Humour v. Harm: Consent, Comedy and the Politics of Laughter
The baseline that connects these instances is not the vulgarity it delivers. Comedy has always contained elements of vulgarity, and it should, to continue challenging modern social values and what is considered unacceptable. Here, the object of scrutiny is the normalisation of violence, coercion, humiliation and prejudice that is made the raw material to illicit humour.
A few days ago, many Indians laughed at a joke in Pranit More’s improv. The joke narrated a man spending money on a date only for the woman to leave without sleeping with him. This doesn’t end here but a brutal punchline of half the money being recovered follows after he allegedly forces himself on her. The chain of events after this: the audience laughs, the clip goes viral and the joke is eventually removed after an online meltdown. However, something troubling remains.
The outrage was not about one offensive joke or one comedian crossing the line, but a broader shift in contemporary comedic shock value bleeding into misogyny, edginess becoming a shield for entitlement, and violence against women and queer persons being repackaged as humour. The issue is not the offensive capacity of comedy but its recurring targets being women, queer individuals, and people occupying a vulnerable position in the society.
Historically, comedy has spoken truth to power with the greatest comedians ridiculing people in power and social and religious hypocrisy. The objective was always to punch up these absurdities, but much of what we see today appears to be punching down. This growing trend witnesses a complete reversal and this distinction matters.
Feminist scholar Kate Manne described misogyny as not merely hatred against women, but a policing mechanism to punish women who refuse to conform. Viewed from this perspective, such jokes are not harmless gigs but rather emerge as narratives of punishment: the woman who rejects a man becomes a gold digger, feminists become irrational, queer persons turned to caricature, and collectively this narrative becomes the setup for a punchline.
The biryani joke solidifies this logic, hiding an unsettling assumption under the laughter. All the money, efforts and romantic investment creates a sexual debt, and a woman’s refusal simply translates into an injustice against the man and her consent becomes negotiable. And the audience is invited to laugh not at the absurdity of this entitlement but rather at its fulfilment.
Pertinently, this incident is not isolated; recent years have witnessed a series of instances involving comedians making homophobic, misogynistic and sexually violent remarks. One comedian referred to female influencers as prostitutes while the other drew scrutiny for crude sexual remarks that eventually prompted intervention by the National Commission for Women. Moreover, time and again, older instances surrounding rape jokes, domestic violence and queer stereotypes continue to resurface.
The baseline that connects these instances is not the vulgarity it delivers. Comedy has always contained elements of vulgarity, and it should, to continue challenging modern social values and what is considered unacceptable. Here, the object of scrutiny is the normalisation of violence, coercion, humiliation and prejudice that is made the raw material to illicit humour.
And when this humour backfires, the defence of “It’s just a joke” is predictable but simply inadequate. Because these jokes are not just words for extracting humour but a cultural telltale of who belongs, who matters and who can be sacrificed for a ‘joke’.
The meltdown over such comedy is not an attack on a single joke, but on the broader culture it sustains. Feminist scholarship on rape culture maintains that explicit advocacy alone cannot create an environment of sexual violence; rather, it functions in parallel with everyday attitudes that trivialize consent, normalize harmful behaviors, and, eventually, reinforce patriarchy. A single joke alone cannot create rape culture, but every single joke that treats coercion as funny contributes another brick to the wall.
The logic remains the same when the target is queer individuals. Humour for long, has been used to police gender norms with effeminate men, masculine women and a transgender person repeatedly appear in punchlines — not as fully realised humans but as subjects of mockery. This communicates a message that is loud and clear, any deviation from the accepted norms invites ridicule. In a country where queer persons continue to face rejection, discrimination and violence, comedy compounds this marginality by shaping the contours of social acceptance.
Critics of such a meltdown often invoke the defence of free speech and censorship. However, this is a misleading narrative. The issue in question is not about punishing, arresting or banning a comedian every time a volatile joke is cracked, in fact, excessive intervention would threaten artistic freedom and give the state the authority to define what is acceptably funny. Comedy should not be politically sanitized or toned down, it should question and call out. But the real issue is accountability. Free speech protects the comedian’s right to tell a joke, but it offers no protection from public disagreement.
Mature artistic cultures thrive in engaging with such scrutiny, and some comedians such as Eddy Murphy have done precisely that by apologising for his early stints that relied on homophobic stereotypes. In India too, moments of accountability have emerged with comedians coming forward apologising and addressing the issue publicly, even Pranit issued an unconditional apology for laughing at the derogatory remarks made against a woman.
It is in this light, context becomes cardinal when addressing sensitive subjects such as rape culture and sexual violence. After all, the difference lies in how the issue was discussed. Comedy can still illicit laugh without reinforcing rape culture, celebrating toxic masculinity or reproducingthe same old stereotypes. And this is not a utopian idea but a practice already adopted. Some comedians do direct their satire towards dismantling patriarchy, power and prejudice. But this transgression need not be heralded at the expense of becoming cruel.
Ergo, the question before us is not of free speech and censorship but imagination. For a long time, shock has been misunderstood for substance. Jokes on rape culture, queerness or consent lacks originality, it recycles misogyny to push the same old prejudices with nothing revolutionary. Thus, a truly edgy and daring comedian is the one who risks offending power, not the one who mocks those already suffering.
Mandar is an Associate Fellow at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. Views expressed are personal.