To find ‘jokes’ about Maddie McCann upsetting?

[Helendee]

I saw a clip of Frankie Boyle demonstrating his sense of ‘humour’ by making what I find to be shocking jokes about Maddie.
The audience seemed to find it hilarious but I find it crass and distressing.
Please tell me I am not alone!

What the hell does whether I’m a parent have to do with it?

All I know is that they’re pretty desperate to criticise the Portuguese police, the UK police, the foreign office, the media - literally everyone but themselves.

In fairness @StillCoughingandLaughing you’re judging them by today’s standards. My parents used to leave my sibling and I asleep in our hotel room all the time while they nipped down for a drink at the bar - it was commonplace. Same as how we used to go off exploring the local area with our friends with a vague instruction to be back at some point. Part of the reason it would be unthinkable now is because of what happened with the McCanns. I remember my mum saying “that so easily could have happened to us”.

Punching down is a pretty well known turn of phrase in comedy.
You can punch down on yourself/your “persona” and it’s generally funny. But not on people who are “downtrodden” by society or circumstance or both. That’s usually racism etc.
Or you can punch up on authority figures, like the Nazi guard in the joke earlier.
I don’t know the FB joke but the people who think it’s out of order do so because they see it as “punching down”.

Do you think when you make negative comments about groups of people you could make your point without grouping people by skin colour?

Ha ha ha - are you seriously standing up for the poor oppressed white man! Now that really is funny - Frankie Boyle could learn something from you

@Dyrne What an utterly strange comment! These events should absolutely be judged by today's standards, it did not happen that long ago! This was a supposed professional couple in the kind of environment where they should know better than most. They could have afforded to pay for childcare. What irks me that they have the gall to blame everyone else but themselves. they have never once had the basic decency to admit that they were wrong and neglectful. My parents never left me alone at night as a toddler and left the house. And as StillCoughingandLaughing put it extremely well, they are the most attention hungry media whores. What really irks me is that if that had been happened from someone from a different demographic group, i.e. a single mum from a lower social class, the media would have crucified her.

@Grumpelstilskin No actually, if it had happened to a lower demographic group we wouldn’t be talking about it at all - just like we never talk about many of the other poor children that have gone missing that aren’t from a naice white middle class family...

(That’s this thread gone now then...)

Kids in the crèche in the day, , left alone at night. Some family holiday. Apart from that, not a scrap of evidence of an abduction.

@Dyrne Complete bollocks! If it were a single mum who had nipped to the bar with her kids left in the hotel room alone, she would be crucified by all the usual papers! That would be the main media angle.

Ha ha ha - are you seriously standing up for the poor oppressed white man! Now that really is funny - Frankie Boyle could learn something from you

I'm not sticking up for or doing down any group. I'm asking you to stop grouping people by skin colour in negative comments, because racist baiting and rhetoric make things unpleasant. Particular unpleasant for some of us because it is a source of violence in the real world.

If your position is that you're going to do it because you think it's ok and you can get away with it, then please let's draw a line under it and discuss it no more.

I don't think you can be racist towards Frankie Boyle and if you do you need to give your head a wobble! Hint - racism is a system of oppression, the delightful Frankie is not a member of an oppressed group. Far from it, as his bewildering popularity for laughing nastily at people who experience real disadvantage demonstrates.

Two points on that. I've heard a misogynist say it's not misogynistic if you just say it about bitches and "you can't be racist against x" is the same point. Unless you're in America, when you say "you can't be racist against x because their skin colour" people will quite often smile and nod rather than take the argument any further because it sounds nuts. I am going to take it one point further though, then I'll drop it.

When you spread the idea around that it's ok to consider you have a grievance against people if their skin colour is such-and-such, at the other end of that, people get hurt on the basis of that by people acting out those grievances. I am one of those people. When you have experienced this day-to-day and in traumatic events, you do not ever forget and you find it hard to ever trust again.

When I see people doing this in the way you do, I do not see a champion of people like me because it's white people they're doing down. I see Alf Garnett with a progressive facade - a magical "power structure" get out of jail free card. The rationalisations of racists, like you, be it power structures or rape gangs or whatever, are nowhere to be seen when an individual is being attacked, terrorized or even just day to day treated like crap by idiots who think they are part of a race war.

