I’d say that ultimately a comedian just has to be funny. Any subject can be used for humour but for sensitive subjects it has to handled carefully.
The problem with social media is that it breaks the bond between an audience and the comedian. For humour to work there has to be an understanding of common cultural references and context. When that is removed, what can be mocking a stereotype can look like perpetuating it.
If a joke relies on mocking a racial stereotype it is easier to pull off if the person telling that joke is from that ethnic group. I can remember retelling a joke that a Jewish friend told me which was very funny but, when I retold it, it drew a sharp intake of breath. The saving grace was that I had prefixed the it with, “David told me this joke…”, which did put it in context.
I remember a comedian friend explaining this. Swear words are angry words. They don’t make something funny but someone getting upset about something trivial can make it appear funnier than it was.
It does tend to get overused, though. The Scottish comedian, Frankie Boyle, put it this way: In Glasgow, “fucking” isn’t swearing, it’s just a warning that a noun is coming up.
Each to their own I say, what 1 person finds a tragidy another finds a source of comedy, neither is right and neither is wrong, just different perspectives.
Except for Michael Mcintyre. Anyone that finds that cunt funny should be shot
I’ve never quite understood how he became so popular. I can see why TV likes him: inoffensive middle class humour, which is a much safer bet for teatime telly than Jerry Sadowitz.
How come freedom of speech absolutists seem to also believe that organisations such as, in this case, theatres don’t have the freedom to refuse to carry something they disagree with?
Should the theatre be forced to carry the show? Does Sadowitz’ freedom of speech override their freedom to make commercial and moral decisions about what they show?
Where does this end? Can anyone demand a theatre put on their show?
i went to see Frankie Boyle the other week and at the start of the show he felt the need to say to the crowd…remember you are here for a comedy show, everything i say will be a joke.
i spent the night cracking up it was so funny and so did everyone around me.
Yes he touched on cancer, aids, rape etc but they are jokes. If you think you wont find it funny then dont go. Dont be offended just dont buy a ticket or turn off the tv.
Soaps, love island and 10,000 other programmes annoy and offend my intelligence…so guess what? i dont watch them.
For me its not subject matter that im judging its is it making me laugh do i find this funny? If not then i will turn over the tv or not go and see someone again.
ive seen Nick Helm twice live and first time he was superb second time he was as funny as a migraine. Nothing to do with the subject matter just it wasnt funny.
Unfortunately some people go out of their way to be offended.
It’s entirely up to the theatre who they put on. However, that decision should be made before they make the booking and sell the tickets. They will have known exactly what Sadowitz’s show is like and it is hardly as if he has misrepresented himself.
Thanks for all the posts! I think the issue I see here is that most comedians I see when I do these shows is that hardly anyone goes up there to offend anyone. Granted that comedians usually have to push tension buttons and boundaries, but no one, at least most, goes up there and seriously make a stereotype joke just to offend them. We just want to make people laugh and like one of the more senior comedians said something I agree with, is that for comedy to be funny, there will always be “victims” not in the victim, victim sense but in the sense that someone will be poked at, sometimes their accent, sometimes their race, sometimes their behaviour etc…
As far as like MH370, I personally will not do it because I just don’t know how to write a joke around that, just that I could not write jokes about holocausts etc but we have plenty of comedians who do those stuff, some managed to deliver it funny while some just made people uncomfortable.
The other issue nowadays is that even if a joke is damn funny at the live audience, when it becomes a clip and shown to people who was not there, you get varied responses. For example my Indian friend did a set recently and he had a joke that was really funny and all races could identify, from young to old, it was of course racial. But when that joke was made into a snippet and it was sent around in whatsapp groups to try to get more attention on our comedians, we have people commenting “you call this funny?”, “this is bordering on disrupting racial harmony” blah blah… and the problem is, on these media, if you are Dave Chapelle, you might enough clout to not get cancelled, but if not, and there are enough voices against vs pro your joke, you will easily get cancelled into oblivion and never get another show again. So thats the problem we face nowadays.
We have a black british guy here who is a stand up comic and also a comic draw artist and he says, in comedy you can have ‘racism’ but it must be “quality racism” that made people laugh
Its a tragedy that will never be forgotten and the families will never get over it. Until now the plane is never found and hell, no one even is sure where it ended in.
