This weekend I had the displeasure of going to Dick’s Last Resort, a chain restaurant known for its “ironic” bad service and offensive humor. Basically, patrons who choose to eat there invite their servers to throw napkins at them, make rude and offensive comments toward their tables, etc. It’s supposed to be fun, and it could very well be fun – if the jokes were funny. Instead, patrons are met with overtly sexist and racist “jokes,” things that are “funny” to those who don’t understand the implications behind them.
I imagine anyone who genuinely enjoys this place will read this and scoff, “she can’t take a joke” or “does she not get the point of the restaurant?” But I’m not a prude. And I do understand the point of the restaurant is to make patrons the butt of the joke. But when every joke made is overtly sexual and also plays on every stereotype, I fail to see the humor. When a waiter places a handwritten hat that reads “me so horny, me love you long time” (a reference to a Vietnamese prostitute) on an Asian female customer’s head, I fail to see the humor. I’m supposed to laugh at that?
Each supposedly hilarious hat placed on a female’s head that night, I noticed, was incredibly vulgar. One read, “easier to get into than community college”, while another proclaimed, “I fake it.” Mine read, “I see tables and poles in my future.” A woman sitting near us came with her five children and hers read, “I don’t like condoms.” Her six-year-old looked puzzled as he sounded out the last word, asking his Mommy why she doesn’t like “condos.” Perhaps the most disturbing moment was when our waiter took away my friend’s plate and asked her, “how’d you like that meat in your mouth?” She attempted to laugh it off but he asked her again pointedly, forcing her to answer.
Why is it that each and every joke aimed at a woman in this establishment was purely sexual? It didn’t happen once or twice and it definitely wasn’t subtle. Instead, joke after vulgar joke was made by someone who automatically has the advantage in society: the white male.
Perhaps I shouldn’t expect so much out of a place that literally charges money to call you names. It’s a ridiculous concept to begin with; who wants to voluntarily pay for awful service? To me at least, paying someone to serve me mediocre french fries and overpriced drinks while proclaiming me a bimbo is not my idea of a fun night out.
What worries me the most though is that people find this kind of humor funny. You can make the whole, “c’mon, it’s just a joke!!” defense all you want, but every joke and every laugh holds some truth. The best comedians are so funny because what they say is relatable – they notice something that everyone goes through collectively and then create something funny out of it. So when a sexist joke is met with laughs, those laughing pretty much admit, “I think this is true.” Maybe those that laugh don’t even realize that they think this way. But if they didn’t, even subconsciously, find truth in it, why would they be laughing?
