watched it last night, thought it was decent. I like the fact he touches on subjects most comedians these days veer away from for fear of causing offence. He's a bit preachy at times re his views ie on religion or lack of, but he throws in enough comedy to make it watchable.
Television Ricky Gervais- SuperNature
- Thread starter Suedesi
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I really despise comedy which/comedians who make fun of the already downtrodden, discriminated against and marginalised. Doing that instead of laughing at the powerful and privilieged is a pathetic career choice at best. It's not brave at all, but cowardly as feck.
Im of the opinion that you can make a joke about anything so long as it's intelligent, well done.
It's why "comedians" like Jim Davidson aren't funny, you're just a racist bigot hiding behind a "joke".
A joke’s a joke. It’s funny or it isn’t. Constantly agonising about who is the target and how their status compares to the status of comedian (or the audience) would be the end of comedy. Luckily, most reasonable people are able to tell when a joke is mean spirited or not and react accordingly.
One thing’s for certain. Standup comedy is infinitely more thoughtful and less mean spirited now than it was 10 or 20 years ago, never mind 30 or 40. We’ve come a long way.
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Good luck finding a comedian who only ever "punches up".
Someone pegged it earlier in the thread. He's a very average stand up comedian playing to larger audiences than he should be because of his fame.
I like Gervais. I'll give any of his sitcoms a chance, but I won't be rushing to watch his stand up
I like Gervais. I'll give any of his sitcoms a chance, but I won't be rushing to watch his stand up
Agreed. Its usually easy to tell the difference between a joke told because its funny and a joke told with the aim of hurting people. If we ever reach the point in society where real comedy doesn't have a place, we're all in deep sh*t
Well this is half the issue he has, he isn’t really a stand up - he’s never honed his craft playing shitty town halls in Newcastle on a Tuesday night. He got famous then decided he’d have a go at telling some jokes, and due to his profile people turned up. He’s a funny person, so he can be funny but he’s not really from the same mould as some names mentioned in here.
I’m sure they say that every 30 years.
I guess so? Although I don’t remember 1980s comics patting themselves on the back for being so much more progressive than the comedians of the 1950s.
Wasn't that Ben Elton's entire thing?
Kind of. And Alexei Sayle was proudly communist. Whatever, you can definitely see that comedy has come a long way from your Bernard Mannings or Jim Davison. It’s crazy how mainstream their particular brand of racism was. Nobody would get away with that nowadays.
I should hope so.
Maybe that's why it nearly all sucks now. Everyone thinks they're Voltaire.
Never been a fan of Gervais’ stand-up but thought it was OK, nothing special. Without the Twitter ‘outrage’ etc, I doubt it would even be mentioned but I guess he knows that.
I think the most offensive thing is the constant reminder of his wealth and how he doesn’t need to do it…that’s the tired joke that hasn’t been funny for 20 years.
I think the most offensive thing is the constant reminder of his wealth and how he doesn’t need to do it…that’s the tired joke that hasn’t been funny for 20 years.
The entire 80s alternative comedy scene was predicated on being a rebuttal to the hacky outdated 60s & 70s “mother-in law & darkies” variety of your Bernard Mannings. That was its whole thing. That’s what it was “alternative” to.
They pretty much “cancelled” them.
Sure. Yet the 1980s also produced a load of seriously dodgy homophobic comedy which has now been consigned to the dustbin of history. Progress. As I said. I’m sure the shittier trans stuff won’t be round much longer either.
I could never get into Stewart Lee. He comes across as just as spiteful as the people he's skewering the few clips I've seen. Even if that's the point.
I miss Morecombe & Wise.
Genuine question: The Office is generally(and caf's favourite) regarded as one of funniest shows of all time, and yet no one likes this because it might offend trans people?
Tldr; racism jokes, sexual harrasment, fat people jokes, mobbing - these are all fine when they are actually funny, but jokes about trans people- NOT FUNNY MATE!
