Maureen Lipman says cancel culture could destroy comedy

It’s not good to talk if you happen to be GC.

Having an ology these days in gender studies means you get to cancel mean old biology believers.

Re: Boyle's heckler. Do we know what did the female heckler said to him? Also, is this material popular with audiences or has the market place given him the message that the material is unfunny?

But if you go to see Frankie Boyle you are accepting you will hear material aimed at people with disabilities, women in general, women in the public eye…anyone he perceives weaker than him, basically. Why be shocked if he turns that on you?
I did go and see him years ago. 60% recycled material from Mock The Week, 20% personal insults at audience members and 20% really, really pushing the bounds of taste and decency. It was……interesting……but I wouldn’t go again.
He’s changed tack for his misogyny now anyway. Female guests on his shows, but only the ones who reflect back at him how great he is in all his TWAW glory.

[quote ArabellaScott][content warning] Boyle, to a woman in the audience of his show :

'His response to a female heckler was: “I’ll abuse you so badly your gynaecologist will think you’ve been in a f*ing car crash,” '

See, I think that, directed at a person, in real life, is not even slightly 'comedy'. That's out and out threatening, misogynist hate speech.

unherd.com/2018/04/come-misogynistic-frankie-boyle-suddenly-acceptable-now/[/quote]
It's not funny because it's about the abuse of women by men, and he's a man directing what is essentially a threat, to a woman. Worse, he's doing it because the heckler made him feel inadequate and he wants her silenced. Probably a really common reason for lots of male on female abuse.

The topic of misogynist abuse should not be out of bounds in comedy. No topic should be. But when you tell this kind of joke, the oppressed party probably shouldn't be the but of the joke. Especially if they're not even the one telling the joke. And the way the joke is told shouldn't precisely mirror the pattern of the abuse, like the example above.

I'm not familiar with Boyle so skimmed the article. What he said was horrid and unfunny and I would never go to hear his act. However what actual harm does it cause? Presumably people who go to see him are familiar with his material. They are consenting adults. Do we think that misogynistic jokes will make the audience behave more misogynistically? I think his audience knows where the line is, which is why they find him funny.

You know the things you CAN'T tell jokes about are the truly unacceptable things.

Nobody for example wants to hear jokes about the sexual abuse or murder of children because it's truly unacceptable.
I don't want to hear dead migrant jokes either, but I do want to hear migrant jokes because that means they are part of society.
Expats are migrants too - it's not just people coming across the Channel.

Unfortunately, if you exclude a group from jokes, whether that is disabled people, women, transpeople or whoever, then you make those groups hated because they remove joy from the world but never add it.

I'm disabled.
I want to hear jokes about disabled people.
I'm a woman.
I want to hear jokes about women.

I can identify with the topics (not 100% of the time but often enough) & when I am included then I feel part of society.
We joke, sometimes quite cruelly but also in a way that touches people because there is often quite sharp observations on real life behind the point of a good joke, about the things that are part of our lives.
Life has cruel bits, without them good observational comedy cannot exist.
By doing so, we include.

When the mere fact of being a woman or disabled means I am an untouchable topic for a comic then I am excluded from normal comedy & society by extension.

Cancel culture is killing comedy & leaving a pale sad imitation of itself behind that means nothing & touches no one.

I think it’s a real concern, because who is the arbiter of what’s allowed and what’s not? How about the not so distant past when Catholic bishops in Ireland could just make their quiet displeasure known and have theatres refuse to show plays? How about taking the piss out of Vladimir Putin? Or perhaps more relevant in the UK, one of the Middle East rulers?

It's already destroyed.

"[Russell Kane] told me it's "complete nonsense" that comedians are sacrificing being funny because they don't want to be cancelled. ... However, he does think he and his fellow comedians worry about being cancelled for things they might have said in the past which have since become less acceptable."
That's a right bit of cognitive dissonance right there. If you worry that what you've already done might get you cancelled, of course you're going to self-censor what you're doing now. You're going to sacrifice some material you would otherwise use, so yes, you are sacrificing being funny. And I do wonder about his thought-process, he seems to think if you're not self-censoring then you're indulging in 'hate speech'. It's not an either-or, mate.

I kind of get what Lipman means though with "Something has to be forbidden to make you laugh, really belly laugh." Transgressive rude comedy can have a shock factor that amplifies the joke. I've seen Jimmy Carr live a couple of times, some of his material definitely falls into that category. (And yes, I did belly laugh.) But there are other types of comedy, such as Tim Vine's one-liners, where he misleads you as to which definition of a key word he is using. Very clever, nothing 'forbidden', he uses surprise not shock - and I find him very funny.

There are different types of comedy. Some uses shock, some uses surprise.

(And for the record, I've seen Russell Kane live too, and I didn't find him that funny. Amusing, but not laugh-out-loud funny.)

But then I think about the fact that Graham Linehan, whose ‘crime’ being gender critical, and who keeps his comedy and politics pretty separate, is being told to take his name off the credits of the Father Ted Musical

Told by whom?

I’d pull the whole fucking thing if I was him…but then I’m very vindictive

I think the thing that gets me is that it doesn't seem to be todays Bernard Manning equivalents who are the targets of 'cancel culture'. Frankie Boyle for instance.

Interesting, thanks Arabella, I think Chris Rock says it better than Maureen Lipman.

“I am an amateur stand up. The world of comedy has been moving towards less offensive for a few years now and I think that's no bad thing. I don't want to hear jokes about dead migrants, and much though I'm gender critical I don't want to hear jokes at trans people's expense any more then I want to hear jokes about GC people.“

I don’t especially want to here jokes like this either. I’m certainly glad comedy is getting less racist.

But then I think about the fact that Graham Linehan, whose ‘crime’ being gender critical, and who keeps his comedy and politics pretty separate, is being told to take his name off the credits of the Father Ted Musical. That pisses me off, it feels reminiscent of McCarthyism. Who gets to be the arbiter of moral taste, or what is progressive/PC?

I'm guessing that there will be a similar backlash, as happened in the 90s after we endured a similar self-censorship from the politically correct phase.

In fact, I think the current Cancel Culture phase is a reaction to the edgy comedy and shock jocks that were around a few years ago.