Off-color humor
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The term off-color humor (also known as dirty jokes or blue humor) is an Americanism used to describe various jokes, prose, poems and black comedy that deal with topics that are considered to be in poor taste or overly vulgar by the prevailing morals in a culture. Most commonly labelled as "off-color" are acts concerned with sex, a particular ethnic group, or gender. Other off-color topics include: violence, particularly domestic abuse; excessive swearing; national superiority or inferiority, pedophilic content, and any other topics generally considered impolite or indecent. Generally, the point of off-color humor is to induce laughter by evoking a feeling of shock and surprise in the comedian's audience.
Off-color humor has been used in Ancient Greek comedy, primarily by its most famous contributor and representative, Aristophanes. His work parodied some of the great tragedians of his time, especially Euripedes, using sexual and excremental jokes which received great popularity among his contemporaries but would be considered embarrassing in the Christian milieu.
Dirty jokes were once considered subversive and underground, and rarely heard in public. stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce was once tried, convicted, and actually jailed for obscenity after a stand up performance that included off-color humor in New York City in 1964.
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