Offensive Charm

(Note: this post contains a couple of jokes which are offensive (and one which might be construed as such – see below for further details). Obviously I don’t endorse the thinking behind said jokes.)

Rape jokes – I know, they’re so 2012 – are back in the news after Ray Badran’s unpleasant encounter with a protester at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Apart from its specific details, this incident raises some general questions: when are jokes offensive? Can offensive jokes be funny? Is it ever legitimate to laugh at such a joke?

The category of ‘offensive jokes’ isn’t a particularly clear-cut one. Here is Badran’s, as quoted verbatim by ABC:

If you've been to a comedy night before then you might know that there's a bit of an unspoken rule in comedy right... gay people can tell jokes about being gay... black people can tell jokes about being black... so I don't know if you can tell, just from looking at me, but I... can... tell rape jokes.[i]

This is our old friend, metacomedy: this isn’t so much a joke about rape (although the punchline is meant to imply that Badran is himself a rapist) but about rape jokes, and more generally about the comic convention that members of a minority group can tell jokes about that group which would otherwise be unacceptable. That said, Badran has chosen to use the r-word, presumably deliberately. This might be a piece of metacomedy, but its intended effect is one of shock.

This joke is edgy, and it might reasonably be said that a comedian who uses edgy material can hardly complain if some audience members find it a little too close to the bone. But not all comedy which might be classed as edgy is offensive, at least not beyond the fairly trivial sense that some people might be inclined to take offense at it. Badran’s joke doesn’t work on the assumption that rape is ever ok, or that rape isn’t something we should be concerned about. A joke which carried such a message would be offensive, in the sense that it would be predicated on repugnant values. Someone may object that Badran’s joke makes light of the real trauma suffered by victims of rape, and that this is what makes it offensive. But there is an important difference, in my opinion, between a joke about rape or one which refers to that topic without minimising the seriousness of the crime, and one which does.[ii]

It doesn’t follow from this that Badran’s joke is not objectionable. It might be better if comedians were not so quick to reach for rape gags to make all matter of points. On the other hand, jokes with shock value are an important weapon in the arsenal of comedians (quite why is itself an interesting question – but it seems to be a fact that people, or enough of them at any rate, appreciate jokes intended to shock them). There is no straightforward answer to this question, because there is no straightforward way of deciding when a point is best made in a shocking fashion, or when a comedian is reaching for shock in lieu of inspiration.

If Badran’s joke is not offensive, that leaves another question: can a joke predicated on distasteful assumptions about people ever be enjoyable, even if one does not share the assumptions? Here is an example from an unlikely source, President Sebastian Pinera of Chile, who was quoted as telling guests at a conference the following:

Do you know what the difference between a politician and a lady is? When a politician says ‘Yes’, he means ‘maybe’, when he says ‘maybe’ he means ‘No’, and if he says ‘No’, he’s not a politician. When a lady says ‘No’ she means ‘maybe’, when she says ‘maybe’ she means ‘Yes’, and if she says ‘Yes’, she’s not a lady.

There’s no doubt that this is a sexist joke: it is predicated on tiresome stereotypes of female behaviour and (worse than that) an extremely worrying view of female consent (you’ll notice there is no way for the ‘lady’ to say ‘No’ and to mean it). But I would suggest that it is a joke which can be enjoyed even by those who do not share these views. For one thing, it is genuinely well constructed without being horribly contrived; for another, it is a joke which very obviously is comparing stereotypes, and so can work as a comment on them rather than just endorsing them. To enjoy this joke, you must be familiar with the stereotypes and accept them for the sake of the joke (a sort of jocular suspension of disbelief), but the very archness of the comparison allows you to step back from them as soon as the joke is finished.

Post scriptum: the best piece on l'affaire Badran (apart from the above, of course), is by Greg Larsen, who runs the night where the whole debacle took place.

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[i] The joke was reported in a shorter version in other outlets: “So you know how gay people can make jokes about being gay, and black people can make jokes about being black, well I can make jokes about rape.”

