Comedy is not the new rock'n'roll. It's the new Muzak. It's always there in the background
This column is a joke really, isn't it? Or it should be. One long shaggy-dog story ending with the money shot, or perhaps a succession of one-liners with a tenuous topical link. Well, I'll try, because that is definitely the way things are going. Comedians are taking over the world. Comedy is not the new rock'n'roll. It's the new muzak. It's always there in the background. It's the way to a big audience, it's the way to get young people interested in anything: make it funny.
Oh yes, how we laugh, and then just occasionally worry about whether we should laugh. We pat ourselves on the back for being out there ? good old Ricky Gervais sticking it to the Americans, who are so up themselves at award ceremonies. That's the spirit! Is that what really happened? Was none of that set up? Did no one know what Gervais was going to do? How laughable now is Gervais's relationship to his own celebrity. I just wonder.
Then there is Danny Cohen, controller of BBC1, sparking a debate about too much middle-class comedy. LOL. As everyone says non-stop. "Lost my job. LOL" is the sort of text I regularly get from my teenager.
I can see what Cohen is saying, and it's odd that debates about race and class are starting to come to the fore again. But in a way we have come full circle. When alternative comedy started in the mid-80s, it was written off as an alternative to comedy. Some of my best friends were comics. And they were often not funny. They were freaky, scary and often brilliant. Some were co-opted into the mainstream, some went mad, some ran away. They would not have expected the current situation, where comedy is still predominantly male and middle class.
Every so often someone like Miranda Hart or Josie Long comes along and reminds us that, yes, women can be hilarious too, but panel show after panel show now consists of what we used to call DOTs (Dicks on Tables). When a comic as skilled as Jo Brand says she can't be bothered with these shows, then Houston, we have a problem. But this is the age where it is now OK for Matt Lucas and David Walliams to "black up", a concept I find disturbing, but many avowedly anti-racist young people don't. I do realise coming over all PC is akin to being a war criminal, and therefore I should accept that Jimmy Carr's or Frankie Boyle's taboo-busting is post-modernly ironic rather than pre-historically moronic. I can't grin as I can't bear it.
Stewart Lee nails it in his new book, How I Escaped My Certain Fate, as he nails so much about the post-alternative comedy scene. That twisted genius Jerry Sadowiz is cited always as an inspiration for those who are pushing the boundaries. Foul-mouthed, self-loathing, vicious Sadowitz was abusing himself as much as everyone else. Rather like Johnny Vegas at his most disturbing, the most pathetic loser in the room was the guy on stage, or, in Vegas's case, wandering around pleading for love by begging, "Lick my nipples." Such "humour" depends on this sense of inclusion or exclusion. Slagging off kids with disabilities, or Gypsies, is empty, not edgy.
Some of the best live stuff I ever saw was properly "dangerous". So maybe my taste isn't everyone's. The night my friends Kevin McAleer and Oscar McLennan wandered on stage at the Queen Elizabeth Hall ? psychotically singing If I Had a Hammer, then got a hammer and walked into the audience, smashing up the pictures of the Queen that lined the wall ? was superb.
The audience were mostly scared and horrified ? and demanded their money back. McAleer and McLennan were mostly upset that their fee was withdrawn, but it was either that or being done for criminal damage. My then-boyfriend and I loved it, so it's no surprise that I am not such a huge fan of much laddish comedy about, say, a half-remembered chocolate bar from the 70s. I prefer to see someone singing, "You are once, twice three times a lady" while stabbing a box of tomato juice with a screwdriver. I prefer old Dave Allen to young Russell Howard. It's subjective. As Mel Brooks says: "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die."
The current glut of observational comedy is best summarised by Simon Munnery, another comic Lee reveres, as, "Anyone ever noticed anything, ever?"
Instead, the establishment trend is now moving towards comics writing columns and great scripts, often with the aim of making current affairs somehow palatable. It is a world of super-intelligent guys. Much TV and radio comedy feels like lectures from men with whom I mostly already agree. They are atheists, liberal, anti-sexist and anti-racist. Very reassuring. Which is not always what I want from "satire".
The huge expectations heaped upon the new 10 O'Clock Live on Channel 4 were based on the indisputable talents of Charlie Brooker, David Mitchell, Lauren Laverne and Jimmy Carr ? hardly an untested crew. The problems of doing a topical live show soon became apparent. This show is not aimed at me, I'm sure, but I ended up thinking that interviewing a politician is best done straight. The burden of having to get a laugh may actually stop rather than start the audience thinking. It was curious that they could not find a role for Laverne. When the agenda of today's comedy establishment is averagely left/liberal, why is it, in terms of gender balance, the same as it ever was?
There was a theory in the 80s that female humour was different from men's, rather like our orgasms. So instead of wham-bam, thank you ma'm punchlines, women tend to meander their way through multiple climaxes. I don't agree, as my favourite male comics don't do jokes. A standup like Lee, for instance, endlessly plays with himself, if you like. Reeves and Mortimer's dada silliness transcends punchlines.
Danny Cohen should face this gender challenge, as well as the class one. Sharon Horgan's Pulling was brilliant, as was Lizzie and Sarah by Julia Davis and Jessica Hynes, which should have been a series. He should look at Jo Brand's mightily dark Getting On. The talent is there, and what's notable in all these "female" comedies is that the women are as horrible and manipulative and complicated as Mark and Jez are in Peep Show. Women being nasty is a world away from much of today's comedy, which offers mostly comfort.
That comfort is clever men being clever for each other, and sometimes pretending to be black or working class while telling us that the Tories are a very bad thing indeed. Forgive me if I don't always find this hysterical. A fear of seriousness is not the same as having a great sense of humor. I would says it's the opposite.
So: alternative comedy? Yes please! What time is it starting? But then I am a woman. Will I get the jokes?
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/29/suzanne-moore-comedy-is-everywhere
No comments:
Post a Comment