tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/comedy-140/articlesComedy – The Conversation2024-03-21T18:01:54Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2262542024-03-21T18:01:54Z2024-03-21T18:01:54ZDrive-Away Dolls: overturning the bad, sad and tragic stereotypes of lesbians in film<p>The critics are divided: lesbian road-trip caper <a href="https://www.focusfeatures.com/drive-away-dolls/">Drive-Away Dolls</a> is either “<a href="https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/drive-away-dolls/">furiously funny [and] helplessly horny</a>” or “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/movies/2024/02/21/drive-away-dolls-ethan-coen-review">flimsy and forgettable</a>”. No doubt for audiences the same will be true – some will love it and others will hate it.</p>
<p>I enjoyed this solitary Coen brother (Ethan) outing, co-created with his queer wife Tricia Cooke. But, rather than adding my voice to the critical polarisation, I am more interested in its significance in the history of US lesbian film, and its place as part of a genre of comedy lesbian films that upend previous stereotypes.</p>
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<h2>Lesbians in US film</h2>
<p>Lesbians have been poorly treated in US cinema. We were erased in the era of <a href="http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/592022/">the Hays Code</a> – a series of censorship guidelines for filmmakers – which existed for 36 years (1930-1966). For almost 40 years, lesbianism was unmarked and unnamed, only ever insinuated and mostly in negative ways.</p>
<p>The most famous example of this is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/23/olivia-laing-on-daphne-du-mauriers-rebecca-80-years-on">Mrs Danvers in Rebecca</a> (1940), as the plain, repressed and twisted servant whose motivations are an unhealthy infatuation with her beautiful, dead employer, Rebecca. Dracula’s Daughter (1936), the sequel to Dracula (1931), followed in this line of <a href="https://matthewshoup.medium.com/the-code-era-lesbian-vampire-in-draculas-daughter-1a4eb9c814d9">monstrous but unspoken lesbian villains</a>.</p>
<p>The tragic lesbian was another trope, and featured in The Children’s Hour (1961) starring Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine. Any hint of romantic lesbian feelings are accompanied by feelings of shame, wrongdoing and self-loathing, as MacLaine later discussed regretfully in the documentary The Celluloid Closet.</p>
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<p>New Queer Cinema of the 1990s blew up the script, <a href="https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/new-queer-cinema-b-ruby-rich">naming and unshaming lesbians</a>. Films like Go Fish (Rose Troche, 1994), The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye, 1996) and High Art (Lisa Cholodenko, 1998) left stereotypes far behind as young, ethnically diverse women told their own stories. The focus was on their friendships as well as their romantic and sexual relationships. Yet, these were low-budget independent films that were seen by few outside of film festivals and the lesbian and queer community.</p>
<p>While there have been <a href="https://theconversation.com/return-of-the-l-word-representing-lesbian-desire-on-screen-in-a-new-era-81839">advances in TV representations</a> of lesbians with series such as the L Word and its follow-up, Generation Q – among <a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/g38571941/best-lesbian-tv-shows/">many others</a> – film has been slower to catch up.</p>
<p>Some exceptions are quality historical dramas such as Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015), Ammonite (Francis Lee, 2020) and Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma, 2019). While these are valuable contributions to the queer film canon, no one is having much fun, and characters are consigned to the tragic ending determined by the context of the historical periods in which they are set.</p>
<p>When lesbians gain access to the means of storytelling production, we demonstrate the humour and sense of play that has been missing in film, consigning the tragic trope to the bin. Lesbian spy movie D.E.B.S (2004), cult comedy But I’m a Cheerleader (1999) and sci-fi B-movie Codependent Space Alien Seeks Same (2011) are all very silly and very funny.</p>
<p>The recent gay comedy Bottoms (2023) also has a lot of fun with its characters, as two young female college students start their own self-defence fight club in a bid to become popular and have more sex. And hot on its heels now is Drive-Away Dolls, in the form of a lesbian road movie.</p>
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<h2>Drive-Away Dolls: fun-loving dykes</h2>
<p>This brief history of lesbians on screen shows that when gay women tell their own stories in the comedy genre, things are a lot more fun for everybody. Drive-Away Dolls certainly fits this category of lesbian comedy that refuses to take itself seriously.</p>
<p>Two “odd couple” friends, good-time dyke Jamie (a gleeful Margaret Qualley) and introverted book-loving Marian (a hilariously straight-faced Geraldine Viswanathan) take a road trip together using a drive-away (hire) car. Jamie is focused on visiting as many lesbian bars en route in her quest to help Marian have more sex, after a fallow period following a split with her girlfriend.</p>
<p>The two are initially oblivious to a parallel plot involving a mysterious suitcase in the boot (they have been given the wrong car), a chase by hapless, violent thugs to retrieve the case, and a hypocritical Republican politician (played by Matt Damon) whose reputation rests on retrieving the “goods” in the case.</p>
<p>All these plot points provide the ingredients for a comic lesbian road movie caper. There are many phallic gags and the film is deliberately ridickulous (pun intended). Drive-Away Dolls is studiously silly, as the interspersed B-movie style transitions and psychedelic insertions underscore.</p>
<p>While the film has been marketed as a Coen brother film with Ethan in the director’s chair, it is as much Cooke’s film (Coen’s editor-producer wife) as his. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/03/ethan-coen-wife-tricia-cooke-drive-away-dolls-lesbian-road-movie-interview">idea for the film</a> came from her student reminiscences of a road trip with a friend.</p>
<p>Drive-Away Dolls was originally Drive-Away Dykes before the production company insisted on the change, and Cooke’s queer world view dominates in the nostalgia for lesbian bars and the riotous sex scenes. But Coen’s signature humour, convoluted plotline, deeply flawed male characters and upending genre tropes (in this case, exploitation movies of the 1960s and 1970s) are in joyful evidence.</p>
<p>The relationship between the two filmmakers is as interesting as the film. Cooke is openly queer and both she and Coen remain happily married, while both are in relationships with other people. Theirs is a creative partnership, working together on the script, directing and editing. It does feel a little off that in a film celebrating lesbian culture and ending the patriarchy, Coen is credited as the sole director – but that says more about the industry than their partnership.</p>
<p>This husband-and-wife team with a difference are now <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/margaret-qualley-aubrey-plaza-chris-evans-1235806107/">working on their follow-up film</a>, Honey Don’t, which will follow the pulpy tone of Drive-Away Dolls. While the critics may be snooty about its quality, I’m looking forward to it. </p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Deborah Shaw does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s odd-couple road movie caper shows just how far lesbian film has come in the last century.Deborah Shaw, Professor of Film and Screen Studies, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2236552024-03-10T22:48:00Z2024-03-10T22:48:00ZBell Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is side-splittingly funny – yet some of the magic is lost<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580594/original/file-20240308-18-hd5iby.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=31%2C14%2C1885%2C1264&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Matu Ngaropo and Ahunim Abebe in Bell Shakespeare s A Midsummer Nights Dream. Photo by Brett Boardman</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Shakespeare’s delightful A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a perennial favourite – and the production run by the Bell Shakespeare company (first prepared in 2021 but hindered by COVID lockdowns) is a swift and pared-back reimaginingreimagining of the play.</p>
<p>It follows the comedy of four lovers – Hermia, Lysander, Helena and Demetrius – who are lost in a forest and get tricked by the fairies, King Oberon, Queen Titania and the impish Puck. </p>
<p>The play also features the bumbling mechanicals – a carpenter, a weaver, a bellows-mender, a tinker, a joiner and a tailor – who meet in the forest to rehearse a play to perform at the upcoming wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Athens, Theseus and Hippolyta. </p>
<p>This <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/may/25/10-of-the-best-plays-within-plays">play within a play</a>, performed at the end, has always brought the house down with sidesplitting laughter, and this show is no exception. It must have been just as hilarious during the play’s first performance, if it’s true that Shakespeare <a href="https://www.rsc.org.uk/a-midsummer-nights-dream/about-the-play/dates-and-sources">wrote it</a> to be performed at an aristocrat’s wedding.</p>
<h2>Finally, Shakespeare for the whole family</h2>
<p>Bell Shakespeare promotes the show as “fast, funny and family-friendly”. This is welcome news for theatregoing parents. Few of Shakespeare’s plays are suitable for children, despite there being a significant market for Shakespeare-related books and activities designed <a href="https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeare-for-kids/">for young people</a>. </p>
<p>My two boys received a storybook version of Shakespeare’s plays from family members some years ago, but it’s a delicate operation to tell bedtime stories about the <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fratricide">fratricide</a> in Hamlet, the domestic violence of Othello, or the romantic suicides of Romeo and Juliet. </p>
<p>Certainly, Shakespeare’s delightful comedies lend themselves more readily to the young. So taking Bell Shakespeare’s promo at its word, I took my son Heathcliff, aged 9 (who contributes to this review) to the show.</p>
<h2>Powerful presence onstage</h2>
<p>Seasoned playgoers will be thoroughly impressed by the vibrant and engaging performances of the cast, who make Shakespeare’s language (and their connections to it) ring as clear as a bell. This is harder to achieve than it sounds. </p>
<p>The delightful charisma of Matu Ngaropo as Nick Bottom (the weaver) positions him as a type of leading man. A galvanising force, Ngaropo combines refined flamboyancy and outrageous sensitivity to keep the audience firmly in his pocket. </p>
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<span class="caption">Matu Ngaropo was a galvanising force onstage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman</span></span>
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<p>Ella Prince is subtle in their rendering of Puck, the sprightly spirit – so watchable in their intriguing silences and confusion when manipulating mortals.</p>
