Having been a satirist and humorist by profession once, I suddenly realize that it’s a crime if I don’t dispense gyaan on controversies around Ranveer Allahbadia aka BeerBicepsGuy who has now apologized for his ‘joke’, though the issue has now reached police; FIR has been registered, national child commission has issued notice, and one Rajya Sabha MP from Uddhav Sena has even promised to raise the issue in the parliament too.
Taking a cue from the joke which landed him in trouble – even if he decided to join this clusterf*ck instead of just watching it, he won’t be able to stop it forever.
It’s never-ending anyway. Even if some comedians may think/argue that ‘why give us so much importance when all we are doing is to crack silly jokes to help few people relax and destress’, they won’t be left alone as comedy is a serious business.
Except for physical comedy, such as clowns in a circus, all comedy, especially those involving words, do end up touching issues that have social and political facets. Even physical comedy, like some acts by Chalie Chaplin, can make social points. Whether or not a comedian is aiming to be or wants to be, he or she becomes some sort of an activist or a social worker – absurd as it may sound. And that’s when you can’t escape scrutiny and can’t wish to be left alone.
Now this risks comedy being regulated, censored, and worst, being self-censored – all of which impediment creativity, which is the worst thing that can happen to an artist.
Wait a minute, so is a comedian an artist or an activist?
The main difference between an artist and an activist is that an artist is primarily on the journey of self-exploration while an activist is bothered mainly about others. Both of these are not mutually exclusive domains though, and there are overlapping areas. Some have entirely blurred the lines and call themselves artist-activists, and they usually suck at both.
However, every form of art touches social and political facets too, so an artist wouldn’t be left alone either – even if he or she would like to and even deserves to be. Society as a whole insists on an order to be maintained, and a social contract to be followed, and it will do what it takes to keep things in check. Art and literature have done far more to bring about social and political changes compared to wars or elections, thus it is naïve to expect that they would be left alone by existing power structures (both social and political).
Comedy – whether you see it as an art form or activism – would not have the license or luxury to be left alone, except in an idealist libertarian world, which has never existed and possibly would never exist. “Don’t like it, don’t watch it” will not happen, because you would be watched, as you impact society and its structure.
It is also important to realize what humour is. Not always, but often, there is an object of humour – an idea, an entity, a person – which is being ridiculed. It allows you to criticize some things that otherwise might be difficult to do when done in a serious manner. Now, if those ideas, entities or persons on the receiving end are directly related to the existing power structures, there will be pushback.
Please do note that “power structures” don’t necessarily mean who is in power – i.e. political party, government, etc. It is essentially any system that maintains the status quo and social equilibrium. It could be ‘right-wing’ in some sectors, and ‘left-wing’ in another, and no explicit wing in many.
When it comes to jokes like what caused the current furore – the idea that is being ridiculed is the concept of social taboos in general and incest in particular. Now, personally, if you think there shouldn’t be any concept of taboo in society, and practices should fall strictly into either legal or illegal domains, you’d find the entire pushback absurd and unwanted.
Jokes around violence, sex, morality, death, tragedy, injustice, crime, etc. would fall into this domain. They don’t encourage illegal activities (unless direct call for violence, rape, etc.), but they go against taboos. It will always be a tricky domain because taboos are not well defined as laws and taboos differ from one group to another, even from one individual to another.
A comedian may crack a morbid joke thinking it’s just a random timepass expression not aimed at ridiculing an idea or weakening a structure, but rarely that is going to be received in that manner. In fact, it does weaken those things.
Not many would be comfortable with the idea of incest being treated in a casual and normalized way. It strikes at the very foundation of the concept of family. Obviously, if you are a woke who thinks family itself is a toxic concept, you’d not care. But most of the society will care, and will react, to protect the idea and concept of the family system.
And they are not overreacting (I mean society as a unit by ‘they’, though some individuals surely are not only overreacting but even overacting outraged). The general reaction is entirely natural. The oft-repeated liberal/woke quip – “Is your religion/nation so weak that it will get hurt by some joke/movie?” – is just a wisecrack. It’s not a serious argument. Yes, ideas can be weakened by words, and often by words only – bit by bit. A religion, a nation, an ideology, is ultimately a set of ideas only. The same folks indulging in that quip knew this fact fully well, which is why when they could, they tried to censor everything in name of fighting hate speech, racism, sexism, etc. to protect their own ideas.
If you are a professional comedian, unfortunately, you can’t really have the luxury of not being scrutinized like this. You can’t compare your act with say a drunk party of some college kids where they blurt all obscenities at each other only to (hopefully) forget it all when their senses are back, even if it was a private closed-door event. There is hardly anything private and closed anyway these days thanks to modern technologies.
Someone on X tagged me to what appears an old voice note of Samay Raina (embedded below), a comedian on whose YouTube show Ranveer uttered that stupid joke involving incest, where he is saying “comedy has no responsibility” in response to what I assume is someone asking him why does he indulge in vulgarity on his shows. He then adds that “comedy is to take you away from the reality and to make you have fun” because people are already burdened with hundreds of issues in their lives and they just want to switch off and enjoy some time off.
‘Agar koi aakar Porn shoot karega toh maja aaega’ – Samay Raina
— Satyam Surana (@SatyamSurana) February 9, 2025
These so called influencers have lost all morality & ethics. Are these the influencers we want to influence our society?
As Samay Raina & Ranveer Allahbadia stoop down to a new pervert level in the name of comedy;… pic.twitter.com/Qb2nWWlZT8
Maybe he doesn’t realize but he contradicted himself. When he gives his comedy that purpose or mandate, he is taking up an important responsibility of making people destress and unwind – something for which some people have to take medical assistance and need therapies. He then can’t go on to say comedy has no responsibility. He himself only took on one.
However, his approach appears to be what I described above – have fun like friends who are drunk. Nothing wrong with that on a base level. I actually liked some of his jokes/acts (I discovered him only after this outrage – yes, I’m getting old); he has a good sense of timing and perhaps no sense of filter, which has caused the trouble now. I for sure won’t want him or Ranveer jailed, but they should realize that comedy won’t be left alone just like that, for the reasons I pointed out above.
In fact, even a group of drunk college friends would stop their wild party if an underage kid were to pass by – well at least most of them I hope would still be in their senses to do that. Modern technologies are enabling kids to peep into such wild parties, which won’t be healthy for them. Tech platforms, and the government obviously have to find a better solution than to jail or ban, but the content creators and comedians too need to be aware and conscious of this fact.
It’s time to realize that comedy is indeed a serious business.
