Frankie Boyle

[zanahoria]

"Frankie has had many controversies in his career, including making jokes about the Queen and people with disabilities. Frankie says that it’s every comedian’s job, to different degrees, to, “take things that people would normally find offensive and make them funny.”

"Frankie does not have positive words to say about Ricky Gervais as a stand-up comedian. “If you’re a stand-up watching him, you feel like, ‘oh, that’s someone doing a version of what we do,’” he says. “But really, it’s that I saw him doing his routine about trans people and I thought it was very lazy [in a 2018 Netflix special, Gervais did a routine about Caitlyn Jenner and trans identity]. I would like him to have the same respect for trans people as he seems to have for animals. I don’t think that’s a lot to ask.”

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/213C6kKb0L1cBssQd482m4N/frankie-boyle-10-things-we-learned-when-he-spoke-to-louis-theroux

I can handle the deliberate offensiveness, but whenever I saw Boyle on TV I always hated the way he ostentatiously laughed at his own jokes. I'd always thought that was generally considered the sign of a bad comic.

Not sure whether he still does that.

It’s not just the fact Boyle tells offensive jokes though. It’s the fact he seemingly gets to decide what’s offensive and what’s not, and is hypocritical about it, thin-skinned about criticism, and has the audacity to call out other comedians for telling jokes that he finds offensive while dismissing any offence he himself might have caused.

Personally I have no problem with comedians telling offensive jokes, but I do have a problem with a comedian policing another comedian’s offensive jokes and thinking they’re vastly superior.

There's something wrong with society when they go after the comedians. Theyare the ones that are MEANT to get a free pass like the kings jester.

I realise it's perhaps a silly suggestion on MN but have you considered reading the OP?

It is Boyle who is 'going after commedians' and claiming not to understand the difference between a joke and someone's views.

The criticism is of his hypocrisy.

The criticism of his humour is mostly about his tendency towards picking on powerless individuals and cruelty for it's own sake which RG avoids.

I do agree that a number of MNers don't seem to have any clue what humour is (beyond Michael McIntyre and Mrs Brown) but that's not what's going on here.

The trouble with the aspects of Boyle's work that I have problems with is that it's done to wound and hurt, there is no humour within it. It's shock-jock stuff. Maybe the kind of thing children in my son's class at school come out with (he's 11).

He is capable of being funny, but he also chooses to deliberately attack, wound and upset people. The fact he can be funny doesn't excuse the latter.

And it is perfectly possible to perform satire, black humour, even shocking comedy, without deliberately and viciously attacking people. It's a choice he is making. (If he's not aware of the problem, he's a sociopath or a psychopath.)

I don't agree with the hate speech laws, fwiw, but I would call some of Boyle's work hate speech.

Yep.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a lot of offensive and black humour (and am increasingly convinced of the need for free speech absolutism, so FB is free to say as many arsehat things as he likes) but there is a right and wrong way to do it.
In a lot of Gervaise’s work, he himself is the character that is the butt of the joke. In South Park, they really lean into the absurdity that is only possible due to it being an animation - and each of the main characters takes a turn at being ridiculed. It’s classic ‘point your finger at someone else but have three pointing back at you’ stuff.
Both SP and RG inhabit a space where no one is all good or all bad. That’s where the profound bits of comedy are found, imo, in that self knowledge of being just as imperfect as everyone else.
Frankie Boyle is the living embodiment of the opposite - an absolute arse of a man who identifies as a good guy and seems to think that’s enough to make him a good guy, whereas Ricky knows he can be just as much of an arse as the next human along.

My favourite comic of all time was Bill Hicks, for reference.

