Maureen Lipman: Cancel culture could wipe out comedy

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theclaud

Reading around the chip
And, as many Comedians try to point out... no-one expects anyone to like all comedians or all jokes. Just because *you* don't like a comedian or a joke, it doesn't mean that it wasn't funny or that they are not a good comedian.

Personally I have a very broad taste in comics. I like Jimmy Carr although I prefer his "hosting" comedy to his stand up shows which are a little dark for me. I tend to like old school and new school, but I don't feel the need to go on twitter and tell the comedians that I don't like, that I don't like them any more than I feel the need to yell at people in the street. I just don't watch their comedy. I'd watch Suzi Ruffle but pass on Sarah Pascoe for example. But that's fine. Lots of people like Pascoe - they probably identify more with her style of comedy.

The clever thing about Jimmy Carr is that he knows he is dislikeable, he plays upon his looks and style, and knows that his style works for the audience that want to see it. He crafts his jokes very cleverly and has a masterful control of the audience. It's worth watching one of his older shows where he just invites the audience to heckle him, to see how quick and skilful he is. He is also very well regarded by other comics, which also says a lot about him.
I think the charge is that he made a crass and offensive joke that indulges and fuels prejudice against gypsies in an already hostile climate, not that he isn't clever. Punching down. It's probably a worse charge if you're clever, TBH, as you could opt to write more responsibly. Dunno if you're a Stewart Lee fan, but his method is kinda the opposite. He doesn't hide behind his craft - he deconstructs his own jokes, and the audience reaction to them, on stage.
 

steve292

New Member
I have seen it. The pretext of the show is Carr starts off by saying that no subject is out off bounds and the jokes will get more distasteful as the show goes on, until either the crowd stops laughing or the material ends. The holocaust joke is the last and therefore the worst taste joke about the most taboo subject to make jokes about. Context as always is everything.

From the Guardian-

The show opened with Carr telling viewers: “Before we start, a quick trigger warning. Tonight’s show contains jokes about terrible things. Things that may have affected you and the people you love. But these are just jokes. They’re not the terrible things.”

In the special, Carr sought to explain what he said was the context of the joke, saying it was “edgy as hell” and had an educational value.

“It’s a joke about the worst thing that’s ever happened in human history, and people say ‘never forget’, well this is how I remember,” he said.

“There is an educational quality. Like everyone in the room knows, 6 million Jewish people lost their lives to the Nazis during the second world war. But a lot of people don’t know, because it’s not really taught in our schools, that the Nazis also killed, in their thousands, Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled people and Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

It is interesting to note that lot's of his fellow comics are saying that, although they find some of his stuff distasteful, they defend his right to say it.

It is also interesting to note that the people who want him censored, are also the ones who were advocating leaving people in small boats to drown in the english channel.
 

Ian H

Guru
And, as many Comedians try to point out... no-one expects anyone to like all comedians or all jokes. Just because *you* don't like a comedian or a joke, it doesn't mean that it wasn't funny or that they are not a good comedian.

Personally I have a very broad taste in comics. I like Jimmy Carr although I prefer his "hosting" comedy to his stand up shows which are a little dark for me. I tend to like old school and new school, but I don't feel the need to go on twitter and tell the comedians that I don't like, that I don't like them any more than I feel the need to yell at people in the street. I just don't watch their comedy. I'd watch Suzi Ruffle but pass on Sarah Pascoe for example. But that's fine. Lots of people like Pascoe - they probably identify more with her style of comedy.

The clever thing about Jimmy Carr is that he knows he is dislikeable, he plays upon his looks and style, and knows that his style works for the audience that want to see it. He crafts his jokes very cleverly and has a masterful control of the audience. It's worth watching one of his older shows where he just invites the audience to heckle him, to see how quick and skilful he is. He is also very well regarded by other comics, which also says a lot about him.
Sorry of misses the point about this particular 'joke'.
 
Am I alone in finding the immediate audience laughter the worst aspect of this? Whether I agree with it or not, there’s a case to be made that the joke was well thought out and purposeful. The laughter was too reactive, I think, to be based on recognition of a deeper point.
 

swansonj

Regular
Anyway, isn't there a difference between defending his right to be offensive, and approving of the joke? I think the joke was offensive, that he is a clever man creating a fig leaf of exploring humour in order to be able to carry on telling the offensive jokes that he enjoys because he is an offensive man - but I don't want him banned, I just want him reduced to poverty because noone likes his jokes enough to pay any more.
 

matticus

Guru
“There is an educational quality. Like everyone in the room knows, 6 million Jewish people lost their lives to the Nazis during the second world war. But a lot of people don’t know, because it’s not really taught in our schools, that the Nazis also killed, in their thousands, Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled people and Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
Like him or not, Carr has created enormous publicity for this viewpoint in the past week. He trod a dangerous line with his "joke"; basically saying that Gypo Genocide had some advantages. He could surely have done some milder gag about lucky heather, say.
But there is no way this quantity of awareness would have resulted from a lucky heather or clothes pegs joke.

Edit: forgot to say- of course this could all be knowing self-promotion!

Context as always is everything
Indeed. Something that I've seen disputed on CC threads :sad:
 
OP
OP
Fab Foodie

Fab Foodie

Guru
It's really not that it's a clever joke tbf, it's pretty cheap and cheerful construct. Am sure somebody supposedly as clever as purported could have made his Gypsy slaughter point in a subtler and still funny way.
 

theclaud

Reading around the chip
Anyway, isn't there a difference between defending his right to be offensive, and approving of the joke? I think the joke was offensive, that he is a clever man creating a fig leaf of exploring humour in order to be able to carry on telling the offensive jokes that he enjoys because he is an offensive man - but I don't want him banned, I just want him reduced to poverty because noone likes his jokes enough to pay any more.

I'm guessing, on the other hand, that he's doing just fine out of it thank you.
 

Ian H

Guru
Am I alone in finding the immediate audience laughter the worst aspect of this? Whether I agree with it or not, there’s a case to be made that the joke was well thought out and purposeful. The laughter was too reactive, I think, to be based on recognition of a deeper point.
If he'd then challenged the audience on why they were laughing, something positive might have resulted.
 

theclaud

Reading around the chip
Like him or not, Carr has created enormous publicity for this viewpoint in the past week. He trod a dangerous line with his "joke"; basically saying that Gypo Genocide had some advantages. He could surely have done some milder gag about lucky heather, say.
But there is no way this quantity of awareness would have resulted from a lucky heather or clothes pegs joke.

Edit: forgot to say- of course this could all be knowing self-promotion!


Indeed. Something that I've seen disputed on CC threads :sad:
Really? You honestly think people in Carr's audience (I'm guessing, but I reckon they are reasonably well-educated on average) were unlikely to know that Germans* murdered gypsies and other minority groups in the Holocaust as well as Jews before he told that joke?

* I realise 'Nazis' would be the more usual term here, but, y'know - Goldhagen and all that.
 
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