Domestic Violence is NOT physical comedy

A recent Pepsi commercial has created a quite a stir on the internet. Apparently women abusing men in a marriage didn’t go over as well as they planned. Everyone from the False Rape Society to NPR has been rather angry about this. Still the world is not in complete agreement. The core belief behind the opposing argument is “so now any time a man gets hurt it is domestic violence or misandry? Whatever happened to physical comedy?”

You would think this would be a clear cut case. The woman is physically harming her husband because she doesn’t like the way he is behaving. In order to correct the way he acts he has to get kicked, shoved into a pie, and has a bar of soap shoved into his mouth. With a bit of bad luck he would have been hit in the head with a can as well.

And yes, you are expected to laugh at this.

Still on a broader level, there is a point to be made. Do physical comedy and sexism overlap? In the media for some reason they do, but if you take a step back it is easy to clarify. There is quite a bit of “humor” found it men getting slapped around by women for doing stupid things. Boyfriends are hit by girlfriends, husbands are pummeled by wives, and girls beat the living daylights out of boys. Sometimes it is adults that end up hurting each other (The episode of Everybody Loves Raymond where they are selling the Girl Scout cookies and Raymond gets beaten up and his wife has to save him).

I look at this in the same way as I see the Pepsi ad. The physical harm is meant for correctional purposes.

When we try to reshape people’s behavior in real life and we see them being physically harmed it qualifies as abuse. It’s a basic aspect of positive punishment in the psychological concept of operant conditioning. Increase the burden and pain on someone and their behavior will change out of fear. It’s a simple concept that is rather nasty in its most extremes.

This is a key aspect of misandric physical comedy. When it is meant to correct behavior, especially in a relationship, it is straight up abuse. But somehow if you put it in a situation comedy and add a laugh track, you have a classic scene that people will remember for years. It may even be a key point in winning you an Emmy!

This is abuse, and it is not funny.

Now what qualifies as physical comedy that is not abuse?