Entertainment For Lively Minds
The get-out-of-jail-free card of modern comedy
Good article in today's Times by Hugo Rifkind about Sacha Baron Cohen's new vehicle Brüno, but it could equally apply to any of today's 'edgy' comedy establishment. I agree with every word. Key point bolded:
"...The film itself is very funny in parts, too. But it is also ... hmm ... what’s the phrase I’m after? Ah yes. Ragingly, disgustingly and startlingly homophobic. That should do it.
I’m not kidding. I honestly can’t think of any other way of interpreting it. It simply brims over with derision of gays. And I’m not sure why that is supposed to be OK.
I’ve been bothered about Sacha Baron Cohen for a while. Ali G was a creation of genius, but it did sometimes feel as if his whole schtick — the idea that Ali was meant to be a suburban white kid with pretensions — was basically just a clever way of excusing a lot of borderline dodgy jokes about actual scary urban black people. Borat didn’t bother me in the same way, but he came up on a recent visit to Moscow, and I was struck by how offensive some Russians seemed to find him.
“You just don’t get it,” I explained. “We’re not laughing because we think that everybody in the former USSR is a bigoted rapist with a deformed brother and a whore for a sister. We’re laughing because other people think this. See?”
They didn’t see. It made me wonder if I’d been fooling myself. Ali G and Borat both got away with moments like this, however, because most of the time they weren’t the butt of the joke. Basically, Baron Cohen was using a bit of bigotry to uncover a lot of bigotry. Only in Brüno he usually isn’t. It’s as if he has forgotten that this is what he is supposed to do.
When Brüno provokes a reaction, it’s not the conman with whom you sympathise, but the mark. What is wrong with a focus group disliking footage of an actual singing penis? Why shouldn’t a black chat-show audience boo when a man tells them that he bought his baby in Africa (price: one iPod) and that it’s a fantastic “dick magnet”? What is wrong with a redneck huntsman not wanting a naked stranger to get into his tent at 3am? Why is this supposed to be a bad way to react?
Much of the time, anyway, there’s nobody around to react except us. And so, from the very beginning, when Brüno and his “Asian dwarf” boyfriend go at each other in a way that unprintably involves an exercise bike, it’s hard to see what we’re supposed to be laughing at, save for silly disgusting gay people and the silly, disgusting, gay things that they want to do. And like I said, I don’t see why that’s supposed to be OK."
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ooh, modern comedy
I find a great deal of modern comedy depressing; a comedian telling jokes about race/gender/disability can wave away any charges of bigotry, just by claiming to be satirising people who actually do have such views.
The majority of people I know who thought Borat, for example, was a great film are people who genuinely are a bit racist. While you can't have control over who sees - and enjoys - a film, the guise of post-modernism and irony can justify laughing at pretty much anything - it can hardly be labelled subversive, as every sod is doing it. The trouble is: how do you decide what's ok to laugh at? Are we a generation who refuse to find anything offensive? Is it ok to laugh at something just because it's a well told gag? Is Bernard Manning due for reappraisal? Yes, people will inevitably say that he was never funny (including me), but he was popular enough in his time.
We tend to look back on the mainstream comedy of 20-30 years ago and cringe. What will people be saying 20-30 years from now?
p.s. Don't get me started on political satire. Politics and its mechanisms have become inherently comical to the point where it's gone beyond satire. Surely the point of satire is to poke fun at those in power, but when it's those in power -i.e. the media - poking the fun, what's the point?
Niceness
The assumption seems to be that this generation of comics are basically 'nice people', unlike (the theory goes) the Jim Davidsons of an earlier era, but really, is that likely to be the case? If anything, this generation is more misanthropic.
There seems to be an unwillingness to criticise
"Borat" for fear of being intellectually backward or old-fashioned or just not modern enough to understand it. I can't really comment because, despite three attempts, I've never got more than 30 minutes through it before thinking, "This just isn't funny, isn't entertaining and is a waste of time."
"One false move and I'm Jim Davidson" - Ricky Gervais
Not sure if this has been discussed here already, but the G2 comedy special in The Guardian caused a big fuss this week, with an article by Brian Logan on "the new offensiveness" in comedy.
Whether the central point of the article was true or not, it was badly written and comedian Richard Herring, whatever you think of him, has some cause for grievance.
The original article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/jul/27/comedy-standup-new-offenders
Richard Herring's response (Andrew Collins and Dave Gorman also replied angrily in their blogs - probably others too):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/jul/31/richard-herring-standup-come...
And here's Brian Logan's defence:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/jul/31/richard-herring-brendon-burn...
I'm glad Brian Logan tried.
As a teenage fan of alternative comedy I followed the party line on 'the old offensiveness' in comedy. Two decades later it dawned on me that I'd never heard a set by Jim Davidson, etc. A few pence in a few charity shops soon put my received wisdom to the test. I heard Jethro tell jokes I recognised from routines by The Two Ronnies and Lenny Henry. I enjoyed them a lot more when they told them. That suggested to me that offensiveness is often a matter of packaging and presentation.