<p>Richard Pyros gives a commanding performance as Oberon: fastidious and curious, with a propensity for bellowing through the forest. Imogen Sage also shows tremendous range by delivering a sultry Titania, a restrained Hippolyta, and a librarian-esque Quince. </p>
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<span class="caption">Ella Prince as Puck, Imogen Sage as Titania and Richard Pyros as Oberon in Bell Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Nights Dream.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman</span></span>
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<p>Finally, the four comic lovers: Hermia (Ahunim Abebe), Helena (Isabel Burton), Demetrius (Mike Howlett) and Lysander (Laurence Young), give feisty performances wholly committed to the verse.</p>
<h2>A subtle set and costumes</h2>
<p>This is Bell’s national touring play for 2024, and the <a href="https://www.bellshakespeare.com.au/2024-midsummer-dream-design-inspiration">set design</a> by Teresa Negroponte centres around a dilapidated wooden construct that looks like the roof of an old barn tipped on its side.</p>
<p>But despite this dynamic set (which might double as the shipwreck from The Tempest), there are no leaves or any sort of greenery to help indicate most of the play is set in a forest – no sylvan milieu. </p>
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<span class="caption">The set, which resembled a rundown wooden barn, didn’t effectively depict the play’s setting in a forest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman</span></span>
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<p>Indeed, this production seems, in several instances, to presuppose the audience’s familiarity with the play. This can prove confusing for newcomers to Shakespeare.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.bellshakespeare.com.au/2024-midsummer-dream-design-inspiration">costumes are</a> intriguing and subtle if you know the play, but may also be too realistic – too bland and “everyday”. This made it difficult for young people to recognise the kings, queens and fairies.</p>
<p>For example, there was nothing fairylike about the fairies, whose costumes were almost always plain black, with no hint of glitter or sparkles in sight. </p>
<p>As Heathcliff commented: “They all changed into black clothes and called themselves fairies […] I didn’t know they were meant to be fairies until the second half […] they looked more like ghosts.”</p>
<p>“Thou shall wear <em>not</em> black costumes for fairies,” he added.</p>
<p>With actors needing to double (and sometimes triple) character roles, they quickly don a new coat, scarf or hat. But again, these distinctions may be too subtle for newcomers to recognise. </p>
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<span class="caption">Laurence Young and Ahunim Abebe played Lysander and Hermia, two of the four comic lovers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman</span></span>
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<h2>Heathcliff’s highlights</h2>
<p>While the acting proved second-to-none, many typical features of this famous play were absent. Heathcliff found the play “entertaining, but not laugh-out-loud funny”.</p>
<p>His favourite parts were the “horse’s head”, the slow-motion sequences, the fake swords used in the ridiculous staging of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pyramus">Pyramus and Thisbe</a> at the play’s end, and “the man playing the princess” (with hairy chest exposed) – which he thought was funny but a bit odd.</p>
<p>Yet, the performance of Pyramus and Thisbe at the end delivered on its promise. Many of the audience members doubled over in stitches, throwing their heads back with laughter. </p>
<p>I’ll remember this show for the many exemplary renditions of the famous characters, but while Shakespeare’s script is itself family-friendly, the play can be confusing when many of its typical features are <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-136330433/view">pared back</a> to the bone. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-50-shades-of-shakespeare-how-the-bard-sexed-things-up-106783">Friday essay: 50 shades of Shakespeare - how the Bard sexed things up</a>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kirk Dodd does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>I took my young son Heathcliff to the show, and his perspective helped me see it through a kid’s eyes.Kirk Dodd, Lecturer in English and Writing, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2244572024-02-29T13:39:32Z2024-02-29T13:39:32ZClimate comedy works − here’s why, and how it can help lighten up a politically heavy year in 2024<p>In a catchy <a href="https://youtu.be/UxLvTF_9jv4?feature=shared">YouTube video</a>, British comedian Jo Brand <a href="https://theconversation.com/jo-brand-translated-my-science-im-certain-that-comedy-can-connect-people-to-climate-change-223745">translates a scientist’s long-winded description</a> of the fossil fuel industry’s role in the climate crisis this way: “We are paying a bunch of rich dudes 1 trillion dollars a year to f--- up our future,” she says. “Even the dinosaurs didn’t subsidize their own extinction. <a href="https://twitter.com/SRTurtleIsland/status/1727843781880209794">Who’s the stupid species now</a>?”</p>
<p>Although there is nothing funny about the subject, the way she says it is funny.</p>
<p>She speaks truth to power. She relieves the heaviness of the rhetoric. And she’s dropping f- and s-bombs with a British accent. At the start of the video, Brand comments, “If people like me have to get involved, you know we’re in deep s---”.</p>
<p>We all need some refreshing levity nowadays – especially this year.</p>
<p>Around the world, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/is-climate-change-on-the-ballot-paper-in-2024/id1538415261?i=1000643262165">voters will be choosing</a> national leaders <a href="https://time.com/6550920/world-elections-2024/">in countries representing nearly half the human population</a>. In many cities, states and counties, those decisions will directly affect how the world deals with climate change. Outcomes, including from another U.S. presidential race with Donald Trump vowing to promote fossil fuels and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/06/trump-climate-change-fossil-fuels-second-term">undermine climate policies</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-election-how-trump-and-his-followers-use-offensive-humour-to-make-prejudice-acceptable-221364">democracy itself</a>, will reverberate across the planet. That’s heavy.</p>
<p>At the same time, the planet just came off its warmest year on record in 2023, and ocean temperatures are still abnormally high. Heavier yet, the <a href="https://www.noaa.gov/news/2023-was-worlds-warmest-year-on-record-by-far">10 hottest years since record-keeping began</a> have all occurred in the past decade.</p>
<p>Not only does the world need to cool down, it also needs to lighten up. As <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/chancellor/cu-boulder-where-you-are-stand-climate-change-using-power-humor-start-conversation">professors who study climate comedy</a>, we can tell you that the need for levity is one reason climate comedy works.</p>
<h2>Lightening up to engage with tough stuff</h2>
<p>For many generations, comedy has been an effective pathway to not only lighten things up but to propose unlikely solutions.</p>
<p>In ancient Greece, comic playwright Aristophanes took on the crisis of his times – the Peloponnesian War – <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27549461">with a comedy</a> in which women from both sides of the conflict enact a sex strike until their men agree to a peace treaty. As you can imagine, sexual innuendo abounds.</p>
<p>Brand, the British comedian, teamed up with <a href="https://theconversation.com/jo-brand-translated-my-science-im-certain-that-comedy-can-connect-people-to-climate-change-223745">climate scientist Mark Maslin</a> to find novel ways to communicate effectively about the climate crisis. In a video, they <a href="https://youtu.be/SA87n9jrWU0?si=iZEilVCj8oEsAcy1">effectively communicate together</a> about climate change causes and consequences. Humorously drawing out their contrasting communication styles, they find the funny as Brand pops up with observations like, “If you liked climate crisis, you’re going to love climate complete f---ing collapse.”</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">British comedian Jo Brand and scientist Mark Maslin play off each other to educate the public about climate change.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Their mix of clever timing, absurdity, scatology and full commitment to each of their roles as scientist and comedian <a href="https://youtu.be/9ZGjEHxoDiQ?si=rBbq6Ob1byWT9i2L">gave their climate comedy traction</a>, with over 3 million views.</p>
<p>In South Africa, the group <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/PoliticallyAweh">Politically Aweh has been producing creative content</a> about climate change and other connected issues in the run-up to their general election this year.</p>
<p>In one <a href="https://youtu.be/N3n1HgwW8jg?si=FHDuGU8pAzMGgRCK">YouTube video</a>, host Zipho Majova creatively compares our collective avoidance of dealing with climate change with avoiding our mothers’ texts. She then says, “You can’t ignore messages from mom forever. And by mom, I mean mother Earth!” The skilled editing of news media clips and popular TV shows woven into Zipho’s commentary makes this climate comedy take an effective one.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Political Aweh takes on ignorance of climate change.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In the U.S., creative collectives such as <a href="https://www.climatetownproductions.com/">Climate Town</a> in New York, <a href="https://yellowdotstudios.com/">Yellow Dot Studios</a> in Los Angeles, the <a href="https://cmsimpact.org/">Center for Media and Social Impact</a> in Washington, D.C., and our <a href="https://insidethegreenhouse.org/">Inside the Greenhouse</a> project in Boulder, Colorado, are working to alleviate climate anxiety and activate people to discuss climate change and do something about it.</p>
<p>With elements of exaggeration, innuendo, witty recognition of truths, suspense and ultimate honesty, climate comedy from groups like these and on late-night shows <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p8zAbFKpW0">like John Oliver’s</a> “Last Week Tonight” resonates.</p>
<h2>Why climate comedy works</h2>
<p>Comedy has the ability to transcend science-speak and open up conversations with new audiences while helping “keep it real” and identifying solutions.</p>
<p>It can also provide emotional relief as it lowers people’s defenses and allows them to find promise and possibility for envisioning positive change.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Comedians discuss climate change using comedy.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Through our research, we have found that comedy can help college students <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/2040610X.2019.1623513">work through negative emotions</a> associated with climate change. In one <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSKgpVnv6xM">Earth Day show</a>, a fashionista student at the University of Colorado-Boulder, craving a loophole for satisfying her clothing addiction, discovers thrifting, and comically quips, “Nothing says ‘I love Planet Earth’ more than wearing someone else’s clothes.”</p>
