Stewart Lee

[FalloverBoy]

He’s on tour and I’ve just seen a Twitter post by someone saying he had a dig at Ricky Gervais’ Transphobia. That he hates Ricky Gervais is no surprise (I’m more of a Stewart Lee gal myself) but has anyone seen him live on this tour? I want to stick my fingers in my ears if he is because I bloody love his comedy.

Op I think you can relax - read today's observer column!

cor

just read SL's observer column

i know admitting you don't get it is verboten....but i don't get it.

some posters i respect have said they like him on this thread, but that read like a stream of bollocks consciousness. i really don't understand anyone spending time or money to consume his output. but obviously i respect your right to do so

i think people pointing out that his audience are people who identify as liberal and 'nice', so understanding that humans can't change sex and women need sex based protections would be an incredibly bad career move for him

but deception is always uncomfortable to watch. and while he is decrying widespread 'transphobia' but identifying as a critical thinker, he is deceiving himself or his audience or both. awks

I saw him live about 10 years ago and thought he was pants. he tried to get the audience to give a round of applause for the IRA. No one did.

Nuance, eh ?

doubly sad when a woman does it. way to demonstrate that internalised misogyny

I have to hold my hand up to this. Came to Mumsnet via AIBU being linked to from other sites. Found it entertainingly bonkers. Got completely hooked by the variety of opinions and expertise here. I have to admit, it wasn't what I expected.

Serendipity - that clip about the IRA is very funny. He's not actually praising the IRA. One of the comments below the clip puts it very nicely:

"You do realise that the entire point of the joke is that this kind of comparative evaluation of different terrorist groups is absurd and stupid, whilst taking the mick out of the whole cliche of old comedians, usually from the north of England, reminiscing about 'the good old days.'"

Thing is, I do get what he's trying to do. I've been a fan for years and watched everything he's done since way back.

I found him amusing once and his piece about workplace formalities was funny last night. I'll credit him with that.

He points at obvious biogtry and does a Bernard Manning voice and he's oh so clever in his storytelling and references, his faux indignation that some people don't even know what proper nouns are had the students by me howling.

Of course, some don't get his irony and nuance, his level of abstract wit. But that's because they voted leave and read Tony Parsons.

I'm now questioning if I felt smug and superior for 'getting' his jokes.

BUT... last night, he nailed his flag to the mast for me.
We are the joke. Women.

As I said before I’ve been a fan of SL in the past and I actually find his humour funny precisely because it’s confrontational and uncomfortable. I think there’s a place for humour like this. I laughed at that sketch because it was patently obvious what he was trying to make the audience do (applaud like unthinking lemmings) Sure if I’d been sitting in that audience and someone I knew had been killed or injured in an IRA bomb I probably might not have been laughing but he’s not saying he thinks IRA terrorists are ‘gentlemen’ or totally reasonable non-psychopaths he’s making a comment on how targets are constantly shifting (and admittedly a comment on how negotiations with Islamic Fundamentalists are nigh on impossible but sure we’ll make pacts with Devil 1 if it helps us defeat Devil 2) it’s absurdist and provocative.

I think there’s usually an intelligence behind his comedy and, yes, definitely a ‘sneering’ and at times a cruelty (with a smattering of self-loathing) His castigation of those who voted Brexit was eye-wincingly coruscating and I certainly wouldn’t recommend him to anyone who voted Leave. But if he’s getting behind humour that targets anyone who is trying to protect the sex-based rights of women then he’s chickening out of really analysing the situation (or caring about it). For what? Does he think that this is about old-fashioned phobia, homophobia? Has he watched any of the endless YouTube videos of girls trying to escape the horrors of what it is to be a woman with month by month monitoring of their dropping voice register, the appearance of chin hairs, the joy of looking forward to their double mastectomies?

Or is this really just about getting in a dig at Gervais? I was trying to get my DS to watch some YouTube sketches by SL the other day. He’s a Russell Howard fan (I’m not) and he is watching a bit too much of ‘has feminism gone too far’ shite from a lot of American male YouTubers (we have a LOT of discussion about that) I’ll be hesitant to point him in the direction of any stuff that basically says ‘women shut up and get with the zeitgeist - woman-hood is just a process or mindset now’ Surely to God he can’t think that, can he?

He’s not a critical thinker he’s a comedian. Now obviously there is some crossover as the use of humour is a pretty useful tool of rhetoric and thus has a place in philosophy.

His brand is one of relatively complex wit that makes his fan base feel superior and intellectual for “getting” it (along with being genuinely amusing in places his joke construction is that of a virtuoso, I wouldn’t take that away from).

Where he falls down is that in terms of genuine intellectual content his contributions are restricted to the weary affected “too cool for school” variety of a cynical half calorie nihilist.

People up thread have noted the inconsistency of the skeptic atheist community when it comes to trans ideology, and that is because these people don’t actually have a real intellectual curiosity to pursue the truth they want to be on trend with a modern secular attack on religion, but because being trans is also currently on trend the same degree of skepticism does not get applied.

It is no great achievement to be the smartest sheep in the herd if you are just going to be headed in the same direction as all the others anyway. It just makes intelligence an affectation of little real value.

Serendipity - that clip about the IRA is very funny. He's not actually praising the IRA.