Tldr; racism jokes, sexual harrasment, fat people jokes, mobbing - these are all fine when they are actually funny, but jokes about trans people- NOT FUNNY MATE!
I didn’t make it past the babies funeral opener.
I watch a lot of standup and have watched RG previous ones. This was just tired for me.
Oh and I've only watched episodes of the office here and there. Never seen it all. Don't get the fuss.
Oh and I've only watched episodes of the office here and there. Never seen it all. Don't get the fuss.
Not the only one i think its absolute crap and not funny at all, but i think the mighty boosh is fantastic so who knows.
Thought it was funny for the most part. There were some bits that more borderlines on weird though. The hitler baby stuff was just bizarre.
I didn’t think there was anything trans based in the office from memory, could be wrong though.
That’s pretty much how offence works when it comes to humour. People laugh at the stuff that doesn’t affect them, then suddenly it isn’t funny anymore when the bottle spins around to something personal to them.
I'm sure some people get bothered by those other topics you mention as well. Jimmy Carr was being criticised for jokes about gypsies just recently for example. Plenty of people complain about plenty of things.
The trans material just gets more attention at the moment because it has become a particularly popular topic for would-be edgy comedians in recent years, from big selling acts like Chappelle, Gervais and Louis CK down to no-talent schlubs at open mic nights. The amount of times I've heard variations of the same "if they can identify as X then I can identify as [insert silly comparison]" riff over the last half decade or so.....
And while I'm sure that makes trans people feel like they're a particular butt of jokes at the moment, from a non-trans POV the main issue is that it then increasingly comes across as tired, lazy, played out and unfunny material. Which if you read through this thread is gist of the complaints people actually have about Gervais, not that he's too offensive.
And if I'm thinking all this is old hat as a mid-thirties millenial then for younger people who have grown up more accepting of trans people it must seem even more increasingly like terribly middle-aged man comedy.
Though tbf that still makes it more current than his constant regurgitating of atheism material as if it's an edgy topic. It's 16 years since The God Delusion came out and millitant atheism was surging in popularity as a topic for comedians like Gervais. The fact that he's still doing the exact same schtick now again makes him seem rather tired and dated.
You can add riffs about "cancel culture" to the pile too. Again the issue isn't that their takes are wrong, it's that every fecking one of them seems to feel the need to dedicate a big chunk of their specials to talking about it. It's gotten stale. I'm bored of hearing millionaire comedians talk about how they're being silenced as part of their mega-popular, widely seen and extremely lucrative shows.
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So are you saying that the comedy about race and sexual harassment, etc. In The Office is of a similar nature to the jokes he's now doing about trans people?
Because it's not. The Office mainly landed the joke on David Brent and the ignorance and fumbling of social acceptability. So for example when he mixes up the Asian men the audience isn't meant to laugh at how silly Asians are. Or "there's been a rape up there" is not Laughing at how fun rape is but Brent's lack of filter. Now you could argue that at times The Office exploits these risqué topics for cheap shocks but I think the comedy and the way it is targeted generally justifies the inclusion. (Some of the over reliance on the disabled stuff goes a little over the line in my view but I wouldn't picket the BBC over it).
(Based on a reported transcript I haven't verified, so feel free to correct)The new stand up has a joke about trans women raping women in toilets and how that should logically give 50 year old millionaires the freedom to misgender at will.
If The Office had a comedic black salesman character who was big and dumb and framed as an uncontrollable brute and would pop into the office every other episode, and every time he did he would grope and sexually threaten women as an extention of his savage animalistic urges, and he would raid the chicken coop, then I think that would be a big flecking issue. And many would say that those making the issue were unable to take a joke etc.
Very well put
You only wrote one paragraph that was barely longer than your “TLDR” paragraph
Yep and that's precisely the point that right wing commentators are missing. Take this in the DM yesterday- to her it was the edgiest thing she's ever seen and she gets some vicarious thrill from someone daring to 'tell it like is', sticking it to the 'wokies'. The jokes sound even more tired when she's eulogising over them in the piece.
