Tonight, the news channel  seems full of news on arrest of some television artist for insulting the emotions and religious feelings of a person/group. TV anchors described the arrested man as comedian. This brings us to the burning question as to what should be the limit of the comedy? In the name of comedy, can anyone allowed to travel to any extent, if not, who would point the limit and risk being termed as “intolerent’?

Noble Prize winner, French philosopher, Henri Louis Bergson, as early as in 1900 AD warned that laughter’s criterion of what should be laughed at is not a moral criterion and that it can in fact cause serious damage to a person’s   self-esteem.

Gone are the days of bunch of circus clowns who would dare to take a joke on themselves to create humor and who can forget the silent acts of Comedy King Charlie Chaplin who would spin humor around unusual situations and characters. Over the time, comedy has grown and developed into multiple genre classifications like,  alternative, black, blue, deadpan, spoof etc. etc.

I am not sure how many of us would know the difference, but one form of comedy is certainly establishing its root in Indian Comedy is “insult comedy”. According to “Wikipedia”, insult comedy is a   genre in which the act consists mainly of offensive insults directed at the performer's audience or other performers . No credit for guessing that the most talked about comedy show(s) on Indian TV are listed in this category.

It is so pathetic to see that we need to insult someone in order to create humor. No surprises, even the stalwarts of the silver screen find no option but to incur the risk of humiliation to sell their popularity. The so called “intellectual class” prefer to ignore this rapidly growing menace in the fear of being labelled as not progressive or having a conservative mind. To be precise and keeping with the latest trend, “intolerant’. For those intelligent friends, Wikipedia has clarified that the “insult comedy” style is quite distinguishable from an act based on satire, or political humor .

Here; an example of laughter given by Bergson deserve mention, according to him laughter created by a man falling down in a street has its source in the presence of rigidity in life which is depicted by an accidental situation. This is in sharp contrast in humiliating a person directly using offensive, obscene and personal comments which is unfortunately the trend in vogue. True Comedy  serves  society by pointing out its antisocial tendencies and inviting us to laugh at them, thus encouraging us to correct them, this way comedy has been said to have a social function.

Again, laughter is purely cerebral. It requires an indifference and detachment from sensibility and emotion because it is more difficult to laugh when one is fully aware of the seriousness of a situation. The insult comedy can hardly claim this virtue as the practitioners of this genre are professional performers who are not trying to create laughter as a charity but they are paid handsomely and everything they do or speak is for money.

Let us desist from watching and promoting humiliation based shows and performers and return to pure comedy that spread laughter and laughter only.