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Comedy and offense


Chris B

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I never actually considered Papa Lazarou to be a black man tbh, he even had white hands didn't he? I can only speak for myself but wasn't he meant to be a dark clown of some sort?

Anyway, what annoys me more than anything is just how knee-jerk everything is at the moment, with no room for any nuance whatsoever.

Everything smacks of a corporate PR manoeuvre rather than carrying out a general conversation on what is genuinely a very important issue.

As others have said, simply brushing everything potentially racist/offensive under the carpet and pretending it never existed helps no-one in the long run, and will simply be forgotten about when the news cycle moves on in a couple of days.

I admit that I've never believed that protection from being offended by anything to be a basic human right,  and guffaw at a lot of stand-up comedy that many people would no doubt be appalled by.

But at the end of the day, anything potentially offensive in any of the shows taken off Netflix were just as offensive (to some) last week as they are now.

I may be cynical, but just taking the programmes off altogether is the digital equivalent of Britain First types protecting a bunch of statues.

 

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10 minutes ago, ReturnOfTheMack said:

The Lethal Weapon episodes of Its Always Sunny have been taken down too. The joke there was about how terrible blackface is and how awful these humans are for doing it. 

Still up on mine. 

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Feel like BBC/Netflix have lost the plot with this a bit. A few years ago in the US before showing old Looney Tunes cartoons that featured racist caricatures they added the below. I feel like BBC/Netflix should do the same.

warner-bros-disclaimer1.jpg?w=648

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1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

It's aged badly and that's fine. Comedy reflects the social values of the time, so it's only right that it would age faster than most genres.

Another example of something that just wouldn't fly these days - high school sex comedies being so much about spying or tricking people into sex. There were ones where guys would dress up as nurses to grope women (Screwballs), spying on women in the shower (all of them, but let's say Porkys), or raping them while pretending to be someone else (Revenge of the Nerds). Even in 2000, American Pie has a plot around broadcasting a naked schoolgirl on the internet.

Something like Booksmart feels like a serious improvement.

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36 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Feel like BBC/Netflix have lost the plot with this a bit. A few years ago in the US before showing old Looney Tunes cartoons that featured racist caricatures they added the below. I feel like BBC/Netflix should do the same.

warner-bros-disclaimer1.jpg?w=648

This is what I said earlier about Disney. You can’t erase history but you can learn from it.

In this regard, the statue of Colston that they pulled from the river - is this now going in a museum? I’m not up-to-date on this story. I don’t think all statues should necessarily be destroyed but made an example of. If this ins was going in a museum then use it to teach people who this guy was a what he did. There are busts of Hitler still around but they’re used as examples of propaganda and to teach people about who he was and what he did. I’m not saying that a statue of Jimmy Saville should be in a museum but people of historical importance.

Edited by Monkee
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1 minute ago, Monkee said:

This is what I said earlier about Disney. You can’t erase history but you can learn from it.

In this regard, the statue of Coulston that they pull from the river - is this now going in a museum? I’m not up-to-date on this story. I don’t think all statues should necessarily be destroyed but made an example of. If this ins was going in a museum then use it to teach people who this guy was a what he did. There are busts of Hitler still around but they’re used as examples of propaganda and to teach people about who he was and what he did. I’m not saying that a statue of Jimmy Saville should be in a museum but people of historical importance.

I believe that it’s been taken to a secure collections store following them getting it out of the river this morning, and is then going to a Bristol museum, yes.

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Just now, HarmonicGenerator said:

I believe that it’s been taken to a secure collections store following them getting it out of the river this morning, and is then going to a Bristol museum, yes.

Thanks for clarifying. Then it should go on display as is - damaged, on its side, graffitied (if it is) - to show a story and educate people.

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I believe it's going in as it is, and some of the BLM placards will be going in with it.  With all the potential blackface stuff getting removed, I'd say it's a great example of protest working and making people revisit and question what's ok.  Although I'm willing to bet there are people willing to let Chris Morris doing blackface slide.

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One thing that makes me uncomfortable, when we talk about 'erasing' old media is that we live under capitalism - putting a disclaimer in front of it when you're selling DVDs or putting it up on your streaming service doesn't erase the fact that you're profiting from it.

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