by thenewgreen
You can see the tension between these two ideas pretty consistently in comedy-related controversies we have here in the States. Take the hullabaloo in 2012 involving the comedian Daniel Tosh, who got into it with an audience member over one of Tosh's routines about rape. After the woman in the audience expressed her distaste for Tosh's joke, he responded by telling her that he hoped she would get raped. The details of that exchange went out into the wider world, and became the source of heated debate.One set of responses went, broadly, like this: This is comedy being performed in a comedy club, and anything anyone says in the context of this club is in bounds — even rape.
Another went, again broadly, like this: There are certain subjects that are beyond the pale, or at least, certain ways of talking about those things that are beyond the pale.