The assignment is designed in such a way as to address the relationship between political correctness and stand-up comedy. The assignment proceeds from the thesis that the concept of political correctness is not defined merely as a limitation of freedom of speech, but is namely also a dynamic framework, which in turn encourages reflection not only of social norms, but also of relations of power and cultural sensitivities. The assignment, in its methodological part or methodological research, relies on qualitative content analysis of secondary both scientific as well as theoretical sources, which are, however, supplemented with three examples, namely first with the example of the British comedian Jimmy Carr, the American comedian Dave Chappelle, and at the same time also with an example from our local field, which is represented by Karmen Spacapan in her column, where she speaks about her own unpleasant experience of visiting an open mic event. The theoretical field is formed primarily on the basis of Morris’s model of reputational concerns, which explains the concept of self-censorship, then with Moller’s dilemma of political correctness as a mechanism that is morally motivated, then the theories of humor are presented (from Hobbes’s and Kant’s to Freud’s) and also the culture of canceling. The final analysis in the assignment shows us that political correctness functions doubly or ambivalently. This is because it is precisely political correctness that on the one hand limits comedians and thereby exposes them to the risk of social sanctions, yet on the other hand it is precisely political correctness that encourages and develops a set of more subtle, more complex, and even more innovative strategies of creating humorous material, which of course enables an even more profound social critique. The examples in the assignment in fact expressly reveal to us that it is precisely the audience that acts as the key regulator of a certain comic discourse, namely because the audience with its responses determines the apparent and thin line of the acceptable. The conclusion of the assignment is that political correctness in the context of stand-up comedy does not bring only censorship, but represents an open space of constant negotiations. And it is precisely in this space that new forms of social reflection and at the same time also new forms of artistic creativity arise.
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