<p>Creative movies like “<a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-look-up-hollywoods-primer-on-climate-denial-illustrates-5-myths-that-fuel-rejection-of-science-174266">Don’t Look Up!</a>” and TV shows like <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/81500842">“Unstable,” starring Rob Lowe</a>, comedically address themes such as climate change and science denial by making fun of some behaviors while bringing serious problems into everyday life. Lowe’s biotech billionaire character’s efforts to capture carbon from the atmosphere in cement got people talking about carbon capture and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/concrete-traps-co2-soaked-air-climate-friendly-test-2023-02-03/">similar projects in real life</a>.</p>
<p>Introducing ridiculous ideas into an otherwise logical world like comedians <a href="https://www.chucknicecomic.com/">Chuck Nice</a> – co-host of “StarTalk” with Neil deGrasse Tyson – and <a href="https://www.kashapatel.com/">Kasha Patel</a> each do can also get people laughing. So can imitation and playfulness with social inversions, which you’ll see from comedians <a href="https://www.nicoleconlan.com/">Nicole Conlan</a>, who writes for “The Daily Show,” and <a href="https://www.rolliewilliamscomedy.com/climate-town">Rollie Williams</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Rollie Williams explains how your money is funding Big Oil behind your back.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Although some of the solutions put forth by comedians may seem ridiculous, history can tell us that such antics can draw attention and lead to change.</p>
<p>The Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. and the Hip Hop Caucus have <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0k9R4DWtuU&t=225s">teamed up with comedians</a> for years to engage audiences on climate change. Their new documentary with comedian Wanda Sykes mixes in comedy while documenting the rising risks of sea-level rise <a href="https://hiphopcaucus.org/hip-hop-caucus-short-film-underwater-projects-selected-for-social-justice-now-film-festival-and-dc-environmental-film-festival/">in Norfolk, Virginia</a>.</p>
<p>Comedy can run the risk of merely distracting people from the serious climate challenges before us or trivializing the problems. However, the transformative and subversive power of comedy as a vehicle for social, political, economic and cultural change is proving to be strong.</p>
<p>When unleashed into our collective consciousness, jokes can be healing contagion as they elicit laughter and open the mind. In that moment, rigidity is relaxed, the single solution is bifurcated, hypocrisy is exposed and delight intoxicates.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224457/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maxwell Boykoff receives funding from National Science Foundation, the National Parks Service Climate Change Response Program and the Argosy Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Beth Osnes receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Argosy Foundation. </span></em></p>Jokes can be a healing contagion as they expose hypocrisy, spark laughter and open minds.Maxwell Boykoff, Professor of Environmental Studies and Fellow in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado BoulderBeth Osnes, Professor of Theatre and Environmental Studies, University of Colorado BoulderLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2237452024-02-19T13:59:08Z2024-02-19T13:59:08ZJo Brand translated my science. I’m certain that comedy can connect people to climate change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576323/original/file-20240218-16-rw2y22.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mark Maslin and Jo Brand Climate Science Translated</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Climate Science Breakthrough</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A new comedy project pairing leading comedians with climate scientists presents a novel way to communicate the climate crisis.</p>
<p>“If people like me have to get involved, you know we are in deep shit,” says Jo Brand, renowned British comedian and The Great British Bake Off host. Why? Because she has joined the ranks of other notable comedians such as <a href="https://www.nishkumar.co.uk/">Nish Kumar</a>, <a href="https://www.kiripritchardmclean.co.uk/">Kiri Pritchard-McLean</a>, and <a href="https://www.jonathanpie.com/">Jonathan Pie</a> in <a href="https://www.climatesciencebreakthrough.com/">Climate Science Translated</a>, a project that translates complex climate science into accessible and funny content to spur millions of people into action.</p>
<p>Even though climate change is the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-cycle/">greatest threat</a> humanity has ever faced, research by the Climate Science Breakthrough team shows that just 2% of the public can name a climate scientist. Nearly everyone knows Jo Brand. Getting famous comedians to translate what climate scientists are saying in a funny, ironic and often blunt way makes the science much more accessible.</p>
<p>And it works. Research shows that humour can be a transformative tool in <a href="https://jcom.sissa.it/article/pubid/JCOM_1804_2019_A07/">science communication</a> and have a positive impact on <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13504622.2022.2113764">people’s understanding of climate change</a>. So far, my video with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA87n9jrWU0&t=33s">Jo Brand</a> has been viewed more than 3 million times and has gained mainstream attention, with celebrities like Ellie Goulding, Gary Lineker, Rainn Wilson and Thom Yorke retweeting the videos. Each time, that brings the core message to a broader audience.</p>
<p>It also works because comedians can say things that scientists cannot – for example, they can swear. Jo asked me in our chat after recording the main film, “was it time for scientists to be allowed to swear, as things are so bad?” My answer, which is in the video clip below, is no. Because the public expect scientists to be calm, rational and to stick to facts – as soon as we “become human” we lose credibility. So, in many ways, Jo Brand is my human side screaming at everyone to do something, now!</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Jo Brand asks Mark whether it’s OK for scientists to swear when discussing the urgency of the climate crisis.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The video launch also caught the eye of <a href="https://www.itv.com/goodmorningbritain">Good Morning Britain</a> – Jo Brand and I were invited to appear on the show. Susanna Reed asked me why I had <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZGjEHxoDiQ">agreed to make the video</a> with Jo Brand. My answer was simple: “Would I be on national breakfast TV discussing climate change without the wonderful Jo Brand?” </p>
<p>Celebrities can access a much wider audience than a scientist. Just imagine if Taylor Swift was dating a climate scientist and not an American football player. </p>
<p>Later that morning, TV presenters Susanna Reed and Richard Medley asked the UK environment minister Steve Barclay one of my questions: “Why has the government granted new oil and gas licences when we already have enough reserves to push the climate way beyond 2˚C warming?” Because the new licenses will not be operational for ten to 15 years and will make no difference to the global cost, so consumers will still have very high energy prices. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly, he avoided the question – but it was asked on breakfast TV because I was on a comedy video.</p>
<h2>Finding the funny</h2>
<p>Comic Relief is a great example of how effective comedy can be. In 2022, it passed a milestone of raising over £1.5 billion to support people worldwide by harnessing the power of comedy. It now stands out as a calendar moment in British culture. </p>
<p>In politics, comedy has been used in a largely satirical way to engage the public, proving its power. Spitting Image and The Thick Of It crystallised the essence of politics at the time in people’s minds. </p>
<p>Jo Brand’s involvement in the climate comedy project marks a significant step up in celebrities sounding the alarm about the accelerating environmental crisis. Others include Kevin McCloud, Mary Portas, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Chris Packham who featured in Channel 4’s <a href="https://www.channel4.com/press/news/channel-4-announces-climate-emergency-season">climate emergency season</a> last year. Even <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inPNxf00iUY">William Shatner</a>, the original Captain James T. Kirk, has added his voice saying we must act now to save our planet.</p>
<p>This trend signifies the increasing urgency of the climate crisis and its recognition across various sectors of society. The blend of <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-little-humour-may-help-with-climate-change-gloom-125860">humour and science clarifies complex environmental issues</a>, making it more relatable to an everyday audience. It underscores comedy’s influence in driving change and awareness, presenting a potent strategy for addressing one of today’s most critical challenges and an alternative to the direct action activism of <a href="https://theconversation.com/just-stop-oil-attack-the-rokeby-venus-how-the-group-is-using-the-suffragettes-disruptive-tactics-to-shape-public-opinion-210018">Just Stop Oil</a> and other groups.</p>
<p>The irony, as Jo Brand would say, is that we have all the solutions at hand. Renewable energy is cheaper, safer, cleaner and more secure than fossil fuels. But globally, according to the International Monetary Fund, we subsidised fossil fuel use to the tune of <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidies">US$7 trillion (£5.5 trillion)</a> in 2023 – up US$2 trillion on the previous year. As Brand said, “even the dinosaurs did not subsidise their own extinction”.</p>
<p>This is why the comedy films invite everyone to step up and act to pressure governments for urgent change, ending with a call to ban new fossil fuel investment and the rallying cry: “All hands on deck now.” </p>
<p>Even the climate summit <a href="https://theconversation.com/cop28-five-major-outcomes-from-the-latest-un-climate-summit-219655">COP28</a>, held in a major petrostate, the United Arab Emirates, called for a transition away from fossil fuels. But we are not moving anywhere near fast enough. And why should billions of people suffer just because a few people and countries want to make huge profits from selling us polluting fossil fuels? That is just not funny.</p>
