July 7th People's Independent Inquiry Forum -> The New Puritanism?

The New Puritanism?, Censorship of comedians etc

Track this topic | Email this topic | Print this topic

Bridget

Posted: Oct 31 2008, 01:22 PM

Group: J7 Admins
Posts: 10,529
Member No.: 2
Joined: 26-November 05

Hot on the heels of the Ross/Brand fiasco:

QUOTE

Corporation attacked for offensive joke about the Queen
Rashid Razaq
31.10.08

THE BBC has been attacked for a series of risqu� jokes that have been allowed to air across its network.

Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle has been criticised for making an offensive comment about the Queen on the BBC 2 satirical comedy programme Mock the Week.

Asked to think of something the Queen would not say in her Christmas speech, the comic replies in an affected voice: "I have had a few medical issues this year I'm now so old that my p*** is haunted."

Tory MP David Davies called the gag a "disgracefully foul comment" and called for the BBC to be held accountable for the remark, which was aired on Wednesday evening.

Other distasteful material broadcast by the corporation recently includes a segment from the Graham Norton Show on BBC2, where he asks guests Thandie Newton and Ricky Gervais to read a script for a porn film starring US Republican candidate Sarah Palin.

QUOTE

31/10/2008
Cameron's revenge

As Jonathan Ross contemplates the loss of a million quid and the damage to his long-term reputation and earnings on British TV, could it be that he is now rueing ever crossing David Cameron?

There is a credible case for saying that it was the Conservative leader's intervention in the row on Tuesday that was the most significant trigger to real action.

By stepping into the controversy and making clear he shared the views of the public, Cameron in turn forced the Prime Minister to speak out. Once Brown (who was very reluctant to get involved) had spoken, the Beeb knew it could no longer get away with its shaky defence and DG Mark Thompson finally roused himself to act.

Cameron's decision to speak out wasn't just smart politics. It perhaps underlined his frustration that he had been ambushed by Ross on his programme two years ago. Many will remember Ross's asking the Tory leader whether he masturbated over a photo of Margaret Thatcher. I call myself pretty broadminded, but even I was appalled that Ross had coarsened a mainstream TV channel in a way that would be barely acceptable in a pub bar.

Cameron was clearly uncomfortable, but was keenly aware that if he over-reacted at the time he could lose the younger demographic of Ross's show. He didn't really have any choice in saying he would go on the show again - as Opposition leader who would want to boycott a prog that reaches millions?

But, amazingly, Ofcom was utterly spineless when it ruled on public complaints about the remarks. It cleared Ross of being "vulgar, disrespectful and unfair", an incredible ruling given that not only Cameron but Thatcher were effectively being abused. The watchdog even suggested that because the Tory leader had agreed to go on the show again, then it was all ok. Pathetic.

John Humphrys has just raised the masturbation incident on the Today prog, putting it to BBC chairman Michael Lyons. After some hesitation, Lyons agreed he had not liked the remarks but displayed once again the Beeb's lack of comprehension of public taste and decency and passed the buck to the editors of Ross's show.

Public taste and decency? Murdering innocents in Afghanistan and Iraq, rendition, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, control orders, JCdM etc etc offends anyones notions of 'taste and decency', but they continue unabated.

Bridget

Posted: Nov 1 2008, 01:49 AM

Group: J7 Admins
Posts: 10,529
Member No.: 2
Joined: 26-November 05

QUOTE

Adrian Edmondson: Is that a joke in bad taste? You'd better watch out...
With controls in place I wouldn't have been able to do my silly press-ups

Friday, 31 October 2008

Independent.co.uk

During an episode of The Young Ones there was a scene in which Vyvyan tries to impress some girls at a party by doing some press-ups. As it was a comedy show I felt I ought to make the press-ups as funny as possible.

With a huge effort that belied my 40 fags a day at the time, I managed to effect some kind of wiggly-lizard-on-hot-sand-type press-ups that got a pretty good laugh. Much later, after the show was broadcast, our producer was hauled into the controller's office and asked why he'd allowed images of Vyvyan "fucking" the floor to go out � they'd had complaints.

Bad taste is in the eye of the beholder. Well, mostly. As Michael Palin once said, "One 'wank' and the BBC switch board is flooded".

I'm not a fan of the word "edgy", especially when it's describing comedy. "Edgy comedy" usually means "not recorded in front of an audience because we were frightened it wouldn't get a laugh". "Dark and edgy" is even worse � it usually means "The Emperor's New Clothes".

I don't think of Russell Brand as edgy, I think he's just really, really funny. Like most good comics he uses the shock of the unexpected to get laughs. This is different from trying to shock people. At the MTV Awards recently he described George Bush as "that retarded cowboy fella". That's funny, not because it's actually shocking, (it's obviously fairly accurate), but because it's not the sort of thing you expect the usually anodyne presenter of such an event to say. He's clever, sharp, surprising, and charming with it. If a little cocky... and that's what this little "scandal" is really about. It's a little witch hunt.

When it was broadcast the show in question apparently got two complaints. The media, tired of trying to find new angles on the current financial meltdown, have leapt at the opportunity to whip it up into something huge. And of course the BBC have taken it up bigger and better than anyone else, because there's no other organisation that enjoys self-flagellation quite as much. The number of complaints grows by the minute. When I started writing this it was somewhere around the 30,000 mark. By the time I finish it may be around a quarter of a million. Most of those complaining didn't listen to the original show. Soon the number of complaints will outstrip the number of people who were tuned in.

