[quote=“tipptops*”]If we’re not careful, we’ll end up with comedy by committee…
“Mommy, can I get a tattoo?”
“No, Sarah, you can’t get a tattoo.”
“But Nana has one!”
“Yes dear, but Nana was in Auschwitz.”
“Damn it! That’s her excuse for everything”
Friday September 25 2009
Sarah Silverman’s fine joke about her Nana’s tattoo rather bursts the absurd myth that you can’t make jokes about such atrocities as the Holocaust.
In fact, perhaps the most interesting aspect of Tommy Tiernan’s obnoxious, anti-Semitic and, worse, thoroughly unfunny rant has been the reaction of many commentators, who say you shouldn’t be allowed to make Holocaust gags, most of whom have never darkened the door of a comedy show in their lives.
As I said, Tiernan’s gravest sin was not in the sour taste his comments left in the mouth but the fact that they weren’t funny – something many Jewish friends of mine have been quick to point out – and while we can dance around the houses all night about whether he was genuinely satirising anti-Semitism or merely pandering to it, some of the responses to the now infamous tirade show a worryingly censorious streak.
The Sunday Tribune, which broke the story, also carried an editorial suggesting he could be prosecuted for Incitement To Racial Hatred, a sentiment every bit as appalling as his comments.
Because if we go down the road of prosecuting comedians for telling jokes that someone doesn’t like, we might as well change our name to Iran. The whole point of good comedy is that it provokes and offends. Because being offended is good for the healthy mind, and stops us enduring a sort of intellectual entropy.
When you look at all the truly great comedians, the ones who blazed a trail and left others in their wake, you will see that they were all dark and they often made for extremely uncomfortable viewing.
We live in increasingly censorious times, where the very act of offending someone, no matter how mad they may be, is seen as a potential criminal offence.
Earlier this week, for example, comedian Ben Miller was prevented from using the word ‘gypsy’ by the BBC because they felt the word was “racist and offensive”.
On the first claim, they are simply wrong. No matter how many politically motivated quangos might claim otherwise, gypsies, or travellers, or pikeys, or whatever you want to call them, are not a separate race. As for the word being “offensive”? So what? Are we now meant to do comedy-by-committee?
Lenny Bruce, of course, started the trend for comedians being targeted by the authorities when he was arrested for obscenity in the 1960s for using the word ‘cocksucker’ on stage. Sadly, the ensuing legal troubles and escalating drug problem ultimately broke the man and he died in 1966.
He paved the way for the great George Carlin, the Irish-American stand-up who came to fame with his ‘Seven Words You Can’t Say On TV’, a blisteringly funny and extremely brave attack on network TV censorship.
Richard Pryor is regarded by many as the finest comedian of all time, and he was hardly a shrinking violet.
His riffs on race included such work as That Nigger’s Crazy and Super Nigger. Following complaints from both sides of the racial divide, there was a compilation released with the less than placatory title of That Nigger’s Still Crazy.
The undoubted heir to Pryor’s crown was – and no longer is, sadly – Chris Rock.
At his height he was quite simply the greatest comedian in the world and the best we had seen since Bill Hicks.
Black audiences in places like The Apollo loved Rock’s ragging on irresponsible black men in The Difference Between A Nigger And A Black Man, in which he excoriated a section of the black community for their lifestyle.
However, that all changed when Rock broke into the mainstream comedy circuit and started saying to white audiences: “Niggers always want credit for some shit they’re supposed to do. They’ll brag about stuff a normal man just does. They’ll say something dumb like: ‘Well, I take care of my kids’. You’re supposed to, you dumb motherfcker! Or they’ll say: ‘I ain’t never been to jail’. Wadda ya want? A cookie? You’re not supposed to go to jail, you low-expectation motherfc ker.”
But those who were outraged completely missed the point – the ‘niggers’ Rock was referring to come in all colours and shades. It wasn’t about being a nigger; it was about being a man. Sadly, his follow ups were lazy and puerile.
One man who was never lazy, but certainly had the capacity to be puerile, was the late and very, very great Bill Hicks who is rightly venerated in death, even though he never received due recognition in life.
On his day, Hicks could and would offend every sacred cow he could possible think of, and was particularly despised by Christians.
But his routines were based on a profound understanding and knowledge of Christianity – take, for instance, his observation that: “Why do Christians wear a cross? Do you think that when Jesus comes back he really wants to see a cross? That’d be like someone going up to Jackie Kennedy with a rifle pendant on their lapel. Jesus must be up there going: ‘Dad they still don’t get it. I ain’t going down there yet.’”
When he told that joke in Alabama, some Christians approached him after a show and, as Hicks recounts, pushed him and said: “Hey buddy, We’re Christians, and we don’t like what you said.”
Hicks paused, shrugged his shoulders and simply said: “Then forgive me.”
The point of that story is that Hicks isn’t having a go at Jesus, who he accepts will some day return – he is having a go at Christians, and that is why people were so incensed.
The great comics knew that you could say whatever you wanted and go into areas normally considered taboo, as long as you were sure about who was the actual butt of the joke – that is the key.
And that is why, after being Ireland’s best stand-up for a few years before his baffling decline over the last while, Tiernan will, sadly, never be considered one of the greats.
By IOD.[/quote]
Tittrots, synopsis of this please, or 5 or 6 bullet points thanks and i will give my opinion then.