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<p><strong><em>Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?</em></strong>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Maslin is the UNFCCC designated point of contact for UCL. He is co-director of the London NERC Doctoral Training Partnership and a member of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group. He is a member of the Sopra-Steria CSR Board, Sheep Included Ltd, Lansons and NetZeroNow advisory boards. He has received grant funding from the NERC, EPSRC, ESRC, DFG, Royal Society, DIFD, BEIS, DECC, FCO, Innovate UK, Carbon Trust, UK Space Agency, European Space Agency, Research England, Wellcome Trust, Leverhulme Trust, CIFF, Sprint2020, and British Council. He has received funding from the BBC, Lancet, Laithwaites, Seventh Generation, Channel 4, JLT Re, WWF, Hermes, CAFOD, HP and Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.</span></em></p>Climate scientist Mark Maslin pairs up with comedian Jo Brand to explain the urgency of the climate crisis. Together, they find that humour cuts through in ways that plain facts just can’t.Mark Maslin, Professor of Natural Sciences, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2224612024-02-12T13:22:05Z2024-02-12T13:22:05ZLorne Michaels, the man behind the curtain at ‘Saturday Night Live,’ has been minting comedy gold for nearly 50 years<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573576/original/file-20240205-29-bcz58h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=120%2C7%2C4916%2C2303&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lorne Michaels holding one of his Emmy Awards in 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/74thEmmyAwards-TrophyTable/6c56e4ccbc7647aca4d123b7de872dd6/photo?boardId=37be9465fcce45d283d5431cccb20a6a&st=boards&mediaType=audio,photo,video,graphic&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=492&currentItemNo=2">Danny Moloshok/Invision for the Television Academy/AP Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On April 24, 1976, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0584427/">Lorne Michaels</a>, the creator and producer of the late-night NBC comedy program “Saturday Night” – it had not yet changed its name to “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072562/">Saturday Night Live</a>” – appeared on camera in hopes of luring the Beatles to reunite on the program.</p>
<p>The Fab Four’s last concert had been eight years earlier in San Francisco, and the <a href="https://www.thebeatles.com/abbey-road">band had stopped recording together in 1969</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL3Foo7ZokY">Michaels addressed</a> the band members by name – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr – and then acknowledged rumors that the group might get back together. </p>
<p>“It’s also been said that no one has yet to come up with enough money to satisfy you,” Michaels said. “Well, if it’s money you want, there’s no problem here.”</p>
<p>Michaels then held up a check.</p>
<p>“Here it is right here. A check made out to you, the Beatles, for $3,000. All you have to do is sing three Beatles songs,” he said. “‘She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.’ That’s $1,000 right there. You know the words – it’ll be easy.”</p>
<p>Among the 22 million viewers was Lennon.</p>
<p>Lennon had watched the program from his home a few miles away from the NBC studio. A week later, he was watching the next episode with McCartney and told him about Michaels’ recent proposal.</p>
<p>“So John said, ‘<a href="https://www.theglassonionbeatlesjournal.com/2014/05/mccartney-talks-beatles-nirvana.html">It’s a hoot</a>, you know what would be great, we can go down there now.’” McCartney later recounted in an interview. </p>
<p>“For about five minutes, we were going, ‘We’ve got to do it.’ Then it was like, ‘Are you kidding, let’s stay in and watch the show,’” McCartney recalled. “It would be a great story, but we decided against it.”</p>
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<h2>‘It’s like he created Yale or NASA’</h2>
<p>No television program in history has chronicled American politics, culture, fads and tastes like “SNL,” which has mirrored and critiqued society over its half-century run by mocking it. “Caricatures,” <a href="https://www.humanitiesforwisdom.org/uploads/5/8/9/8/58987361/lampooning_injustice-__paul_conrad%E2%80%99s_perspective_on_civil_rights.pdf">Ralph Waldo Emerson</a> said, “are often the truest history of the times.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0275486">Tina Fey</a>, who appeared on the program from 1997 to 2006, <a href="https://www.eonline.com/news/1393319/lorne-michaels-reveals-who-may-succeed-him-at-saturday-night-live">reportedly might succeed Michaels</a> as its producer when he retires.</p>
<p>“Lorne created a show that’s impacted culture for decades,” Fey said of the man who has been the program’s producer, showrunner and mastermind for most of the program’s nearly half-century run. “No one has ever really successfully been able to replicate it.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aox7YP1Fr1I">Comedian Mike Myers</a>, who served as a cast member on “SNL” from 1989 to 1996, is another big fan. “It’s like he created Yale or NASA.”</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">SNL’s ‘needs more cowbell’ spoof of the band Blue Öyster Cult is among its most-watched sketches.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Unmatched track record</h2>
<p>Michaels <a href="https://horatioalger.ca/en/haa_members/lorne-michaels/">grew up in Toronto</a> before immigrating to the U.S., where he <a href="https://walkoffame.com/lorne-michaels/">first worked as a writer</a> for “Laugh-In” and “The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show.” He has received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement – Canada’s highest honor in the performing arts. He also won the <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/campaign/medal-of-freedom">Presidential Medal of Freedom</a>, the highest civilian honor in the U.S.</p>
<p>He’s also been nominated for <a href="https://www.emmys.com/bios/lorne-michaels">102 Emmy Awards</a>, <a href="https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/credits/creator/lorne-michaels?lang=es">setting a show business record</a>, and he’s won more than 20 of them. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/list/ls083322620/">“SNL” has won more Emmys</a> than any other TV show.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.kennedy-center.org/artists/m/ma-mn/lorne-michaels/">Michaels’ long list of awards</a> includes the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, two Peabody Awards and the Kennedy Center Honors.</p>
<p><a href="https://screenrant.com/snl-best-skits-ranked/#olympia-caf-eacute">“SNL”‘s skits</a> and its humorous “<a href="https://www.nbc.com/nbc-insider/snl-weekend-update-hosts-in-order">Weekend Update</a>” news segments have tracked America’s politics, fads, foibles and scandals from the era of disco fever through the COVID-19 pandemic and today’s <a href="https://youtu.be/pGO1hC4iIb8">trepidation about artificial intelligence</a>.</p>
<p>Whether it was <a href="https://youtu.be/puJePACBoIo">John Belushi</a> gruffly taking orders at a dive that’s only serving cheeseburgers at breakfast time, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgZukeisGwU&ab_channel=MsMojo">Fey impersonating Sarah Palin</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwPQn7i-6JQ">James Austin Johnson</a> caricaturing Donald Trump, “SNL” has served as the nation’s laugh track through the last half-century.</p>
<p>That’s in large part because Michaels <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/how-snls-lorne-michaels-became-179894/">recruited some of the best comic minds and actors</a> of the last half-century to work for “SNL,” including, but hardly limited to, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Amy Poehler, Fred Armisen, Will Ferrell, Jason Sudeikis, Kristen Wiig, Adam Sandler, Kate McKinnon and Kenan Thompson.</p>
<p>“There has never been anything in show business <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/feb/17/lorne-michaels-kingmaker-comedy-saturday-night-live">like his track record for discovering stars</a>,” said Doug Hill, the author of “Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live.”</p>
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<h2>No reunion necessary</h2>
<p>Michaels’ enduring success is like that of a top college football coach who remains successful year after year even though his players frequently have to be replaced. But then again, how many <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/longest-tenured-college-football-coaches-023305426.html">college football coaches</a> have remained at the top of their game for a half-century?</p>
<p>At some point, Michaels, who <a href="https://www.famousbirthdays.com/people/lorne-michaels.html">turns 80 on Nov. 17, 2024</a>, will retire.</p>
<p>When asked about retirement rumors in January 2024, he said he intended to remain with the program for at least another year.</p>
<p>“We’re doing the 50th anniversary show in February of '25,” <a href="https://www.eonline.com/news/1393319/lorne-michaels-reveals-who-may-succeed-him-at-saturday-night-live">he told “Entertainment Tonight</a>.” “I will definitely be there for that, and definitely be there until that, and sometime before that we’ll figure out what we’re going to do.”</p>
<p>No matter when Michaels retires, his legacy is secure. So are his contributions to comedy, <a href="https://www.nbc.com/nbc-insider/first-saturday-night-live-cast-snl-season-1">beginning with the original cast</a>, known as the Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time Players. The roster included Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Chevy Chase, Laraine Newman, Jane Curtin and Garrett Morris.</p>
<p>A movie about the behind-the-scenes mayhem before the show first went on the air, “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27657135/">SNL 1975</a>,” is in the works.</p>
<p>It was near the end of the first season of “SNL” when Michaels offered the Beatles $3,000 to appear on the program. </p>
<p>Former Beatle <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0694666/">Harrison</a> did make an appearance later that year. <a href="https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/the-chris-farley-show-paul-mccartney/2868143">McCartney later made several appearances</a>, and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0694472/">Starr</a> hosted an episode in 1984. But neither “Saturday Night Live” nor Michaels, as it turned out, needed a Beatles reunion to make their mark on popular culture.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222461/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Lamb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The show has served as the nation’s laugh track for decades. Who will take over when he retires?Chris Lamb, Professor of Journalism, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2207742024-01-16T19:15:21Z2024-01-16T19:15:21ZDave Chappelle has built a reputation for ‘punching down’ on trans people – and now he’s targeting disabled people<p>Dave Chappelle’s latest Netflix special, The Dreamer, opens with a story about meeting Jim Carrey, who, at the time, was method acting and portraying comedian Andy Kaufman. </p>
<p>Chappelle recalls being “very disappointed” at having to pretend to be speaking to Kaufman, when he could clearly see it was Carrey. The punchline? “That’s how trans people make me feel.”</p>
<p>Whether or not non-transgender people find it funny, it is a joke that stabs at the fundamental insecurity of being trans. It takes the stance of <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095507973">biological essentialism</a>: that people have innate and intractable traits by virtue of their biology. </p>
