Daniel Tosh Satire

Television shows in today’s world are becoming increasingly more inappropriate, both sexually and violently, especially shows aired on networks known for embracing this inappropriateness. Many television shows, however, are becoming less scripted and rawer in their context. The growing interest in stand-up comedy is revolutionizing comedic networks such as Comedy Central, allowing them to spend less time drafting potential pilots and simply airing pre-recorded live comedy shows to help fill up their time slots. One comedian who specializes in both scripted and non-scripted comedy television is Daniel Tosh, the host of Tosh.0 and of stand-up performances. While Comedy Central very blatantly accepts crude and inappropriate humor with welcoming …show more content…
According to Roxanne Gay, a woman in the crowd shouted “actually, rape jokes are never funny” in response to one of his jokes (Gay). While his response was less than eloquent, it was to be expected. Had Daniel Tosh walked into the Laugh Factory that evening willing to scratch his stand-up show and turn it into an ethical debate on rape culture, he would have done so. However, this was not his point. Daniel Tosh went into the Laugh Factory fully prepared to disregard all sense of morality and say the outright ridiculous things no one else would dare to in order to inspire laughter in his audience. Gay even writes “rape jokes are part of his shtick”, recognizing the darkness and disgusting undertones of his creative output. The way in which said rape joke was taken far out of context; Tosh began his joke by discussing how him and his sister always play practical jokes on each other, but not until after he had mentioned that people often told him that he had a sick sense of humor and compared himself to his sister as “tame”. Had there actually been grounds for uproar, the response to said joke would not have been the eruption of cheers and laughter that commenced after he finished speaking. The newfound political and ethical unrest in America’s society has caused an oversensitivity to a severe amount of commonalities. …show more content…
Daniel Tosh clearly operates his creative genius by poking fun at seriously controversial topics. Since his discovery in the early 2000s he has consistently made crude remarks about touchy subjects with very little backlash and instead was able to gain a massive fan base. His lack of care for sensitivity is exactly what makes him so popular. While a highly sensitive person may have interpreted his work as ignorant and vile, it is hard to believe that Daniel Tosh truly feels this way. He is an actor who is paid to appear real to his audience; through stand-up comedy he is able to put on a show that need not be rehearsed yet was planned without a doubt. While he may not be eloquent or respectful while on stage, his reactions to his audience are easily confined as a part of his persona that he adopts when taking the stage. While rape is classified as one of the more sensitive subjects a comedian could use to joke about, finding the correlation between Tosh’s 30-second comment on rape that actually started with a prank on his sister and the amount of sexual assaults that occur yearly is difficult. The heightened sensitivity of today’s culture has grown massively throughout the 2000s and has led to more uproar about such topics than ever before. The essence of stand-up comedy is that it is available to allow someone to perform as creatively as they would like