Recently, a small clip from The Great Indian Kapil Show, hosted by Kapil Sharma, went viral. The clip is part of the episode where the Baby John team — represented by Varun, Keerthy Suresh, Wamiqa Gabbi, and Atlee — were there to promote their movie.
In the viral portion, Kapil Sharma is asking Atlee about the mismatch between how he looks and his actual stature of being a big director. Atlee’s response can be the definition of dignity.
He said, “In a way I understood your question, I’ll try to answer (it). I am very thankful to AR Murugadoss because he produced my first film… He didn’t see how I’m looking, whether I’m capable of it or not, but he loved my narration. I think the world should see that. By appearance we should not judge; by heart, you have to judge.”
The dignified handling of the question by Atlee did not stop netizens from blasting Kapil Sharma for reckless insinuation about Atlee’s looks. It is being assumed that he made fun of his dark complexion, which Sharma has obviously denied. However, considering his past track record, it is hard to believe Kapil.
But the question is how did he even come to think that such racist jokes could be appreciated? One answer could be that these jokes were normal when Sharma began his career. But we are in 2024, the era of post-Black Lives Matter, in which even the BCCI asked its cricketers to kneel down without any mistake.
So, what explains it? The answer lies in the nature of comedy, the background research behind it, and how the advent of dark comedy impacts them.
In its essence, comedy by its very nature is a deviation from normal. It gives us a way to look at things in ways that make us laugh. Comedians’ usefulness lies in the fact that they explain serious subjects in an easy-to-understand manner and break the status quo on orthodoxy. In a way, they bend civilisational outlook in a logical manner.
For instance, in serious debates, it is next to impossible to criticise cousin marriage in Islam. But in stand-up comedy, Maheep Singh does. He can also bash Urfi Javed and not get cancelled. In a way, it is a position of privilege to be identified as a comedian.
But privilege does not mean an absence of responsibility. After all, at the end of the day, their jokes have to be rooted in the way society, economy, relations, and emotions function. They have always looked into societal practices to find something that is a bit of a deviation from normal.
This is where the Internet comes into play. The Internet is also a deviation from normal. You wouldn’t find a teenager wearing spectacles finding much acceptance in the pre-Internet world. It was a sign of a weak immune system or poor parenting. These people are normal on the Internet and, in fact, are celebrated.
The same holds true for moral standards. The reckless way in which obscenity and nudity are there on the Internet, if practised in daily lives, becomes the cause of censorship by society.
The research team of these comedians also turns to the Internet, and then they encounter a genre of comedy called dark humour, which earlier was known as black comedy.
Cambridge Dictionary defines black comedy as ‘a film, play, etc. that looks at the funny side of things that we usually consider to be very serious, like death and illness’.
It was recently evident in Samay Raina’s show, where comedians laughed at the death of one of their panellists’ father. We have women comedians trolling their real fathers.
Dark humour touches on taboo subjects, and rightly so, because some evil practices are designated as taboo to talk about by the elite section of society, who then use it to hide their culpability. That is the only good and useful purpose they serve in society.
But the Overton window has drastically shifted in favour of evil. From making fun of evil religious practices, it has now gone on to attempting to normalise incest, beating parents, killing one’s children, and burning people for their opinions.
Of course, the usual shield would be to say that they do not cause real changes in society. But psychoanalysts do not agree with it.
Words are magic through which we bring changes in society. There are ways to bring about changes. Firstly, an idea is floated; then public response is checked. If the public does not respond kindly, it is reintroduced in a few years’ time frame, just like wokeism was brought to the Ivy League. The gap is used by these nefarious people to prepare society for its reintroduction.
The attempt has always been made to normalise genuinely taboo practices in Indian society.
Manto and Mirza Ghalib are particularly famous for romanticising and normalising hedonistic ideas like prostitution and drunkenness. Both got bashed during their times, but Sanjay Leela Bhansali is appreciated for Devdas and Heeramandi.
We have men and women from good families joining prostitution and the drunkard trend.
These are just two big examples of how evil practices get normalised in society. They make soft entries through jokes and then corrupt society in an unimaginable way. In most cases, people using and enjoying dark humour are somewhat frustrated with failures in their lives.
According to arguably the greatest psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, these people are hyper-aggressive but have been forced to repress their sexual and aggressive urges for various reasons. Carl Jung, another contender for the greatest, has coined the term shadow for repressed traits.
Every human being has two personalities — one which he practises regularly, while there is another which he has repressed over the years. These repressed ones become part of the shadow, and if given proper freedom from consequences, they are expressed.
The Internet does provide this, which is why we see humans promoting racism, cultural bigotry, incest, vulgarism, baby killing, animal burning, and what not. A few of them emerge from American TikTok and then come to India, while a few have taken reverse routes as well.
That is what dark humour has brought us. Thankfully, it was someone as famous as Atlee, which is why there was a counter to it. Sharma does it regularly to audience members, and no one bats an eye.
