So now Netflix has removed The Mighty Boosh and League of Gentlemen

[Doyoumind]

Should they be cancelled or is it going too far? They weren't like Little Britain, imho. Perhaps they were offensive. How far does it go though? Will there be anything left to watch pre 2020?

They did the same thing with Tom and Jerry

Wtf? Did anybody grow up thinking slavery was ok because of Tom and Jerry ?

@IagoWithABlackberry

Gone with the wind was made in a time when society WAS very racist. The sugarcoated portrayal of slavery is hardly surprising. If someone watches that film and comes away with the impression that slaves were happy to be there, then that is down to ignorance on the part of the individual. Considering how unlikely it is that a person in modern Britain's (or pretty much any country, I would assume) idea of slavery is derived solely from watching gone with the wind, I doubt many people are going to come away with the impression that slavery wasn't that bad, when that contradicts everything else they've been taught or they've read/watched/listened to.

Outside of television:
Othello, if I remember from school, is quite racist.
Merchants of Venice is extremely anti Semitic

God knows how many films, books or plays have offensive, inaccurate depictions of women.
Who decides what stays and what goes?

The U.S. Has a severe issue with the white washing of chattel slavery. The myth of benign slave owners and happy and content slaves is very much taught and believed throughout the states. People don't want to learn the actual brutality of it. Gone With The End supports that myth. It glamorizes the myth of the house slave. The very idea of Mammy is insulting to every black person in the world. Harriet McDaniel was the daughter of greed slaves and she was the first African-American to win an Oscar. Too bad she wasn't good enough to attend the premiere of the movie in Atlanta. Now that we have discussed Ms. McDaniel let's move on to the film portraying the KKK . I'm the 1880s during Reconstruction of the American South the original KKK was designated as a terrorist organization. They were not saviors as portrayed in the movie. They were murderers and terrorized the South. Not just freed slaves but everyone unless you were a rich,white male. They were even worse after they reformed in the early 20th Century. They targeted African Americans, Jewish,Irish,Catholics,poor white people. They makers of this movie knew this. They were in contact with the NAACP and ignored them. It needs to be pulled

I think it says more about America's inability to understand British irony and humour (yes, I am generalising, but then so are they by removing anything that involves a white actor wearing black makeup).

Papa Lazarou wasn't a black character at all. His carnival, and his character, was based on the Carnival of Darkness from "Something Wicked This Way Comes". His words and mannerisms came from their landlord.

In Series 3, Papa Lazarou puts on white make-up over the black. He kidnaps people and change them into animals. He's a clown and there's a strong hint that he's not even human. He's certainly not pretending to be black.

bloody hope Mrs Brown’s Boys is cancelled, but because it is shite and an embarrassment amen!

Little Britain was uncomfortable at the time. They may have claimed they were sending up the stereotype but that’s not what the viewer necessarily experienced.

The Boosh and the League probably both suffer from being essentially indie boys clubs where they wind each other up to be more daring. I think saying PL was meant to be a clown is misguided - at the time he was perceived as being a creepy guy who had blacked up because he was creepy. That was perceived as a comment on the type of people who would black up.

"I read that Netflix are considering removing The Help which surprised me as the whole premise of the film was about the injustice of the inequality. But people say that the story promotes “white saviour” angle which I guess they have a point. But it’s a popular film which might get people thinking/talking about how unfair peopLe of colour were/are treated."

This article will help people understand why The Help doesn't help.

www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/09/viola-davis-the-help-regret

"Nothing's been banned". Considering the importance of streaming now, and how more important it will be become, if a company who owns the streaming rights to a property decides to lock it away and never show it, that's a de facto ban.

GWtW needs to permanently pulled from streaming/TV? As unpleasant as parts of it may be, it certainly does not.

I vaguely remember the character of Papa Lazarou from Boosh. He's supposed to be a vodoun spirit I think? That he's played by a white man in black makeup is technically blackface, but given how absurd it is I don't think its offensive enough to get it pulled.

hyper why do you think black make up is used to look scary or weird or not natural? Or belongs in a circus?
Obscuring the face is always seen as scary and weird, because it dehumanises the subject and lets them hide behind a mask, a kind of 'uncanny valley' effect. That's why a lot of people find clowns - who paint their faces white, not black - scary. I've got no desire to defend blackface, but I really don't see Papa Lazarou as the same thing.

Where do we think that came from? Black faces as scary and bad? From a good place?
All the characters in LOG are creepy and weird in one way or another, and PL is a creepy and weird carnival character. It's comedy, it's not meant to be a realistic depiction of the life of an average black man in Britain in the 1990s, I'm pretty sure most people watching have enough intelligence to see that.

@hypernormal

hyper why do you think black make up is used to look scary or weird or not natural? Or belongs in a circus? Obscuring the face is always seen as scary and weird, because it dehumanises the subject and lets them hide behind a mask, a kind of 'uncanny valley' effect. That's why a lot of people find clowns - who paint their faces white, not black - scary. I've got no desire to defend blackface, but I really don't see Papa Lazarou as the same thing.

Where do we think that came from? Black faces as scary and bad? From a good place?
All the characters in LOG are creepy and weird in one way or another, and PL is a creepy and weird carnival character. It's comedy, it's not meant to be a realistic depiction of the life of an average black man in Britain in the 1990s, I'm pretty sure most people watching have enough intelligence to see that.

Yes I agree. PL has nothing to do with mocking the experience of being black.

”Nothing's been banned". Considering the importance of streaming now, and how more important it will be become, if a company who owns the streaming rights to a property decides to lock it away and never show it, that's a de facto ban.