<p>Biological essentialism <a href="https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/sipr.12099">has been used</a> by the <a href="https://commonslibrary.org/the-anti-trans-movement/">anti-trans</a> lobby to deny that trans women are women and trans men are men, and to justify sexism and racism <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-essentialism-and-how-does-it-shape-attitudes-to-transgender-people-and-sexual-diversity-203577">before that</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-essentialism-and-how-does-it-shape-attitudes-to-transgender-people-and-sexual-diversity-203577">What is essentialism? And how does it shape attitudes to transgender people and sexual diversity?</a>
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<p>Chappelle’s Netflix specials have become notorious for his jokes targeting the transgender community, but Chappelle has claimed his comedy is <a href="https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/dave-chappelle-netflix-speech-whats-in-a-name-1235311467/">more nuanced</a> and artistic than his critics allow.</p>
<p>He claims to be an equal opportunity offender, “punching down” (his words) to all minorities equally. To prove this point, in The Dreamer he takes on what he calls “handicapped jokes”.</p>
<h2>Mirroring prejudice</h2>
<p>While the word “handicapped” was once used to describe people with disability, it is <a href="https://adata.org/factsheet/ADANN-writing">now considered offensive</a>. Chappelle is either unaware or just doesn’t care that the term is decades out of date.</p>
<p>Comedy, at its best, draws from and reveals insight into the human condition. It slips into mockery when, bereft of understanding, it does nothing more than mirror prejudice.</p>
<p>Chappelle’s first disability joke has the potential to be clever and insightful. He says:</p>
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<p>there’s probably a handicap in the back right now ’cause that’s where they make them sit.</p>
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<p>A joke about the placement of people with disability at the back of the theatre is clever as it unmasks social disadvantage. In different hands, it could be a reflection on the <a href="https://pwd.org.au/resources/models-of-disability/">social model of disability</a>.</p>
<p>The social model of disability says the problem of disability is not “handicapped” bodies but the social environment designed to exclude and marginalise them. For example, a wheelchair user is not disabled because they cannot walk (they have wheels for mobility), but because of a lack of access to ramps – or a theatre which insists they sit at the back of the room.</p>
<p>But clever turns to mockery with a visual punchline, as Chappelle twists his hand and walks like a “cripple”. It is mockery bereft of understanding.</p>
<p>A crass attack on paraplegic sexual function follows: “Who the fuck invites a paraplegic to an orgy?”. It’s ableism masquerading as comedy. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/ableism-and-disablism-how-to-spot-them-and-how-we-can-all-do-better-204541">Ableism</a> refers to stereotypical attitudes and behaviours that dehumanise people with disability, treating them as different, less than, incapable, foolish, laughable, excludable. In this case, Chappelle repeats <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13178-023-00873-5">the damaging and false stereotype</a> that people with disability are asexual and unsexy. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ableism-and-disablism-how-to-spot-them-and-how-we-can-all-do-better-204541">Ableism and disablism – how to spot them and how we can all do better</a>
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<p>Australia’s Disability Royal Commission <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/2023-03/Public%20hearing%2028%20-%20Counsel%20Assisting%20submissions%20-%20SUBM.0047.0001.0105.pdf">heard</a> how ableism, especially as propagated in the media, drives violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people with disability. It noted we learn our language and attitudes from the media and popular culture, which often leads to abusive behaviour in public and online.</p>
<p>When comedy relies on humiliation and cruelty to earn its laughter it can have serious consequences. Rather than propagate ableism, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Film-Comedy-and-Disability-Understanding-Humour-and-Genre-in-Cinematic/Wilde/p/book/9780367587680">comedy can deconstruct it</a>, revealing the absurdity of discrimination, and questioning notions of normality, abnormality and ideas of difference.</p>
<p>But watching the special, it feels like disability is not Chappelle’s real target. Instead, it seems he embraces being an “equal opportunity” offender who mocks disability as a defence for his long-running transgender jokes.</p>
<h2>The impacts of mockery</h2>
<p>Witty transgender comedy might highlight the social issues trans people face, but Chapelle exemplifies those issues. In The Dreamer, he makes the tired joke that if he was arrested in California he’d claim in court that he identified as a woman to be sent to women’s jail so he could have sex with women.</p>
<p>His jokes rely on prevailing disgust about transgender bodies and increasingly politicised insistence that transgender people are not real women or men. These views shared in popular culture are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10570314.2019.1615635">coming to inform</a> anti-trans policy in healthcare, education and the justice system. </p>
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<p>As the majority of the general population <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2023-06/Ipsos%20Global%20Advisor%20-%20LGBT%2B%20Pride%202023%20-%20AUSTRALIAN%20Press%20Release.pdf">do not know a trans person</a>, the media has significant influence over perceptions of trans people. </p>
<p>Throughout four Netflix specials, Chapelle has made no effort to understand the object of his jokes or the impact of his mockery on their daily lives. While trans representation in the media is improving, trans people are still exposed to a plethora of <a href="https://doi.org/10.36828/newvistas.226">negative depictions</a> of their identities in the media across a range of mediums. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7826438/">Research</a> shows this is significantly associated with clinical levels of depression, anxiety and psychological distress. </p>
<p>Near the end of The Dreamer, Chappelle paints himself as the victim of the “unjust” LGBTQI+ campaign against his comedy, which included Chappelle being <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/05/04/1096547296/dave-chappelle-video-attacked-onstage-performance-hollywood-bowl-netflix">physically attacked</a> on stage at a 2022 show. </p>
<p>Physical violence is never justified. However it should be noted comedy which “punches down” on trans people <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13178-017-0280-2">helps to drive</a> the negative perceptions that lead to <a href="https://equityhealthj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12939-022-01632-5">violence</a> against queer people that we see on social media feeds and in the daily experience of transgender people globally. </p>
<p>Chappelle is an influential comedian who proudly punches down. It is true he is an egalitarian bully. In The Dreamer, he laughs at disability, bisexuality and gay men. But his jokes continue to come back to one target: the transgender community. When will we say enough is enough? When will we stop laughing?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/yes-words-can-harm-young-trans-people-heres-what-we-can-do-to-help-176788">Yes, words can harm young trans people. Here's what we can do to help</a>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In The Dreamer, Chapelle laughs at disability, bisexuality and gay men. But his jokes continue to come back to one target: the transgender community.Shane Clifton, Associate Professor of Practice, School of Health Sciences and the Centre for Disability Research and Policy, University of SydneyJemma Clifton, Research officer, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2166262023-10-31T03:47:12Z2023-10-31T03:47:12ZThe enduring appeal of Friends, and why so many of us feel we’ve lost a personal friend in Matthew Perry<p>The <a href="https://www.9news.com.au/videos/world/friends-star-matthew-perry-dies-aged-54/cloatn0ae00ea0jqbpdz0h8td">death of Matthew Perry</a>, best known for his role as Chandler Bing in the television series Friends, has seen an outpouring of grief from fans and the Hollywood community. </p>
<p>His passing at age 54 has shocked both those who admired his acting work, as well as those who followed his efforts to bring awareness to <a href="https://people.com/tv/matthew-perry-opens-up-about-addiction-new-memoir/">the pains of addiction</a>.</p>
<p>Tributes to Perry have understandably focused on his star-making turn on the incredibly popular television sitcom. Scenes, catchphrases, and his character’s lines have been lovingly repurposed across the internet to memorialise the gifted actor. </p>
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<p>Meanwhile, many viewers have situated their <a href="https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/friends-fans-mourn-matthew-perry-new-york-apartment-1235772520/">recollections</a> of Perry and the series within the context of their own experiences. </p>
<p>Viewers who came of age, or were the characters’ ages during the show’s original run, have reminisced about what the work of Perry and his co-stars meant to them at formative times in their lives. Newer viewers have similarly shared how important the series has been to them – their relationship with the show often beginning long after production ended. </p>
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<p>For many, Friends was the television equivalent of the soundtrack to their lives.</p>
<p>To appreciate the staying power of the series for original and <a href="https://www.etonline.com/streaming-friends-how-a-90s-sitcom-became-gen-zs-new-favorite-show-132624">newer viewers alike</a> almost 30 years since it debuted, we need to consider what functions television viewing serves and the bonds we form with its characters.</p>
<h2>Enduring appeal</h2>
<p>Part of Friends’ popularity lies in its timing. The show premiered in 1994, a period when network television was still dominant. By its end a decade later, while the power of the big television networks had <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08838150701820924">eroded</a>, the series had maintained <a href="https://www.ratingsryan.com/2022/09/friends-nbc-ratings-recap.html">an average</a> of more than 20 million viewers each season. </p>
<p>The 2004 finale brought in a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/08/arts/friends-finale-s-audience-is-the-fourth-biggest-ever.html">record-breaking</a> 52.5 million viewers in the United States. The series then entered repeats around the world. It hasn’t left our screens since. </p>
<p>The late 90s and early 2000s have sometimes been referred to as the end of monoculture. While a <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/12/17/21024439/monoculture-algorithm-netflix-spotify">contested and controversial idea</a> because of, among other concerns, who was included and excluded on our screens, monoculture meant we watched <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/bestmusic2012/2012/12/21/167836852/the-year-in-pop-charts-return-of-the-monoculture">many of the same things</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/neighbours-vs-friends-we-found-out-which-beloved-show-fans-mourned-more-when-it-ended-212843">Neighbours vs Friends: we found out which beloved show fans mourned more when it ended</a>