[ii] For examples of rape jokes which are, to my mind, genuinely offensive (and fully intended as such), click here. To take one example from there, ‘9 out of 10 people enjoy gang rape’ only works as a joke on the jocular assumption that the enjoyment of the rapists is to be treated as in some way on a level with the suffering of the victim. In saying this, I am not overlooking the fact that this is a joke, and that the person telling it will not (or at least need not) accept that assumption. But that assumption is still required for the joke to work.

New York Plays Itself

Appropriate Behaviour, written, directed by and starring Desiree Akhavan, is the latest film about creative, independent-minded twenty-something women trying to scratch out a living in New York, usually while negotiating complicated relationships with their families, friends and paramours. These films often feature graphic depictions of female sexuality, but by and large the characters’ lives do not revolve around male appreciation; the nuances of female friendships are at least as important. In different ways, Frances Ha, Tiny Furniture and Obvious Child meet this description, but it is undoubtedly Girls which has defined the trend.[1]

The emergence of this micro-genre is itself a good thing, throwing into sharp relief just how few coming-of-age films about young women there were until quite recently. (While the films mentioned are comic and are about romance, they are very different from standard romantic comedies, and light years removed from the likes of Sex and the City, to which Girls was bizarrely compared when it first appeared). In thematic terms they form a female response to a previous battalion of awkward young men hesitantly exploring themselves and their romantic lives (Youth in Revolt, Garden State, (500 Days of) Summer, Adventureland). In terms of tone, they are generally different: less sentimental, more sexually frank, and much more New York. A better reference point might be such films as The Squid and the Whale, Tadpole, Rodger Dodger or Igby Goes Down, each of which features a much younger male protagonist, but each of which is set in, and is very much a product of, the Big Apple.

It’s interesting to consider why Appropriate Behaviour and its sister films share this setting. New York features as a heightened version of a much broader phenomenon: a place where young people from middle-class or even privileged backgrounds look for alternative careers to suburbia or finance, living in insecure and low-income conditions without being what would be traditionally termed poor. Very similar stories could be set in many other cities, but New York helpfully combines cutting-edge trendiness (or at any rate what is perceived as such) with a long tradition of attracting precisely these kinds of people. If this story was set elsewhere, many of the characters would probably be longing to move to Brooklyn.

Appropriate Behaviour belongs if anything too comfortably in this sorority; it cleaves so closely to the tropes laid down by Girls that ‘imagine if Hannah Horvath was an Iranian-American lesbian photographer’ isn’t too bad as a capsule summary.[2] Its other main limitation is its episodic nature and lack of a strong narrative. This isn’t necessarily a problem – some of the episodes, particularly a threesome and a scene in a lingerie shop with an empowering sales assistant, are very funny, showing a flair for short-form comedy which illustrates Akhavan’s background writing an internet sitcom. But while Appropriate Behaviour never loses one’s interest, it doesn’t coalesce into something more than a series of vignettes, vignettes moreover of a world which already feels over-familiar. These limitations together suggest a filmmaker who has mastered detail but who needs to find something more distinctive to say (and perhaps a different medium – maybe a sitcom?) Perhaps the best response to New York Desiree Akhavan could have would be to leave it, at least thematically.    

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[1] These films are also for the most part written and directed by women (Noah Baumbach directed Frances Ha, which he co-wrote with Greta Gerwig).

[2] It’s amusing to read that Appropriate Behaviour is an alternative to ‘disgruntled New York hipster comedies’, when that is what it so blatantly, and for the most part successfully, is. Akhavan is well aware of this, and of comparisons with Dunham. Such are the wages of making critically-acclaimed films about young urban bohemians in twenty-first century America.

Tragedy plus time?

A number of perennial talking points were raised by the announcement that Channel 4 have commissioned a script for a sitcom set in Ireland during the Great Famine. Hugh Travers, the writer, explained his thinking:

They say ‘comedy equals tragedy plus time’.[i] […] I don’t want to do anything that denies the suffering that people went through, but Ireland has always been good at black humour. We’re kind of thinking of it as Shameless in famine Ireland.

