I mentioned a few posts back that this blog has gradually turned into a kind of Trans Comedy Watch, ever alert for examples of transphobia falling out of the lazy mouths of cissupremacist comedians. This week, however, has witnessed a major episode of 'comic' transphobia about which I have yet to shoot my mouth off, due to me being shagged out from running around like a blue-arsed fly working on the You Didn't Win campaign, your honour.
However, on the grounds that I seem to have made the task of nailing transphobic comedy bastards in this blog a glitter-coated millstone about my neck, it behoves this blog to turn its divinely mascara'd eyes in the direction of one Russell Howard. This 13-year-old comedian and child prodigy, who first came to public attention on Mock the Week, the show which forces Dara O'Briain to slum it with much lazier comedians for half an hour each week in return for a regular paycheck from Auntie Beeb, has this week...hold on, I'm being handed a note...what, really? Have you checked this? He is?
I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but it appears Russell Howard is not in fact a prepubescent, he merely looks like one. He is, however, a transphobic little piece of work, as the following youtube clip - for which a serious trigger warning is in effect - shows.
After being alerted to this blatant piece of bigotry by trans journalist Paris Lees (who blogs at Last of the Clean Bohemians), I, like many others, fired off an email of complaint to the BBC. You can see the text of their reply at my tumblr.
You can also see the reply that trans man Big Daddy Keltik got over at his tumblr. Notice anything familiar?
And we're not the only ones. Pretty much everyone else who's complained to the BBC has got the same stock reply, trying to argue that a sketch about kathoey stewardesses on a Thai airline is somehow 'not a sketch about trans people' and is 'in the tradition of Kenny Everett and Les Dawson'. You can see a detailed dissection of that line of bullshit in the press release from Trans Media Watch.
The BBC have removed the offending episode from the iPlayer, as per their policy of only leaving content up on it for a week, leaving only an inoffensive clip of a different routine from the show. Doubtless they're hoping that this story will go away. That, just like every other time they've made a joke about trans people, the fuss will die down and they'll get away with it.
But it won't. Not this time. Pink News have covered the story, and a general sense has crystallised in the trans community that enough is enough. Why should we stand by and take it when egregious, grinning little scumbags make jokes about how we're so disgusting we make people want to vomit?
This is dehumanisation. This is what Nazis do: make jokes about how the Other is so sickening that the only response decent people can have is horror and revulsion. And this is not what an organisation like the BBC - which has a public service remit to respect all the people of Britain, especially the most vulnerable of us - should be doing. And it is past time they were reminded of that, and started to act on that remit.
This time, we are not going away. This time, we are not giving up. This time, Auntie Beeb and her special little comedy children do not get to get away with it. The BBC and Russell Howard must apologise properly for their disgusting behaviour, and the BBC must start living up to the commitments it should honour as a public service broadcaster in an increasingly diverse society, instead of acting as if, where trans people are concerned, it's still the 1970s.
Showing posts with label crap comedians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crap comedians. Show all posts
Saturday, 16 April 2011
Monday, 21 March 2011
Always Outnumbered, Always Betrayed
It's a truism of politics - and of life, of which politics is merely an extension - that you hate your betrayer more than your enemy. This is why there is a greater reservoir of hatred for Nick Clegg than there is for David Cameron. Cameron is a Tory, and we know we can rely on the Tories to be horrible, hateful, bigoted scum, who'll kick crutches away from the disabled and burn babies' prams for firewood. But a year ago Nick Clegg seemed to promise a new kind of politics - seemed to be the personification of Britain's own 'Obama moment' - only to throw it all away for a shot at power, turning his back on the hope he represented and everything he told us he believes in.
So in a similar way, as angry as I am with Peter Kay I find myself angrier at Channel 4 when I read that said channel - which, just last week, to general acclaim from the trans community, signed the Trans Media Watch Memorandum of Understanding - is planning to repeat the very programme in which Kay first aired his transphobic caricature, Geraldine. Yes: on March 26th, a grand total of twelve days after signing the MoU, Channel 4 plans to air a programme featuring a character and a performer universally reviled by trans people.
Let's remind ourselves what Channel 4 committed themselves to do by signing the Memorandum. The Memorandum has four principle aims: to eliminate transphobia in the media, to end the provision of misinformation about transgender issues in the media, to increase positive, well-informed representations of trans people in the media, and to ensure that trans people working in or with the media are treated with the same respect as cis people in equivalent positions.
The relevant principles transgressed by 'Peter Kay's Britain's Got the Pop Factor And Oh For God's Sake Stop the Title We Got the Joke Ten Words Ago You Unfunny Buffoon' are principles two and three. Kay's caricature 'Geraldine' is nothing but misinformation about trans people; and this laughable transface mockery is far from a 'positive' or 'well-informed' representation. So why are Channel 4 doing this?
The only inference I can make from this scheduling decision is that they just don't care. And that in fact they never did. Channel 4 were happy to use Trans Media Watch's good intentions as a way to score a little good publicity (though notably less keen to trumpet their decision on their news programming - a reticence to show solidarity with trans people in the mainstream media thankfully not shared by others, such as the New Statesman's David Allen Green), but when it comes down to it, doing the right thing by one of the most vulnerable groups in society means nothing for Channel 4 compared to the cheap ratings pop a rerun of Kay's godawful talent show spoof will garner in the wake of his charidee single with Susan Boyle.
Should this really surprise us? This is the same channel that broadcast an episode of The IT Crowd which featured, as its comic climax, a cis man beating a trans woman unconscious; the same channel which broadcast Frankie Boyle making rape jokes involving a disabled child. This is the channel which only did something about the Big Brother racism scandal when rioters in India began burning contestants in effigy.
Fine words are all very well, but Channel 4 have shown again and again that they only do what's right when people put pressure on them to do so. Perhaps this is what Channel 4's head of creative diversity, Stuart Cosgrove was alluding to when he said that Trans Media Watch needed to feel free to 'shaft us' now and again (as reported by Chrisine Burns at Just Plain Sense).
Sadly, it isn't people like Cosgrove who wind up getting shafted, but trans people, again and again, when cis people act as if we don't really matter to them, as if we're not as important as profits or ratings or their own smug peace of mind. We may be a minority, but I'm sick to the back teeth of being betrayed by people and organisations I admire.
That's why I've started a petition to ask Channel 4 to live up to their promises and not air Peter Kay's transphobic comedy special again. Please sign, and send a message to Channel 4 that fine words and big parties are not enough: that we expect to see them act on the promises they've made, and that we'll judge the extent to which they really value and respect trans voices by their actions, not their PR.
So in a similar way, as angry as I am with Peter Kay I find myself angrier at Channel 4 when I read that said channel - which, just last week, to general acclaim from the trans community, signed the Trans Media Watch Memorandum of Understanding - is planning to repeat the very programme in which Kay first aired his transphobic caricature, Geraldine. Yes: on March 26th, a grand total of twelve days after signing the MoU, Channel 4 plans to air a programme featuring a character and a performer universally reviled by trans people.
Let's remind ourselves what Channel 4 committed themselves to do by signing the Memorandum. The Memorandum has four principle aims: to eliminate transphobia in the media, to end the provision of misinformation about transgender issues in the media, to increase positive, well-informed representations of trans people in the media, and to ensure that trans people working in or with the media are treated with the same respect as cis people in equivalent positions.
The relevant principles transgressed by 'Peter Kay's Britain's Got the Pop Factor And Oh For God's Sake Stop the Title We Got the Joke Ten Words Ago You Unfunny Buffoon' are principles two and three. Kay's caricature 'Geraldine' is nothing but misinformation about trans people; and this laughable transface mockery is far from a 'positive' or 'well-informed' representation. So why are Channel 4 doing this?
The only inference I can make from this scheduling decision is that they just don't care. And that in fact they never did. Channel 4 were happy to use Trans Media Watch's good intentions as a way to score a little good publicity (though notably less keen to trumpet their decision on their news programming - a reticence to show solidarity with trans people in the mainstream media thankfully not shared by others, such as the New Statesman's David Allen Green), but when it comes down to it, doing the right thing by one of the most vulnerable groups in society means nothing for Channel 4 compared to the cheap ratings pop a rerun of Kay's godawful talent show spoof will garner in the wake of his charidee single with Susan Boyle.
Should this really surprise us? This is the same channel that broadcast an episode of The IT Crowd which featured, as its comic climax, a cis man beating a trans woman unconscious; the same channel which broadcast Frankie Boyle making rape jokes involving a disabled child. This is the channel which only did something about the Big Brother racism scandal when rioters in India began burning contestants in effigy.
Fine words are all very well, but Channel 4 have shown again and again that they only do what's right when people put pressure on them to do so. Perhaps this is what Channel 4's head of creative diversity, Stuart Cosgrove was alluding to when he said that Trans Media Watch needed to feel free to 'shaft us' now and again (as reported by Chrisine Burns at Just Plain Sense).
