So Maureen Lipman has joined those complaining that comedy is under threat from ‘cancel culture’. Is this a real threat, or something that’s being exaggerated by conservative types who like complaining that the world is unjustly turning against them?
I have the perspective that there are some liberal types who are too sensitive and ready to complain that comedians they don’t like are unacceptable. But I also think this is used by some old comics who have lost the knack of making a big audience laugh, and some people who don’t like having their perspectives challenges.
I’m aware of two clear examples of cancellation: Roy Chubby Brown being bumped from Sheffield City Hall, and a whole stream of Andrew Lawrence gigs being cancelled. In both cases it seems this was down to decisions by the individual theatres rather than part of a widespread campaign. I haven’t seen any of Brown’s material for a long time so wouldn’t comment on whether he has crossed any lines; but Lawrence’s tweets were clearly racist and I can understand why many theatres didn’t want to let him on their stages. (Would also say he’s the one I’ve seen in the past, about ten years ago in a comedy club, when he made a series of rape jokes and went down like a lead balloon).
But there are comedians with a big ability to upset people who currently have tours lined up in mid-size halls: I’m aware of Jimmy Carr, who many consider beyond the pale, and Jim Davidson, who makes a virtue of his old reactionary attitudes.
Also, you are more likely to get a liberal/left leaning slant in TV and radio comedy, but I reckon that derives from two things. One is that the type of people who go into it – like actors and artists – are more likely to have that type of view of the world. It’s something to do with how social values match the creative temperament; and I know you’ll find quite a few exceptions. The other is that comedy is more likely to be funny when it punches up rather than down, and in a country that’s had Conservative government for over ten years that’s bound to come with a left leaning slant. Overall, the comics going down that line are more likely to find an audience, although there are those who lean right, like Geoff Norcott and Simon Evans, who are doing OK.
So, any Afterworder perspectives on this?
Not in favour of censorship and the current febrile atmosphere the we have to endure where people behaving in a way deemed unacceptable to the majority get bullied into submission. Either that or have their careers effectively destroyed for non compliance.
Next we will be burning books and running people out of town. Yes homophobic and racist jokes are unacceptable but so too bullying and coercion to follow a code of behaviour.
I recently saw Sarah Millican and some of here comments were outrageous but personally I thought she was hilarious and I wouldn’t take too kindly to anyone suggesting she should change her set.
I once saw Jimmy Carr and to be honest some of his gags was too much for me but I cant deny his
comic ability and timing. Eve though I would never go and see him again I would be appalled if he was virtue cancelled. That is not what we are about or should be about.
It seems obvious that there’s two things happening:
1) a load of unfashionable comics who aren’t pulling in the crowds any more and want an excuse
2) a load of people who have a vested interest in pretending “cancellation” isn’t real because the chilling effect it has on aspects of free speech is something they want.
The first lot are just a bit sad, and unfortunately they also muddy the water with their special pleading.
The second are outright disingenuous. It’s clear that expressing the wrong opinions, some of which may be quite reasonable, can have disproportionately catastrophic social and economic consequences for ordinary people. The defence that “look, they’re still in the papers” isn’t the point – monstering JK Rowling, for example, isn’t particularly designed to “cancel” her per se. It’s to show regular people that if they follow her lead, but lacking her resources and insulation, they’ll be fucked, so best shut up, eh? And it works. You’d have to be in serious denial to pretend speaking up on certain issues which until a few years ago were uncontroversial can’t now land you in life-ruining territory, particularly if you work in the public sector. That’s not a free speech environment, and I think it’s silly to pretend it is just because it’s not the literal Stasi imposing the restrictions.
Limiting free speech isn’t just a matter of government censorship; that’s a category error caused by the Americanisation of our culture, conflating the entire concept of free speech with the provisions of their First Amendment. And the line that “freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences” is a bare paraphrase of IDI ACTUAL AMIN, so forgive me if I don’t jump on board with it. The minute you start saying “no debate” and imposing rule-by-fear on what people can and can’t say, you’re just opening yourself up to it happening to you when times and fashions change.
I’m not some libertarian absolutist, but tend to think legal limits on speech are best codified as incitements to harm, rather than the incredibly woolly definitions around “hate speech” as currently (not) defined by the CPS.
I also think everyone, me included, would do well to shut the fuck up more often. They just shouldn’t be compelled to.
This is my view too.
I don’t think there’s much point considering this issue through the lens of Jim Davidson and Roy Chubby Brown; far too easy, any sane person wants them to shut up.