...that's all I'll say on that. You do you, I guess.

I don’t like him. His jokes make me feel uncomfortable. Ricky Gervais, I find funny in the office and in extras but his stand up again, I don’t like. I find a lot of their jokes to be gross actually.

I prefer ‘softer comedy’ Peter Kay, Jason Manford etc.

That said, I do think they have the right to create their ‘comedy’ and to perform it. I would just never waste any money going to see them.

Sorry I couldn’t completely follow the point of your post - the reference to America went over my head.

The point I am making is that ‘punching down’ in comedy is when people in positions of privilege get a cheap laugh at the expense of the disadvantaged (such as children with Down’s syndrome).

Frankie’s colour is relevant to this debate because as a white man he has not experienced discrimination on the basis of colour, sex or disability. He is in a position of privilege and enjoys mocking those who aren’t. And that don’t impress me much.

Sorry my post was in response to justarandomtricycle

Off the topic of Frankie Boyle however it was mentioned up thread about where do you draw the line and Sarah Silverman. There's a really interesting documentary called The Last Laugh about Jewish comedians and Holocaust jokes. Also has survivors speaking about it if anyone is interested, since it came up here ( I know the conversation has moved on but still)

"Is the Holocaust funny? This documentary looks at the taboo topic of humor, delving deep into pop-culture to find out where to draw the line, and whether that is a desirable—or even possible—goal. Much of the film is centered around Auschwitz survivor Renee Firestone who discusses humor in the concentration camps and finding enjoyment in life after the war."

Frankie’s colour is relevant to this debate because as a white man he has not experienced discrimination on the basis of colour, sex or disability

I get a bit annoyed about the assumption that if you are white and male you are automatically privileged. Of course being white and male does give you privilege but I work with some of the most underprivileged kids the the country.
These kids are white working class boys (coastal town). Being born male and white often means you are privileged but not always.

The point I am making is that ‘punching down’ in comedy is when people in positions of privilege get a cheap laugh at the expense of the disadvantaged (such as children with Down’s syndrome). My riposte would be that this is too simplistic, too black and white. I see his comedy as holding up a mirror and letting us laugh and simultaneously feel a little uncomfrtable that we have done so.

That is what comedy has done since kings and queens had court jesters killed for taking it too far! Even pharoahs and leaders of ancient history had foul mouthed jokers to hand.

Frankie Boyle is just one purveyor of an incredibly long history of insult comedy that is fully intended to shock and disturb, to disrupt our quiet little lives, make us think!

Some people like it for what it is, comedy version of horror films. Others just see the offensiveness. Neither have the right or wrong of it.

Yup, but Frankie does not come from an underprivileged background - so no real excuses for using soft target in his comedy.

My response was to Therewillbeadaquetefood - I can't keep up with the Frankie defenders!

That is what comedy has done since kings and queens had court jesters killed for taking it too far! Even pharoahs and leaders of ancient history had foul mouthed jokers to hand. You've got it the wrong way round. The kings and queens enjoyed having the piss ripped out of them. I don't think this applies to the McCanns or Harvey Price.

Oh I don't know. Jesters had such a wide ranging job they often died in horrible ways... catapulted back to their own troops to make a point!

My basic point still stands, insult comedy is nothing new.

The McCanns and Harvey Price are hardly kings and queens - that is point. Insult comedy is nothing new, but it depends who you are insulting. Used against the vulnerable it becomes unpleasant, in my opinion. Obviously others love laughing at children with disabilities. You do you, as a PP said.

I get that Frankie Boyle’s jokes, without their wider context, are offensive in themselves and that’s what causes the outrage. But like Ricky gervais the outrageous statements are within a wider routine that highlights the hypocrisies and ridiculousness of people and situations.
Nobody is arguing that Madeleines disappearance is anything less than tragic but the hysteria and PR machine generated (at the expense of other missing children’s appeals, as seen in the documentary) is something to be questioned and analysed and often jokes are a way of trying to make sense of them.

And having seen his stand-up routines, the man is incredibly well-read and intelligent - he knows he’s not simply making a joke at the expense of a missing wee girl.