Making gay comedy without causing harm

I write funny songs, and nearly all of them have a joke tucked inside. That forces me to ask a question plenty of people in comedy would rather not: who does this hurt? Not so I can stop writing, but so I know exactly what I'm doing when I write.

I don't have a manual. I have a few checks I run before signing off on a lyric, and a few doubts I haven't managed to settle. I'm sharing them here in case they help someone else who writes, or anyone who's ever wondered why one camp queer joke makes them laugh and another turns their stomach.

Look at where the joke is pointing

Every joke points at something. That's my first check. If it points at a situation, a habit or a quirk, it's usually fine. If it points at what someone is, at their body, their origins or the way they talk, it needs a magnifying glass.

An example with one of my titles: «No quiero otro novio cojín» (I don't want another cushion boyfriend). The fun is in the kind of relationship it suggests, that image of someone just there, soft, decorating the sofa without contributing much. The joke goes after a dynamic many of us have lived through. Not a particular man, not a type of body. If the title had gone another way, mocking someone's looks, it would be a different song. And I wouldn't have written it.

«La vecina cotilla» (The nosy neighbour) works the same way. The busybody is a character we all know, almost a stock figure of comedy of manners. The title points at the habit of poking into other people's lives, not at older women or neighbours in general. The difference may look subtle, but it changes everything.

Laugh at yourself first

There's an unwritten rule in queer humour: before you laugh at others, laugh at yourself. Not as a defence strategy, though it is one, but as a test of honesty. If a joke about gay life works when I aim it at myself, it'll probably work on others without wounding. If it only works when it's aimed at someone else, something's wrong.

I call myself the first AI songwriter, and I know full well that gives people plenty of material. I make the jokes before anyone else does. I live in Madrid, I direct artificial intelligence tools to produce music, I write the lyrics, and then I direct music videos for songs with titles like «La dieta del cucurucho» (The ice-cream-cone diet). If I didn't laugh at that, I'd be insufferable.

And here comes the first doubt. Laughing at yourself has a limit too. There's a kind of gay humour that laughs at itself so much it ends up repeating, from the inside, what used to be said from the outside. Camp mannerisms as the joke, bodies as the joke, being gay as the joke in itself. I don't know exactly where the line is, but I know it exists. Sometimes I feel it when a line makes me laugh in the moment and leaves me uneasy the next day. Those lines, as a rule, I cut.

Origins aren't the joke

I have a title that makes me think hard about this: «Mitad Venezuela, mitad Pakistán» (Half Venezuela, half Pakistan). It plays with someone's origins, and people's origins are one of the easiest places to do harm with humour. The way I see it, the title celebrates the mix rather than mocking it. I find it a gorgeous, unexpected combination, the kind that makes a person unique. The fun is in the surprise of putting two maps together, not in either one.

Same with «Mi novio de Albacete» (My boyfriend from Albacete). Albacete isn't the joke. The joke, if there is one, is that very Spanish habit of introducing people by their town, as if it were a surname. In the title, Albacete comes off well. Or that's what I aim for.

And with «Tan Cateto» (Such a bumpkin), the best-known title of everything I do, it's even more delicate, because «cateto» is an insult. What I try to do is stand inside the word, not hurl it at anyone. It's the difference between saying "you're a bumpkin" and "I'm such a bumpkin". The first is a shove. The second is a confession.

What you can't control

Now the uncomfortable part. However careful you are, you can't control how a joke will land. Someone might be having a bad day. Someone might have a wound exactly where you thought there was nothing. Lots of people discovered my songs on TikTok, in clips a few seconds long, and a clip without context can be read in a way that has nothing to do with the whole song.

I don't think the answer is to stop being funny. For LGBT people, humour has been a way to survive, to recognise each other and to take the sting out of things that weighed too much. Giving it up would mean giving up something very much ours. But I do believe the responsibility lies with the writer. If someone tells me a song hurt them, my first instinct can't be to explain the joke. It has to be to listen.

I've released 273 singles in about two years. Statistically, one or two will have crossed the line. I don't know which. I'd like to know, and at the same time it scares me.

What I'm clear about is the goal: that queer people who listen to my songs laugh with them, not at themselves. That they come out of a song with their self-esteem a little higher, not lower. If a joke doesn't do that, however good it is, it's no use to me.

All the lyrics in full are at mikesaintlouis.com, in case you'd like to judge for yourself.