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<p>One of the most popular shows of its era, Friends brought people together. It was a show we watched with our families or friends, spoke about the next day with colleagues, and it provided a common connection. It allowed bonding with real friends as much as fictional ones.</p>
<p>Friends did not only reflect style of the time; it also frequently created it. Jennifer Aniston’s haircut, coined “<a href="https://www.bustle.com/style/the-rachel-haircut">The Rachel</a>”, or Perry’s lovable smart-alecky cadence, typified with Chandler’s catchphrase of “Could I <em>be</em> any more…”, were endlessly imitated. I know I attempted to replicate Chandler’s <a href="https://www.gq.com.au/style/celebrity/unexpectedly-great-fashion-inspiration-courtesy-of-friends/image-gallery/f55ac75cc180e31c462525da961295fc">sweater vests</a> and light blue denim look. Participation provided viewers <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2011.00866.x">a sense</a> of identity.</p>
<p>As people enter their 30s and 40s, they often <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208595">gravitate</a> towards the memories made during their formative adolescent and young adult years. So perhaps it’s no surprise Friends endures for original viewers as it represents – and was a part of – their lives at this important time.</p>
<h2>Likeable characters</h2>
<p>Television and other fictional media meet our needs for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2009.01368.x">both</a> pleasure and extracting meaning. We get excited, entertained and moved by television.</p>
<p>As part of this, we bond with fictional characters. We cannot help but <a href="https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327825MCS0403_01">empathise</a> with them. A series like Friends with its characters and their combinations of breakups, makeups and other mishaps allowed us to safely use our empathy muscles to cheer on and sometimes commiserate with the group of six. It helped that each character was flawed but inherently likeable. </p>
<p>Fictional characters also allow us to <a href="https://theconversation.com/neighbours-vs-friends-we-found-out-which-beloved-show-fans-mourned-more-when-it-ended-212843">experience lifestyles</a> we might not otherwise. In the case of Friends, who didn’t want to live in a rent-controlled apartment like Monica’s, or regularly meet their supportive and funny pals for coffee at Central Perk? As a teen, I imagined such a world for myself in the not-too-distant future. </p>
<p>Younger generations might be more aware of how out-of-reach that lifestyle was, or find the show’s <a href="https://ew.com/tv/jennifer-aniston-friends-offensive-new-generation/">humour sometimes dated</a>. But the idea of what the friends’ lifestyle represented – possibility, freedom, a chosen family – evidently still holds appeal.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/can-death-on-the-screen-feel-the-same-as-a-real-one-203549">Can death on the screen feel the same as a 'real' one?</a>
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<h2>Fictional relationships, but real sadness</h2>
<p>In forming relationships with fictional characters, we form bonds with the performers who bring them to life. The lines between character and creator become blurry, both because of the knowledge about actors’ lives celebrity culture affords us, but also because their characters seem so real. When the actors pass away, we <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.06.042">feel real grief</a>.</p>
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<p>It’s important for fans of Matthew Perry to <a href="https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/why-with-all-the-sht-happening-in-the-world-its-still-okay-to-grieve-a-celebritys-death/">acknowledge</a> their loss. Even though his character is fictional, and you didn’t know him personally, you can still feel sad. Watching the series may be difficult right now. With time, it will become easier. </p>
<p>Matthew Perry wanted <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/matthew-perry-death-addiction-alcoholism-drugs-b2437980.html">his legacy</a> to be awareness of addiction and the help he provided to people struggling with this disorder. Hopefully what will be felt now, alongside collective sadness, is an empathy for those facing addiction. That may be the power of television, and of a character named Chandler, and the actor who brought him to life, who many considered their friend.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216626/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Gerace does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The death of Matthew Perry has seen old and new fans reflect on the legacy of a television classic.Adam Gerace, Senior Lecturer and Head of Course - Positive Psychology, CQUniversity AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2147532023-10-09T17:19:19Z2023-10-09T17:19:19ZThe Tony Blair Rock Opera features bagpipes, Lady Macbeth and a wrestling match with Gordon Brown<p>If you’re looking for subtlety and sophistication, Harry Hill and Steve Brown’s <a href="https://tonyblairrockopera.co.uk/">Tony! The Tony Blair Rock Opera</a> is probably not for you. It starts – literally – with a bang and careens through a hectic hour and a half of high-energy songs and skits. </p>
<p>The committed cast are happy to provide their audience with caricatures, as opposed to characters. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Prescott">John Prescott</a> (Rosie Strobel) is portrayed as a professional northerner, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robin-Cook">Robin Cook</a> (Sally Cheng) as a priapic ginger gnome, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cherie-Booth">Cherie Blair</a> (Tori Burgess) as a sharp-tongued Scouser – you get the picture.</p>
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<p>Although the occasional joke misfires (blind <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Blunkett">David Blunkett</a> walking into a door frame, really?) and some of the actors’ accents are as woeful as the deliberately dodgy wigs they whip on and off, it works on its own terms.</p>
<p>The music and the lyrics might not be that memorable, but the songs rhyme well. In the run up to the 1992 election, for example, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Neil-Kinnock-Baron-Kinnock-of-Bedwellty">Neil Kinnock</a> (Martin Johnston) sings: “We’ve been waiting in the valleys, I’ve been storming it at rallies.” And <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-princess-dianas-death-came-to-define-tragedy-for-the-media-82939">Princess Diana’s fatal accident</a> is neatly, if rather bluntly, summed up as “the chauffeur was smashed, no wonder he crashed”. </p>
<p>And they cohere nicely – perhaps even especially – when they stray beyond the bounds of good taste. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Osama-bin-Laden">Osama Bin Laden</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/saddam-hussein-how-a-deadly-purge-of-opponents-set-up-his-ruthless-dictatorship-120748">Saddam Hussein’s</a> numbers (the latter done via a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Groucho-Marx">Groucho Marx</a> impression) are a case in point.</p>
<p>The occasional cameos are particularly well done (Britpop’s Liam Gallagher was a favourite of mine), the impressively athletic choreography is basic but effective and one or two of the set pieces work particularly well. The momentous <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/jun/06/labour.uk">Granita deal</a> (at which <a href="https://theconversation.com/gordon-brown-political-giant-and-wasted-talent-at-the-same-time-34673">Brown was persuaded</a> to give Blair a free run at the leadership in the wake of <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/12/newsid_2550000/2550803.stm">John Smith’s untimely death</a>) is staged as a wrestling match complete with ropes and shiny leotards. Believe it or not, this actually conveyed what was allegedly discussed and agreed during that dinner pretty accurately.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-princess-diana-story-why-everyone-has-their-own-version-82224">The 'Princess Diana story': why everyone has their own version</a>
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<h2>The show’s limitations</h2>
<p>So far, so good(ish), then. But there are some downsides. The most obvious is that in order to get most of the rock opera’s jokes, you probably had to be there – “there” being the 1990s and the early 2000s. Those under 50 might struggle to appreciate some of the political and cultural references, unless they’ve done or are doing a politics degree that covered the New Labour years.</p>
<p>Having not only lived through them but taught them, too, I had no trouble. But that didn’t mean I had no problems with the show.</p>
<p>First and foremost, it fell into the trap of inferring that Blair (Jack Whittle) was driven almost entirely by his love of the limelight. As a result, he is portrayed as an amoral airhead throughout – a puppet whose strings were pulled by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Peter-Mandelson">Peter Mandelson</a> (Howard Samuels). </p>
<p>In reality, I suspect even Blair’s toughest critics wouldn’t deny that his extraordinary powers of communication rested not just on his natural charisma but on a penetrating intelligence, too. Nor would they deny he was animated by a passion to do what – by his own lights anyway – was right.</p>
<p>Whether that sense of moral purpose (misguided or otherwise) deserted Blair once he left Downing Street and entered the shadowy world of high-paid, globetrotting consultancy is another story. But it’s a story that the authors (who were apparently determined not to write something too long) stop short of telling.</p>
<p>Other all too familiar tropes are much in evidence. Mandelson, who is effectively the narrator of the show, is predictably portrayed – albeit with considerable aplomb – as some sort of vampire or Mephistopheles. And by the same token, Cherie, although wonderfully played, is presented (not for the first nor, I suspect, the last time) as Lady Macbeth.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Gordon Brown comes over (very amusingly, as far as the audience were concerned) as a stereotypical angry Scotsman. <a href="https://twitter.com/campbellclaret?lang=en">Alastair Campbell</a>, for good or ill, only gets a brief walk-on part, coming on, complete with kilt and bagpipes, after the ghost of Princess Diana has – bear with me – persuaded Blair to sex up the “dodgy dossier”.</p>
<p>My main gripe, however, was with the supposedly showstopping last number. Blair, not unreasonably, reminds the audience that 9.5 million of us voted him in for a third term, notwithstanding his decision to go to war in Iraq. The song that follows declares that “The whole wide world is led by assholes”, accompanied by pictures of a bunch of strongmen leaders from around the world.</p>