Sadly, it isn't people like Cosgrove who wind up getting shafted, but trans people, again and again, when cis people act as if we don't really matter to them, as if we're not as important as profits or ratings or their own smug peace of mind. We may be a minority, but I'm sick to the back teeth of being betrayed by people and organisations I admire.
That's why I've started a petition to ask Channel 4 to live up to their promises and not air Peter Kay's transphobic comedy special again. Please sign, and send a message to Channel 4 that fine words and big parties are not enough: that we expect to see them act on the promises they've made, and that we'll judge the extent to which they really value and respect trans voices by their actions, not their PR.
Thursday, 17 March 2011
Comic Relief's Garlic Bread-heads Need to Show Some Damn Respect
First, the good news. This Monday, UK broadcaster Channel Four signed up to a historic memorandum of understanding with Transmediawatch, pledging to handle trans issues sensitively and respectfully. I can only welcome something like this, given the amount of times on this blog that I've raged against disrespectful and insensitive coverage of trans issues in the media. Trans Media Watch are to be commended for their excellent work in getting Channel 4 on board, and I look forward to seeing the new approach in action on that channel.
Sadly, however, it would seem that one of Channel 4's competitors, ITV, literally didn't get the memo. Because, in the same week that 4 made this historic step in trans representation, it was announced that next week, ITV's lunchtime ratings hit, Loose Women (note to American readers - basically a British version of The View) announced that they would feature their first 'transsexual' panelist. Who would it be? Roz Kaveney? Natacha Kennedy? Well, both those girls are a bit intellectual, a bit too removed from the celebrity, Heat magazine world for Loose Cis Women...maybe Dana International would be more their speed?
Alas, no. Because it turns out the 'first trans panellist' on Loose Cis Women will not be any of these women, will in fact not be a trans woman at all, but will be...washed-up funnyman Peter Kay trotting out his tired old caricature of trans womanhood, Geraldine McQueen. But don't worry! It's all in aid of Comic Relief - because Kay is releasing this year's annoying Comic Relief novelty single as a collaboration with Susan Boyle. That makes it okay, right?
Well, no, not really. In fact frankly it makes me wonder what Comic Relief are playing at. In 2007, they literally wheeled Kay out, for another 'comedy' duet with his fellow bigoted 'comedian' (and previous target of this blog) Matt Lucas, this time making fun of disabled people with their 'hilarious' wheelchair-user caricatures Brian Potter & Andy Pipkin. And now here we are again, with Kay given free reign to mock some of the most vulnerable people in society - people Comic Relief ostensibly sets out to help.
It does make you wonder who Comic Relief exists for, doesn't it? Is it really about the charidee, mate, or does it exist to boost the careers of pointless, desperate, laughter-hungry failed humans like Kay and Lucas? What's Kay done on telly lately, besides those rubbish John Smith adverts? Well, he showed up looking off his face on the One Show...and that's about it, really. I know he's doing a series of shows at the O2 arena because he's now too up his arse to tour like a proper stand-up - and let's face it, sod the charities, that's what Kay is doing this single and his run on Loose Cis Women to promote. So why are Comic Relief indulging him with all this free publicity?
It's a legitimate question because, even leaving aside his transphobia, Kay is disliked by many in the comedy world. Channel 4 had to compensate an innocent man from Kay's hometown after one of Kay's shows apparently slandered him; he screwed collaborators Dave Spikey and Neil Fitzmaurice out of the credit for Phoenix Nights, the show which brought him to peoples' attention; he rubbished a routine by Noel Fielding - a comedian who, at his worst, is ten times more interesting than Kay - purely to court the affections of a single heckler in the room.
Anecdotally, people talk of him tightening mike stands as much as possible when he comperes shows, just so the acts who follow have to start their set fighting to get the microphone to their height; of other comedians refusing to speak to him backstage lest he steal their gags; and of him introducing performers by saying 'don't worry if the next act's shit, I'll be back on in a minute'. His autohagiography was so badly-written and contained so much chip-on-the-shoulder score-settling that sales for its sequel tanked so badly it was cited as a factor in the decline of the UK book industry; and his 'ecological' approach to DVD releases - endlessly, cynically recycling the same old material - has became an old, unfunny joke - much like the ones that litter his routines. Little wonder that, when he appeared to receive an 'outstanding achievement' award at the 2009 British Comedy Awards (I suppose spinning twenty minutes worth of stand-up material into a ten year career is some kind of achievement), the assembled comedians pointedly refused to give him the usual standing ovation.
Peter Kay used to tell jokes. Now he is one. When the laughs he could get by endlessly repeating the phrase 'garlic bread' dried up, he did what far too many rubbish comedians do and went to the endless well of transphobic gags. So far, so par for the course: regular readers will know transphobia in comedy is no rarity, and in fact this blog has gradually turned into a kind of Trans Comedy Watch, so often have I been forced to lay into yet another pointless funnyman for spreading prejudice with a liar's smile on his face; but what is special about this case is the support Comic Relief are giving Kay, and the platform they are giving him to ponce about doing his hateful caricature of a trans woman.
Trans women are one of the most vulnerable groups in society worldwide, as this blog and many, many others have documented time and again. Comic Relief claims that it exists to help the most vulnerable in Britain and throughout the world. That is a laudable aim. But it sits uneasily with providing a platform for a turgid little man like Kay to mock those very vulnerable people it claims to support. I had hoped they'd learned their lesson after the disgusting ableism of the Kay/Lucas video. Clearly they haven't.
This Friday, Comic Relief will squat on the Friday night schedules in its usual bloated manner, interspersing variety turns and almost-funny skits with tug-on-the-heartstrings real-life bits and asking, again and again, for our money. The money they raise does a lot of good. But let's be brutally honest: there are lots of other charities out there, and I can and do donate to those charities. I do charity gigs and I use my poetry to engage in activist causes as often as I can. I'm no Scrooge: I believe in standing up for the vulnerable and using my money to help them improve their lot in whatever way they can.
I'm a charitable person. But this Red Nose Day, Comic Relief will not see one red cent of my hard-earned cash, and they won't see any again until they stop allowing their shindig to be hijacked by hateful, transphobic 'comedians' like Peter Kay. Because transphobia is just not funny. Ever.
Sadly, however, it would seem that one of Channel 4's competitors, ITV, literally didn't get the memo. Because, in the same week that 4 made this historic step in trans representation, it was announced that next week, ITV's lunchtime ratings hit, Loose Women (note to American readers - basically a British version of The View) announced that they would feature their first 'transsexual' panelist. Who would it be? Roz Kaveney? Natacha Kennedy? Well, both those girls are a bit intellectual, a bit too removed from the celebrity, Heat magazine world for Loose Cis Women...maybe Dana International would be more their speed?
Alas, no. Because it turns out the 'first trans panellist' on Loose Cis Women will not be any of these women, will in fact not be a trans woman at all, but will be...washed-up funnyman Peter Kay trotting out his tired old caricature of trans womanhood, Geraldine McQueen. But don't worry! It's all in aid of Comic Relief - because Kay is releasing this year's annoying Comic Relief novelty single as a collaboration with Susan Boyle. That makes it okay, right?
Well, no, not really. In fact frankly it makes me wonder what Comic Relief are playing at. In 2007, they literally wheeled Kay out, for another 'comedy' duet with his fellow bigoted 'comedian' (and previous target of this blog) Matt Lucas, this time making fun of disabled people with their 'hilarious' wheelchair-user caricatures Brian Potter & Andy Pipkin. And now here we are again, with Kay given free reign to mock some of the most vulnerable people in society - people Comic Relief ostensibly sets out to help.
It does make you wonder who Comic Relief exists for, doesn't it? Is it really about the charidee, mate, or does it exist to boost the careers of pointless, desperate, laughter-hungry failed humans like Kay and Lucas? What's Kay done on telly lately, besides those rubbish John Smith adverts? Well, he showed up looking off his face on the One Show...and that's about it, really. I know he's doing a series of shows at the O2 arena because he's now too up his arse to tour like a proper stand-up - and let's face it, sod the charities, that's what Kay is doing this single and his run on Loose Cis Women to promote. So why are Comic Relief indulging him with all this free publicity?
It's a legitimate question because, even leaving aside his transphobia, Kay is disliked by many in the comedy world. Channel 4 had to compensate an innocent man from Kay's hometown after one of Kay's shows apparently slandered him; he screwed collaborators Dave Spikey and Neil Fitzmaurice out of the credit for Phoenix Nights, the show which brought him to peoples' attention; he rubbished a routine by Noel Fielding - a comedian who, at his worst, is ten times more interesting than Kay - purely to court the affections of a single heckler in the room.
