violence

We seem okay with violence, but nudity we race to criticize and censor.

-Eva Mendes

I have a friend on the facebook who was recently sharing a lot of pictures from a page called *Clean* Funny Pics. Those pics and the page are no longer available. Not sure why.

Some of the pics I found funny, but it just seemed to me that many of them simply rely on violence or violent language for their humor. I can’t remember what they all were, but here are 2 that I do remember and found elsewhere:

wanderings.net

I didn’t find this funny. It’s actually kinda sad.

premad.tumblr.com

This one is kind of funny. It’s the one that first got my attention. It’s also kind of violent, but that‘s not what got my attention.

In the *Clean* Funny Pics version the word “screw” was blacked out. I, quite naturally I think, assumed the blacked out word was “fuck”. So, in this case, censoring the picture actually made it worse. Maybe not technically worse, as it didn’t have a “curse” word, but it made me think a “curse” word. 

It’s like in ancient Greek drama, where the violent stuff happened offstage, or in a suspense movie, where you know the bad guy or monster is there someplace but you can’t see it. To show it makes it definitive, but leaving it unseen lets the imagination perhaps go further than would ever be possible onstage.

Ah well, my point is that I often don’t find violence all that amusing. I prefer the Marx Brothers to the Three Stooges. When I was a kid I thought some of the Stooges humor was amusing, but not anymore.