Frankie Boyle on Down Syndrome - horrific

[Lymond]

interesting blog post from a mother of a DS daughter who was blasted by a 5-10 minute diatribe containing all the old stereotypes about people with DS at a Frakie Boyle show. I'm turning off any TV show he's on in future.

blog here

Grauniad article on it here

PC in Meejahland.

Prats all of them.

Just thinking about that Extras episode that was played the other night with the actress who has CP (Francesca..can't remember her last name)....What bastards they are (Gervais/Merchant)trying to be all faux PC when their true colours show live on air.

You can tell what is not PC by what is not allowed on TV. Bernard Manning, Jim Davidson, Benny Hill etc. are not PC. But for the savvy chatterati, the media crowd, Boyle, Carr, Gervais etc. is where it is all at. The more they attack vulnerable disabled people they are, the more 'edgy' they are, the more sanctioned PC they are.

We need a 'Frankie Boyle is an unfunny talentless arse' facebook group

Well that depends. Once again it's so subjective.A lot of Gervais and Merchants act is that they are "faux PC" but get it wrong. Now the argument is whether or not they are using this as a clever smoke screen to hide their true colours in a publicly acceptable manner or if they are satirically playing on the idea of a soceity which forces people to doubt themselves and twist the way in which they present themselves due to the prevailing PC culture despite not being maliciously bigotted in anyway.
So for some Gervais in his portrayal of Brent wasn't that of a racist middle-aged white man but that of someone who came from a sheltered environment and had little interaction with other cultures or ethnicities and was not sure of how to act despite the fact that he desperately wanted him to like them (think his fawning to Oliver the black office worker)And his failures in this area were portrayed in a negative manner in the show so it was not a positive trait. Others will argue that he was just playing off these miorities and perceived sterotypes for cheap laughs.

I think a lot of the problem is that we will decide wether or not a joke is acceptable ,I'm talking in the wider sense of questionable satire etc rather than the crude FB jokes which began this thread, based on our pre-disposition of liking or not liking someone. So if we like someone we are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are beig tongue in cheek/satirical but if we already have an inclination that they are not nice people we will use their humour as further evidence as to their bad nature.
So for example many people will accept that Chris Morris' Brass Eye was a brilliant and scathing observational satire on public and media hypocrisy in a way which we would not if made by Jimmy Carr even if it was a frame for frame reproduction.

I agree with MayorQuimby and PurplePrincess on this.

I don't like Frankie Boyle. I think he's a twat and I hate his 'sense of humour'.
I can enjoy edgy and dark humour but like Ricky Gervais and Jimmy Carr he's often incredibly offensive not because he's trying to entertain but simply because he enjoys being crass and wants to shock.

However I think the blogwriter is a hypocrite. She says that she wanted to see him being nasty, being even more offensive and 'daring' than he is on MTW. Well she got what she wanted didn't she?

She seems to have thought that making fun of other disabilities was acceptable so long as the disability being made fun of wasn't Down's Syndrome.

She mentions going to see other comedians who have made fun of those with disabilities yet she wasn't outraged by those and in the Guardian article she does say that she was prepared for jokes about disabilities,so it's acceptable to make fun of autism, cerebral palsy,epilepsy etc but not a disability that's personal to her.

Surely if it's wrong to make jokes about people with Down's syndrome it's wrong to make fun of any of those disabilities and not just those that affect her?

claig you are spot on

As for the Extras episode with the CP actress can I ask what aspects you found offensive? because for me the tone of that episode was in line with the reast of the series. The jokes for me didn't rely on the "lets laugh at the disabled" aspect, they were more based on the ridiculousness of people who become socially awkward with someone just because they are disabled and their failings.

thats exactly my point mayorquimby- Gervais pretending to be so bloody 'right on' and tackling society's prejudices in the Extras epsode and all along...his true colours regarding disability come out in the radio interview.

I agree with the comments that the woman seemed to think it was ok for FB to be nasty and offensive as long as it didn't offend her which is suggested by her comments about expecting some jokes about disability.

Maybe I'm just cynical but funny how the person he just happened to offend has created such media interest with blog and twitter....

LetThereBeRock,
I don't blame the blogwriter in the slightest, she, like the vast majority of the public, has been misled. They put these comedians on TV and tell the public that they are great, and the public goes along. It is now the norm for 'edgy' comedians to make fun of disabled people. So the public feel that if they don't join in, then they're not getting the joke, because everyone around them is laughing along.