His ‘joke’ about Harvey Price put me right off him, and I didn’t find him particularly funny in the first place. It was the sort of crap the angry, bitter little shit at school came out with when he wanted to get out of Maths lesson, nobody laughed and he ended up with detention. That’s the sort of natural ‘comic’ this prick is. An unfunny little boy who never grew up,

Did anyone ever see the special he did with Akala? I love Akala, so no disrespect to him, but it just showed Boyle up for what he is: a grovelling shitter, ready to arse-lick other men for woke points while pouring bile on women at any given opportunity. Plenty of them on the left (and I say that as a leftie).

Gervais isn’t my favourite comedian, but he seems reflective and has real heart. Both vital qualities needed for good comedy, and which Boyle is sorely lacking.

Boyle is now on Radio 4 being interviewed by Louis Theroux. Not live, it's pre-recorded.

There is an attempted coup going on in America . Right now! WTAF? Not a feminist issue perse, but.... Symptomatic of all the madness that is causing all the main feminist issues of the day?

Well, that was less interesting than I was expecting. He seems to view the world through a Right-Left lens, with "Right" often meaning as "far Right". It was amusing to hear him talking about a court case over him being accused of racism and how his jury of the public were able to apply common sense. But then this doesn't seem to be consistent with woke policing. I guess his view is that if you're on the right side of history, which means the Left, then you get a free pass.

Just watching the Katie Price programme about finding a college for Harvey, heartbreaking but so sweet.

It boggles my brain that Frankie Boyle thinks that Harvey is ok to joke about but transwomen are off limits. What a warped logic that man has, he needs to learn what vulnerable actually means.

@risefromyourgrave

Just watching the Katie Price programme about finding a college for Harvey, heartbreaking but so sweet.

It boggles my brain that Frankie Boyle thinks that Harvey is ok to joke about but transwomen are off limits. What a warped logic that man has, he needs to learn what vulnerable actually means.

Boyle is a truly loathsome individual.

an absolute arse of a man who identifies as a good guy

The only person I've known who acts like that - total arse, vicious to others, hypocrite, but completely convinced he's a good guy - was diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder.

Does he still have that ridiculous beard that really doesn't suit him? I'd never found him or gervais funny.

This article provides some insight into Boyle’s view of Katie Price www.chortle.co.uk/news/2011/03/22/13005/frankie_boyle_stands_firm_over_harvey_gag

His comment that ‘Jordan’s twin prongs of her media profile are her disabled son and her sexuality - and they don’t really belong together’ is illuminating. He appears to buy into the ‘Madonna’ or ‘Whore’ dichotomy rather than see women as living breathing complex human beings.

He is the person who put those two facets of her life together in a way they don’t belong not Katie. In light of his views expressed in the article above it looks less like a ill thought out revolting ‘joke’ that he won’t back down on and more like a deliberately nasty misogynistic comment intended to hurt and ‘punish’ her for not conforming to his stereotypical view of women.

I’ve come to admire Katie greatly since Boyle’s verbal attacks on her and Harvey, like all of us she isn’t perfect but she always does the best she can for Harvey and that cannot be an easy life.

@highame

What. A. Cunt. I assume these are his pronouns Passmea

@NorthernIrishFeminist

This article provides some insight into Boyle’s view of Katie Price www.chortle.co.uk/news/2011/03/22/13005/frankie_boyle_stands_firm_over_harvey_gag

His comment that ‘Jordan’s twin prongs of her media profile are her disabled son and her sexuality - and they don’t really belong together’ is illuminating. He appears to buy into the ‘Madonna’ or ‘Whore’ dichotomy rather than see women as living breathing complex human beings.

He is the person who put those two facets of her life together in a way they don’t belong not Katie. In light of his views expressed in the article above it looks less like a ill thought out revolting ‘joke’ that he won’t back down on and more like a deliberately nasty misogynistic comment intended to hurt and ‘punish’ her for not conforming to his stereotypical view of women.

I’ve come to admire Katie greatly since Boyle’s verbal attacks on her and Harvey, like all of us she isn’t perfect but she always does the best she can for Harvey and that cannot be an easy life.

That's interesting and really shows his misogynistic ignorance.