If you put me in a Formula 1 car I would not approach corners at 180mph. If you put Eric Chappell's scripts for "Rising Damp" in the hands of a lesser talent than Leonard Rossiter, it wouldn't be on ITV3 every day.
I feel that some comedians are developing a way of packaging Jim Davidson material in a way that audiences who would not dream of going to a Jim Davidson gig can laugh knowingly about. And they're not going to recognise the gags either. The problem is: these same jokes are re-told with their packaging removed. Perhaps racism is just a memory in S.E. England.
It's the way of comedy: Rik Mayall did his Terry-Thomas, David Mitchell tries his young Dudley Moore, Al Murray does Alf Garnett, Richard Herring revamps Roy 'Chubby' Brown. And Paul Whitehouse copied someone really obscure so he's the best.
In "Extras", Ricky Gervais thinks it's okay for his character to make 'old-guard' remarks about 'old-guard' targets provided his character comes a cropper at the end of the episode. It's like the way "The Daily Star" reports forthcoming BNP rallies: half a page of disapproval before giving details of the venue, time and dress code in the final paragraph.
I remember Ben Elton, as compere on "Saturday Live", criticising Jasper Carrott, who'd just performed, for picking on 'women drivers - the big targets.' (Of course, Carrott was the most able comedian there and got the best response that evening.) I'm confused as to who these daring comedians think the big targets are today.
This may be because old powers have shifted. Jeremy Paxman receives £1 million p.a. from the BBC for reading from an autocue with a smirk on his face. The MP opposite him gets £65k p.a. and, if they care, are attempting a balancing act between the needs of their constituents and the demands of their party, whilst a few hundred others watch for every sign of failure. The remaining 97% of UK adults of working age get paid less. It's a lot easier to re-work the old stuff.
There's a lot I don't get about comedy. A multi-millionaire like Jack Dee delivers a tenth-rate Larry David sit-com and everyone hopes that it might pick up by the next series, or two. A bunch of kids deliver a single that sounds a bit derivative and we all queue up to give them a critical kicking.
I don't like this frog. Let's dissect it.
Top post
Great post Robin, briliant. Too true, as Stuart Lee said of Jimmy Carr, if Jim Davidson can sue you for using his jokes in your set, the problem is yours, not his.
Alternative comedy has lost its sense of what irony's purpose is.
Little Britain was the worst hate fest imaginable and only became unstuck when they pissed off the yanks.
I covered comedy for years for a paper and found there's too many people think that they have to take me on a journey and tell me something about racism or whatever.
Brendan Burns needs plants in the audience to set up his diatribe on the perils of political correctness - I don't think so.
What's wrong with Bish below?
It makes me sad that Robin can write stuff like this
And that only a few people can read it.
It makes me happy that it is being witten on The Word blog. The people who read this are influential.
My thoughts on comedy would bore you all shitless.
We'd all see the frog. We'd all see how it works. BUT try how we might, only the application of extaernal elecromotive force will make it twitch.
I think I've made a point.
"Nobody laughs, and the frog dies."
I agree with you, Robin (and DougieJ in the original post).
I still think that Brian Logan's article was badly written.
Although the vast majority of the comedy I like would probably be described as "non-edgy", I think that there is a need for good satirical comedians who can probe social attitudes and prick hypocrisy. They have to choose their targets carefully and they have to be able to convince you that they are on the right side and their aim is true. And they have to be funny.
The trouble is, all this is extremely hard to do well - and extremely easy to do badly. Most will end up just being offensive with no good outcomes, other than the cheapest laughs. There are a lot of cheap laughs to be had at the moment, if you shop around.
I think satire is usually pretty much dead. It's very rare for there to be more than one good satirist (or team of satirists) around at the same time. I do think that we need to give comedians who see themselves as satirical a chance to show their true colours. Satire needs time to soak in, and if there are subtleties present they need time to be appreciated. That's where Brian Logan was wrong. He suggested Richard Herring's act is straight-up racist, when it seems very clear that Herring's aims are not just non-racist but anti-racist. I haven't seen this particular show, so I can't comment on whether it's any good, or if it succeeds in its aims. Personally I don't find Herring very funny, but I think he deserved better.
Anyone who listens to Randy Newman for thirty seconds and concludes that he hates short people has clearly missed something important. The work of a really good satirical comedian can genuinely be described as "important".
Comedy is capable of so much more than pointing out that there's always one sock missing when the washing comes out of the machine. I just hope we can be discerning enough to pick out the very few writers and performers who are willing and, far more importantly, able to use comedy in an effectively satirical way.
And he was all yellow...
Baron-Cohen can be incorrect until the cows come home for all I care, that's not what bothers me about him. What does irk me is that he's a master of the obvious, that he hides behind paper-thin caricatures while people like Carr, Silverman and Burns take the wrath of their audience on the chin, and above all else he bothers me because after the first five minutes he's just not that funny. He's like the most banal, over-worked elements of The Fast Show and Little Britain condensed into one punchably smug individual.
Oh, and it's so peeving that many of his apologists feel the need to remind us that "he's Jewish" as if that's guaranteed to give him some kind of ironic detachment from the culture of willful offensiveness he shamelessly wallows in.