Better to consider Dave Chapelle, whose comments on trans people in his last comedy special induced a staff walkout at Netflix. Or Rowling, per the above. Or that inevitable time in the future when some poor sod gets 500 angry torch wielded outside their workplace because they used the terms “man” and “woman” instead of whatever right on alternatives are decreed. It’s simple stuff when the material is clearly offensive. It gets less simple the less offensive you personally find the material, although the principle is all of a piece.
I also don’t think the idea that it’s funnier to punch up than down stands up to any real scrutiny. The direction you punch might make things more or less moral and virtuous, but it has little impact on how funny the gag is – why would it? And if punching down isn’t funny then surely we can leave this sort of comedy to wither on the vine naturally anyway?
I’m naturally suspicious of the “punch up/down” dichotomy. It strikes me that there are an awful lot of people out there who just like throwing punches and will gladly eat up the idea that there’s a way to do so and feel good about yourself. Story of Frankie Boyle’s odious career to date.
The truth of the matter is that human beings love being part of a mob. Always have, always will. And that’s what an awful lot of this stuff is; an opportunity to get that virtuous buzz when you’re all off out to string some poor fucker up, safe in the knowledge that weight of numbers will shield you from responsibility for your actions. It’s an impulse which, unchecked, can and will cause just as much damage to society and our institutions as any offensive joke.
@hedgepig I know we have had differences of opinion in the past but your post above just about covers my entire thoughts on this new ‘alien’ environment we find ourselves in. It makes me angry but you have succinctly addressed it in a way I wish I could have articulated.
I take your point on 2). I know the cancel culture thing has a nasty side that can’t be justified – as with the abuse Rowling has taken and the fate of Kathleen Stock at Sussex University – and has disturbing implications for freedom of speech. The issue is cropping in different contexts and I was thinking specifically of comedy.
Well known comedy writer Graham Linehan was totally cancelled as a result of his ill-judged online battles in the area of gender identity. Had he not been, we might have been able to enjoy Father Ted the Musical, something I was really looking forward to.
On the other hand Motherland would never have had another series had he not walked away from the writing team. If only he’d stayed…
“Wichita” Linehan is an interesting case. The basic problem with him seems to be that he’s an awful prick. He was an awful prick for years before the trans “debate” came along – as m’colleague @bingo-little once said of him, “Wherever the pensant is insufficiently bien, up he pops”. A preaching, hectoring, self-righteous, aggressive troll who’s never seemingly had a reasonable or calm online conversation in his life.
Then, because he went VERY ONLINE in his prosecution of the gender-critical line, people who agreed with him forgot that he was an awful prick and treated him like our lord come again. This, obviously, was Not Great for Wichita’s already rather… prosperous… ego and he lost control completely. Cue banned from Twitter, as is their right, and so on.
He’s such a good example of why online debate is awful, because I basically agree with some of his original positions (though think he’s now unambiguously transphobic, a word i don’t throw around a lot). But he’s so horrible I’d cross the street to avoid being associated with him.
I don’t mind that his career has fallen through, to be honest, because I think he crossed any number of lines and who would want to work with someone like that? I do mind a lot that his cancellation has made it largely impossible to adopt a publicly even mildly gender critical stance in certain jobs, though. If your employer says “put your pronouns on your email signature”, there’s no real way to say no, even though I don’t believe a gender identity is something I have, and think it’s none of my business how someone refers to me in the third person. It’s not Wichita who’s been cancelled here: it’s kind of… me, in all my milquetoast moderacy.
It’s a messy old business. And Father Ted and the IT Crowd were great.
Graham Linehan: Down with his sort of thing.
“Better to keep quiet and have people think you’re a fool than to speak your mind and confirm it”.
Back in the olden days of my time as an undergraduate, the first tour of universities by The Blurs nearly didn’t happen because there was a picture of a lady in the nuddy astride a hippo on the cover of their first single.
Also: Maurenn Lipman is a comedian?
I always thought of her as a comic actress. I saw her Joyce Grenfell show on stage in 1993 and she was uncannily accurate. I’ve been trying to work out if her being Jewish gives her a voice on such matters but honestly, I don’t give a shit about any of it as nearly all comedy isn’t funny anyway, regardless of the subject.
“Nearly all comedy isn’t funny anyway” – Afterword T-shirt.
Comedy is a very individual thing.
Blokes get really, really angry about comedians who they don’t like, in a way that doesn’t apply to the other arts. I have a theory that most blokes think they are funnier than everyone else (just as most blokes think they are literally the only person on the road who can drive), and that there is a finite amount of laughter in the world and some of it is being stolen from them.
