What is so funny about profanity? Simply standing on stage shouting the f-word into the microphone is not funny, but maybe that's just us because the audience applauded, shouted and laughed.
Rock's performance reminded me of the time several years ago when I was out cutting the grass and a young pre-teen boy halfway down the street was standing in the tree lawn shouting profanities at passing cars. No doubt in his juvenile mind he thought it was clever, shocking and funny. It wasn't. It was juvenile and stupid.
I was once told that swearing is the sign of a weak mind trying to express itself forcibly. Swearing is not mature; it's very immature and childish. Twelve year old boys like to swear because it's obnoxious, annoying, rude, stupid and immature, but they think it is cool.
Kevin Hart is another actor, comedian, writer, and producer and in his routine almost every sentence includes the use of profanity as well as at least one f-bomb.
Hart addressed those who think he's not funny in a series of tweets in which he pointed out that he has had several stand up comedy specials on television and they always fall in the top 10 highest grossing comedy specials of all time. He added that he has been the highest grossing comedian for years with over 4 billion in earnings.
Hart is right, but why do people think watching someone stand on stage uttering a string of profanity is funny? Telling a joke or a story and implanting profanity between every other word makes people laugh. Why?
No matter matter how much a comedian's comedy specials gross, offensive material and language under the guise of jokes should not be funny or acceptable, but it is.
Americans are more than ever before willing to view profanity as acceptable on television, in movies and in public. What does it all mean?
A study by San Diego State University psychologist Jean M. Twenge suggested that this increasing coarseness is not necessarily due to a decline in morals or manners, but rather to the growth of individualism and freedom of expression.
The findings suggested a notable decline in social taboos which they equate with increasing individualism. Our culture values individual self-expression more and more and so the taboo factor of profanity is disappearing.
Our culture has shifted toward more free self-expression and profanity has become normalized and certain words have even lost some of their impact.
That still does not answer the question, "Why is profanity funny?"
Richard Stephens, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Keele University in the United Kingdom, found that swearing helps people cope with pain.
He narrowed it down to two possible mechanisms.
First, there is an emotional response from swearing. It rouses your emotions and that arouses your body's autonomic nervous system. Profanity is an acute stress response.
The second possible mechanism is that there appears to be a physical sensation of swearing. A lot of swear words are fricatives. A fricative is a type of consonant made by the friction of breath in a narrow opening, producing a turbulent air flow. What's that got to do with anything?!
Professor Stephens created an experiment in which people put their hands in ice water which is painful but not harmful.
Some of the subjects put their hands in ice water and used the f-word while other used made up swear words such as fouch (a fricative) and twizpipe (just funny sounding). Another group used a neutral word.
Professor Stephens measured how long the subjects could keep their hands in the water while saying their swear word.
The findings were that when people used fouch and twizpipe, they couldn't keep their hands in the water as long as when people used the f-word. The experiment proved that distraction and humor did not help at all in dealing with pain.
It was concluded that there's something about our emotional connection to swear words that helps people deal with pain.
And, he also concluded that just as swearing helps with physical pain, it also helps with mental pain. That may be the answer to the question about why people find profanity laced routines by comedians funny.
In the fields of social psychology and personality psychology, the term social pain is used to denote psychological pain caused by harm or threat to social connection; bereavement, embarrassment, shame and hurt feelings are sub-types of social pain. Maybe swearing comedians help people deal with that type of pain.