The comment section is full of boomers who appear to be regressing into their early teens, rediscovering a misguided adolescent rebellious streak. Incidentally, they were probably the ones who were outraged when The Sex Pistols were goaded into swearing live on air in the 1970s, but now they're getting excited about the perceived offence 'her penis you fecking bigot' might cause a trans person.
SARAH VINE: Ricky Gervais shouldn't be cancelled for his wickedly offensive new stand-up show - he deserves a knighthood
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...celled-wickedly-offensive-new-stand-show.html
You could do that same routine about black people under Jim Crow wanting access to communal bathrooms, water fountains, swimming pools etc. throw in the same rapist caricature and all.yahoo news and other sites said:
because it's a joke predicated on the idea that existent language and social convention (for example gender definitions, or racial categorisations) are inherently authoritative, and it's also skewering the supposed intolerance of those who seek to change those conventions. I mean it's barely a joke but then we've all put on the voice of our opponents and mockingly distorted it to make it as absurd and unflattering as possible - although most people post it as a throwaway messageboard post and it's not featuring as part of their expensively produced performance career on the world's biggest streaming platform.
I sort of pity him in a way because he used to openly mock "low brow" culture, looked down his nose at laugh tracks and such. He saw himself as someone of taste and spoke of himself as an artist.
This utter crap is his legacy.
Surely he must realise as do his supporters that he is only being criticized for this because of how utterly predicable he has become.
So you agree that people who like The Office and don't like this(because of trans people jokes) are hypocrites?
That's fair point. Altough I am quite sure many people didn't like it simply because they don't find any trans jokes funny, because it's not going with the modern times(and for some reason the Office is quite popular, which means that we are all okay with calling fat people fat, calling the only black guy in the office as special, and stuff like that, while trans people are the new victims).
I am not quite sure you watched The Office. Being funny towards black people, fat people, minorities, etc. is basically what the show is all about. When Michael - person who undermined black people, Mexicans, fat people, etc. left the show, everyone agreed that the show wasn't funny anymore.
Ooh boy. So many bad takes.
The Office exploited racial and sexist stereotypes but the target of the jokes was obviously David Brent and the sort of person he represents.
Similarly that SuperNature joke exploits trans people, but the actual target are the twitter activists who send rape and death threats to all the "fecking terf whores" who dont fall in line with gender ideology.
Similarly that SuperNature joke exploits trans people, but the actual target are the twitter activists who send rape and death threats to all the "fecking terf whores" who dont fall in line with gender ideology.
You're referring to the wrong version of the office
This comparison doesn't track at all. In the first example the bigoted opinion is being used to poke fun at the bigot's idiocy/ignorance/whatever. In the second, the bigoted opinion is presented as common sense and a quasi-strawman fallacy* is being used to undermine opposition to that bigoted opinion.
*Maybe it has its own name but I mean the thing of finding the stupidest, most horrible person on the opposite side of a debate to you and arguing against their views in the pretence that they are representative of that side of the debate.
No, I am talking about American all the time. Never seen the British one.You're referring to the wrong version of the office
I'm not having a go at you personally here.
When does this thinking stop or become dated?
I'm an Asian bloke who came to this country when young and have heard this pretty much from the late 70's onward.
From it ain't half hot mum to Alf Garnet to Del boy in only fools. And now David Brent.
Is it because the average bloke in UK is a racist, misogynistic type or is it because of something else.
All I know is that as an Asian kid what these fellas said was repeated to "us" on the ground. Words like the paki shop, chinkies, spear chucker, gunga din etc were used from the play ground to the town centre. Wasn't funny tbf
Fair play to you for bothering but I don't envy you having another 5 pages of brigading added to this thread against you by the usual suspects now