through, and after living in fear in a particularly vulnerable industry as a witch, and already nearly losing my job over COVID mandates, I believe the only way this stop is if the left gets a taste of their own medicine. Rules only exist and are respected among peers with the same capabilities.
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Having your band partner get pissed off at something you say (especially on stage) and break up isn't centrally cancellation, though.
His agent dropping him does though. But that might just be because the only thing Kyle has going for him is that he is adjacent to Jack Black, and once that is gone there is nothing for an agent to gain.
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The setup was Jack Black singing Kyle Happy Birthday, and asking him to make a wish. "Don't miss Trump next time" was the punchline.
It's an example of shock humour. Similar to the average Jimmy Carr quip. "People always talk about how Hitler murdered 6 million Jews. They never mention how he also killed 2 million Gypsies. No one likes to focus on the positives."
A) Jimmy Carr has a brand. He's up there with Anthony Jeselnik for dark humor. Dark humor is not even remotely in Tenacious D's wheelhouse.
B) It's nakedly obvious Jimmy Carr doesn't believe 3 million gypsies being killed was a positive. The punchline is the shock value sure, but also playing a character that appears to possess almost every terrible belief you can imagine, void of all morality or social shame.
Tenacious D saying they wish the president had been assassinated as a birthday wish possesses neither of these points in their favor. It's not their brand, and it's not immediately obvious they don't actually believe it. Because lots of people believe it. Especially in their business. They haven't been shy about it for the last 8 years, and no part of it has been joking. All that's changed is that now people aren't tolerating it now that an attempt has actually been made.
It's like being a nazi, being flippant and jovial about the holocaust in 1942, and claiming it was just a joke. Or a KKK member in the 50's being really encouraging about lynching the local black kid who was seen with a white girl, and then backing off and claiming it was just a joke.
I don't buy it.
"I can't wait to take Kage back to Hell
I'm gonna fill him with my hot demon gel"
Their second most popular song jokes about a protagonist potentially being raped for eternity by Satan.
But your point (B) is much more persuasive.
is that dark humor? does that mean that every heavy/death metal band is dark humor?
Most heavy/death metal bands aren't comedy-focused, so obviously no.
listening to the snippet of the song in the link above just proves to me that this isn't for me as I don't find it funny
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I'm gonna fill him with my hot demon gel"
Their second most popular song jokes about a protagonist potentially being raped for eternity by Satan.
This isn’t a “dark joke” in the mold of Jimmy Carr or Anthony Jeselnik, because approximately zero of Tenacious D’s listeners actually believe in Satan or hell, and therefore this joke isn’t rubbing up against any of their actual moral sensibilities. Yeah, it’s puerile, homoerotic, and makes light of Satan, so it would certainly be a “dark joke” if said by, for example, a Catholic priest in the course of a church service, but in the context of a Tenacious D song it’s a very “light joke”.
What made the Trump joke different is that political humor, especially of the violent nature, is absolutely not part of their act (even if, as others have pointed out, the members have made political comments outside of their capacity as Tenacious D) and therefore it actually is shocking to the political sensibilities of some listeners.
The rape element is as shocking in a modern polite society context as the Satan element is in a Christian one.
I don’t think that’s true. I hear people make prison rape “don’t drop the soap” jokes all the time. Men raping women is something it’s taboo to joke about. A man (or, in this case, a male deity) raping another man - especially when the context is this over-the-top and obviously tongue-in-cheek - is far, far less taboo to joke about, especially to this particular audience.
For a more recent pop-culture example, I've heard there's a scene in a recent episode of The Boys where one of the main characters infiltrates a villian's sex-dungeon, and get violated in various ways for his trouble, which is played for laughs.
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It does have basic comedic timing, with a big setup to say something unexpected and then blowing out candles: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-hPUM01nuis
I wouldn't know to what extent they're playing characters, but it seems pretty exaggerated. And they're americans in another country so it may have seemed less inflammatory to go for a darker joke there. But yeah it doesn't preclude that he did mean what he said, even if as a punchline.
Gass could have said 'Boobies' and probably gotten the same effect. Instead he did the stupid thing.
I'm still carrying a charge over this after watching various leftist figures not only joke about the attempt on Trump's life, but also the other victims (1 dead, 2 critical). Last week I listened to Glenn Loury and John McWhorter on the former's podcast, and even straight-laced smarty linguistics expert John was saying he was only 'half-kidding' when he said he wanted Trump killed. Mind you, this was before the shooting, and I am intensely interested in their next episode together.
