To think SIL just doesn't have a sense of humour

[Angree]

Not a hugely important issue (or even an issue at all), but just thought I'd share to get the views of MN'ers.

I came across this clip on YouTube and thought it was very funny, playing on the stereotypical thoughts of how Women should be from the 40s/50s. I sent it to my SIL who just didn't think it was funny at all and said it just perpetuated a sexist stereotype and she would just not accept that it was at all funny. She is one of those people who, I think just likes "face level" humour like why did the X do X, then an answer, and not satire.

What do you think-funny or a stereotype?

I'm wondering now how i would feel if that Enfield sketch had been made by French and Saunders or Smack the Pony....hmmm...

YANBU.

Funny.

Well I guess it depends on your environment as someone pointed out earlier. As to whether you can afford to find it funny or not. I am lucky in that by and large I don't suffer directly from stupid sexism of that nature, and I see the sketch as being entirely at the expense of men. In fact it never occured to me that it was otherwise. Perhaps I need to get out more

The whole point of this sketch is that the joke is on the men and the ridiculousness of the patriarchal society we are slowly making our way out of. This is illustrated by the fact that the point which the woman made ("we should leave the gold standard") was ahead of its time - Britain did leave the gold standard and for exactly the reasons she said, and those who fought against it at the time were shown to be foolish, old-fashioned and economically dangerous.

Anyone who can't laugh at this is clearly not clever enough to understand the subtlety behind it. Totally different to laughing at a minstrel - there is no subtlety or nuanced humour in that at all, it is just racist.

YANBU

I don't think the Minstrels is what I am thinking of. Obviously 'blacking up' is horrifying. But what about something like David Walliams vomiting racists or, going back years, the Black neighbour in Rising Damp who was intelligent, young, modern and good looking. All, presumably, to show up how awful (ugly, stupid and old-fashioned) the other, racist characters were. I don't like Rising Damp but just to say that this does happen with other groups. And, no, I don't like being paid less than men.

the problem with satire such as this, is that it can be taken as the thing it seeks to satirize.

Obviously the intention is to pillory sexism. Unfortunately a sexist would still find it funny. Certainly the more mysogynist boys at university used the 'women know your limits' catch phrase.

I find things like Family Guy do that too - they intend to satirise mysogyny etc, but are a product a mysogynist might still find amusing.

I didn't laugh until the "venomous harridans" - then I choked on my coffee a bit!

Ok, so if it's mostly offensive but there is a nuance or subtlety to it then it's ok, thanks for educating me. Silly little woman I am for having an opinion.....

It's the kind of thing you laugh at when those views are archaic, inconceivable and outdated but thing is, their not, hence they pay gap, objectification of woman to the exclusion of considering them as intellectual beings etc etc but hey, guess that doesn't matter.

Warren Mitchell couldn't believe how some people took Alf Garnett's views and ran with them. Maybe as a liberal (jewish) comedian he overestimated the populations intelligence.

Pjmama. That's me before the first coffee, that is.

But the misogynists who take it at face value and laugh at it on that level are revealing their moronity in a very pleasing way imo.

I.e. the sketch has done it's job.

YANBU.

Sad but true TBE... We were oh so post modernist back then....I blame the good looking one leaving The Mary Whitehouse Experience - it all went downhill after that

I think its funny.Can we really not laugh at serious matters? That would be all jewish comics and all black humour banned then.Laugh at it all I say.(I am Welsh,we are underdogs anyway,and do black humour as a matter of course).

I found this funny when I saw it on TV in the 90s, poking fun at sexism expecting women not to have opinions.

I thought it was funny and it really doesn't take the piss out of women at all.

I would laugh at a sketch mocking racists quite happily.

I've changed. I used to find this kind of satire very entertaining - I loved that sketch when it first came out. Around the same time, I also enjoyed comedy shows that satirised racism, anti-judaism and every other prejudiced 'ism' you can think of. It seemed to me, then, that we were all so advanced we could laugh at how "we used to be".

But it's not funny. Rather, it's funny in the same way as care workers making satirical jokes about cripples & spastics ("we know these people, we're not prejudiced!") or Nazis making a sketch about a stupid Nazi throwing live Jews into a pit of lime.

Your laughter is the sort that comes from fear.

Thank you Grace I had no idea I was so scared!

Your laughter may have come from fear, mine is because I think that shit is funny.

Yeah, I know ...
I've also stopped finding blonde jokes funny (I'm blonde) as well as Irish jokes, Essex Girl jokes and the rest.

Aha! I've figured something out (clever of me, considering I'm only a woman, and an ugly old one at that) I still love the 'prejudice' jokes where there's a comeback - the female/jewish/black/disabled/poor character gets the payoff. What I dislike about the other kind is that it's only funny if everybody assumes we find the content irrational. It's smug, imo, and dangerous.

Leaving this thread now; I'm scared of killing it

Oh dear, I have! Sorry, OP.

I couldn't watch to the end, sexist crap pretending to be funny. I think knowing a man is behind it puts me off as well, as I suspect he was only partly being ironic.
If my sister dent me it I'd think she'd misplaced her brain.

Hmm interesting, almost a 50/50 split.

For those of you who asked whether it would be funny if race was used in the same way, here is another one which does have a little bit on race in the books.

"If this was "black people, know your place", would it be as acceptable?"

Yes, yes it would. It's mocking an attitude, not supporting it. Bloody hell, it's hardly subtle!