Examples Of Dark Humor In To Kill A Mockingbird

Humor is odd. Dark humor pokes fun and turns taboo topics, like death, into comical and light subjects. These are known as jokes. In America, dark humor is widely accepted— regardless of many areas of dark humor being racist. So, why do so many find racism, death, and terrorism concocted with humor — humorous? Do we simply deny that it’s an issue? This dark humor called-out for its hateful undertones in American Denial, while the hate is shown in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, as well as A Raisin In The Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. Dark humor, defined by making light of serious or crude topics. It can warrant deep thought about certain issues, causing discomfort and disgust— while still staying amusing and humorous to the audience.

Comic relief typically eases stress in social situations, it’s an emotional release, but the subject of choice for a release to be—of all things— racism, speaks volumes. As racist dark humor becomes popular, encouraged by the internet society in the current, growing generation mentioned above, we don’t realize that in order for anything to be considered humor, people have to find it humorous. Who finds racism funny? In TKAM and ARITS, white people found it to be. However now, it seems we’ve really been ramping up racism in humor. Is this because Millennial and Gen-Z humor is racist? I have personally witnessed people of color making racist jokes. About people of color. I’ve heard adults, Gen-X and older, making jokes that weren’t around when they were younger. Are the millennials teaching this? Or are these beliefs taught and reinforced? Why is the youngest generation under the impression that racism in dark humor, and dark humor overall, is okay? It’s almost as if society has implemented dark humor as a norm, and thus even some of the mere children now scream of racist slurs. Is it a monkey-see, monkey-do situation? Or are we blind to the issue and ignorantly refuse to fix