Free speech in crisis: can we take a joke?

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There have been many headlines and column inches devoted to the ‘woke’ backlash against comedians from Ricky Gervais to Dave Chappelle. And for many, Jerry Sadowitz’s cancellation at the Edinburgh Fringe was something of a watershed moment in comedy. But what impact are such controversies having on wider society’s ability to have a laugh?

Office banter has long provided welcome relief from repetitive and boring work. If you were the butt of a joke, a clever response was appreciated and respected. If you couldn’t ‘take a joke’, you were seen as a bit ‘up yourself’. People who didn’t ‘get the joke’ were seen as a bit dim.

But in many workplaces, there is now considerable anxiety about what you can and cannot joke about. Will a misjudged comment, meant purely in jest, get you hauled up before HR? Are we becoming too sensitive? On the other hand, some would argue that workplace banter has long been used as a form of bullying – as embodied in the character of Chris Finch in Gervais’s well-observed breakthrough show, The Office.

In a climate of cancel culture and gratuitous offence-seeking, can we still tell jokes – and take them? Where is the line between lightening the mood and being unprofessional to your colleagues? Does office banter and joking make people feel excluded, or does it knit friendship groups and colleagues together?