Newsflash, Jerk: You're not Funny.

Look at these two images. Which one is funny? Are either one of them funny?

It's a touchy subject: making light of or even flat out making fun of an event or situation that was clearly never funny. In class, we talked about this subject in terms of Hurricane Katrina and The Boondocks episode "Invasion of the Katrinians" (the comic strip equivalent depicted to the left) and the attacks on 9/11 and this demotivational poster (depicted to the right).

In The Boondocks episode, originally aired two years after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Grandad's second-cousin Jericho and his family from New Orleans take up residence in the Freeman house, having been displaced by Hurricane Katrina. The Freeman's hospitality quickly runs out as the N'awleaneans take over the house: racking up their bills, eating their food, breaking their possessions, and using the tragedy as a guilt-trip over the Freemans. Jericho reassures them that he is to receive a check from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), money that mysteriously never seems to appear.

The episode is pretty funny, but as the series typically does, it raises underlying questions of racial stereotyping and humor. How far is too far to be funny? "The Invasion of the Katrinians" episode depicts the Katrina refugees as lazy, manipulative moochers. They use the tragedy and the inherent racism in the event to perpetuate themselves as victims needing of taking care of. We can laugh at it up here in New England five years later, but I can't imagine Katrina refugees finding that episode very funny three years ago.

Now, alternatively, we also discussed as a class the controversial significance of the "Falling Man" photograph. The photograph, taken by Associated Press photographer Richard Drew, depicts a man of falling from the burning North Tower of the World Trade Center at 9:41:15 a.m. on 9/11. Why do we shy away from these suicides? Can they even be labeled as suicides considering the circumstances? And if not, why do we as a society still yet to this day associate them with the negative connotations of a typical suicide? What is it about a real death immortalized on film that raises such emotions?

If the raw photograph wasn't controversial enough, images on the Internet (colloquially referred to as demotivational posters) have started surfacing very blatantly making fun of the jumpers off the World Trade Center. Classy, guy.

Someone in the class tried to justify these images, saying, "Well, the person who made this image, they come from a younger generation- so its harder for them to fully comprehend the ramifications of their actions."

So? I didn't live to see the Holocaust, but an anonymously-posted internet comic turning the phrase into "LOLocaust" doesn't exactly tickle my funny bone. Its like saying idiots should get a free pass because they're young, a preteen, maybe twelve or eleven years old. When I was eleven years old, I saw the World Trade Center topple into dust before my eyes, before I even knew what the World Trade Center was. So maybe they should know, if they don't already. 9/11 isn't funny.

I'm not suggesting we subject another generation to the same thing -it was a traumatic day for us all- but what I'm saying is that children are more resilient than we realize at times. They don't need to know the nitty-gritty. They don't need to know the details. They don't need to see the falling man to know that 9/11 was a big deal and that its impacted our daily lives and the way we look at the world. But maybe they should know the 9/11 happened. When they are asked what day it is, they should be able to say, "Its September 11th. Its a day to remember and memorialize the people that died."

So think about it. Think about these two instances. Why is The Boondocks episode funny? Why is the falling man not funny? Do you agree? Can we ever move far enough from these tragedies to laugh about them? Can these events ever be funny?