Cue outrage: Gervais' new Netflix special just dropped.

[mirax]

Supernature is taking absolutely, absolutely no prisoners. I am 7 minutes in with a mojito in hand.

I wonder if Nish Kumar would argue that murderers are going to murder people anyway so we might as well legalise guns and make it a bit easier for them? Probably not.

Do we not think it's lazy that RG is lifting material directly from Mumsnet? You guys have been telling the same "jokes" for years.

We all lifted it from you.

Reminds me of when Stewart Lee berates his audience for clapping at jokes they "agree with" rather than find funny. Surely there's nothing new here?

We certainly have been living with this stuff for a number of years now, yes. Sigh.

I don't particularly buy into the "punching down" business anyway. If, say, male comedians want to make jokes about, say, women, I think they should go right ahead. If they are true and funny then people will respond to them. If people don't like what they say, they shouldn't watch, and if no one likes it, the comedians will not get Netflix specials.

As for Gervais, I thought some of it was almost a little too mundane to be super funny to me. But I think it would have been more effective for some other people.

One thing it put me in mind of, I remember years ago people saying that comedians on the left could be funny because they could be anti-authoritarian, whereas comedians on the right tended not to be in the same way. While I wouldn't exactly say people like Gervais or Chapell are on the right, there is a sense where that has really flipped. The targets of progressive humour are so weakly presented that they tend not to be funny. It's like Trevor Noah making fun of something Trump said by just repeating it (and not always accurately, even, which means it's not funny at all.) You see the same thing around critisism of older comedy by progressives, many don't understand where it was looking to undermine certain viewpoints, or they are so uptight about langugage that you can't even present certain ideas.

A very astute and true observation.

Exactly how long have women been the butt of jokes and mockery? Some comedians base their entire set on mocking women, all the stereotypes, some sets are deeply misogynistic. Somehow we manage not to throw epic tantrums and unleash hyperbolic claims about murder and suicide.

No, although I've certainly heard women claim that such jokes are problematic because they are punching down.

I found this funnier than Chappelle's special (though a lot of my sense of humour more lines up with Gervais' for cultural reasons) but I think from a TRA point of view Chappelle's was more 'dangerous.' Gervais just told some jokes and also regurgitated some TRA debate tactics. It was funny and damning but not necessarily something that someone not up on this debate would fully understand as him just repeating what they say rather than just massively exaggerating as a joke.

Chappelle on the other hand, told a really quite moving story about a transwoman who he admired and befriended who committed suicide immediately after being bullied en masse by 'trans-allies.' He was justifiably angry and he held those people up as the nasty hypocrites that they are. It was much more damning of what they truly stand for.

I used to like left wing comedy and now much of it is more a right on lecture than trying to actually craft jokes. I think the Brexit referendum made this worse as comedy just became being rude about Brexit (I voted remain but still accepted the result) with a dose of indignation mixed in. If you can only make jokes about white able bodied wealthy people who vote differently to you then your jokes are going to be limited.

Yeah, I definitely found RGs funnier, Dave Chapelles style is completely different though. I don't find him hilarious but he's a great story teller and he's clearly a very clever and sharp guy. The story about his friend was very sad as well and I hate how that was brushed under the carpet when people were talking about his show and how offensive it was. So much shouting about how trans people will kill themselves because of things like this and this one clear example Dave shows us about how his trans friend was treated after they stood up for Dave.

Agreed Wanderingowl. I watched Chapelle's Closer after watching Supernature last night.
I laughed at so much of both (and cringed / disagreed with both at times). Both are culturally located and both use extended stories to make their points. Dave Chapelle critiques the LGBT community and highlights the significant power / privilege that they're often granted (or taken) contrasted with the fight that the African American community still have. Gervais is a brutal takedown of what's happening while Chapelle's is dynamite (imho)

Exactly how long have women been the butt of jokes and mockery? Some comedians base their entire set on mocking women, all the stereotypes, some sets are deeply misogynistic. Somehow we manage not to throw epic tantrums and unleash hyperbolic claims about murder and suicide

see also: Drag acts.

nothing but mockery and stereotypes.

twitter.com/MsBlaireWhite/status/1529147823622701056

Ah but Blaire is the Wrong Kind Of Trans

Quite.

But the boring old female dinosaur thingys with wombs aren't special. It's very fashionable to be utterly vile to them, particularly if they're not doing what they're told or having opinions or daring to be white and over thirty.

This. ^^

The whole thing is clearly orchestrated to cause froth and outrage. He just attacked everything possible. No stone unturned.

And yet many people only concentrated on the trans issue.

The far left wokies in a nutshell.

Far more concerned about the rights of trans people, than the rights of women.
And no, women do NOT have penises.

I think when a fairly left of centre comedian like RG comes out with something like this, it's a sign that wokeness is on its way out. No-one I know in real life thinks like the far left wokies on twitter and the like.

One thing that struck me was that Gervais used the phrase "the old-fashioned type of women, the ones with wombs" (not exact phrase but that was the gist). Whereas the phrase traditionally used on Mumsnet is "the old-fashioned cunty type of women".

It's funny that Mumsnetters are more daring than Ricky Gervais. Even he didn't have it in him to refer to "cunty women" or "women with cunts".

We should add that to the MN T shirt collection.

'cunty type'

Yes, and when women criticise Drag the response from the too cool for school types, the SJW's, the TRAs, etc., is? Reasoned listening, perhaps? In my dreams.

Number 2 most popular show on Netflix today apparently!
I just watched it
It's brilliant, shows just how fucking ridiculous the whole situation is, I'll be sharing the crap out of that twitter clip, so many people are peaking.
Even men that previously didn't give a shit are commenting on it.
Thank you RG 🥰

Ricky Gervais didn't say anything in that clip that TRAs haven't said in real life. Right down to 'TERF whore' - he particularly nailed that!

I see Nish Kumar in that clip is using the old 'look ladies, ya gonna get raped anyway, so we might as well take away all safeguarding around intimate public spaces and let anyone use them if they want and if you don't like it then......bigot!' line.

Yaaaaaawn....

I stand corrected:

twitter.com/DebbieHayton/status/1529490613707673602

Ricky Gervais isn't new to this, he's done jokes like this for years. He got called transphobic for criticising Jenner's driving (yet no one seemed concerned about the person who died in the accident)!

Previous standup sets could've been described as homophobic (like the AIDS advice for ejaculating on the back or out of a window), because they touched on gay issues.

He's being called transphobic for misgendering rapists on his latest standup.