I'm not against rape jokes if they are done well e.g. the dramatic irony of the prison cell scene in My Cousin Vinnie. I like edgy comedy. I don't like living in a politically correct society where jokes were policed. Make no mistake, jokes are already policed. Don't for one minute believe we live in a society where there is freedom of speech, let alone freedom of thought. There has been a slow creeping censorship since the 1970s. Some things are verboten. We need edgy comedy more than ever.
Boyle is an annoying pseud, but censorship of second raters ends up censoring some important art. Yep, I'm gonna go there with the A-word. Art. No! Don't do it! They'll tear you apart for being elitist and patronising...
Frankie Boyle is a second rate Jerry Sadowitz. If you are unfamiliar with Sadowitz, a real pioneer of offensive shtick in the 80s, joking about Jimmy Savile being a paedophile, then as Sadowitz said mocking those who stole from him, "Oh, he’s a bit like Frankie Boyle. Oh, he’s a bit like Ricky Gervais, he’s a bit like Jimmy Carr or Chubby Brown. I’ve heard Doug Stanhope do that..." For me that order of funny is: Doug Stanhope < Ricky Gervais < Jimmy Carr < Frankie Boyle < Roy Chubby Brown < Jerry Sadowitz < Stewart Lee. I introduce Lee here because Boyle's just a pale imitation of Lee's audacious meta comedy (e.g. the William Wallace, Braveheart paedophile routine to a Glasgow audience). My trouble with this critic's attack on meta comedy, calling it pretentious, is that it picks on Boyle's strawman. Even when the Brechtian alienation device (verfremdungseffekt) of meta comedy is expertly employed it is often met with the knee-jerk, self-rightous anger that the ignorant have towards all that fancy book learnin'. The unthinking mob, pitchforks and burning torches in hand, wants to drag everything down to its literal level. Emperor's New Clothes? Elitist? Patronising? Yes. I've heard it all before. When did elite become a dirty word? Don't I realise what I'm saying is verboten? Boo hoo. Hurt feelings. Safe spaces. Be nice. This is why we need edgy comedy more than ever. Edgy anything.
According to his autobiography, My Shit Life So Far, (some one bought it for me as a present) Boyle went to Sussex University. So intellectually almost anything is punching up for him. His latest show has been pretty dire because it is too politically correct. If you have not seen it then imagine a tutorial in some shit humanities department at a breeze block university (cf The History Man) attended by some dim pseudo-Marxist undergraduates (i.e. not real Marxists, y'know the people who have actually put in the effort to actually read Marx), so undergraduates with PC sticks up their arses, token [verbotten adjective deleted because I don't want to get banned] comedians, and [shudders] for some unexplained reason Miles Jupp (token representative of self-flagellating white privilege?). Though there were some decent flights of fancy from Boyle at the end of each episode, one particular monologue about dogging in a Fiat Twingo comes to mind, and brings a smile to my lips. Gervais as a social commentator hits the nail on its head with his joke about the new sort of women, the one's with dicks, but I just don't find him funny, except when he is making fun of fat people, or the slow kids at school, or in The Office the with double entendres about volunteers in the Territorial Army being homosexuals. I enjoy such ribaldry, and can't help finding the Queen's vagina funny. It's not any old woman's vagina. It's the Queen's. It's someone revered, to whom we usually show deference. It's taboo. Boyle's Queen's vagina joke wasn't particularly original or funny, while Sacha Baron Cohen's (Ali G's) goes much further and I find it hilarious. Cohen is also sort of meta because it has to be explained to the stunned Hollywood commissioning folks. I find it funny in the same transgressive way that I find Tony Slatery's sick joke about Douglas Bader funny.
I hope I haven't said anything too out of order. Wouldn't want to be banned.