Mumsnet Talk

I love a bit of Schadenfreude, me.

I have been saying for years that Seth MacFarlane is an egotistical, smug, peurile, misogonystic little twat. Most people responded with 'Who?'.

Now the world knows just how much of a smug twunt he is.

So far up his own arse I wish he wasn't able to sing...but sing he does. And it got old real fast in FG.

Smug.

Twat.

Oh god I couldn't stop giggling at the song. And yes, all the actresses they showed had had their reactions pre-recorded (they were all wearing different dresses). That blog MN linked to needs an editor, desperately - couldn't even get past the first paragraph. And someone needs to let her know that we're over all that privilege stuff.

Did anyone actually watch the Oscars programme? There were no "sex jokes" about the 9-year-old. There was a joke about George Clooney being a desperate old perv. The Onion Twitter feed made a disgusting "joke" about the little girl which thankfully they have apologised for.

I think the whole "We saw your boobs" song could very well be taken as a joke on men. As in, exactly the way so many people are taking it: these were actresses playing serious roles, and all the men could take out of it was that there were breasts to be seen. Doesn't that make them laughable and pathetic? Or do we women always have to make ourselves the victims in every single situation?

I think you misunderstand the joke. They were discussing when a 9 year old can have sex.

I normally like Seth Macfarlane but I really didn't find this funny at all. Also, the title of the song is the only joke in it, it's not as if he adds any twists or extra jokes in the verses - it reminded me of an eight year old boy laughing at the sight of any body part.

He's not a naturally funny guy though. And his attempt to copy Ricky Gervais type parody came out too mean and unfunny. It's the way you tell em that matters.

How depressing that so many women find women and young girls being humiliated and degraded like this 'funny'.

I had no idea who Seth McFarlane was and I'm really annoyed that I bought my nephew Family Guy stuff for Christmas. Never again

Completely utterly agree with getorf - it was lame and pathetic and insulting. Puerile just about begins to describe it.

I can't believe SF gets to host one of the biggest presenting roles and that's all he could come up with - laughing at boobs - really, my 4 year old DS has more subtlety in his humour and he thinks the word 'poo' is funny. Maybe he should host the Oscars.

Alison - No you misunderstood the joke. It referenced that "it will be 16 years until...."given that she is nine this has naff all to do with the age of consent and sex as it references her being the age of 25 I.e a full grown woman. It was a reference to GC going out with younger women, slightly odd ref as though GC does often date younger women they all seem to be fully grown adults I.e his current girlfriend is early thirties. I guess the "joke" wa meant to be about he fact he has had many girlfriends and they are younger than him. Hardly side splitting stuff

Haven't watched it but the idea is terrible.

You think you're a actress? you think you're here celebrating your work? Nah, we don't care about that, we only care about your tits.

Agree with Goal, that joke really wasn't about a nine year old having sex, it was about George Clooney being completely ridiculous in that a 25 year old is too old for him. I actually thought it was amusing (though I can appreciate I probably wouldn't have, were I the girl' mother in the audience!). The rest of his material was pretty crap. The boob song was unfunny and cringeworthy.

not funny. totally misjudged. And the song was only part of it - quote below from article in New Yorker

" There are many variations on misogyny, and MacFarlane by no means confined himself to a single one. (A Buzzfeed post called “6 Sexist Things That Happened at the Oscars” was revised, in the course of the evening, to “9 Sexist Things.”) “Django Unchained,” he said, was “the story of a man fighting to get back his woman, who has been subjected to unthinkable violence. Or as Chris Brown and Rihanna call it, a date movie.” Relationships are complicated, and it can take a woman more than one attempt to leave an abuser. But if any woman who goes back is told that she has forfeited sympathy and can be written off with mockery—that the whole thing is now an amusing spectacle—then we’ll end up with more dead women. There are surely better things to joke about. Instead, we got a borderline anti-Semitic Teddy bear asking where the post-Oscars orgy would be. The answer was Jack Nicholson’s house; maybe not the same Jack Nicholson house where Roman Polanski raped a girl, but still, not funny."

Bue do you think the 9 year old Nominee thought it was amusing - of do her feelings not count?

excellent analysis of some of the clips used in the song here

Yes it was a joke about George Clooney having young girlfriends - but it was a joke that made Quvenzhané Wallis, a 9 year old child, a potential sexual object. It doesn't matter that he isn't the butt of the joke, it matters that that is not an appropriate lens to view a child, it is not appropriate to continue to oversexualization of young Black girls by the media, and that a child should not have to go through that for adult's amusements.

Bad enough she was greatly disrespected and had her name disregarded on the entrance to her big night, and sit through the boob song (which included rape scenes based on real women's stories. Essentially mocking real women's trauma and sending the message that these don't matter as long as men get their jokes, she then has to smile through that. I do not get how any of this treatment of a child can be beyond that, especially compared to the treatment of other stars her age and older who have been far more protected.

Seriously, whose first thought when trying to write a joke about a 9 year old child is to reduce them to a sex object? Who even thinks of a child in the context of them going out with a 50 year old man? This is a child who has made an incredible achievement to get an Oscar nomination at such a young age (I haven't seen the film but I'm assuming it must have been a powerful performance to get nominated) and the only thing worthy of comment is her future sexuality?

And in George Clooney's defence, while he may date young women they are always adults and I think it's pretty crap to associate him with a child in such a suggestive manner. But clearly I'm just dull and humourless.

Upthread, someone said it might have been funny if they had done a male version of the song too:

Well, for MN-ers delight and for feminist justice, here it is!

We Saw Your Junk

Interestingly, most of these male nude scenes referenced are from comedies, not serious films about sexual violence.

I cringed when I first saw the SMcF song at the Oscars as I just saw a clip of it but once I saw it in context, I 'got' the joke. He was sending up his own childish, frat-boy sense of humour. However, when I think about the fact that a lot of the scenes he references are of rapes or assaults, then that is indeed very creepy.