The announcement has already generated a good deal of predictable (sought-after?) blowback, and some predictable defences. Channel 4 tells us that “It’s not unusual for sitcoms to exist against backdrops that are full of adversity and hardship”, which seems a rather harsh as a description of its commissioning department. Rory Fenton suggests that people calling for the show to not be produced “have failed to see the difference between comedy about the Famine and a comedy set during the Famine”, going on to note that

The slaughter of the First World War wasn’t funny and yet Black Adder Goes Forth, set in the trenches, was. The Holocaust couldn’t be further from humour and yet Life is Beautiful, set in a concentration camp, was very funny.

I have no desire to see an official list of topics which are or are not suitable for comedy, or for any other dramatic or literary depiction; nor would I wish to see C4 prevented by law from going ahead with this programme if they see fit. But there are reasons to wonder if this project is appropriate, or whether it has been properly thought through.

First, there is Travers’ pocket description: ‘Shameless in famine Ireland’. Granted, this may well have been a throwaway remark rather than a summary of his pitch to C4, but it’s a pretty worrying comment to include in an interview. It’s hardly stretching things too far to suggest that much of the humour in Shameless comes from a family whose members are presented as feckless and irresponsible, though often sympathetic and even lovable. For all that can be said about the structural and cultural causes of long-term unemployment and the serious problems faced by people in that situation in modern-day Britain, their predicament pales in comparison to people dying in their thousands for lack of food. The premise of Shameless is that no matter how hard things get or how badly the people behave, the safety net of social welfare is always there. In Ireland in the 1840s, this was emphatically not the case.

Second, to return to Fenton’s distinction between a comedy about the Famine and a comedy set during the Famine, it is worth asking why a sitcom should be set during that period, unless the situation itself can be mined for humour? In order to deliver on its audience’s expectations, and in order for the decision to make creative sense, the script will have to address the reality of what happened, even if in a light-hearted way. What’s required is something much more like Blackadder Goes Forth than Dad’s Army, a sitcom set during a terrible war but which scarcely addresses it.[ii]

Finally, there is the choice of genre. The famine is, in principle, perfect material for black comedy – indeed, one of the earliest and greatest examples of that genre, Swift’s Modest Proposal, concerns similar conditions of dire poverty in Ireland. More recently, Alan Partridge famously gave his considered opinion on the matter: "at the end of the day, you will pay the price if you're a fussy eater".

However, Swift and Steve Coogan were driving very different comic vehicles to that which C4 are considering. Swift’s is a short and pungent essay – any longer and it would be in danger of becoming fascinated by its morbid subject-matter and descending into horror-show tourism. Coogan gave Partridge a few lines about the famine in a longer episode, lines which, in the context, clearly reveal him to be the butt of the joke. This kind of distance won’t be available for a sitcom set during the famine; nor will it enjoy Swift’s brevity.

A good rule of thumb for black comedy is that less is more. The butt of the joke is usually something pretty simple (the pig-headedness of military leaders during WWI, or the stupidity and ignorance of a certain kind of Englishman when it comes to the sometimes complicated history of Empire). To keep going after the point has been made risks losing the humour and (even more importantly) changing the tone, from the casual understatement which is the genre’s hallmark to something shrill or blankly nihilistic. It may be that Travers can pull off the delicate balancing act his project requires, but it will take some doing. It might have been better for him never to have mounted the tightrope.

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[i] They do, although the most famous use of this phrase is perhaps the mocking employment of it in Crimes and Misdemeanours.

[ii] Which is not to say that Dad’s Army is not about WWII, just that it considers that war not as a colossal waste of life but as Britain’s Finest Hour; and because the war was widely remembered along those lines, there was no expectation that it would address any of its more grim aspects.

Jeremy Thorpe: A Life in Comedy

The flamboyant former leader of the Liberal party, Jeremy Thorpe, passed away last week. A noted raconteur and apparently a devastating impersonator of political rivals, he will be remembered for, among other things, two contributions to comic history. The more direct of these was his famous quip about the Night of the Long Knives, when Harold MacMillan sacked seven of his cabinet ministers: “Greater love hath no man than this – that he lay down his friends for his life”.

The other contribution was a more roundabout affair. The exact details of Thorpe’s relationship with Norman Scott and his possible involvement in a plot to kill the latter are still a source of dispute. Thorpe was acquitted of conspiracy to murder Scott, but the judge’s remarks to the jury before they retired to consider their verdict were widely seen as prejudicial (see the section on Committal and Trial here).