Anecdotally, people talk of him tightening mike stands as much as possible when he comperes shows, just so the acts who follow have to start their set fighting to get the microphone to their height; of other comedians refusing to speak to him backstage lest he steal their gags; and of him introducing performers by saying 'don't worry if the next act's shit, I'll be back on in a minute'. His autohagiography was so badly-written and contained so much chip-on-the-shoulder score-settling that sales for its sequel tanked so badly it was cited as a factor in the decline of the UK book industry; and his 'ecological' approach to DVD releases - endlessly, cynically recycling the same old material - has became an old, unfunny joke - much like the ones that litter his routines. Little wonder that, when he appeared to receive an 'outstanding achievement' award at the 2009 British Comedy Awards (I suppose spinning twenty minutes worth of stand-up material into a ten year career is some kind of achievement), the assembled comedians pointedly refused to give him the usual standing ovation.
Peter Kay used to tell jokes. Now he is one. When the laughs he could get by endlessly repeating the phrase 'garlic bread' dried up, he did what far too many rubbish comedians do and went to the endless well of transphobic gags. So far, so par for the course: regular readers will know transphobia in comedy is no rarity, and in fact this blog has gradually turned into a kind of Trans Comedy Watch, so often have I been forced to lay into yet another pointless funnyman for spreading prejudice with a liar's smile on his face; but what is special about this case is the support Comic Relief are giving Kay, and the platform they are giving him to ponce about doing his hateful caricature of a trans woman.
Trans women are one of the most vulnerable groups in society worldwide, as this blog and many, many others have documented time and again. Comic Relief claims that it exists to help the most vulnerable in Britain and throughout the world. That is a laudable aim. But it sits uneasily with providing a platform for a turgid little man like Kay to mock those very vulnerable people it claims to support. I had hoped they'd learned their lesson after the disgusting ableism of the Kay/Lucas video. Clearly they haven't.
This Friday, Comic Relief will squat on the Friday night schedules in its usual bloated manner, interspersing variety turns and almost-funny skits with tug-on-the-heartstrings real-life bits and asking, again and again, for our money. The money they raise does a lot of good. But let's be brutally honest: there are lots of other charities out there, and I can and do donate to those charities. I do charity gigs and I use my poetry to engage in activist causes as often as I can. I'm no Scrooge: I believe in standing up for the vulnerable and using my money to help them improve their lot in whatever way they can.
I'm a charitable person. But this Red Nose Day, Comic Relief will not see one red cent of my hard-earned cash, and they won't see any again until they stop allowing their shindig to be hijacked by hateful, transphobic 'comedians' like Peter Kay. Because transphobia is just not funny. Ever.
Thursday, 3 February 2011
I should be drinking a toast to absent friends...instead of these comedians.
Whenever I do the kind of performance that comes along rarely in poetry, the sort of gig where I have the audience in the palm of my hand, where the bits between poems flow easily and I get to display the kind of crowd-pleasing cool that puts people in mind of Dean Martin during his heyday, I always find myself on edge afterwards. Jumpy. Disturbed. Because I know there's a chance someone from the audience will wind up talking to me and will utter the phrase I most dread:
'Mate, why are you wasting your time on this poetry crap? You're really good, you should be a comedian!'
And then, because I'm a good girl, I smile politely and say 'thanks' with what I hope is just the right note of self-deprecation, but inside I am desperate to say: 'NO! No, I do not want to be a fucking comedian! I hate comedians! I despise most of the fuckers! If a virus wiped out 95% of the comedians in the world overnight then as long as it neglected to infect the few of them I can stand to have a drink with, I would isolate that virus and shake it by the dominant allele! Fuck comedians! Fuck comedy! If I wanted to be a comedian I wouldn't have been a fucking poet, would I, you bloody INANULON! Piss off!'
A somewhat extreme position, you might think, but it's one I've arrived at through long observation of the similarly extreme position which most comedians have taken towards people like me. Time after time in this blog, I've detailed the way comedians such as David Letterman, Stephen Fry, Graham Linehan, Sean Lock, Lucas & Walliams, and even Stewart Lee, have all, in the past, chosen to make trans people the punchlines of their jokes. As this blog has outline again and again, jokes like these have a body count, best evidenced by the names added to the Transgender Day of Remembrance list year after year.
When you treat an entire group of people as a joke, you legitimise the idea that they don't matter. When you pander to the hatred that makes peoples' lives unbearable, you legitimise that hatred. And, ultimately, you tell those who want to kill trans people that actually, it's okay. That we aren't fully human and, anyway, if you find out we're trans, then it's only understandable if you freak out and batter us to death. Jokes!
Recently I was watching a stand-up comedy show on the BBC and I saw something which gave me a little bit of hope. One of the turns on the show made a naff joke about his wife 'having a penis'. And what was amazing was that every joke he'd been telling before this point had been getting good, round laughs, but when he drew from the transphobia well, his laugh flattened. There were a few titters here and there and maybe a couple of belly laughs, but the thick, full, rounded laughs that most of the audience had been giving him had faded away to nothing. And I thought about this conversation we've all been having, online, in the arts, in politics and in the wider culture, and how more and more voices - of which this blog is one - have been slowly chipping away at the notion that people are punchlines - whether those people are trans, disabled, poor, gay, lesbian, bisexual, black, fat, whatever: and I thought, well, thank fuck for that. We're having an impact. We're starting to break through.
Sadly, we are not yet having enough of an impact to stop America's flagship comedy show from behaving like a bunch of transphobic douchebags (problematic reporting flag: 'transgenders' used as noun).
Look at the picture at the top of that article and you see everything that sickens me about most comedians, and the reason why I'm ashamed to be associated with them. Look at the face: the smug, cis, caucasian face. I have no idea which smug, piece-of-shit 'comic' that face belongs to, and I care even less. All I do know is that that's the kind of face I got sick of seeing at school: the face of a scumbag enjoying the pleasure of mocking people who don't have the privilege he has simply for lacking that privilege, safe in the knowledge there won't be any comeback, and he can get away with it.
I have no desire to be associated with that kind of vileness. I have no desire to be a comedian while that kind of arrogant, bullying crap is the public face of comedy. I'm a poet, and I'm proud of it, because it's a calling that demands a higher standard than the cheap laugh and the slap on the back, and because I want to live in a culture that demands high standards. That demands better, for everyone outside the charmed circle of privilege.
Demand better: let NBC know we won't let them turn people into punchlines any longer. Flatten the laugh; wipe the smirk from the privileged faces. Sign the petition.
'Mate, why are you wasting your time on this poetry crap? You're really good, you should be a comedian!'
And then, because I'm a good girl, I smile politely and say 'thanks' with what I hope is just the right note of self-deprecation, but inside I am desperate to say: 'NO! No, I do not want to be a fucking comedian! I hate comedians! I despise most of the fuckers! If a virus wiped out 95% of the comedians in the world overnight then as long as it neglected to infect the few of them I can stand to have a drink with, I would isolate that virus and shake it by the dominant allele! Fuck comedians! Fuck comedy! If I wanted to be a comedian I wouldn't have been a fucking poet, would I, you bloody INANULON! Piss off!'
A somewhat extreme position, you might think, but it's one I've arrived at through long observation of the similarly extreme position which most comedians have taken towards people like me. Time after time in this blog, I've detailed the way comedians such as David Letterman, Stephen Fry, Graham Linehan, Sean Lock, Lucas & Walliams, and even Stewart Lee, have all, in the past, chosen to make trans people the punchlines of their jokes. As this blog has outline again and again, jokes like these have a body count, best evidenced by the names added to the Transgender Day of Remembrance list year after year.
When you treat an entire group of people as a joke, you legitimise the idea that they don't matter. When you pander to the hatred that makes peoples' lives unbearable, you legitimise that hatred. And, ultimately, you tell those who want to kill trans people that actually, it's okay. That we aren't fully human and, anyway, if you find out we're trans, then it's only understandable if you freak out and batter us to death. Jokes!
Recently I was watching a stand-up comedy show on the BBC and I saw something which gave me a little bit of hope. One of the turns on the show made a naff joke about his wife 'having a penis'. And what was amazing was that every joke he'd been telling before this point had been getting good, round laughs, but when he drew from the transphobia well, his laugh flattened. There were a few titters here and there and maybe a couple of belly laughs, but the thick, full, rounded laughs that most of the audience had been giving him had faded away to nothing. And I thought about this conversation we've all been having, online, in the arts, in politics and in the wider culture, and how more and more voices - of which this blog is one - have been slowly chipping away at the notion that people are punchlines - whether those people are trans, disabled, poor, gay, lesbian, bisexual, black, fat, whatever: and I thought, well, thank fuck for that. We're having an impact. We're starting to break through.
Sadly, we are not yet having enough of an impact to stop America's flagship comedy show from behaving like a bunch of transphobic douchebags (problematic reporting flag: 'transgenders' used as noun).
