Comedians Jimmy Carr and Dave Chappelle have been getting into trouble lately over their Netflix shows. Critics say their incendiary jokes don’t even count as comedy, or that only racists, misogynists and homophobes would laugh at them. But neither of those claims are true or capture what’s wrong with jokes that make light of other people’s suffering, argues Zoe Walker.

In recent months, a couple of Netflix’s comedy specials have given rise to a great deal of controversy and backlash. In October last year, the release of Dave Chappelle’s latest Netflix special The Closer prompted a walkout from Netflix employees protesting its mockery of trans people, as well as drawing criticism that it was misogynistic, homophobic and anti-Semitic. And now Jimmy Carr has sparked widespread outrage for a joke in his Netflix special His Dark Material, in which he suggests that the genocide of Roma and Sinti people by the Nazis was one of ‘the positives’ of the Holocaust.

But what exactly is it that these comedians are doing that is so objectionable? I think that some attempts to capture what it is – their jokes aren’t funny, they only appeal to deeply immoral people – get it wrong. Rather, it is the uncritical use of others’ pain for our pleasure, and making light of something that is already not taken as seriously as it should, which justifies the outrage.