<p>To equate the UK’s prime minister, however little one may think of him, with the likes of <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-recap-kim-jong-un-visits-putin-for-arms-for-tech-talks-while-kyiv-urges-west-for-longer-range-missiles-to-aid-counteroffensive-213603">Kim Jong Un</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/bashar-al-assad-13775">Bashar al-Assad</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/vladimir-putin-6680">Putin</a> seems, to me at least, a category error. And, even if you disagree, the underlying message merely serves up more of the populist take on politics that, frankly, we could probably do with rather less of these days.</p>
<p>That said, if you happen to be in Liverpool for the <a href="https://labour.org.uk/conference/">Labour Party conference</a> next week, don’t miss the chance to go see it at the city’s Playhouse. You might not love it, but there’s no way it won’t leave you laughing.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214753/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Bale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Written by comedian Harry Hill, it’s a hectic hour-and-a-half of high-energy songs and skits.Tim Bale, Professor of Politics, Queen Mary University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2133162023-09-29T12:28:24Z2023-09-29T12:28:24ZSoccer kiss scandal exposes how structural sexism in Spain can be a laughing matter<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551011/original/file-20230928-23-ozpk23.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C22%2C4985%2C3293&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Showing sexism the red card.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/protesters-hold-placards-with-feminist-and-anti-machismo-news-photo/1639245914?adppopup=true">David Canales/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Amid <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/aug/21/luis-rubiales-kiss-outrage-spanish-football-fa-president-womens-world-cup-final-spain-jenni-hermoso">expressions of outrage and disgust</a> over a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/66645961">nonconsensual kiss</a> between the male head of Spanish soccer and a Women’s World Cup-winning player, there was also laughter.</p>
<p>Luis Rubiales, the now ex-president of the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) and former vice-president of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), was <a href="https://apnews.com/article/rubiales-resigns-spain-sexism-kiss-7ae39241dd3798d251230ba3c8ffa303">forced to resign from</a> <a href="https://www.uefa.com/insideuefa/mediaservices/mediareleases/news/0285-18f470e2997c-4d1eded9d491-1000--uefa-takes-note-of-luis-rubiales-resignation/">those leadership positions</a> as a result of the forced kiss on Aug. 20, 2023, which took place in front of a packed stadium in Australia and a global audience. He is also <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/08/football/luis-rubiales-prosecutor-complaint-spt-intl/index.html">under investigation by prosecutors</a> in Spain for sexual assault and coercion. </p>
<p>Throughout the high-stakes and painful drama – which dominated Spanish media for weeks on end – there were jokes. The Rubiales kiss became fodder for <a href="https://www.moncloa.com/2023/09/03/memes-rubiales-protagonista-2157105/">internet memes</a>, <a href="https://www.eldiario.es/vertele/videos/actualidad/intermedio-echo-plato-clon-luis-rubiales-ridiculo-hecho-sido-mundial_7_10507627.html">skits by comedians on Spanish TV</a>, as well as many cartoons in national and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/ng-interactive/2023/aug/29/david-squires-on-luis-rubiales-and-the-gaslighting-scandal-in-spanish-football">international</a> newspapers.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://mlli.umbc.edu/dr-erin-k-hogan/">scholars of Iberian cultures</a> <a href="https://www.csusb.edu/profile/mpuente">and gender representation</a>, we know that humor, much like soccer, is a national pastime in Spain. Moreover, Rubiales’ forced kiss of Jenni Hermoso, a member of <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/19/football/womens-world-cup-final-spain-england-spt-intl/index.html">Spain’s World Cup-winning team</a>, provided a perfect example of the role that comedy can play in unmasking and highlighting structural sexism.</p>
<h2>The humor of incongruity</h2>
<p>Humor is a social act that reflects human experience and, more to the point here, human folly. </p>
<p>In “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-in-society/article/abs/leon-rappoport-punchlines-the-case-for-racial-ethnic-and-gender-humor/B95936D4BF50FA01C5766A5698E8B0DB">Punchlines: The Case for Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Humor</a>,” <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Leon-Rappoport-2032746838">social psychologist Leon Rappoport</a> explains that, among other reasons, we laugh at incongruity. Humor is employed, Rappoport observes, to shed light on something “clearly absurd or contradictory.” </p>
<p>This appears to be the basis of much of the laughter in the Rubiales case. His outlandish, unexpected and unwanted gestures – not only the kiss, but also <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-12438939/Luis-Rubiales-Spain-caught-grabbing-crotch-Queen-daughter-World-Cup-Final-celebrations.html">grabbing his crotch</a> while cheering the Spanish women on to their first World Cup win – certainly came across as incongruous.</p>
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<img alt="A man in a suit grabs a female soccer player by the head while kissing her." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550759/original/file-20230927-19-xririg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550759/original/file-20230927-19-xririg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550759/original/file-20230927-19-xririg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550759/original/file-20230927-19-xririg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550759/original/file-20230927-19-xririg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550759/original/file-20230927-19-xririg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550759/original/file-20230927-19-xririg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The unwanted kiss that sparked scandal.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-of-the-royal-spanish-football-federation-luis-news-photo/1622660427?adppopup=true">Noemi Llamas/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Much of the humor poked fun at Rubiales directly. While one editorial cartoon published in the digital newspaper <em>El Español</em> envisioned him as the <a href="https://www.elespanol.com/opinion/vinetas/20230826/rubiales-trump/789611033_19.html">Spanish counterpart of Donald Trump</a>, he was widely mocked across the media in posts that <a href="https://www.elconfidencial.com/television/programas-tv/2023-08-24/hilo-twitter-homer-simpson-predicen-rubiales_3723449/">compared him to a brutish Homer Simpson</a>. </p>
<p>The former UEFA vice president wasn’t the only person to be lampooned. His mother – with her <a href="https://apnews.com/article/spain-football-kiss-rubiales-mother-player-fifa-9d8c33c5a28f00bbe6a17092e4d7b32f">stranger-than-fiction hunger strike</a> demanding his exoneration – also opened herself up to ridicule. Rubiales’ many supporters at the RFEF couldn’t escape the farce-fest either. Even those who eventually turned on him were ridiculed, with one editorial cartoon portraying them as rats abandoning <a href="https://www.eldiasoria.es/noticia/z6112a909-06c6-425e-d182d5b65c24b045/202308/el-hundimiento-de-rubiales">Rubiales’ sinking Titanic ship</a>.</p>
<p>But some of the jokes called attention to bigger issues. Rubiales’ sexism on display at a major sporting event did not reflect well on the country’s international reputation, especially at a time when it is <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/sports/2023/3/15/morocco-joining-spain-portugal-in-footballs-2030-world-cup-bid">bidding to co-host the 2030 Men’s World Cup</a>. A humorist from the national newspaper El Mundo proposed that a crotch-grabbing Rubiales be adopted as the next World Cup <a href="https://www.elmundo.es/opinion/2023/08/25/64e8dbcb21efa0aa5f8b4598.html">official mascot</a>.</p>
<h2>A sexist laughingstock</h2>
<p>Such use of comedy takes a page from the book “<a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520299764/a-comedian-and-an-activist-walk-into-a-bar">A Comedian and an Activist Walk Into a Bar</a>,” in which authors Caty Borum Chattoo and Lauren Feldman discuss how humor can be used as a means to unify, guide public discourse, and inspire action.</p>
<p>It would be too much to claim that the jokes cracked during the fallout of Rubiales’ behavior led to his <a href="https://apnews.com/article/rubiales-resigns-spain-sexism-kiss-7ae39241dd3798d251230ba3c8ffa303">eventual resignation on Sept. 10</a>. But the humor in this case helped amplify public debate and inspired action to confront structural sexism in Spain and beyond.</p>
<p>An example of how it did this can be seen in a parody reenactment of Rubiales’ kiss posted on the social media accounts of a self-fashioned amateur writer who goes by the online name @LolaLaMonyos.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1695525232486850935"}"></div></p>
<p>In the sketch, two women impersonate Rubiales and Hermoso and stage the kiss, as <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/not-resign-says-defiant-spanish-104226421.html">recounted by Rubiales</a> in his public appearance before the RFEF’s general assembly. At the Aug. 25 gathering, he did not resign as some had expected. Instead, he defended his “peck” as consensual and positioned himself against both “false feminism” and gender inclusive language. </p>
<p>“When Jenni first showed up, she lifted me up from the ground. She grabbed me by the hips, by the legs, I don’t remember well. … She lifted me up from the ground – and we almost fell down.</p>
<p>"Then the peck happened during all of this celebration, with her patting me on the side a few times and then excusing herself with one more hand on the side and going off laughing,” he added.</p>
<p>Those words, set over the spoof reenactment, highlight just how nonsensical Rubiales’ imaginative interpretation is. Furthermore, the mismatch of his male voice and the two female bodies in the video points at the pervasive <a href="https://theconversation.com/luis-rubiales-these-seven-tactics-made-his-speech-excusing-his-assault-on-jenni-hermoso-a-textbook-case-in-silencing-women-212546">silencing of women</a> and sexist double standards. Since being posted on X, the platform formally known as Twitter, the sketch has been viewed almost 650,000 times.</p>
<p>Taking a somewhat different comedic approach, the popular Spanish satirical TV program “El Intermedio” recast the events in the <a href="https://www.lasexta.com/programas/el-intermedio/video-intermedio-minuto-que-resume-rigor-caso-rubiales-nos-quedado-muy-mono_2023090464f640eb9598e30001aac400.html">style of a wildlife documentary</a>. With the title “This turned out so ‘cute’” – a play on the Spanish word “mono,” which can mean “monkey” or “cute” – the skit uses a collage of monkey clips accompanied by an authoritative male voice-over.</p>
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<p>Funny though it is, there are also serious points being made. The writers of the sketch place the audience in a position of evolved superiority to Rubiales – reveling in the idiocy of the mockumentary’s subject. </p>