Look at the picture at the top of that article and you see everything that sickens me about most comedians, and the reason why I'm ashamed to be associated with them. Look at the face: the smug, cis, caucasian face. I have no idea which smug, piece-of-shit 'comic' that face belongs to, and I care even less. All I do know is that that's the kind of face I got sick of seeing at school: the face of a scumbag enjoying the pleasure of mocking people who don't have the privilege he has simply for lacking that privilege, safe in the knowledge there won't be any comeback, and he can get away with it.
I have no desire to be associated with that kind of vileness. I have no desire to be a comedian while that kind of arrogant, bullying crap is the public face of comedy. I'm a poet, and I'm proud of it, because it's a calling that demands a higher standard than the cheap laugh and the slap on the back, and because I want to live in a culture that demands high standards. That demands better, for everyone outside the charmed circle of privilege.
Demand better: let NBC know we won't let them turn people into punchlines any longer. Flatten the laugh; wipe the smirk from the privileged faces. Sign the petition.
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
A blogpost that smells mainly of toast and is comprised principally of disappointment
Regular readers of this blog will know of my enjoyment of the comedic work of genuine, certfied laughter-genius Stewart Lee. Lee - who recently gained notoriety through his campaign to get the Piss-Weak Lager Comedy God Award to be given to Japanese performance-art troupe Frank Chickens - is a breath of fresh air in a world composed of 'comedians' like Michael 'it's funny isn't it how, hmmmm, things happen, yes, itsfunnyisn'tit, yes' Mcintyre, Peter 'catchphrase regurgitator' Kay, or Sean 'genuinely vile human being' Lock. His work is dark, bitter, twisted and, at its best, becomes a kind of meta-comedy, breaking through some kind of wall beyond even the fourth and trapping the audience in a recursive awareness of how twisted the jokes are even as they laugh at them. A challenging comedian like that is worth ten Russell Howards. However horrible the image of ten Russell Howards bounding towards you, hilariously going 'hello!' in a silly voice and waving in a laugh-a-second impression of someone with learning disabilities, might be.
That last sentence is my homage to one of the key tropes in Lee's comedy - the moment when he will skewer another performer's schtick with pin-point precision. Because I'm not a professional comedian, my example tends towards the needlessly brutal and vicious - Lee's versions of this trick can be subtler and even affectionate (my favourite, despite my love of Izzard's work, is his brilliant line 'I'll improvise, like Eddie Izzard...pretends to do.' [in fairness to Lee, he has explained that he genuinely admires Izzard for his ability to make what are obviously meticulously-planned moments in his set appear to be improvised on the spot]).
If you've read this far, and you're familiar with the way entries of this sort on my blog tend to work, you'll be expecting a similar skewering of Lee himself at this point. What has he done, Adam? Has he by any chance said something transphobic, insulting and generally offensive? Well, kind of, yes. And, frankly, I'm baffled.
You see, I've been reading Lee's otherwise excellent book, 'How I Escaped My Certain Fate' today, and, during the otherwise funny introduction (it is actually a very good book except in the respect I'm going to have a go at. I'm hoping both those 'otherwises' will make that seem clear), Lee comes out with this line, apropos of his description of an alternative comedy promoter discovering Lee had been educated at Oxford:
'"But you're not like those wankers, are you?" he added with all the desparation of a disappointed sex tourist who has just discovered his beautiful Thai prostitute has a penis, and is wondering whether just to try and make the best of it.'
Now as a writer I can see why Lee has gone for this line. He needs a simile for someone discovering a secret about another person, and he also needs one that fits with his carefully-crafted 'edgy' comic persona. Superficially, it seems to fit the bill. But when we subject it to the kind of deep comic analysis which is often the hallmark of Lee's own act, we find it's actually kind of unpalatable.
The problem with this seemingly throwaway line is the implicit assumptions it contains. There are three main assumptions buried in this joke, all of them problematic.
1) Trans people are prostitutes. The basic trans woman joke is essentially a variant on this line. Man goes to prostitute. Man discovers prostitute is trans. Hilarity ensues! Well. Not really. Very often what ensues is the sex worker involved being attacked violently and possibly murdered. Some versions of the joke even imply that this violence is deserved (and to be fair, the 'disappointed sex tourist' in Lee's gag at least doesn't do that). But leaving even that aside - even if suddenly punters stopped being violent to trans sex workers - one of the implicit assumptions in a joke of this kind is that the only place you are liable to find a trans person is a red light district. While it's true that many trans women often go into sex work due to the persistent and often unacknowledged discrimination they face in 'conventional' employment, there are trans people in all walks of life. There are trans poets, journalists, architects, scientists, broadcasters and, indeed, comedians. This implicit association with the sex industry contributes to a widespread perception of trans people as being somehow sleazy which becomes both a self-fulfilling prophecy and also a contributing factor to problematic point two...
2) Trans people are (often exotic) others. Notice that the prostitute in the above scenario is, of course, Thai. There is something definitely very odd and a bit sleazy about this, on the part of Lee and the whole 'Bangkok chickboys' tone of this conversation in the culture. It smacks simultaneously of Orientalism and transmisogyny. It's a fairly toxic combo: it contributes to the belief in our culture that trans people are not like us. Which is a ludicrous notion. Trans people are a small segment of the population, but you find them in any population, caucasian, black, hispanic, asian, south asian...attitudes to trans people differ from culture to culture (some countries are much more welcoming to trans people than others), but trans people are to be found everywhere. Not all of them are flawless 'oriental' beauties (and indeed it should be noted that not all 'oriental' people are flawless beauties either): there are dumpy white trans people, athletic black trans people, skinny Irish trans people, and all sorts of combinations. One even encounters overweight non-binary trans people with pale skin who find it impossible to tan and fight an ongoing battle against their body and facial hair with an ever-expanding arsenal of depilatory creams, razors, waxing and tweezers. You know, as a hypothetical example. Actually scratch that, I'm talking about myself there, because to do otherwise is to play into the hands of problematic assumption three...
3) Trans status is a shameful secret. Oh NOES! The prostitute was really a MAN! What a horrible dark secret! What a disappointment! Oh the womanity! Oh, bollocks, more like. Is it really Stewart Lee making this joke? This tired old piece-of-shit joke we'd be more likely to expect from some hack like Letterman or Lock? For Venus Castina's sake, being trans is nothing to be ashamed of. It's only the twisted assumptions of cis society which regards it as such, and that is in no small part due to the previous assumptions listed above. And jokes like this, which - while seemingly inconsequential - reinforce those assumptions, do not help to solve the problem.
In fact, I'll go further. Jokes like this have a body count. Read that link. Every second day the murder of a trans person is reported. The true casualty figures, as always in this sort of crime, are probably far higher.
This is why I'm deeply, sorely disappointed in Stewart Lee. I don't think there's any malice in his line. I think he genuinely hasn't thought about it. And in a way, that makes it worse. Because, having followed his work as I have, I know he genuinely does think very carefully about his art, and that he generally comes at things from a sensibility rooted in the alternative comedy of the 80s. It's just a shame - a damn shame - that, for this one throwaway line, this one moment, he slackened that focus.
It is an otherwise good book. Lee is, I think, one of the good guys, and his thoughts on comedy and the construction of a stage act are required reading for any performer. But I wish he'd thought a little more when he was writing them.
That last sentence is my homage to one of the key tropes in Lee's comedy - the moment when he will skewer another performer's schtick with pin-point precision. Because I'm not a professional comedian, my example tends towards the needlessly brutal and vicious - Lee's versions of this trick can be subtler and even affectionate (my favourite, despite my love of Izzard's work, is his brilliant line 'I'll improvise, like Eddie Izzard...pretends to do.' [in fairness to Lee, he has explained that he genuinely admires Izzard for his ability to make what are obviously meticulously-planned moments in his set appear to be improvised on the spot]).
If you've read this far, and you're familiar with the way entries of this sort on my blog tend to work, you'll be expecting a similar skewering of Lee himself at this point. What has he done, Adam? Has he by any chance said something transphobic, insulting and generally offensive? Well, kind of, yes. And, frankly, I'm baffled.
You see, I've been reading Lee's otherwise excellent book, 'How I Escaped My Certain Fate' today, and, during the otherwise funny introduction (it is actually a very good book except in the respect I'm going to have a go at. I'm hoping both those 'otherwises' will make that seem clear), Lee comes out with this line, apropos of his description of an alternative comedy promoter discovering Lee had been educated at Oxford:
'"But you're not like those wankers, are you?" he added with all the desparation of a disappointed sex tourist who has just discovered his beautiful Thai prostitute has a penis, and is wondering whether just to try and make the best of it.'
Now as a writer I can see why Lee has gone for this line. He needs a simile for someone discovering a secret about another person, and he also needs one that fits with his carefully-crafted 'edgy' comic persona. Superficially, it seems to fit the bill. But when we subject it to the kind of deep comic analysis which is often the hallmark of Lee's own act, we find it's actually kind of unpalatable.
