“Part of the offensiveness wicked campers creates is that the side of a vehicle travelling public roads is not the place for puerile jokes”.
‘Oh, you’ve got such a wicked sense of humour!’ How many times have we heard that clichéd cry? I guess that was the marketing strategy thought up by Wicked Campers when they came up with the idea of plastering their vans in what I presume is meant to be edgy humour. People, politicians and advocates are up in arms about Wicked’s lack of sensibility, and quite rightly so I reckon. If you haven’t heard of their slogans yet, you must live in a cave or campervan without media.
The art of humour often treads a thin line in its efforts to provoke a reaction. There is a certain style of humour which comes from bordering on being offensive but not quite stepping over the line. Humourists often venture into subject areas that have been traditionally taboo, such as racism, sexism and homophobia.
Disability is one of the taboo areas that humourists from time to time delve into, wanting to be avant garde with their use of shock jock tactics.
Context plays a big part as to whether humour is acceptable or not. Disabled leaders and activists, for instance, will use derogatory words such as ‘crip’ to describe themselves. They do this to take back the power of the negative language, as gay rights activists did in the ‘80s by reclaiming and using the word ‘queer’ to identify their sexual preference.
In this way the target population succeed in taking the wind out of the sails of the pernicious bigots. They steal their thunder. Part of the offensiveness Wicked Campers creates is that the side of a vehicle travelling public roads is not the place puerile jokes. While teenage jokes may well be funny shared among fellow pimply youths working through their hormones surges, when they’re displayed in public they can be damaging for the precious minds of our tamariki and other sectors of the community.
Often celebrities or media hosts overstep the mark. Remember the late Sir Paul Holmes getting into hot water after calling Kofi Annan a “cheeky darkie”? Or when Paul Henry temporarily fell from grace after a series of gaffes, one of them commenting through uncontrollable snickering that Susan Boyle looked ‘retarded’.
Both Pauls found their boundaries through societal push back.
It’s when humour gets away it can take on a life of its own.
For most adults good comedy tends to be somewhat more subtle and involves sophisticated ways of reflecting back to us life’s idiosyncrasies in a way that we all relate to. Masters of this have been Bob Newhart, Jerry Seinfeld, Alan Davies, Billy Connelly, Ruby Wax, and more recently Amy Schumer, Lee Mack, Kirsten Wigg, Bill Bailey
Sure they talk about sex , drugs and rock n roll – but with a smidgen of self-deprecation and surrealism – and to an audience who has sought them out.
So Wicked Campers, you’re not too outrageous – you’re just wrong place, wrong time. Your artwork would be right at home in the back page of a bored teenager’s exercise book. Back to the drawing board you overgrown adolescents.
Downloadable pdf below:
| Available Downloads | Type | Size |
|---|---|---|
| Wicked sense of humour not at all funny | 221 KB |