In reality, there is no limit to how much you can laugh. If you don’t believe me, look at this…
*several hours later*
….OK, I’m getting cold now.
I sat through 3 comedians over a couple of days two weeks ago. Two struggled and the third was quite good. The best one was the Lost Voice Guy who uses the programmable voice box, similar to Professor Hawking and he wasn’t even in the room, we brought him in on Zoom. His timing was better than the others too.
@fentonsteve no but she is a very good comedy actor or should I say actress?
My thoughts exactly – it’s not like she has skin in the stand-up game.
@fentonsteve
Pretty sure ML was talking about comedy in general and the topic somehow mutated into stand up when someone threw JD and RCB into the mix
I’m sure you’re right. If I could be bothered (I can’t) to read the whole thing, I bet the interviewer asked the question in passing, and then turned it into a DM front-page headline. “It was taken out of context”, etc.
*Jerry Sadowitz has entered the forums*
I think that , yes, there is a creeping tendency to judge people for what they say. Which is, to a degree, fair enough. I think that there are some lines that shouldn;t be crossed – calling for people to be killed (as a made up example) would clearly be a no-no.
But I am minded about what Stephen Fry said: “It’s now very common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that.’ As if that gives them certain rights. It’s actually nothing more… than a whine. ‘I find that offensive.’ It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. ‘I am offended by that.’ Well, so fucking what.”
@Sitheref2409
Agree.
The right to offend has always been way more important than the right to be offended, and long may it remain so.
Agree re the AL comments. First tweet was bad enough but to then “double down” with another was clearly stupid. Might have got a titter on the Comedians or in Manning’s club in the 70s but AL suffers from the fact that he’s just not funny. It’s not that he suffers from woke prejudice. I’d rather watch my house burn down than him.
If someone did a ten-minute sketch on the political situation in Israel – could that be made funny? who knows? I wouldn’t be in a queue to find out – I wager that Maureen Lipman would be the first to want to get it banned.
Does she have a track record of unconditional Israel support or are you guessing?
Not having a pop but interested to know.
Edit: Just took a look at her Wikipedia entry. Oh dear..
Given that she pretty much did more than anyone to deliver Boris Johnson his majority at the last election, thus allowing the back-benchers in the Tory party to do anything they want to with impunity (holding the country to ransom over and over again in the process), I pleased that she’s found her natural habitat – the front page of the Daily Telegraph.
@deramdaze
Think you’re getting ML mixed up with Jeremy Corbyn
Have a lovely Christmas, DD. I hope 2022 is good to you.
I’m not sure how big a part Maureen Lipman really played in the events of the 2019 general election, but that hardly seems worth getting into.
I wish you and your family peace and contentment. All the best.
For someone complaining about cancel culture, Ms Lipman has been plastered across the media and airwaves quite a lot. In the past, she protested mightily outside a theatre about the director of a West End play whose play she’d never read, or seen.
“I’m not allowed to say what I think” says woman saying exactly what she thinks in several mainstream media outlets.
This observation is a bit like when people mock the notion of global warming because it’s snowing outside their window.
Lipman isn’t saying she’s personally been cancelled. Similarly you can get yourself in the papers for a day but still have your ability to work impacted by a vindictive, social media-organised boycott, particularly if you work in academia.
I don’t agree entirely with what Lipman is saying: clearly, it’s hyperbole to suggest that comedy will be “wiped out”. But, equally clearly, there is an issue here, and if anyone thinks there isn’t, it’s highly likely to be primarily because the censorship by mob that’s now being practiced hasn’t (yet) discomfited their own values. But that day will come, because all sides can play this game.
I objected to Maureen Lipman’s argument because I don’t like her. Probably* not a reasonable position.
(*yeah, I know)
Having spent a good chunk of Xmas day chomping through the new Maggie Nelson, I would highly recommend that anyone who is interested in actual thought on this subject (as opposed to the platitudes, excuses and hyperbole which tend to characterise the debate) read the first chapter, on the censorship of art. It gets into many of the issues discussed above and considers the subject from all sides. I didn’t agree with everything being said, but I certainly appreciated all of it.
The second chapter, on MeToo, is also excellent.