The problem with this seemingly throwaway line is the implicit assumptions it contains. There are three main assumptions buried in this joke, all of them problematic.
1) Trans people are prostitutes. The basic trans woman joke is essentially a variant on this line. Man goes to prostitute. Man discovers prostitute is trans. Hilarity ensues! Well. Not really. Very often what ensues is the sex worker involved being attacked violently and possibly murdered. Some versions of the joke even imply that this violence is deserved (and to be fair, the 'disappointed sex tourist' in Lee's gag at least doesn't do that). But leaving even that aside - even if suddenly punters stopped being violent to trans sex workers - one of the implicit assumptions in a joke of this kind is that the only place you are liable to find a trans person is a red light district. While it's true that many trans women often go into sex work due to the persistent and often unacknowledged discrimination they face in 'conventional' employment, there are trans people in all walks of life. There are trans poets, journalists, architects, scientists, broadcasters and, indeed, comedians. This implicit association with the sex industry contributes to a widespread perception of trans people as being somehow sleazy which becomes both a self-fulfilling prophecy and also a contributing factor to problematic point two...
2) Trans people are (often exotic) others. Notice that the prostitute in the above scenario is, of course, Thai. There is something definitely very odd and a bit sleazy about this, on the part of Lee and the whole 'Bangkok chickboys' tone of this conversation in the culture. It smacks simultaneously of Orientalism and transmisogyny. It's a fairly toxic combo: it contributes to the belief in our culture that trans people are not like us. Which is a ludicrous notion. Trans people are a small segment of the population, but you find them in any population, caucasian, black, hispanic, asian, south asian...attitudes to trans people differ from culture to culture (some countries are much more welcoming to trans people than others), but trans people are to be found everywhere. Not all of them are flawless 'oriental' beauties (and indeed it should be noted that not all 'oriental' people are flawless beauties either): there are dumpy white trans people, athletic black trans people, skinny Irish trans people, and all sorts of combinations. One even encounters overweight non-binary trans people with pale skin who find it impossible to tan and fight an ongoing battle against their body and facial hair with an ever-expanding arsenal of depilatory creams, razors, waxing and tweezers. You know, as a hypothetical example. Actually scratch that, I'm talking about myself there, because to do otherwise is to play into the hands of problematic assumption three...
3) Trans status is a shameful secret. Oh NOES! The prostitute was really a MAN! What a horrible dark secret! What a disappointment! Oh the womanity! Oh, bollocks, more like. Is it really Stewart Lee making this joke? This tired old piece-of-shit joke we'd be more likely to expect from some hack like Letterman or Lock? For Venus Castina's sake, being trans is nothing to be ashamed of. It's only the twisted assumptions of cis society which regards it as such, and that is in no small part due to the previous assumptions listed above. And jokes like this, which - while seemingly inconsequential - reinforce those assumptions, do not help to solve the problem.
In fact, I'll go further. Jokes like this have a body count. Read that link. Every second day the murder of a trans person is reported. The true casualty figures, as always in this sort of crime, are probably far higher.
This is why I'm deeply, sorely disappointed in Stewart Lee. I don't think there's any malice in his line. I think he genuinely hasn't thought about it. And in a way, that makes it worse. Because, having followed his work as I have, I know he genuinely does think very carefully about his art, and that he generally comes at things from a sensibility rooted in the alternative comedy of the 80s. It's just a shame - a damn shame - that, for this one throwaway line, this one moment, he slackened that focus.
It is an otherwise good book. Lee is, I think, one of the good guys, and his thoughts on comedy and the construction of a stage act are required reading for any performer. But I wish he'd thought a little more when he was writing them.
Sunday, 4 July 2010
Why Eddie Izzard is a God, and Matt Lucas is a fool I am destined to piss on in the gutter
Having discussed the intersection of gender and comedy, it's fair at this point to unleash a little rant I've been wanting to launch for a while, focusing on just how much of a boundary-smashing genius Eddie Izzard is and how the forces of retrogression in gender-based comedy can lick my sweaty bits and tell me that they love it.
The genius of Eddie Izzard isn't that he performs in drag. The genius of Eddie Izzard is that he's a transvestite. There is a massive difference between these two things, and that difference lies at the heart of the way in which Izzard genuinely changed the game for stand-up comedy in ways many lesser comedians are trying to catch up with, and some are actively trying to run away from.
Before Izzard, there was a long tradition of drag in British comedy and, whether it was hateful shit like Dick Emery, the more affectionate Northern social observations of Les Dawson, or the weirdness of Monty Python and Terry Jones' endless appearances as 'generic old woman' (most memorably as Brian's mum in Life of Brian), the joke was always, on one level, 'Hey! Look! It's a bloke dressed up as a woman!' The comedy in all these cases - even with Jones and Python, whose work I otherwise worship - depends, in large part, on the disconnect between the ideas of a certain type of idealised femininity and a certain form of masculinity which the performer is assumed to really have. It turns, in fact, on transmisogyny.
The brilliance of Eddie Izzard is that his comedy doesn't. Although Izzard finds comedy in his experiences of other peoples' reactions to his transvestism, the punchline in his work isn't hey-look-it's-a-man-in-a-dress. The punchlines in Izzard's work tend to be more thoughtful, odd, and surrealist. Izzard's work is more likely to focus on discrepancies in the Bible than discrepancies between his birth-assigned gender and the clothes and make-up he likes to wear. In a country as sexually unsophisticated as Britain, and in a field as generally immature as British comedy, the idea that a man could wear high heels and make-up on stage without it being the focus of the joke was akin to the impact of glam rock on music. Eddie Izzard is the David Bowie of comedy.
Of course, one of the sadder things about being a rock music fan in Britain is that guys like Bowie are few and far between. We might occassionally strike it lucky with, say, a Brian Moltko or a Jarvis Cocker, but more usually Britain is the country responsible for terrible pub-rock shite like Oasis and the Stereophonics. Rock music straight men can listen to while wearing football shirts and drinking Carling. Unfortunately it's the same with comedy. A lot of men wouldn't be seen dead at an Izzard gig or a Placebo show, because they're terrified of looking gay in front of their mates. The idea that a man might look good in make-up, the idea that there might not be such a hard-and-fast line between acceptable male and female behaviours, and, probably, to paraphrase Hunter S Thompson, the gnawing fear that people somewhere are having fun in ways they'll never know, is a terrifying prospect for these fuckers. So they retreat to comedy which repeats the same old transmisogynistic tropes, which makes them feel comfortable in their tired, old, fossilised notions of gender, which allows them, once again, to grunt ha-ha-it's-a-guy-in-a-dress.
They retreat, in fact, to Little Britain (you'll notice I never include links to Little Britain when I blog about it. This is for the same reason many bloggers choose not to provide links to the Daily Mail in their blogs: I genuinely detest everything about it. I used to laugh at it, it's true, but I used to shit my pants as well. People grow up, and having grown up I despise the fucking show. Besides, the thing is fucking ubiquitous, you probably know what I'm talking about without a link and, if not, Google is your friend). They retreat to David Walliams and Matt Lucas in ridiculous crinoline dresses shouting 'I'm a lay-dee!' (Not that bad drag is all Lucas and Walliams can do. They can do fat suits and blackface too. They're a multi-talented pair.) And Lucas and Walliams make them feel safe and make them feel good and make them feel that, yes, it's okay, you can laugh at a man dressed as a woman (or a black woman. Or a fat woman. Or a lower-class woman. Or a disabled person [because they're all faking]. Or a mentally-ill woman. Or a woman who wets herself. Ha ha ha. Ha. Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha HA. It's astonishing that Lucas and Walliams got away with fooling people that they were 'edgy' for so long, because, really, there isn't a Mars Bars wrappers' difference between the world of their comedy and the world of the Daily Mail).
This is Lucas and Walliam's function: to convince the mass of people following them that they're enjoying something genuinely 'edgy' and exciting when actually their show is deeply retrogressive. All the vomiting, pissing, OAP-kissing, wobbling arses and breast-sucking in their shows serves the same function as the sound of loud electric guitars in the music of Oasis: it creates an impression of excitement and daring, but ultimately serves to distract from the essentially conservative nature of the enterprise (recall that the supposedly edgy, rock 'n' roll mofos in Oasis complained loudly that Jay-Z shouldn't play Glastonbury because rap isn't 'proper music').