Maybe it is just what I have read, but
I'd estimate that about 30-40% of the non-review print media about Bruno seems have been of the 'I know this is an unpopular opinion but I find Sacha Baron Cohen offensive' variety.
Antidote
Reading some of the articles linked above, the view seems to be that 'mild, observational' comedy is too 'safe' and should be avoided at all costs, but I disagree. I think it can approach genius, like this:
It's fantastic,
but it also leads us back full circle because as you will know Seinfeld was not above using minorities to get a laugh. The Pakistani restaurant, the deaf girlfriend, bald people, fat people, mental illness [remember the one with Kramer and Mel Torme?] it goes on and on. And yet I love it and suspect that most people who spend time here do too. So what does that say about us? About comedy? What is there left to actually be funny about once you remove the minority? Isn't it probable that most comedy is offensive to somebody? After all, we're laughing at someone or something - the butt of the joke - aren't we?
Minorities
I take your point, but I just feel Seinfeld always had an underlying warmth that I find sadly lacking in the Gervais, Carr et al UK equivalents.
Even Curb Your Enthusiasm, while clearly a lot less comfortable than Seinfeld, nevertheless managed to probe some 'difficult' subjects with a lot more class and, importantly, humour...
If I were forced to choose
If I were forced to choose between "edgy dark" comedy and "mild observational" comedy, I'd have to say that what I like the best is "funny" comedy. There isn't enough of that.
The winding-up of unwitting people in the name of comedy.
The cheapest and most witless form of amusement. From those "hilarious" wind-up phone-calls to Jeremy Beadle via Candid Camera I find it awful in the extreme. SBC is just the most recent and, ultimately, most successful exponent of the genre. Shame on him.
Chris Morris is the only person who has managed to usurp the technique for semi-useful purposes "Cake - it's a made-up drug" but even then I felt sorry for the celebs who, despite their faux-sincerity, assumed they were doing something helpful.
The recording of two opposing soundbites from David Mellor for broadcast later depending on the result of a by-election was, however, genius.
This thread reminds me of Warren Mitchell
I'm paraphrasing but back in the Alf Garnett days he said he was walking down the street and someone yelled out at him, "That's it Alf, keep giving it to the nignogs!"
Mitchell yelled back, "We're giving it to you, ya stupid git!"
I don't think the creators of Til Death Do Us Part were anywhere near as naive as the likes of Sacha Baron-Cohen. Maybe they just weren't as cynical.
I dont really think he's funny
often enough. Borat was occasionally hilarious but perhaps not for the reasons it set out to be. It felt like yet another attempt to show up those bloody Americans for the fascist pigs all right thinking people seem obliged to believe they are and ended up showing the absolute reverse.
Regardless of the hideous behaviour they were confronted with almost every "real" person in the film came out of it as a friendly, decent and kind individual. The film had to up the ante repeatedly to get a response and that, i think, was what ended up making it funny. SBC had to eventually provide an actress purporting to be a prostitute before he was asked to leave a dinner party. Handing the hostess a bag of human shit wasnt enough. So what are wwe supposed to be sneering at?
His destruction of an Antique Store was met with remarkable restraint. Change the setting to South London and picture the consequences. Picture the unleashing of a chicken on the London Underground and attempts to kiss strangers. Those americans!
Bruno, however, devoid of the faux innocent aspect, shows a hideous narccisist being rightly despised. I'm not seeing the joke. Why would you not be angry about a naked man breaking into your tent? We're being asked to laugh at "rednecks" not at their preconceived prejudices. They dont display any. They just seem angry at having the piss taken out of them.
Theres a tang of the self righteous and judgemental about this stuff which sits ill with me. Its tarted up in irony and post-modernism but has a feel of the witch trial about it.
Must be getting old.
(Lazy) Things it's all right to mock
* Paedos - comedy gold ahoy
* The ginger one from Girls Aloud
* Prof Stphen Hawking (feck's sake, please move on). But it's OK because he's a celebrity with disabilities.
* Old People people pissing themselves
* Chavs - especially with a post modern 'nearly' black accent, right. An up-to-date Jim Davidson Chalkie complex
is it because I is ginger?
I should declare an interest here as something of a 'strawberry blonde' but if I'm not mistaken the opprobrium directed at gingers is quite a UK (particularly England) specific thing.
A key character in the wonderful Mad Men is the proudly red-haired sex bomb Joan Holloway. Not a single derogatory mention of her hair colour. Her boss Roger Sterling (with whom she has an affair) calls her 'red'. In general, I can't really recall red hair being discussed pejoratively in American popular culture.
The latest puerile Tango billboard ads ('turns your hair ginger - yes, those ones too') are just the latest in a long line of derogatory mentions in UK popular culture. Another quite nasty example is the 'Sir Digby Chicken Caesar' skits in Mitchell & Webb, where Ginger's daughter waits for him outside the family home with a 'welcome home Daddy' banner wrongly thinking he had overcome his alcoholism - oh, my aching sides...
Is it something deep in Anglo-Saxon DNA - an embedded fear of Viking invaders perhaps?