Jerry Sadowitz

Many many years ago, I chanced upon a play : "Mein Kampf: Farce" at the Brentford Arts Centre.

For reasons I couldn't (and still) can't fathom there was a scene where a female actor was sitting nude as she talked to one of the characters. I'm pretty certain (a) there was no-one who was offended and (b) if you're the sort of rentanoffence person that I thought we'd seen the last of, the actual plot had potential to be far more offensive.

Does no one else find it ironic that MN are deleting posts "not in the spirit of the site" on a thread that purports to be about free speech ?

Hahaha that is really funny! He's a great comedian.

He doesn't need 'trigger warnings' or any of that bollocks. It's not for children. You're an adult, you can cope with his show. If you can't cope with it, don't go and watch it.

twitter.com/ExcelPope/status/1558942459853422594

A short thread about a Jerry Sadowitz joke I witnessed, which will include said joke.
This is from when I went to see him live, maybe five or six years ago.
He did a whole piece to the audience about people wondering if it was OK to laugh at his joke.
Was he saying terrible things because they were funny, or were they things he really believed?
The audience felt confused. Guilty, even.
He explained he had a solution. He indicated to a table at the back of the stage. This table, he said, contained a load of hats.
If he put a hat on then he was just playing a character, He wasn't really him. It was OK to laugh at the joke.
"Let's try it out. Remember, wearing a hat means 'just a character, it's OK to laugh."
He went to the table.
The audience is silent. Obviously, he's going to return wearing a hat and say something really terrible.
He came back to the front of the stage.
He was wearing an SS Officer's cap.
"Right, then, what are we going to do about the Jews?"

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I don't really get the impression they're trying to do him any favours by suggesting he should be deplatformed everywhere ...

Yes I take that point Jemima and agree there should be no ambiguity about what the show involves.

I don't know, maybe they were hoping to downplay it as a favour to JS.

That's not really the point. The point is people can't claim Fringe is inherently adult when a whopping 84% of all shows on at the Fringe this year are listed as being suitable for under 18s.

Besides 18+ covers a broad range of things.

Some examples of 18+ shows I've seen at the fringe.
A one-woman show where the performer talks about her personal experience of being raped.
A one-woman show where the performer talks about her personal experience of self-harming.
A show about the plight of refugees who try to cross the channel in illegal boats (18+ due to descriptions of drowned children).
A play written by someone who had a family member murdered due to domestic violence.

You wouldn't automatically assume that 18+ means exposed penises.

That's why acts are explicitly told to write if their show contains nudity or not in the "content warning" box.

In which case why did they state 'opinions'? If they'd said he exposed himself without warning, that would have made far more sense.

Ok now it looks like I agree with both MaChien and with Jemima. Thank god for that - I need to go and eat.

It was. Funnily enough the show I saw with nudity last week was labelled 14+, though the nudity was mentioned on the website.

I agree with everything said above about The Pleasance being old hands at this and having hosted him many times would know what to expect.

This is why I think it is the penis situation that has got him banned, there's nothing outrageous enough that he hasn't said before and they would have been expecting some nudity - but this time he took the penis exposure too far (or too close).

I accept graciously for all.

And was this show labelled 18+? Is that correct?

I actually do agree with MaChienEstUnDick post, that would have been the appropriate way to handle things.

Edfringe.com currently has 129 shows listed under the category "Children's shows."

Not "other festivals", The Fringe Festival.

There's tons and tons of stuff on at the actual Edinburgh Fringe Festival that's dance, mainstream theatre, Shakespeare, am-dram productions of Ayckbourn, children's shows, shows aimed at babies, etc. etc. Not at other festivals that happen to be going on in August in Edinburgh, but at the actual The Fringe itself.

It isn't true that Fringe is all adult or edgy, is really isn't.

Only 583 shows on at Fringe this year are labelled as 18+, and that's out of more than 3500.

I agree. Can we put MaChien in charge of the Pleasance please.

I'd be fully prepared to call an unnamed source in the Sun a liar, to be perfectly honest! In all likelihood that quote will have come from the journo's imagination.

And no 'audience member' I've seen anything from on Twitter has been an identifiable, credible source. Things are still as mysterious as they were yesterday!

The other thing that worries me is this.

CONTENT WARNING - Below I will mention/discuss CSA.

What if someone said Sadowitz' act contained material about paedophilia? Used the word 'child-bender'? Does that mean is should be banned? That's a nasty term. Sounds alarming.

Here's the context:

We cannot ban discussion of or mention of unsavoury things, or ban certain words because they are offensive, in part because that can render us unable to counter bad things, or question them, or even point them out.

Okay @JemimaPuddlegoose that is fair enough. Thank you for taking the time to explain. I just get very suspicious of people hunting at inside knowledge online because it is so difficult to verify the truth.

As I have said in other posts. I don’t like the guy or his comedy. And I won’t defend racism, ever. If he said what he is reported have said then his a knob. But I do think that too often situations like this feed the alt-right’s sense of grievance. As painful as it may be it is better to let people say it out loud and then see them for who they really are and then open a conversation with them about why they are wrong/stupid etc.

Just shutting him down has turned and in such a secretive way has caused him to become the victim of this, rather than the people in the audience he abused. As I said- The Pleasance could have handles this better.

But I'm also anti-censorship so I grudgingly admit his show has every right to exist, but that it should be performed with adequate content description, since obviously people did attend based on the inadequate Edfringe.com show listing.

I agree that nudity should require a content warning but I still don’t understand how you could give a content warning for the racial abuse you say women in the audience suffered? I’m obviously missing the point somehow. Nobody deserves to be racially abused even if they are warned about it first.

You can easily attend Edinburgh and see shows every day without ever seeing anything 'adult' or 'edgy.'

Yes, I know. There are loads of different Festivals going on in August - drama, dance, books, childrens' etc. But if you go to the Fringe, you do expect to see some fringe stuff, edgy stuff and definitely adult stuff.

Exactly @PrimAndProperViperish because where does that end?

Who decides? Because a healthy liberal democracy is made up of a range of opinions and beliefs (some of which completely contradict) each other.

If you don’t like a book, don’t read it. If you don’t like a comedian, don’t buy the tickets. If you don’t agree with someone then feel free to says so but respect their right to have that opinion.

I find it deeply worrying that some in the left in particular are adopting the old Catholic Church model of dealing with those who don’t adhere to the same belief system or share the same morality- shame, excommunicate and persecute. It’s culty.

So you're calling the audience members liars? Or accusing the people who have tweeted or spoken to the press of... what, lying about having attended the show?

It doesn't seem to be the audience members who have complained, though. No one seems to know exactly what happened. JS says there were no walk outs and the show went well.