I didn't listen to the show either, but I have read the transcripts of the messages left on Andrew Sachs's phone. I understand entirely why Andrew Sachs is upset. But he and his grandaughter are the only people who should be really upset about this. In the transcripts you can hear Brand and Ross getting overexcited in each others company. Or perhaps, to put it less kindly, you can hear Ross trying to keep up with someone much funnier than he is.

This isn't a dig. Ross doesn't particularly pretend he's a comedian. He's a charming, affable, if slightly over-exposed chat show host. But the peer pressure is pretty obvious. In a year or two Brand will probably have Ross's chat show slot on Friday nights.

But back to the show. They get overexcited and forget that by ringing a real human's phone they're suddenly in the real world rather than the beautifully surreal world that Brand usually creates around himself, and they go slightly over the edge. Not too far over the edge, but enough to elicit two complaints. Though the complaints were about Ross using the F-word, rather than about telling an old man that his new best friend had slept with his grandaughter (again, as the grandaughter makes clear in the tabloids, it turns out Brand was at least being accurate). Perhaps their only crime is that it just wasn't particularly funny.

What the millions are really complaining about is Brand's success with women, and Ross's extraordinary salary. They're fed up with how good Brand looks in his skinny jeans with his crazy hair, how his life seems such effortless good fun, a whirlwind of humour and debauchery, how he managed to sleep with Andrew Sachs's grand-daughter. I mean, have you seen her? And I don't know anyone who isn't incredibly jealous of Ross's 6 million a year.

The noise about BBC editorial procedure is a smokescreen, but a dangerous one. Once we start passing all jokes through endless "taste" controls we'll cripple people's ability to make jokes. If we'd had the kind of controls people are talking about implementing I wouldn't have been able to do my silly wiggly press-ups � not the high point of comedy history perhaps, but a pointer as to where we might end up - in some kind of puritanical Britain where they start putting underpants on church spires because they look a bit phallic.

Mind you, strange that Ross hasn't offered to resign. Wonder why?

Bridget	Posted: Nov 1 2008, 02:06 AM
Group: J7 Admins Posts: 10,529 Member No.: 2 Joined: 26-November 05	Fleet Street's puritans are in bliss at the BBC witch trials

The Antagonist

Posted: Nov 1 2008, 03:25 AM

Antagonista

Group: Admin
Posts: 8,491
Member No.: 1
Joined: 25-November 05

Funny that the issue is Ross's words relating to Brand's sleeping with Andrew Sachs' granddaughter, which just happens to be THE TRUTH....

user posted image

It is certainly an odd form of puritanism that is led by one of four members of a coven known as the Satanic Sluts:

QUOTE

The Satanic Sluts uncovered

user posted image

Revealed ... Satanic Sluts with Georgina (second left)

HERE is the girl and her sexy burlesque group at the centre of the BBC radio phone filth scandal.

Shamed stars Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross left a message on 78-year-old veteran Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs' answer phone saying Brand had "f***ed" his granddaughter Georgina Baillie.

The 23-year-old revealed to The Sun earlier this week her "disgust" at the pair's actions and called for their dismissal.

Radio 2 star Brand has since quit and Ross has been suspended for 12 weeks.

Georgina auditioned for The Sun�s Page 3 before launching a career as a burlesque performer with tongue-in-cheek troupe Satanic Sluts.

And in our sizzling video, she proves that she is grinning and baring it...

"Tongue-in-cheek troupe Satanic Sluts", OK. Tongue in cheek cheap gags, not OK.

Good to see that some people are calling it for what it is, a witch hunt. It is playing out in precisely the same way as one or two well orchestrated witch hunts played out on the Internet recently. And, as with all such things, one will find the media darling of the media darlings, Max Clifford, operating on behalf of the torch and pitchfork mob that would seek to silence those whose words to which they object.

Judge for yourself.

Truth is a crime. Lenny Bruce turns in his grave.

This post has been edited by The Antagonist on Nov 1 2008, 04:11 PM

The Antagonist

Posted: Nov 1 2008, 04:26 PM

Antagonista

Group: Admin
Posts: 8,491
Member No.: 1
Joined: 25-November 05

Probably worth noting that the same show, from which all this fake outrage has been manufactured, includes Russell Brand saying:

QUOTE

"I was trying to open up a bit of debate about socialism, during the credit crunch, mate. I was thinking perhaps there could be a socialist alternative to capitalism, but if you can't take a bit of talk about economics and revolution, Jonathan, because you're up in your ivory tower on your high horse...."

It's only subliminal if you don't notice it.

The Antagonist	Posted: Nov 1 2008, 04:51 PM
Antagonista Group: Admin Posts: 8,491 Member No.: 1 Joined: 25-November 05	Interesting choice of backdrop to Russell Brand's apology: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=f3mql03LvTk

indisguise	Posted: Nov 1 2008, 05:09 PM
Group: Members Posts: 1,277 Member No.: 139 Joined: 15-August 06	I disagree with Ant that this is fake, manufactured outrage. If you have sex with someone the decent thing to do is keep it to yourself. You certainly don't announce the fact on national radio and torment his/her grandparents over it. I have personal experience of a similar situation. Although it was not announced on national radio, I didn't like it one bit that my family was told who I had been fing.

0 User(s) are reading this topic (0 Guests and 0 Anonymous Users)

0 Members:

« Next Oldest | Current News & Affairs | Next Newest »