Black comedy—the kind that revels in crossing lines and shocking people by confronting, even mocking controversial societal subjects— is at a bit of a crossroads. Its original purpose was perhaps to use provocative material to point and laugh at the miseries of life and shake the audiences into something resembling humanity, flawed as that reasoning may well have been. However, too often now, it feels as if the form has been hijacked specifically to advance hateful or exclusionary belief systems under the garb of harmless humour. “Lighten up, it’s just a joke,” the bad-faith admonishment goes. Or “dank humour”, as it’s called among post-millennial generations in India. In fairness, the subtleties between these contrasting intentions can often seem fuzzy or, indeed, non-existent. But the rationale behind it, the intention informing the work, isn’t immaterial.

This inversion of intent has become far more pronounced in pop culture over the past decade or so, especially following the rise of the alt-right in pop culture, a movement that the Gamergate mess brought to mainstream infamy. Big-shot global comedians have jumped on the bandwagon, using their platform to amplify their very real prejudices about society. You know the types—comedians who appear on sold-out stages and Netflix specials to moan about how they’ve been ‘cancelled’ for defending “freeze peach.”

Anthony Jeselnik, the American comic who revels in the blackest of comedies is an interesting point of comparison here. On the surface he fits right into this space; he says awful, uncomfortable things with a restrained glee that makes one wonder if he is truly a monster.

But following a particularly egregious joke about child sexual abuse and pornography on his new Netflix special Bones and All, with himself as the antagonist, Jeselnik briefly breaks character. He reminds the audience that his comedy is rooted in gallows humour. That things are so horrible, you can’t help but laugh—it’s a coping mechanism. Of course, he follows up this admission immediately with another child abuse joke, but that context is essential.

“Anthony Jeselnik”, the vile, loathsome, criminally minded joke machine on stage, is an act; it’s all fiction and not a reflection of the comedian’s own view of the world. The characters are all made up; the storylines didn’t happen; the rapid-fire punchlines were written on a page, not in real life. He did not, in fact, buy an expensive baby coffin with the expectation that there would be a dead baby inside.

All of this shouldn’t necessarily need spelling out, but we do now live in a world where prominent artists use complexity in comedy as a license to peddle suspect agendas, so long as there’s a ba-dum-tish at the end. Jeselnik wants to draw a distinction between those guys and himself, even if it means having to hand-deliver his intentions to the audience. He has to make the subtext the text, so as not to be clubbed with the unhinged conspiracy theorists of the world.

As with his previous specials, the comedy retains its cold, black heart, while his delivery is premised on a series of provocative non-sequiturs that are elevated by the sharp misdirection and unexpected conclusions.

He is a shock jock rather than a propagandist; a provocateur saying outrageously offensive things to seek guilty, sheepish laughs. And perhaps wake people from their stupor. Just to drive home the point, Jeselnik refers to people who listen to Joe Rogan’s podcast as “f**king losers”. He treats cancel culture with the disdain it probably deserves, mocking comedians who go on about it endlessly. Even as he makes jokes around the trans community, he doesn’t feel the need to attack them with bigotry or vitriol.

As far as the culture wars of America are concerned, Jeselnik wants to signal that he’s very much not on that side of the fence. This is something we’ve seen Bill Burr do as well—Burr has always positioned himself as an outspoken, foul-mouthed badass selling people the uncomfortable truth, but his work more often than not displays sensitivity and an understanding of nuance and subtlety, and the fine line between mockery and hate.

Jeselnik mastered the art of walking that tightrope years ago, long before black comedy became a political minefield. His new special Bones And All—which is the same hour that he brought to India for the DeadAnt Loop tour earlier this year—sees him celebrate 20 years as a comedian, an achievement he addresses with a trademark mix of ironic arrogance and subtle self-deprecation.

It’s a quality he brings to his public interviews too; on comparisons with comedian Matt Rife in a recent interview with Vulture, he said: “I’m sure Gordon Ramsay doesn’t lose sleep at night because McDonald’s sells billions of hamburgers […] Popularity is not a metric I use to measure myself against other artists.”

As with his previous specials, the comedy retains its cold, black heart, while his delivery is premised on a series of provocative non-sequiturs that are elevated by the sharp misdirection and unexpected conclusions. His style relies on ratatat one-liners dealing with immorality and social taboos—misogyny, pornography, sexual abuse, violence, hating children and such, all with him as the pantomime villain at the heart of the stories—which he sets up in a way where the audience can see exactly what the approaching punchline is going to be. And then he pulls the rug out from under them and takes the joke in a far more twisted direction than the crowd would have anticipated.

While these are all fantasy tales concocted by Jeselnik, untethered from material reality, the absence of a narrative arc to fall back on means that there’s an exaggerated emphasis on crafting effective jokes with immediacy and zing. This is where Jeselnik’s strengths lie; his ability to jolt the crowd with these horrible themes presented via incisive joke delivery. It’s thrilling and unnerving.

Bones and All is an exhibition of the nihilistic spirit and scorn in his comedy, where there’s no such thing as ‘too far’. But there’s a gentle evolution to his work too; hidden behind the cynicism—and the equal opportunity windup merchant he’s presenting as—there’s a thoughtful comic engaging with the world and looking to interrogate the shifting face of this art form, which helps to offset some of the self-serving vapidity that tends to creep into gallows humour. He is trying to find some renewed relevance for a complicated style of humour corrupted by malice and agendas. And maybe he’s just trying to have his cake and eat it too.