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To be shocked that this was ever ok?! Blackface on Little Britain...

646 replies

BrexitBingoGenerator · 09/06/2020 17:27

Hello. I've just been looking at the Daily Mail (sorry) and there is a thing about this. I was genuinely gobsmacked seeing the photo and it's completely offensive. However, at some time in the not-so-distant past, this was seen as mainstream comedy and I remember it being on primetime telly. So a critical mass of people must have thought this was ok? I never really watched little Britain and this sketch in particular made me want to heave, but I think at the time it was rather for its horrible portrayal of women generally. I don't remember outrage over it at the time. But maybe there was? I guess I'm just ashamed that comedy like this could have been screened in my adult lifetime.

To be shocked that this was ever ok?! Blackface on Little Britain...
OP posts:
Pumperthepumper · 10/06/2020 08:35

I do think it is supposed to be mocking the stereotypes and even the disabled sketch isn’t saying they’re all fakers, to me it is mocking the tabloid narrative that lots of them are pulling a fast one.

If it’s mocking stereotypes then why not have the actor playing them fit that description? It’s because you wouldn’t laugh if someone actually disabled was being laughed at.

SchadenfreudePersonified · 10/06/2020 08:38

Shall we just say that on the whole Walliams and Lucas are unfunny fuckers?

This ^

I've never seen them in anything worth watching (except Reeves and Mortimer, but even then, it was Reeves and Mortimer I watched, not the appalling "Big Baby" George Dawes.)

2020canfuckoff · 10/06/2020 08:55

All the stereotypes portrayed i personally have known and seen people exactly like that.

Gwenhwyfar · 10/06/2020 08:58

@2020canfuckoff

All the stereotypes portrayed i personally have known and seen people exactly like that.
That's funny. I don't think I know anyone like any of the characters, but I still find them hilarious. It's more that there's a bit of lots of them in us, I think. The 'yes', but no' girl I find totally hilarious because it's the way a lot of people speak when trying to get out of something.
Destroyedpeople · 10/06/2020 08:59

No you haven't don't be ridiculous...'seen people exactly like this'....really. .you do know the meaning of exactly' dont you?

Destroyedpeople · 10/06/2020 09:01

Actually the really rude woman who says 'the computer says no' was scarily realistic.

Gwenhwyfar · 10/06/2020 09:02

"True, but real life instances of faking disability are pretty rare. So I never really got the point of that particular character. Unless it is poking fun at the notion that some people have (red top columnists and their readership) that all disabeld people are malingering benefits scroungers. If so, I take back my previous comment."

It's a joke isn't it? It's 'imagine what if'.

Gwenhwyfar · 10/06/2020 09:03

@Destroyedpeople

Actually the really rude woman who says 'the computer says no' was scarily realistic.
Yes! Except she worked in the wrong places. if they'd moved her from the travel agency to the doctor's receptionist it would have turned into reality TV.
YourVagesty · 10/06/2020 09:13

I'd completely forgotten about the character of Ting Tony so I just looked up a Ting Tong sketch on YouTube. Christ that was bad. Incredibly offensive. Amazing that the sketch was only from the early 2000s Shock

Also, I wonder why Walliams loves playing such greasy, pervy weirdos all the time. It's a bit (a lot) disturbing.

80sMum · 10/06/2020 09:18

The entire show was bloody awful! I watched it once because everyone seemed to be raving over it and saying how funny it was. I thought it was absolutely terrible and not in the slightest bit funny.

Destroyedpeople · 10/06/2020 09:18

Lol you know the answer to that your vagesty. ...Grin

PlatoAteMySnozcumber · 10/06/2020 09:19

If it’s mocking stereotypes then why not have the actor playing them fit that description? It’s because you wouldn’t laugh if someone actually disabled was being laughed at.

I generally agree hence the question whether if the people were played by the type of person involved would it still be offensive. However Andy couldn’t be played by a disabled person, the point is he isn’t actually disabled, that’s what they are mocking, the trope of faking.

CaptainButtock · 10/06/2020 09:21

Pretty sure there was a character called Ting Tong as well Blush with associated appalling stereotypes.
Even at the time I cringed.
Amazing what you can get away with when you're flavour of the month...