The following week Peter Cook, appearing in Amnesty International’s first Secret Policeman’s Ball, needed some new material to respond to a critic’s complaint that the show lacked satirical bite. The rest is comedy history:

Dissecting the Target: Ben Target interview

One-man comedy laboratory Ben Target was the subject of the very first post on this-here blog. Three years later he is still every inch the idiot-savant man-child. I caught up with him on the last day of his Fringe run to find out what made him tick.

The interview, complete with incredibly unprofessional opening sequence, can be found here.

Dissecting the Fringe: Edinburgh Diary

Saturday 23^rd

Until last Saturday I had never seen Late Night Gimp Fight. This might seem like something of an oversight on my part given their prominence at the Fringe and in London over the past few years, but everything I had read and heard about the group had suggested that they were not what I was interested in, comically speaking. Sitting through their greatest hits in a raucous Pleasance Beyond confirmed this suspicion: rarely have I felt more out of place in an audience, or felt that a show was aimed at people other (i.e., younger) than myself. This isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy it. The troupe are relentlessly professional and dispatch their sketches with ruthless aplomb. A couple of the presentational ideas (sock puppets made using the legs of the performers, and a silent piece where all the audience can see are translucent gloves and other accoutrments) were superbly executed, and one of their songs was wittier than any ditty about bestiality has a right to be.

Nevertheless, there’s arguably less to LNGF than meets the eye. The point isn’t that too often they fall below the level of their best ideas – after all, this is true of almost any sketch troupe. Rather, what was surprising to me was how unchallenging the show is, in the sense of how closely it conformed to its audience’s expectations. Unlike the traditional late-night Fringe gig, with drink-fuelled heckles and put-downs and a genuine battle of wills (if not wits) between audience and performer, this was entirely slick and controlled from the word go. In fact, it put me in mind of a children’s show, albeit one marketed at children who found references to masturbation and paedophilia hilarious.[i] The edgy humour which is the group’s selling point was delivered in spades, but a show where the audience expects shocking material and is there precisely to see it is one whose edge is automatically blunted.

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[i] Not to mention, somewhat more dismayingly, a number of sketches where the punchline involved nonconsesual sex.

Dissecting the Fringe: Edinburgh Diary

Thursday 21^st- Friday 22^nd

That hardy perennial, the one-liner comic, is well represented at this year’s Fringe. A couple of different acts I saw illustrated the variety of approaches available to the most stripped-down form of stand-up. In particular, they each found different ways of dealing with what is often a characteristic feature of one-liner comedy: the comedian, since they are giving us the joke and waiting for us to get it, assumes a high-status role, remote from the cares and worries of the audience members they are deigning to guide towards enjoyment.

Mark Simmons wears the de facto uniform of recent one-liner comics, a suit, but it’s rumpled and not particularly intimidating, much like the man himself.[i] He does tell us that if we don’t get a joke we should raise a hand and he can explain it, which sounds very high-status but in practice undercuts his role. He’s also a naturally warm performer: ‘warm’ can mean a number of different things depending on the kind of show in question, but in this case it means he giggles endearingly at his own jokes. In other circumstances, giggling indicates a nervousness which can ruin a show, but Simmons is a fluent enough performer that the audience never worries about his ability.

Sean Nolan takes the theme of non-dominant performer even further. He wears a t-shirt and jeans and reads most of his jokes from a notebook (many of which, interestingly, are the same as when he performed them here last year without visual aid):

The vocal delivery is very deadpan, which is a classic trope of one-liner comedy, but lightened by a shy grin after each one. In some cases this is a necessity, given that some of his material is edgier than anything in Simmon’s set. Nolan is obviously influenced by Demetri Martin in how he constructs his jokes,[ii] but some of the jokes themselves would sound more appropriate coming from Frankie Boyle or Jimmy Carr. Nevertheless, the impression remains one of a cheeky young ‘un nudging at the boundaries of what we will accept, rather than an alpha figure striding confidently over the line.

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[i] He also changes his clothes as the show progresses, which is intriguing and only slightly spoiled by the rather weak punch-line to which it leads.

[ii] And in the drawings he presents at the end of his set, which were the most consistently funny element of the show.