When Girl Scouts Attack

Some colleagues and I were talking about the line of decency in media these days (and the grander scale of "art" for that matter, whatever the hell that means), and I decided it was a fallacy to call it a line, because that would imply some inherent, universal definition or static position or location, and that's just not the truth.

Here's an example [This is a joke I found online]:
An old-ish man and a young boy are in the a forest (clearly the middle of nowhere), and the caption reads:
BOY: Mister, I'm scared.
MAN: _You're_ scared? I'm the one who has to walk home alone in the dark!

Now, to me, that's hilarious. But to someone who has actually had a child abducted or hurt/killed by some creepy pedophile, that's not funny at all. Racist jokes are the same, for the most part. I'm sure I don't need to give examples for you to get the point. On the other hand, the father of one of my good friends says, "It's not a joke unless there's a victim."

So, the line of decency is more of a thick band, where an infinite number of lines are drawn by individuals and those lines can change depending on circumstances, past and future experiences, contexts, times of the day/week/month/year/decade/millenium. It's a blurry, vibrating incarnation of Value or Morality. There are certain things that are so ridiculously over the line/band that one could never argue that it's okay...but who knows? As the morality of Human Culture continues to change, so too will the concept of what's considered acceptable.