There is no doubt that there is an ability to express and mobilise outrage – not least through social media – that is more fast moving and intense than we’ve seen before. The hounding of JK Rowling is a case in point. What I am interested in though is whether there is something fundamentally different going on. There has always been censorship and the withholding of access to people expressing views or causing offence to the mores of the time, or, the mores of the gatekeepers, be they broadcasters, publishers, politicians, newspaper editors and owners, theatre producers etc. I guess, to take Rowling as an example, she obviously isn’t being ‘cancelled’ in that her books will go on being published. But her reputation may be tarnished and the pressure on her to conform to a particular point of view – and even to express it in her fiction – is real and whilst someone in her position may be able to resist it, someone at the beginning of her career would find it much harder to do so.
And yet, to return to the OP, is comedy really being censored in a way it hasn’t always been? Love Thy Neighbour wouldn’t get made now; Fleabag wouldn’t have been made in the 60s. Lenny Bruce was reviled by much of the establishment back in the day; Dave Chapelle now. Doesn’t the comedy of our time always both reflect our time and in some cases challenge it?
The difference is that the censorial pressure is now coming from the left, and from the masses/the mob (take your pick), with greater frequency, whereas previously it came from right wing authorities/the establishment.
Hence why the vast majority of us would despise the treatment of Lenny Bruce (which now looks laughably over the top in hindsight), whereas you’ll get a lot of people defending very similar types of censure for the Chapelles and Rowlings of this world. Chapelle is actually being defended by the establishment (for now): Netflix continue to back his right to express his thoughts.
The speed at which the castigation occurs is now also far greater, far more tribal and far more random, which changes the cadence of its deterrent effect. There’s also a slightly sinister suspicion that you can shield yourself with right-think. I note that – as mentioned above – Frankie Boyle built a comedy career on some really quite disgusting and mean spirited jokes, which transgress decency far more than anything Dave Chapelle has ever said on stage, but is absolved of all blame because he writes for the guardian and has all the correct views. The path to salvation and forgiveness is paved on intellectual acquiescence – I know an awful lot of people with very guilty consciences I who refer to this as “doing the work”.
What will change the picture is when the right wake up and realise that they too can participate in this bacchanal: if Chapelle’s comedy should be treated as inciting literal violence against trans people (per his complainants), then should we be asking what the impacts of our liberal approach to (say) movie violence and the lyrics of hip hop records might have been on the youth? If sexist jokes can be located on a spectrum that leads to actual gendered violence, then can’t the same be said for playing Doom and school shootings, or Drill lyrics and stabbings?
I don’t have the answers here; I think there’s always going to be a tension between the right to produce art (even shit art) that offends and the social and personal harm that can be done by such materials, and that it’s best to recognise that tension and avoid pretending the issue will be ever be morally simple or that we aren’t losing something quite important when we take a side in too voluble a fashion.
I do lean towards freedom of expression though, because to move in the opposite direction always begs the dread question of who we will trust to decide what’s beyond the pale. The suggestion here seems to be that this decision making will be decentralised, and therefore less prone to abuses of power. I’m not sure I buy that at all; we’ve had mobs oversee morality plenty of times in our previous history, and it hasn’t tended to end well.
The number of people who are perfectly comfortable with the “but it’s ok when *we* do it” defence – not just employing it unthinkingly or instinctively but seemingly actually happy to stand consciously on that “principle” – has blown my mind in recent years.
Ugh. Way too many adverbs in that sentence. Oh well.
A lot of people have seemingly lost the ability to understand how values work. Or at least they believe they can have all the upsides of values (that happy glow, the ability to stand shoulder to shoulder with others who share said values, etc) with none of the downsides (having to defend people we don’t like, possibly sometimes needing to disagree with people we do like).
It’s craven intellectual dishonesty of the worst stripe.
I remember being fully aware, when the arguments about censoring hip-hop started to be heard in the late 1980s, that my objection basically amounted to “I don’t care whether this music endorses violence or misogyny – hands off the stuff I like. You can ban Guns’n’Roses though, they’re shite”
Well put Bingo. I’m not sure the right have been exactly backwards in coming forwards on this front, mind. It’s just that the people they are looking to cancel are the likes of immigrants, medical scientists (and ‘experts’ of any kind whose research disagrees with their world view), civil servants, and historians as opposed to writers and comedians.
Those things are all lamentable, but I’m not sure they’re cancel culture, or at least not all of them.
The closest example is the press treatment of judges in the various Brexit decisions of a few years ago, which was clearly designed to intimidate. Mind you, if they’d found in the other direction they’d have been the subject of a million internet think pieces dredging through their backgrounds, questioning their Brexit biases and fitness for their roles.
Happy to agree that both “sides” are disgusting, brain-free and malicious.