It can be depressing, thinking about the popularity of acts like Lucas and Walliams. But you have to think about the long run. Oasis were the biggest band in Britain once, but they're a musical joke now, endlessly retreading the same dull path of lyrics ripped off from the Beatles and guitar riffs ripped off from Slade while newer, exciting bands spring up around them and their contemporaries, like Damon Albarn and Jarvis Cocker, remain creative and musically vital (Bowie, indeed, barring a disastrous stint in the eighties, was a vital musical force for thirty years, while Oasis burned out creatively in about six). And now look at Lucas and Walliams, reduced to slapping on their make-up and reprising their tired old schtick in a series of ads for a building society. Their true colours are revealed: they're a bank manager's idea of what's funny and hip.
Meanwhile, Eddie Izzard continues to perform incredible stand-up, has carved out a decent enough niche as a movie actor (though it's painfully obvious Hollywood doesn't really know how to use him properly), and ran forty-three fucking marathons.
It's fair to say that the idea of a transvestite running forty-three marathons wouldn't occur to Lucas and Walliams, because it doesn't fit in with their transmisogynistic worldview. But it doesn't really matter. In whatever Eddie Izzard does, he'll keep on running, while, creatively and comedically, the little boys from Little Britain remain stalled.
The genius of Eddie Izzard isn't that he performs in drag. The genius of Eddie Izzard is that he's a transvestite. There is a massive difference between these two things, and that difference lies at the heart of the way in which Izzard genuinely changed the game for stand-up comedy in ways many lesser comedians are trying to catch up with, and some are actively trying to run away from.
Before Izzard, there was a long tradition of drag in British comedy and, whether it was hateful shit like Dick Emery, the more affectionate Northern social observations of Les Dawson, or the weirdness of Monty Python and Terry Jones' endless appearances as 'generic old woman' (most memorably as Brian's mum in Life of Brian), the joke was always, on one level, 'Hey! Look! It's a bloke dressed up as a woman!' The comedy in all these cases - even with Jones and Python, whose work I otherwise worship - depends, in large part, on the disconnect between the ideas of a certain type of idealised femininity and a certain form of masculinity which the performer is assumed to really have. It turns, in fact, on transmisogyny.
The brilliance of Eddie Izzard is that his comedy doesn't. Although Izzard finds comedy in his experiences of other peoples' reactions to his transvestism, the punchline in his work isn't hey-look-it's-a-man-in-a-dress. The punchlines in Izzard's work tend to be more thoughtful, odd, and surrealist. Izzard's work is more likely to focus on discrepancies in the Bible than discrepancies between his birth-assigned gender and the clothes and make-up he likes to wear. In a country as sexually unsophisticated as Britain, and in a field as generally immature as British comedy, the idea that a man could wear high heels and make-up on stage without it being the focus of the joke was akin to the impact of glam rock on music. Eddie Izzard is the David Bowie of comedy.
Of course, one of the sadder things about being a rock music fan in Britain is that guys like Bowie are few and far between. We might occassionally strike it lucky with, say, a Brian Moltko or a Jarvis Cocker, but more usually Britain is the country responsible for terrible pub-rock shite like Oasis and the Stereophonics. Rock music straight men can listen to while wearing football shirts and drinking Carling. Unfortunately it's the same with comedy. A lot of men wouldn't be seen dead at an Izzard gig or a Placebo show, because they're terrified of looking gay in front of their mates. The idea that a man might look good in make-up, the idea that there might not be such a hard-and-fast line between acceptable male and female behaviours, and, probably, to paraphrase Hunter S Thompson, the gnawing fear that people somewhere are having fun in ways they'll never know, is a terrifying prospect for these fuckers. So they retreat to comedy which repeats the same old transmisogynistic tropes, which makes them feel comfortable in their tired, old, fossilised notions of gender, which allows them, once again, to grunt ha-ha-it's-a-guy-in-a-dress.
They retreat, in fact, to Little Britain (you'll notice I never include links to Little Britain when I blog about it. This is for the same reason many bloggers choose not to provide links to the Daily Mail in their blogs: I genuinely detest everything about it. I used to laugh at it, it's true, but I used to shit my pants as well. People grow up, and having grown up I despise the fucking show. Besides, the thing is fucking ubiquitous, you probably know what I'm talking about without a link and, if not, Google is your friend). They retreat to David Walliams and Matt Lucas in ridiculous crinoline dresses shouting 'I'm a lay-dee!' (Not that bad drag is all Lucas and Walliams can do. They can do fat suits and blackface too. They're a multi-talented pair.) And Lucas and Walliams make them feel safe and make them feel good and make them feel that, yes, it's okay, you can laugh at a man dressed as a woman (or a black woman. Or a fat woman. Or a lower-class woman. Or a disabled person [because they're all faking]. Or a mentally-ill woman. Or a woman who wets herself. Ha ha ha. Ha. Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha HA. It's astonishing that Lucas and Walliams got away with fooling people that they were 'edgy' for so long, because, really, there isn't a Mars Bars wrappers' difference between the world of their comedy and the world of the Daily Mail).
This is Lucas and Walliam's function: to convince the mass of people following them that they're enjoying something genuinely 'edgy' and exciting when actually their show is deeply retrogressive. All the vomiting, pissing, OAP-kissing, wobbling arses and breast-sucking in their shows serves the same function as the sound of loud electric guitars in the music of Oasis: it creates an impression of excitement and daring, but ultimately serves to distract from the essentially conservative nature of the enterprise (recall that the supposedly edgy, rock 'n' roll mofos in Oasis complained loudly that Jay-Z shouldn't play Glastonbury because rap isn't 'proper music').
It can be depressing, thinking about the popularity of acts like Lucas and Walliams. But you have to think about the long run. Oasis were the biggest band in Britain once, but they're a musical joke now, endlessly retreading the same dull path of lyrics ripped off from the Beatles and guitar riffs ripped off from Slade while newer, exciting bands spring up around them and their contemporaries, like Damon Albarn and Jarvis Cocker, remain creative and musically vital (Bowie, indeed, barring a disastrous stint in the eighties, was a vital musical force for thirty years, while Oasis burned out creatively in about six). And now look at Lucas and Walliams, reduced to slapping on their make-up and reprising their tired old schtick in a series of ads for a building society. Their true colours are revealed: they're a bank manager's idea of what's funny and hip.
Meanwhile, Eddie Izzard continues to perform incredible stand-up, has carved out a decent enough niche as a movie actor (though it's painfully obvious Hollywood doesn't really know how to use him properly), and ran forty-three fucking marathons.
It's fair to say that the idea of a transvestite running forty-three marathons wouldn't occur to Lucas and Walliams, because it doesn't fit in with their transmisogynistic worldview. But it doesn't really matter. In whatever Eddie Izzard does, he'll keep on running, while, creatively and comedically, the little boys from Little Britain remain stalled.
You're not funny, stuff your money
(Trigger warning: transmisogyny)
Anyone who's swung by my Facebook page lately will have noticed my anger at the current ads being ran by Nationwide Building Society, in which washed-up UK comedians David Walliams and Matt Lucas reprise a range of characters from their over-rated catchphrase-com Little Britain, including the deeply transmisogynistic skit in which the duo play a pair of 'ladies' who insist on being addressed as such in spite of their deep voices and facial hair. These hateful sketches weren't funny when the pair ran them during their show, and are even less funny trotted out in the service of naked commercialism. But they're indicative of an aspect of what some people mistakenly call comedy that is really beginning to get on my tits.
Last night, I watched, and for the most part enjoyed, a stand-up routine by the British comedian Sean Lock. I have to say that generally I've found Lock funny. His routines are well-crafted, his delivery well-timed, and he comes up with some nice, off-the-wall observations. I had watched a Russell Brand stand-up show before switching over to the Lock performance, and while I admired Brand's energetic delivery and rockstar attitude, I was reflecting that Lock seemed to be more polished, more considered, and a more well-rounded stand-up than Brand. Until, mystifyingly, and with the same kind of casual determination to piss over his legacy which apparently motivated Graham Linehan to turn The IT Crowd from an enjoyable sitcom in the mould of his previous work to a celebration of trans panic, Lock embarked on his encore. An encore in which he opined, first of all, that 'fragrant ladyboys' still sound like growling heterosexual men when they come and, that, even more shockingly (and here I have to reiterate my trigger warning particularly for any trans people reading, because this next comment was astonishingly hateful) that the genitalia of post-operative trans women must resemble 'a squirrel that's been shot with a mallet.'
What. The. Fuck. Seriously. What the fuck? First of all, unless Sean Lock has something he'd like to share with us, I really can't see how he knows what any 'ladyboy' sounds like when they come (TMI warning: anyone unfortunate enough to have made sex with the author of this blog will definitely confirm that I sound like anything but a growling, butch lumberjack at the moment of what the French call 'the little death'), and as for the bit about the genitalia...That isn't good comedy. It isn't even bad comedy. It's hate speech, pure and simple.