CuriousaboutSamphire · 10/06/2020 09:23

It was a really uncomfortable mirror of society. Many comedians do the same. Given that no member of society was off limits it's a tad disingenuous to call it racist, or sexist, disablist etc etc

It was simply one reflection of it's time.

derxa · 10/06/2020 09:24

I've never seen them in anything worth watching (except Reeves and Mortimer, but even then, it was Reeves and Mortimer I watched, not the appalling "Big Baby" George Dawes.) Matt Lucas was funny in Bridesmaids to be fair.

Pumperthepumper · 10/06/2020 09:32

@CuriousaboutSamphire

It was a really uncomfortable mirror of society. Many comedians do the same. Given that no member of society was off limits it's a tad disingenuous to call it racist, or sexist, disablist etc etc

It was simply one reflection of it's time.

No it wasn’t, it was made in 2003. Laughing at mentally disabled people wasn’t ok then. Neither was racism. I don’t understand why people are pretending it’s some 50-year old staple of British tv.

Please explain to me why the picture posted earlier of David Walliams in blackface isn’t racist. Nobody has been able to answer that yet.

derxa · 10/06/2020 09:47

Leigh Francis/Keith Lemon might be a different case. He's said sorry for the Craig David impersonations. Keith Lemon is so nasty and struggle to understand why anyone laughs at him. He nearly destroyed
Craig David's career.

2020canfuckoff · 10/06/2020 09:52

I liked the lady testiclée 😂

SerenDippitty · 10/06/2020 09:54

@PlatoAteMySnozcumber

If it’s mocking stereotypes then why not have the actor playing them fit that description? It’s because you wouldn’t laugh if someone actually disabled was being laughed at.

I generally agree hence the question whether if the people were played by the type of person involved would it still be offensive. However Andy couldn’t be played by a disabled person, the point is he isn’t actually disabled, that’s what they are mocking, the trope of faking.

They were also, via Andy’s carer, mocking the patronising attitude some people have towards disabled people.
CuriousaboutSamphire · 10/06/2020 09:57

????? 2003 is half a generation ago. Opinions should be changing.

And your point is the same as the one I was making. The intense need to apologise for existing, the purity spirals of today do not undo the need for the whole bloody journey to have existed. Today's angst is born out of stuff like Little Britain.

The 00s were a weird era of post 90s excess, right wing agitation and global green awareness.

Every era has its own characteristics and, especially if it is your own defining era, it can be odd looking back at it and see it from the outside.

The 90s and 00s were, to me, times of the individual, greed, acquisition and being loud, lairy. Little Britain deliberately, and in hindsight less deliberately, reflected the worst if that time. I didn't like it because it was, to me, just a long list of offensiveness. But to many younger friends and colleagues it was hilarious.

I will say here I hated Vic and Bob too. My sense of humour was always out of whack (loved Dave Allen )

LB was very much a show once and forget kind of show. It only existed because those characters did exist but we're at odds with how society of the time wanted to view itself. Nothing you can say about it's offensiveness will be wrong, it was intended to be offensive, multi layered, all encompassing and nasty.

As for the picture you are so hung up on... racist, misogynist, whatever... see in it what you want to see. It will be there. It was intended to be.

CuriousaboutSamphire · 10/06/2020 09:59

Bugger! There were paragraphs. Apologies for the wall of text!

Pumperthepumper · 10/06/2020 10:06

As for the picture you are so hung up on... racist, misogynist, whatever... see in it what you want to see. It will be there. It was intended to be.

So, hang on, is it a racist picture? Why the reluctance to say it? Why the need to say ‘LB wasn’t racist’ despite the evidence?

Pumperthepumper · 10/06/2020 10:08

Also opinions haven’t changed that much since 2003 - it was racist then and it’s racist now. That’s my point. Loads of people thought it was base humour then, this exact same conversation was happening in 2003.

bellinisurge · 10/06/2020 10:10

Shit programme. Hated it then and now. Both of them give me the creeps.

Pumperthepumper · 10/06/2020 10:15

@Pumperthepumper

Also opinions haven’t changed that much since 2003 - it was racist then and it’s racist now. That’s my point. Loads of people thought it was base humour then, this exact same conversation was happening in 2003.
I worded this badly. It wasn’t made to reflect the views of the time, because it didn’t reflect the views of the time. It’s not like the shows made in the 60s/70s where the attitudes were so casual towards racism. It was made to appeal to - as another PP put it - pig ignorant little Englanders, which it did. And it’s those people who are so furious it’s been taken off air now.
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