Yes, but not everyone actually wanted to understand that (and not everyone could either).

..They didn't want to be British...

Can anyone link The Observer column? Tried google obv & can't find it. Or if only in print, could you summarise?

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/02/mrs-browns-boys-deserving-winner-stewart-lee

If you're not used to his writing it can seem a bit odd smug. And the appeal for me is that I feel clever if I get the jokes (he once did one in the style of Kafka's metamorphosis and I felt extremely intellectual for getting it 😂) although the Micheal Hove beat poet thing is just nonsense. Anyway enjoy! Or don't! Aagh I'm no good at the internet

*odd and smug
*Michael Gove

There's not much point in arguing about who finds him funny or not. I find some of his little stylistic touches hilarious, whereas some of the takes or long surrealist tales leave me a bit cold.

Last week's column included this though: "In 2012, I wrote a piece for the Quietus, reappraising the sword and sorcery pulps of the 30s, such as RE Howard’s enduring Conan the Barbarian, CL Moore’s forgotten feminist Jirel the Swordswoman, and PG Wodehouse’s prophetic Jolyon the Beastslayer, about a wealthy London lawyer who is transported to feudal Japan, where he must wear a kimono and club oriental mammals to death with his 20th-century sport bat."

(Sorry, wasn't meant to sound scolding in my first sentence there! Just from experience it doesn't get anyone anywhere!)

We saw him about 7 years ago and he was crucifying Top Gear esp "Richard the Hamster Hammond who isn't a hamster but a real man". I thought he was superb then. He proceeded to climb up the side of the ex-church we were in. His last tour, Content Provider, i was sad to miss. We saw it on tv and liked it but it was never as good as seeing him live. We did see Carpet Remnant World and enjoyed it but i was ill and so wasn't as good as before. My dates are all shot to fuck now i'm over 45 so I'm only guessing the first one we saw was 7 years ago. Anyway i like him and think he's a talented comedian

Newuser that's a pretty good article although I must admit to being surprised that Gervais is considered woke. The ultra woke people I follow seem to hate him for lack of wokeness & Derek. I can see how he's woke compared to Mrs Brown's Boys. He makes an excellent point about Fleabag & what the NTA awards says about British politics & culture more widely.

It was Sarah Vine who called Gervais 'the Wokefinder General'. Stew is, as ever, taking the piss.

I like the "moving to the country" thing. Some of his stuff is funny, but I bet he's a right knob in real life. I say this because he reminds me of certain 40 something east London dwelling, vinyl collecting, ex-punk but-now-loaded men who always shout you down in pub conversation because they know everything and deep down they think women are a bit stupid.
Men like him might think TWAW but they sure know which type of women to talk down to. Same old same old.

I always find it telling which comedians get lots of work on panel shows. There are some that I think don’t play well with others.

Using Mumsnet as some kind of trope about women is lazy sexist stereotyping, and when I hear people do it, I think less of them.

Yes, me too.

I do think on balance it is to our advantage that people underestimate the level of debate and the sharing of facts and evidence on here. There are some incredibly clever women I've encountered on here who could run rings around anyone else no matter their education or background. There are lawyers, doctors, CEOs but no-one who's a misogynist believes any of this could be true on a site called 'mumsnet'. Because being a Mum and being a) intelligent and / or b) successful are obviously - in their limited minds- mutually exclusive.

I don't know if it's because this sexist belief is so deeply held that they then get incredibly angry when women on here talk and take action about important things like women's rights and child safeguarding.

I always find it telling which comedians get lots of work on panel shows

SL mentions that a few times in his act - he also shows why.

Mind you, according to Lee Mack, he's a cultural bully from OxBridge that couldn't cut the mustard on a panel show.

Only you don't cut mustard, you spread it .

It's because they are all represented by the same talent agents, the ones with connections at the BBC.

His humour - which basically involves going on long, rambling detours around a topic - wouldn't work on a panel show. And he knows perfectly well that going on a panel show would undermine his credibility as the kind of comedian he is.

Just remembered a few years ago, someone started a thread about how they used to fancy Stewart Lee until he'd let himself go. He referenced that in his act. The person who started the thread then came back on Mumsnet excited that he'd mentioned it. It was all a bit bonkers, but quite funny and good-humoured.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwkEEqXT3uQ

Nuance, eh ?

That was hilarious. But I can see that if you have no concept of irony you might not get it.
Comedians don't always believe the things they're saying. It's a comedic technique to either adopt a persona, or say things from the point of view of a third person.
Quoted word for word, out of context, and attributing the opinions to the comedian is crazy.
Richard Herring did a routine, as part of his Hitler Moustache show, where he concluded "Maybe the racists are right". If you quoted that and ignored the rest, you'd have missed the point of what he was saying completely.

Richard Herring did a routine, as part of his Hitler Moustache show, where he concluded "Maybe the racists are right". If you quoted that and ignored the rest, you'd have missed the point of what he was saying completely.

A lot did

I reckon that the past 20 or so years have seen a structural shift in the human brain. Thanks to Google. Whereas before we had to hold entire sentences in our heads to grasp the meanings within, thanks to Google (and it's ilk) everything is deconstructed to keywords for searching. So people just hear a keyword and immediately find the appropriate response Google-fashion. Any nuance, subtly or irony completely stripped away.