I had low tolerance for this kind of public talk before. It's nuked now.
EDIT: I have just now actually watched the video of Gass on stage making that joke. The most disturbing thing isn't the joke itself, but watching and hearing the crowd go fucking wild at it. And I'm reminded that we have a much larger problem than whatever stupid shit falls out of Gass' mouth. If the Right needs to claim scalps wherever they can get them and make examples of people (even down to lowly Home Depot workers), then so be it. Time to reach out and oh-so-gently touch them.
That's what makes me think that in context of the whole show (without having heard Tenacious D in 20 years), it must be practically like an in-character comedy set, where the audience is willing to go along with near full charity, not with arms crossed and deciding how they really feel about anything said.
Definitely, this has to be one of their most anticipated episodes. John's TDS does seem embarrassing, but I at least gave him credit before if he was trying to say out loud how he really felt, even knowing that it didn't sound good. I think now that things actually ramped up to another level, it's sobering, and people are feeling a bit sheepish to have been involved in childish gay ops or fantasies. But to the extent anyone keeps at it or doubles down, that's important to learn. I'm still not interested in going after a Home Depot worker for it, but I'd hold John to a higher bar (although it's a bit unlucky to not have been this past monday for a less filtered take).
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Oh how quickly the concept of politically correct humor has gone back to being a justification for right wing censorship. I'm sure we'll see such consistent logic from everyone involved.
The logic of "this is your petard, right?" is perfectly consistent. I don't see what hypocrisy you could possibly be pointing at.
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in my opinion The right wing gets free speech and all it entails, and the left wing freeze peach and all it entails. That means I'm judging them based on their own standards without any hypocrisy involved and I get to keep my moral high ground, thank you very much.
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Wanting to kill the president is disgusting. It's morally reprehensible. There's not some "both sides" hypocrisy consistency "true free speech" liberal norm where I'm forced to concede that, hey, live and let live man. "I want to kill the president." "That's disgusting." "I'm only joking." "Oh, ok, sounds like free speech."
It's free speech even if he's not joking. The whole point of free speech is to protect reprehensible speech. Inoffensive speech needs no protections.
That's missing the point. No one is denying that you have the free speech right to say you want to kill the president. It's also morally reprehensible. Cowering behind the defense that, it's just a joke man, that's my free speech, man, is retreating. It's pretending that they didn't say what they said.
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"I want to kill the president."
RIP Trevor Moore.
It really can be a joke, though.
Sure, it's possible to make a joke about killing the president, and it's even possible for it to be funny, but this is obviously a bad faith justification people are applying after they get criticized for bad taste. There's a big difference between a dark joke comedy sketch and actually admitting out loud that you want the president to be killed.
The sketch was in reference to Bush, and what made the joke funny was the fact that everyone could tell Moore was not actually joking.
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Morally reprehensible is definitely an objective line for determining the boundaries of free speech. Not at all something with competing definitions.
I'm not saying it's not free speech, I'm saying it's bad stupid and morally reprehensible speech. Falling back on, "it's just a joke," "it's free speech" is the lowest possible justification. Being sarcastic about it doesn't make your defense any stronger.
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One day I'm going to stand for election on a platform of legalising comedy.
Australia is going to have to add a right to freedom of speech in their constitution first then. And an actual one, not a "subject to reasonable restrictions" one
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Playing it off as a joke requires both Gass to have been joking and the audience to believe that he was joking.
Not only only is Black a (relatively) big star, his fanbase is predominantly middle-aged cis-hetero folk who grew up waching 90s stoner comedies who's kids have grown up watching Kung-Fu Panda.
Point being that there's a lot of overlap between Trump's core constituents and Black's, and i suspect that Black is savvy enough to recognize that, and to recognize that this is not something said constituents were likely to take as "a joke".
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Minor celebrity Kyle Gass, who isn't particularly politically important, might have gotten away with it being a dark joke, but megastar Jack Black, who has frequently stumped for political causes, being involved means that it's on another level.
Good point. Let's remember he was the prominent keynote of a major Biden fundraiser and made a prominent public endorsement. He's too close to the campaign itself to even joke about that kind of thing.
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