No!

Pretty much everything available on Netflix is freely, if unlawfully, available online

NO WAY! Two of the best shows on Netflix.

thanks to the people who explained about GWTW
I saw it and read the book as a teen, so don't really "remember" it.
weird how you can love a book as a teen, but can't re read as an adult(same happened with of mice and men)

League is still on bbc iPlayer, for now.

"I think saying PL was meant to be a clown is misguided"

It's what Reece Shearsmith said himself about the character he created.

*"I think saying PL was meant to be a clown is misguided"

It's what Reece Shearsmith said himself about the character he created.*

Quite, it doesn't refer to race at all as far as I can see, the character could quite as easily have been made up in the inverse with white makeup and black eyes and mouth and would work as well. I suggest it's black makeup for the very reason that blackface is such a weird and creepy relic from the past and it's a comment on that, rather than a celebration of black and white minstrels. I seriously doubt that Shearsmith is a massive racist trying to send up black people, just nonsense.

"he character could quite as easily have been made up in the inverse with white makeup and black eyes and mouth and would work as well."

As indeed it was, in Series 3.

Stock silence on all the LOG social media.
Good.
Mark Gatiss has been v supportive in recent times.

Are they going to ban porridge and only foold and horses next?

Porridge has been "corrected"

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1554615/Porridge-fans-accuse-BBC-of-editing-gay-slur.html

The irony being that having seen that episode - considering when it was made - it's actually much human (and therefore funny) than some of the more right-on stuff of these days.

Personally I'd rather things were kept intact, and left available (it's hardly like we've run out of disk space now) with appropriate cushioning if needs be (warnings before etc). Banning things is simply playing into the conspiraloons hands (not minds, obviously). And bowdlerising is simply guaranteed to provoke further debate.

Banning things (like any use of certain words, irrespective of content) is also handing racists another stick with which to beat the people they have already beaten once. There's nothing more sinister than a white person telling a black person what language they may - or may not - use. It's just racism by language. The adventures (or otherwise) or Reginald D. Hunter spring to mind, who has a self-confessed warm feeling for certain "unsayable" words (with an amusing justification).

Jokes lose their context with age. Lord Capulet says to Paris that many a fine bride was made at age thirteen. We have no idea what the context of that was at the time.

Take the case of It Aint Half Hot Mum, now decried. The portrayal of Indians was a subtle dig at their own values. Ranji the Sikh lords it over Mohammed the Muslim charwallah and they both kick the Hindu punkahwallah. Add in the occasional visit of the Oxbridge educated posh Indian elite and it's a mode of British imperial divide and rule and as such, mature satire in its day.

"Why should I complain about making $700 a week playing a maid? If I didn't, I'd be making $7 a week being one."

Hattie McDonald, for interest.

Why dont some of you on here treat yourselfs to a boxset of Love Thy Neighbour, I'm sure youll think its hillarious and all meant in good fun so theres no racism in it FFS

Why are some of you so adamant to defend what the majority of POC are telling you is offensive, does your 'viewing pleasure' count more than how they feel within the society they live? And the same people call the 'woke' generation entitled

Jokes lose their context with age.

Juvenal is still pretty on the money.

And in any case, even if there is a "tell by date", does that justify the cultural vandalism of destruction ? Surely if things are no longer any use in contemporary society, they go in museums. So what's the televisual equivalent of a museum ? Dave ? UK Gold ?

Oh ffs!

This is just going to make racism worse! Why can’t they see that this sort of behaviour divides us all and breeds contempt.

I love the boosh, I love gone with the wind, I even had a guilty chuckle sometimes at little Britain, though I found some of it unfunny.

I am black and I am extremely grateful to be living in the UK. I feel safe here and have been given great opportunities.

This feels like when a program (marvel endgame, batwoman) puts some stupid ‘woman power’ scenes in that everyone rolls their eyes at. Actually feminists want something done that helps, like someone to actually acknowledge the two women murdered a week in the uk by men and do something about it! Not some over-egged cringe worthy scene on tv.

This is the race equivalent of that. Doing something pointless that far from helping, actually weakens the cause as it makes it an eye-rolling joke.

Love Thy Neighbour was widely criticised at the time and never repeated. See also Mind Your Language which was if anything even worse.

But then consider Alf Garnett, who his writer and actor were in complete agreement with, was a grotesque who became a folk hero to the very racists he embodied.

Why are some of you so adamant to defend what the majority of POC are telling you is offensive

Because framing it like that is simply perpetuating the idea there's a "them" and "us" ? Rather than acknowledge that although there may be social, cultural, racial and ethnic groupings within it, there is actually a collective human whole ?

If even acknowledging a difference - no matter what it is predicated upon - is enough to attract an "-ist" or "-list" suffix, then we really have fallen through the rabbit hole and as a species entirely deserve the fate of being killed on a zebra crossing.

And I'm not really a fan of the attempts by some to create a heads-I-win/tails-you-lose version of society where refusing to acknowledge a difference is "-ist" whilst at the same time acknowledging it is also "-ist". Because that way madness lies.

It's how we treat people, surely ?

The Goodies, integral to my childhood, did their share of blackface. At the time, in a society saturated with racism, the joke was clear to all. They were making fun of blackface and pointing out its absurdities.

I particularly liked the one where they went to South Africa where there was a problem. The black people got so fed up they all emigrated, so the Afrikaaners started kidnapping jockeys to be the new underlings in a system they called Apart-Height, in which Bill being short was now put to work as Graeme and Tim's personal skivvy.