There is an odd contrast between the comedy material reviewed in this article and the idea of transgression in modern art. When an artist produces something repulsive or sacrilegious or both, he or she often justifies it on the ground that the work is "transgressive", it "challenges tabboos", and makes people "question their norms." So we get a Madonna spattered with elephant dung and pornographic pictures, a crucifix dunked in urine, and photographs of a naked man with a bullwhip handle stuck up his butt. There are also many theatrical performances which attempt to be "transgressive" by such means as presenting an actress wearing nothing but chocolate sauce and bean sprouts, or a play about a homosexual Jesus. As I write this, there is a production of "King Lear" in D.C. and other cities which opens with two men peeing into a urinal. Take that, W.S.!

OK, so what's wrong with a little shock-the-bourgeousie? First, the fact that bad taste for the sake of bad taste is inherently phony. Second, the more you shock people, the harder it becomes to shock them. And finally, the fact that transgressive art only transgresses against the mores of people the artist doesn't like, just as "edgy" comedy is edgy only because it's aimed at approved targets. The double standard is easy to illustrate. How many jokes have you ever heard about the rape of men in prison? When the Attorney General of California joked that he'd like to arrange for Ken Lay to get raped in prison, how many feminists objected? Not one that I know of. If jokes about domestic violence are tabboo, why did I never hear any feminist object to jokes I heard about Lorena Bobbitt cutting her husband's penis off? Because violence by men against women is heinous, violence by women against men is comedy.

I'd also add that "transgressive" modern art is not really transgressive at all. The realm of "high" art has been for at least a few hundred years a completely sanctioned and acceptable place to do taboo things. If there is a sanctioned, generally accepted place to do certain things, then, in my book, they are no longer taboo at all. Much like Carnival: seems "transgressive" on the surface, but really just gives the system a release of steam that then gets everyone working even harder come next Monday, all charged up from their state-sanctioned orgy the week before.

Besides the bumpkins who criticize them, artists have had much support being transgressive and "shocking" and all sorts of raunchy. People like looking at porn. It is embarrassing to do it at home on the internet, but it is okay to do it at an art gallery. The feelings aroused when looking at naked humans is hardly different in the two settings (though we could talk about the misogyny of mainstream porn and/or the violence of pornography, etc. but let's keep it to the Playboy soft core sense).

I couldn't quite tell what the original article was saying versus what Andrea was saying in the OP, and I haven't time to read the Guardian article in its entirety before dinner, but it seems people can always criticize comedians for attacking the "wrong" people, just like comedians criticize culture at large for discriminating against the "wrong" people. Not just double-standards but dodeca-standards and more so.

Frankly, I've had it with the would-be 'edgy/shocking'. Once one looks past the crudity/cruelty, it's obviously so contrived and childish, it makes a fourteen-year-old who manages to make 'motherfucker' and 'cunt' into roughly half their spoken output seem nonchalant and profound. The key difference seems to be that most people eventually realize that contrived efforts to shock simply make them sound like asses, and move on.

I grew up in a family of eccentrics and artists (whom I respect for not insisting on there being a correlation between the two; they also have no awareness of the fact that they're eccentric, but that's another story). I have a lot of respect for people who genuinely do what they believe in, but most supposedly 'transgressive' art smacks of someone uptight going out of their way to show how shocking they can be. Evidently, it doesn't take take much. Worse, it's boring. Affectation always is.
'Edgy' and 'shocking' seem to have gone the way of 'cool': Reduced to set of grotesque, worn-out (and thus actually familiar and safe) utterances that are as empty of meaning as if Teddy Ruxpin were giving voice to them.

I've had enough with the edgy, mysoginistic and racist comics... I was on a cruise ship earlier this year and there was a comedian hired on as entertainment... He was cuban and kept on make racist remarks, as well as mysoginistic jokes! Nobody laughed and people began to boo him. He defended what he was saying by 'I can say this 'cause I'm not white, I'm cuban,' or 'I'm old, this is the way that we treated women back in the day.' Just because you aren't white or you are of the race that you are making fun of or you're old does not make it right to propagate distasteful remarks... I'd rather you be up on the stage talking about an awkward convorsation you had with you're parents when you were 12 or something funny your cat did the other day!

You're perfectly right, Autumn. Tasteless remarks are tasteless whoever makes them. If a comic claims "It's OK for me to say racist or misogynist things because I'm Cuban", what's he implying about Cubans?

I hate rape jokes, and I've always been immensely offended not only when people tell them, but when people expect women on the receiving end of the joke to just 'lighten up' and laugh about it. I'm a survivor myself, and I find it incredibly callous that people think rape is good joke material. Thanks for the article.