A lot has been said by smug, privileged fuckwits in the media about how we're past the 80s heyday of 'alternative comedy' now. We've seen attempts to rehabilitate the reputations of evil-minded scumbags like Bernard Manning; we've seen TV shows like Little Britain splashed all over the schedules, all over the country on a nationwide tour and even over the Atlantic, in the (thankfully short-lived) Little Britain USA spin-off. But the idea that alternative comedy is something we've turned our back on wholesale is not true. In most areas of comedy we've integrated the key idea of the 'alternative' movement, which is, simply: people are not punchlines.
That's it. That's all it is. People, and their lives, aren't a joke because they happen to be black. Or Asian. Or disabled. Or gay. Or trans. Or at least, that's how it should work. But, because an awful lot of comedians are hateful, cynical, attention-hungry class-clown types, the reality is that some of them only accepted this settlement grudgingly. They won't take the piss out of black or Asian people because they know they form a large part of the population. Straight comedians won't tell bigoted jokes about gay people, because gay people have proved that they can lobby effectively and punish anyone who tries to turn back the comedy clock. But, far too often, trans people are considered fair game (seemingly with the sanction of Ofcom) because these cowardly so-called 'comedians' make the calculation that they don't have the numbers to affect their DVD sales and tour ratings.
Things are changing, however. Groups like Trans Media Watch are increasingly protesting about bigoted portrayals or treatment of trans people in the media. A host of other websites, forums and blogs (including, in its tiny and largely ineffectual way, the one you're now reading) are engaged in critiquing and taking apart the media and society's bizarre obsession to clinging to an outdated gender binary. We're a small movement now, but thirty years ago the people who dared to suggest that The Black and White Minstrel Show was, well, kind of racist were a minority too.
It's the bolshy, pissed-off, not-gonna-take-it-anymore minority groups who ultimately change things. By drawing attention to how hurtful, unacceptable and bigoted this kind of 'comedy' is, we make the majority unlike us - in this case, cis people - uncomfortable about the yuks they're enjoying when they hear smug bastards like Sean Lock coming out with ugly descriptions of peoples' genitalia. And, while it's true that sometimes people like comedy which makes them squirm and feel as if they need a shower afterwards (cf. Carr, Jimmy, the career of), generally speaking no-one likes to feel like a horrible old Nazi bastard when they're enjoying a good LOL.
And so the TV appearances dry up. The DVD sales tail off. The audiences dwindle. And soon you're eking out the rest of your career as a bitter, ugly old man, standing up in front of similarly bitter, racist, misogynist shitbags, laughing their tiny little brains out and pissing their semen-stained pants at the thought that at least here, in this shitty theatre with fleabitten seats and a bar that serves nothing but Stowells wine and flat Carling, they're safe from the 'politically correct brigade' with their unreasonable insistence on treating people as people, not punchlines. You've gone from winning a British Comedy Award to becoming something less respectable than a performer in a peepshow booth in Amsterdam. In fact, in the words of the actually decent comedian Dara O'Briain, you might as well be playing golf with Jim Davidson.
(Unexpected Ending Alert: googling for an internet reference to that Dara O'Briain gag has led me to encounter Looks Like Satire, a fine blog which, though it doesn't seem to have been updated in a while, has some perceptive entries on the difficulties involved in confronting bigoted 'humour' and even features a much-better takedown of Sean Lock than my own, which leads me to conclude that my enjoyment of said show on TV was a function of (a) having consumed too much beer and (b) some incredibly judicious work by whoever had to edit the thing to a decent DVD length. And thus we see that evil is, in the end, ultimately self-defeating. Fuck you, Sean Lock. Eight out of ten cats think you're a loser.)
Anyone who's swung by my Facebook page lately will have noticed my anger at the current ads being ran by Nationwide Building Society, in which washed-up UK comedians David Walliams and Matt Lucas reprise a range of characters from their over-rated catchphrase-com Little Britain, including the deeply transmisogynistic skit in which the duo play a pair of 'ladies' who insist on being addressed as such in spite of their deep voices and facial hair. These hateful sketches weren't funny when the pair ran them during their show, and are even less funny trotted out in the service of naked commercialism. But they're indicative of an aspect of what some people mistakenly call comedy that is really beginning to get on my tits.
Last night, I watched, and for the most part enjoyed, a stand-up routine by the British comedian Sean Lock. I have to say that generally I've found Lock funny. His routines are well-crafted, his delivery well-timed, and he comes up with some nice, off-the-wall observations. I had watched a Russell Brand stand-up show before switching over to the Lock performance, and while I admired Brand's energetic delivery and rockstar attitude, I was reflecting that Lock seemed to be more polished, more considered, and a more well-rounded stand-up than Brand. Until, mystifyingly, and with the same kind of casual determination to piss over his legacy which apparently motivated Graham Linehan to turn The IT Crowd from an enjoyable sitcom in the mould of his previous work to a celebration of trans panic, Lock embarked on his encore. An encore in which he opined, first of all, that 'fragrant ladyboys' still sound like growling heterosexual men when they come and, that, even more shockingly (and here I have to reiterate my trigger warning particularly for any trans people reading, because this next comment was astonishingly hateful) that the genitalia of post-operative trans women must resemble 'a squirrel that's been shot with a mallet.'
What. The. Fuck. Seriously. What the fuck? First of all, unless Sean Lock has something he'd like to share with us, I really can't see how he knows what any 'ladyboy' sounds like when they come (TMI warning: anyone unfortunate enough to have made sex with the author of this blog will definitely confirm that I sound like anything but a growling, butch lumberjack at the moment of what the French call 'the little death'), and as for the bit about the genitalia...That isn't good comedy. It isn't even bad comedy. It's hate speech, pure and simple.
A lot has been said by smug, privileged fuckwits in the media about how we're past the 80s heyday of 'alternative comedy' now. We've seen attempts to rehabilitate the reputations of evil-minded scumbags like Bernard Manning; we've seen TV shows like Little Britain splashed all over the schedules, all over the country on a nationwide tour and even over the Atlantic, in the (thankfully short-lived) Little Britain USA spin-off. But the idea that alternative comedy is something we've turned our back on wholesale is not true. In most areas of comedy we've integrated the key idea of the 'alternative' movement, which is, simply: people are not punchlines.
That's it. That's all it is. People, and their lives, aren't a joke because they happen to be black. Or Asian. Or disabled. Or gay. Or trans. Or at least, that's how it should work. But, because an awful lot of comedians are hateful, cynical, attention-hungry class-clown types, the reality is that some of them only accepted this settlement grudgingly. They won't take the piss out of black or Asian people because they know they form a large part of the population. Straight comedians won't tell bigoted jokes about gay people, because gay people have proved that they can lobby effectively and punish anyone who tries to turn back the comedy clock. But, far too often, trans people are considered fair game (seemingly with the sanction of Ofcom) because these cowardly so-called 'comedians' make the calculation that they don't have the numbers to affect their DVD sales and tour ratings.
Things are changing, however. Groups like Trans Media Watch are increasingly protesting about bigoted portrayals or treatment of trans people in the media. A host of other websites, forums and blogs (including, in its tiny and largely ineffectual way, the one you're now reading) are engaged in critiquing and taking apart the media and society's bizarre obsession to clinging to an outdated gender binary. We're a small movement now, but thirty years ago the people who dared to suggest that The Black and White Minstrel Show was, well, kind of racist were a minority too.
It's the bolshy, pissed-off, not-gonna-take-it-anymore minority groups who ultimately change things. By drawing attention to how hurtful, unacceptable and bigoted this kind of 'comedy' is, we make the majority unlike us - in this case, cis people - uncomfortable about the yuks they're enjoying when they hear smug bastards like Sean Lock coming out with ugly descriptions of peoples' genitalia. And, while it's true that sometimes people like comedy which makes them squirm and feel as if they need a shower afterwards (cf. Carr, Jimmy, the career of), generally speaking no-one likes to feel like a horrible old Nazi bastard when they're enjoying a good LOL.
And so the TV appearances dry up. The DVD sales tail off. The audiences dwindle. And soon you're eking out the rest of your career as a bitter, ugly old man, standing up in front of similarly bitter, racist, misogynist shitbags, laughing their tiny little brains out and pissing their semen-stained pants at the thought that at least here, in this shitty theatre with fleabitten seats and a bar that serves nothing but Stowells wine and flat Carling, they're safe from the 'politically correct brigade' with their unreasonable insistence on treating people as people, not punchlines. You've gone from winning a British Comedy Award to becoming something less respectable than a performer in a peepshow booth in Amsterdam. In fact, in the words of the actually decent comedian Dara O'Briain, you might as well be playing golf with Jim Davidson.
(Unexpected Ending Alert: googling for an internet reference to that Dara O'Briain gag has led me to encounter Looks Like Satire, a fine blog which, though it doesn't seem to have been updated in a while, has some perceptive entries on the difficulties involved in confronting bigoted 'humour' and even features a much-better takedown of Sean Lock than my own, which leads me to conclude that my enjoyment of said show on TV was a function of (a) having consumed too much beer and (b) some incredibly judicious work by whoever had to edit the thing to a decent DVD length. And thus we see that evil is, in the end, ultimately self-defeating. Fuck you, Sean Lock. Eight out of ten cats think you're a loser.)