I think while its a sensitive issue, what works against this lady comedian was that she practically spent the whole time fucking Malaysia, fucking everything that if you stop at one or two joke its fine because Singapore and Malaysia are forever competing against each other so there are plenty of jokes between two of us. But once you spent the whole show fucking everything about them, then its no longer funny and come across as more making a serious mockery of them. So when in that context, they will not see the MH370 joke as a joke but a serious mockery of their ability to land a plane by using a tragedy to make that point. She might not have started out with that intention but in the end, it came across as that.
Had the same thing with Ricky Gervais, and the same with Jimmy Carr.
Both making statements at the beginning of the show to stress that its potentially offensive, it may upset you, but you bought the ticket knowing whats in store.
Both were very funny, with very emotive stuff being discussed…
Then I re watched Ricky Gervais series “Derek” and I once again marvelled at the level of insight and empathy the man possesses.
Comedy is comedy. The people who deride Benny Hill and Les Dawson laughed at them years ago. And Carr, Boyle et al will all be cancelled in the next couple of years.
I have a personal bug bear about mental health issues, and bristle at use of language that promotes stigma. And then I see Gervais, able to do what politicians and campaigners spend ages doing…highlighting the plight of the person.
Yes, that’s true. Jerry Sadowitz is a comedian who has always made it his mission to cause as much offence as possible, so I suppose you should be prepared for it.
However if the show, because of Sadowitz’ improvisational approach, degenerates into public nudity and outright racism that they didn’t sign up for, they probably have the right to re-evaluate.
I wonder what his definition of “quality racism” is? Mocking stereotypes, maybe?
Years ago I watched a video of Roy “Chubby” Brown as one of my workmates had recommended it. I just found the whole thing tediously unfunny except for one joke which relied on a racial stereotype. The thing was, it wasn’t the stereotype that made it funny but an amusing wordplay that relied on the stereotype to work.
The archetype of the racist British comedian was Bernard Manning. He was off the scale in terms of being racially offensive. He could also be very funny. Ben Elton, who was known as a left-wing, right-on comedian, pointed out that he was supremely skilled in the art of joke telling it’s just that some of his material was disturbing. The problem there was that many lesser comedians simply took the racist angle and ran with that. Essentially, that’s what caused the backlash in the 1980s.
I seem to recall that the promotional poster literally says that he gets his cock out on stage. If it is similar to the show I saw, it is part of a magic trick.
I guess he means, its easy to throw out racist statements. For example in Singapore, we always make jokes that chinese have small dicks. If you just keep saying that, its not funny but if you are able to craft a story with some personal experience or stories thrown in around that stereotype and people laughs at it, then you can call it a joke or as he calls it “quality racism”
The problem I have with comedians like Jimmy Carr and Frankie Boyle is that there is frequently a lack of thought to their material that doesn’t suggest they have thought about a joke any more that ‘is this funny?’ It’s like they are machine-gunning out one liners, and the problem is that while both of them can be hilarious, occasionally they totally mis-read the room (although I credit Frankie Boyle with a bit more empathy than Jimmy Carr).
Take Jimmy Carr’s recent problems with the gypsy joke he did. It was just really badly judged, it kicked downwards, it was delivered from position of apparent racism and it wasn’t even that funny.
Do I think Jimmy Carr is racist? Not really. I just don’t think he ever asks himself the question.
Personally, I am of the opinion that there is nothing that can’t be a source of humour. I like comedy that is on the edge. But I also want to see that a comedian, before he or she makes that joke about the Holocaust, or rape, or gypsies, or whatever, has thought about how that joke is being delivered, how they position themselves, how they make clear their intent. I don’t think putting up a disclaimer saying ‘you might be offended’ before the show is good enough. That’s just staunchly refusing to think about your material. If you can’t make it clear within a joke, or a stand up routine, or even a career, that you are being ironic, you simply haven’t worked on your material enough.
One of my favourite bits of comedy is Stewart Lee’s routine about his imaginary black wife. In the hands of a lesser comedian or a gag merchant like Jimmy Carr that material could be incredibly racist, but because Stewart Lee has taken the time and care to make it clear that he is the butt of the joke, and he is poking fun at ‘patronising liberal delusions’ about race, it works brilliantly.
Also I don’t think it’s fair to put Les Dawson in the same bracket as Benny Hill.
Benny Hill was essentially a dirty old man masquerading as a comedian. His seaside postcard crap was tediously behind the times when he did it, and the stories that have emerged since his death don’t paint him in a good light.
Les Dawson, by contrast was a master of his trade, and far more artistic and cerebral in his comedy than the working men’s club graduates he gets bundled up with.