The blogwriter probably read a review in the Guardian, about what a great show Boyle was putting on. The critics must have told her that this show was cutting edge, be prepared for stretching of boundaries, Boyle's prepared to go where no one else dares. She thought she was being right on buying a ticket, and thought she would be hip enough not to be shocked by Boyle's scathing groundbreaking humour. She wasn't a hypocrite, she was just like the rest of the public. The hypocrites are the critics in the PC Guardian and the PC BBC who know exactly what Boyle's act is all about, but still give it a thumbs up. She found that she wasn't 'edgy' enough, that his cruel jibes were too close for comfort. She saw the real harm of the scum's humour. Unfortunately, the rest of the audience hasn't yet seen it, because they are not affected by it since they don't have disabled children. They join in with Boyle, laughing at vulnerable people.

That is why Boyle's PC humour is dangerous, because the public starts to agree with Boyle, that laughing at and disrespecting vulnerable people is par for the course, it is fair game.

Do you really think anyone has been misled as to FB's act and content?

And what's the radio interview with gervais stillneacht? I don't know what you're referring to.

the XFM interview with gervais and Merchant - its higher up in the thread.

'I agree with the comments that the woman seemed to think it was ok for FB to be nasty and offensive as long as it didn't offend her which is suggested by her comments about expecting some jokes about disability.'

I don't think that's what she meant. I think she was expecting some jokes about disability because many people (including FB) think it's funny to joke about disability and she probably has learnt to tune out. She got upset because of the intensity of the comments about disability and was unable to ignore them.

Frankie Boyle, for instance, is a twat.
I used to enjoy MTW but don't haven't watched for ages. I thought that FB came across as an overbearing twat on it. When they did the open mike thing he would always steam in and take the mike when he wanted to say something, even if someone else had already started walking over to it. Vile man.

Its quite common all this though eh - Davina McCall and Vinnie Jones laughing about 'walking like retards' on big brothers big mouth a few weeks ago. My friend has campaigned for an apology about this and successfully got an apology from C4.

for my friend Nicky

Yes that went very quiet didn't it? Was that a public apology. Twats.

She did indeed get an apology

www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/blog/chanel-4-disablism/

I'd never heard of this guy before now, but find it amazing that there are acts that make jokes like this - also "p*kis" as someone mentioned in the comments - is that really true?
I know when I went to a comedy club the night ended with some 'jokes' about CP which I found quite offensive, and looking round I don;t think I was the only one.

mayorquimby,
Gervais and Boyle are not messing about, they really do look down on disabled people, they couldn't even think the thoughts that they think and be prepared to utter them if they didn't believe them. But if you look deeper you see that their views are considered OK, they are allowed under PC, which is why they receive all the plaudits that they do from the media. So, even though their views are outrageous and obscene, they are still PC. There are topics that they would not be allowed to talk about because these topics would not be PC, and they are clever enough not to stray into that territory. Just like Ross, Brand and all the rest of them, they stick to what they know is offensive, but acceptably PC.

Gervais was very funny as Brent in the Office, but he was still PC. He was bending over backwards to be PC and was often failing, which made it funny. He wasn't challenging PC in any way, so whatever he did was acceptable.

"So if we like someone we are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are being tongue in cheek/satirical but if we already have an inclination that they are not nice people we will use their humour as further evidence as to their bad nature."

I think you are making a good point here. But I think the public's critical thinking has been compromised. It turns out that the majority of the public do like Boyle, because Boyle has been praised to the rafters by the media, the critics, the trendy TV producers etc. Therefore, the public starts out by giving his offensive humour the benefit of the doubt. The public has been influenced to find it acceptable and therefore his offensive jokes at the expense of disabled people become the norm, and the public see nothing in them to object to. If the media didn't hype offensive clowns like him up, the public would never have given him houseroom, the public wouldn't have swallowed his poisonous humour.

here is the link to the Gervais radio show clip
sotcaa.net/blogcaa/?p=31

stillenacht, thanks for that link to the apology made by Channel 4. Great work by Nicky Clark. I think she makes a point that gets to the heart of why this sort of humour is very dangerous. It is allowed by the media and becomes acceptable, influences the public to disrespect disabled people and can lead to the tormenting and hounding to death of vulnerable people.

"Nicky Clark said of disablist attitudes in the media: ?Fiona Pilkington and her daughter died because they were hounded with exactly this type of abuse. Fiona Pilkington felt hopeless, helpless and that no-one cared. The inquiry led to press and public horror that they had suffered for so long without protection. Yet casually, routinely, disability abuse happens everyday. When a national broadcaster allows this behaviour to go unchallenged they are saying it?s acceptable. Young people will watch Vinnie Jones and Davina McCall and copy what they do.?

sheep i'd imagine - i certainly was. not laughing but not saying anything either