Monday, 21 June 2010
Betrayed
The new series of Graham Linehan's The It Crowd starts this Friday. But even though I've loved Linehan's work since Father Ted, I won't be watching. (Trigger warning: article discusses transmisogyny and implicit support of 'trans panic' violence)
Graham Linehan is one of the most gifted sitcom writers in British TV history. As the writer of Father Ted and Black Books, he created the in-jokes of my generation of young British comedy-geeks. Mention My Lovely Horse, Dougal's diagram, or Bernard Black's 'lolly' made of frozen wine to anyone around my age and you'll get a wry smile or a laugh of recognition. I say all this at the beginning of this piece not because I do not come to bury Linehan, but because I want it to be understood that what I'm going to say later comes from a sense of deep disappointment and betrayal.
Recently, having been introduced to it by some very good friends of mine, I got into Linehan's next series, The IT Crowd. This series is best described as Black Books with computers. It has the same main three characters, described by one of the other cast members as 'a nerd, a woman, and a man from Ireland,' all of whom are isolated from the 'normal' world by a particular location (a bookshop in one series, a basement IT department in the other). And the first two series, and the first few episodes of season three, are brilliant. One of the season three episodes, 'Are We Not Men?' was one of my favourite pieces of TV in years. In the episode, lovable geeks Moss and Roy learn how to speak 'like real men' from a website, become friends with a bunch of football-loving cockney geezers, witness a robbery and have to flee for their lives. To a person like me, who has always struggled to speak the Tongue of Bloke, this episode was fantastic. I loved it both for its humour and its insightful take on gender stereotyping.
Then I watched episode four, 'The Speech', and any admiration for Linehan's humour and nuanced view of gender politics went out the window. 'The Speech', you see, has a long subplot featuring one of the other characters in the show, sleazy boss Douglas Denholm (played to perfection by master of the ridiculous, booming overstatement, Matt Berry). In this story, Douglas romances Emma, a business journalist sent to report on him, and in the course of the episode he discovers she's a trans woman. Douglas at first seems bothered not a jot by her telling him she 'used to be a man' (would a trans woman actually say it that way? I doubt it) and they form a close relationship, conveyed by a 'hilarious' montage of both Douglas and Emma watching the darts, gorging on pizza, drinking pints and so on...because you see, she's really a man! Ah, hilarious. Did we not just have an entire episode devoted to debunking lazy gender stereotyping?
But it gets worse. Douglas reveals en passant that he thought Emma said she 'came from Iran'. When Emma reveals what she actually said, Douglas visibly shivers and goes into a long drawn-out 'trans panic' response, which ends with a scene in which Douglas (who, it has been established early in the series, is actually a rather weak, craven person) beats Emma unconscious. A scene which ends with a long, lingering shot of Emma's unconscious body. And a scene which plays the whole beating for laughs.
Recently, in this blog, I wrote about the case of Andrea Waddell, a trans woman killed by a cis man in circumstances rather like those of Douglas and Emma, but whose fate was far from funny. What happened to Andrea is far from an isolated case. Trans people are often marginalised by a society which treats them as, at best, the butt of a joke (see my recent post on 'light-hearted' cissexist slurs) and at worst as freaks or gender criminals out to deceive 'normal' cis gender men and women. The reason an event like the Trans Day of Remembrance exists is because trans people are at a much higher risk of violence, and a terrifyingly higher risk of murder, than cis people. In these circumstances, I find it hard to laugh at a wacky slapstick scene which shows the brutal beating of a trans woman.
Actually, I'd find it hard to laugh if it was a cis woman too...but of course, Linehan wouldn't dare have a scene where Douglas assaults a cis woman for TEH LULZ. You have to wonder: is his making a joke out of a trans woman being beaten (a) a sign he hates trans people, (b) a sign he just doesn't really care about them or (c) a sign that he secretly wanted to just do a scene where a girl got the shit kicked out of her, and making her a trans girl gave him the perfect excuse? Either way, it shines a disturbing light on the real Graham Linehan. And that's why I can't watch the new series of The IT Crowd, or any of the other episodes now; it's why I'm thinking of getting rid of my Black Books DVDS, and taking the complete Father Ted box set off my Amazon wishlist. Because Graham Linehan, who I genuinely thought of as a comedy genius, turns out to be the kind of immature wanker who giggles over 'women who used to be men' and thinks beating up women is funny. I've seen people like that. I've met people like that. And they're always the enemy, however many jokes they can come out with.
Graham Linehan is one of the most gifted sitcom writers in British TV history. As the writer of Father Ted and Black Books, he created the in-jokes of my generation of young British comedy-geeks. Mention My Lovely Horse, Dougal's diagram, or Bernard Black's 'lolly' made of frozen wine to anyone around my age and you'll get a wry smile or a laugh of recognition. I say all this at the beginning of this piece not because I do not come to bury Linehan, but because I want it to be understood that what I'm going to say later comes from a sense of deep disappointment and betrayal.
Recently, having been introduced to it by some very good friends of mine, I got into Linehan's next series, The IT Crowd. This series is best described as Black Books with computers. It has the same main three characters, described by one of the other cast members as 'a nerd, a woman, and a man from Ireland,' all of whom are isolated from the 'normal' world by a particular location (a bookshop in one series, a basement IT department in the other). And the first two series, and the first few episodes of season three, are brilliant. One of the season three episodes, 'Are We Not Men?' was one of my favourite pieces of TV in years. In the episode, lovable geeks Moss and Roy learn how to speak 'like real men' from a website, become friends with a bunch of football-loving cockney geezers, witness a robbery and have to flee for their lives. To a person like me, who has always struggled to speak the Tongue of Bloke, this episode was fantastic. I loved it both for its humour and its insightful take on gender stereotyping.
Then I watched episode four, 'The Speech', and any admiration for Linehan's humour and nuanced view of gender politics went out the window. 'The Speech', you see, has a long subplot featuring one of the other characters in the show, sleazy boss Douglas Denholm (played to perfection by master of the ridiculous, booming overstatement, Matt Berry). In this story, Douglas romances Emma, a business journalist sent to report on him, and in the course of the episode he discovers she's a trans woman. Douglas at first seems bothered not a jot by her telling him she 'used to be a man' (would a trans woman actually say it that way? I doubt it) and they form a close relationship, conveyed by a 'hilarious' montage of both Douglas and Emma watching the darts, gorging on pizza, drinking pints and so on...because you see, she's really a man! Ah, hilarious. Did we not just have an entire episode devoted to debunking lazy gender stereotyping?
But it gets worse. Douglas reveals en passant that he thought Emma said she 'came from Iran'. When Emma reveals what she actually said, Douglas visibly shivers and goes into a long drawn-out 'trans panic' response, which ends with a scene in which Douglas (who, it has been established early in the series, is actually a rather weak, craven person) beats Emma unconscious. A scene which ends with a long, lingering shot of Emma's unconscious body. And a scene which plays the whole beating for laughs.
Recently, in this blog, I wrote about the case of Andrea Waddell, a trans woman killed by a cis man in circumstances rather like those of Douglas and Emma, but whose fate was far from funny. What happened to Andrea is far from an isolated case. Trans people are often marginalised by a society which treats them as, at best, the butt of a joke (see my recent post on 'light-hearted' cissexist slurs) and at worst as freaks or gender criminals out to deceive 'normal' cis gender men and women. The reason an event like the Trans Day of Remembrance exists is because trans people are at a much higher risk of violence, and a terrifyingly higher risk of murder, than cis people. In these circumstances, I find it hard to laugh at a wacky slapstick scene which shows the brutal beating of a trans woman.
Actually, I'd find it hard to laugh if it was a cis woman too...but of course, Linehan wouldn't dare have a scene where Douglas assaults a cis woman for TEH LULZ. You have to wonder: is his making a joke out of a trans woman being beaten (a) a sign he hates trans people, (b) a sign he just doesn't really care about them or (c) a sign that he secretly wanted to just do a scene where a girl got the shit kicked out of her, and making her a trans girl gave him the perfect excuse? Either way, it shines a disturbing light on the real Graham Linehan. And that's why I can't watch the new series of The IT Crowd, or any of the other episodes now; it's why I'm thinking of getting rid of my Black Books DVDS, and taking the complete Father Ted box set off my Amazon wishlist. Because Graham Linehan, who I genuinely thought of as a comedy genius, turns out to be the kind of immature wanker who giggles over 'women who used to be men' and thinks beating up women is funny. I've seen people like that. I've met people like that. And they're always the enemy, however many jokes they can come out with.
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