Dick Zijp once dreamed of a career as a comedian. Now he researches and reviews humor. “Dissecting humor is like dissecting a frog,” he says. “The frog is dying.” That’s why he mainly looks at the politics behind jokes. He himself used to think that humor was mainly liberating and liberal. He now looks at it differently. According to him, humor can also confirm power relations.
Zijp’s criticism of transgressive jokes regularly earns him reactions. Comedian Hans Teeuwen once called him a “gender-neutral cunt”, and GeenStijl nicknamed him “Suck my Dick Zijp”. According to Zijp, some comedians are too quick to say that woke destroys humor: “Criticism is often confused with censorship.” He is often asked whether the left still has humor. According to him, left-wing humor is in an identity crisis and that side too often takes over the frame of the right. According to Zijp, the left must stop this immediately.
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- Presentation:
- Pieter van der Wielen
- Editing and production:
- Merel van Waalwijk van Doorn
- Mixing:
- Audio chief
- Music:
- Rufus van Baardwijk
- Photo:
- NRC