<p>What’s more, the piece suggests that Rubiales’ worldview and values are archaic and represent a step back in the fight for gender equality.</p>
<p>We would also argue that the video invites the audience to question patriarchal structures as being synonymous with the advancement of civilization. To us, the message implied is that society needs to redefine such assumptions. A world in which we can excuse harassment, sexual abuse, coercion or discrimination is incompatible with an aspiring civilized society.</p>
<p>None of these humorous responses to the scandal diminish the seriousness of the Rubiales incident, nor the debate they sparked. Rather, they have helped frame the way in which discussions have played out in Spain.</p>
<h2>For Rubiales, #itsover</h2>
<p>There is no doubt that the recriminations against Rubiales mark a tipping point in Spain’s reckoning with abuses of power related to sexual assault and broader gender inequality. For good reason, the <a href="https://www.eldiario.es/sociedad/jugadoras-suecas-suman-acabo-pancarta-primer-partido-espana-mundial_1_10537631.html">hashtag #seacabó</a> – translating to #itsover – has continued to trend since the scandal, after the term was directed at Rubiales by Spanish soccer star Alexia Putellas. Putellas, a two-time winner of the prestigious Ballon d’Or Féminin and <a href="https://www.fifa.com/fifaplus/en/articles/putellas-wins-best-fifa-womens-player-award-for-second-year-running-mead-morgan">Best FIFA Women’s Player</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5-riKD3yhg">affirmed in December 2021</a>: “True victory will be when there is 100% equal opportunity for boys and girls in sports and in the world.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Female soccer players stand over a banner reading 'It's over. Our fight is the global fight.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550758/original/file-20230927-23-2on7mx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550758/original/file-20230927-23-2on7mx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550758/original/file-20230927-23-2on7mx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550758/original/file-20230927-23-2on7mx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550758/original/file-20230927-23-2on7mx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550758/original/file-20230927-23-2on7mx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550758/original/file-20230927-23-2on7mx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Swiss and Spanish women’s national teams unite with the message: ‘It’s over. Our fight is the global fight.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/both-teams-players-hold-a-banner-reading-its-over-our-fight-news-photo/1690552213?adppopup=true">Cristina Quicler/AFP via Getty Images)</a></span>
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<p>The implications of the Rubiales tragicomedy have been sweeping and are still developing. It has allowed Spain, and inspired others, to confront discriminatory practices within and beyond the soccer field.</p>
<p>But is it also a laughing matter? We argue yes – because a sense of humor allows us to make sense of incongruities, confront them as a group and advance toward social change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213316/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The jokes, memes and skits came thick and fast – but behind the humor were serious points.Erin K Hogan, Associate Professor of Spanish, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyMaria Garcia-Puente, Associate Professor of Spanish, California State University, San BernardinoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2138322023-09-25T12:32:07Z2023-09-25T12:32:07ZHenry VIII’s favourite fool – a new book draws a portrait of the man the Tudor court loved to laugh at<p>Henry VIII is notorious for his willingness to lop off the heads of anyone who crossed him, including a string of former friends and intimates –even two of his wives. So you might think that, to keep your head on your shoulders at his court, you would need to have your wits about you and to watch your tongue. </p>
<p>And yet, one figure who sailed on apparently effortlessly through Henry’s bloody later years and the equally violent reigns of his successors was Will Somers, the court fool.</p>
<p>Somers died peacefully under Queen Elizabeth I after a long and successful career at the Tudor court. It is this survivor’s tale that the Swedish historian Peter Andersson set out to tell in <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691250168/fool">Fool: In Search of Henry VIII’s Closest Man</a>. </p>
<p>In writing a book about Somers, Andersson faces two pretty serious problems. One, we know almost nothing about Somers. We have a series of off-hand mentions, hackneyed anecdotes and accountants’ notes, none of which add up to much. </p>
<p>Secondly, what we do know is that his purpose was to make people laugh – but Tudor comedy has, to put it kindly, not aged well. The punchline to a number of the jokes remembered here is that a man pisses in his pants. As Andersson says rather apologetically, “you had to be there” – but perhaps you’re glad you weren’t.</p>
<p>Conjuring up a 200-page book out of what little there is on Somers is a tall order, and at times the performance sags. Andersson does invoke quite a lot of historical and literary scholarship to interpret Somers’ world – and while it is learned it is about as entertaining as a Tudor joke-book. He has to cast his net pretty wide, searching not only for solid facts, of which there are precious few, but for “things that ring true”, an alarmingly capacious category.</p>
<p>Still, he’s on to something. The court fool was, as he shows us, a weird category of being. Quite distinct from the clown, who sets out to make people laugh and is in on the joke, the point of the fool was that he stumbles into comedy by mistake. Anyone who wants to know about this oddly central figure in Tudor life will find Andersson’s book worthwhile.</p>
<h2>The king’s pet</h2>
<p>Like many court fools, Somers had a reputation for being hot-tempered, sometimes lashing out at the wrong person when tormented. He also, more unusually, had a reputation for falling asleep at inopportune moments. Neither of those things would be tolerated for a moment in a normal courtier, which is presumably the point. He was an anti-courtier, his misbehaviour indulged like a pet’s. Indeed, there is a story that says he slept with the king’s spaniels. He was, the account books tell us, only an intermittent presence at court, since presumably little foolery goes a long way.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Portrait of Henry VIII and his family." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548850/original/file-20230918-29605-8u04z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548850/original/file-20230918-29605-8u04z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=242&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548850/original/file-20230918-29605-8u04z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=242&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548850/original/file-20230918-29605-8u04z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=242&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548850/original/file-20230918-29605-8u04z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548850/original/file-20230918-29605-8u04z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548850/original/file-20230918-29605-8u04z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">William Somers is depicted on the far right of this portrait of Henry VIII and his family.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Sommers#/media/File:Family_of_Henry_VIII_c_1545.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>Somers was, the portraits tell us, beardless like a boy, with his hair close-cropped like a madman. Sadly, he wouldn’t have worn the cockscomb headdress with bells that we imagine, but expensive and distinctive clothes were made for him, to mark him out visually from the normal humans at court. </p>
<p>Somers mostly wore green and his clothes were apparently covered in brightly coloured silk buttons, which were bought for him by the hundred. As that suggests, he wasn’t there chiefly for his witty banter, but to be looked at, laughed at and mocked.</p>
<p>And, it seems, kicked and punched. This was not sophisticated comedy. One of the later sources has Somers say that the king “gave me such a box on the ear, that struck me clean through three chambers, down four pair of stairs, fell over five barrels, into the bottom of the cellar”. This is Looney Tunes stuff.</p>
<p>As Ian Holm’s Napoleon says in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081633/characters/nm0000453">Terry Gilliam’s film Time Bandits</a>: comedy is about “little things hitting each other”. No wonder Henry VIII’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Heywood">court musician and playwright John Heywood</a> had sour grapes about his own commissions drying up while the court still guffawed at this sort of thing. It would be like Shakespeare being sacked and replaced with a troupe of dwarf-wrestlers.</p>
<h2>Nobody’s fool</h2>
<p>But what made Somers so memorable was that courtiers could never quite make up their minds about him. Was he, they repeatedly asked, truly a “natural fool”, or was he an “artificial fool”? Was the joke on him, or on them? Although Andersson’s book is heavy going at times, this central puzzle animates it and keeps the reader guessing to the end.</p>
<p>Take Somers’ most famous witticism. One day when the king was lamenting his poverty, Somers told him it was because he employed so many “frauditors, conveyors and deceivers”. Was that play on the words “auditors, surveyors and receivers” something that someone had taught him, like teaching a parrot to swear? Or was he sharper than he let on?</p>
<p>In the end, Andersson doesn’t buy it. He reckons Somers really was a “natural fool”, “saying what came into his mind, now and then inadvertently stumbling upon a humorous phrasing or unwittingly saying something that could be imbued with comedy”. I’m not so sure. If those who knew him couldn’t make up their mind what he was, it seems foolhardy for us to make a judgement. </p>
<p>By far the best-attested saying of Somers’, for which we have three independent witnesses, is that he would abide by nothing that he had said: warning us, in effect, not to believe a word from him. It’s worth remembering as you read this book. Is the joke on him, or on us?</p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alec Ryrie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The court would laugh at rather than with the fool.Alec Ryrie, Professor of the History of Christianity, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2138852023-09-19T12:21:23Z2023-09-19T12:21:23ZRussell Brand: how the comedy industry uses humour to abuse and silence women<p>Over the last ten years I have been researching the barriers to women’s participation in the <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/standup-comedy-and-contemporary-feminisms-9781350302297/">UK comedy circuit</a>. During that time, it became clear to me that the live comedy industry has a particular susceptibility to fostering spaces of abuse.</p>
<p>Recent <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russell-brand-rape-sexual-assault-abuse-allegations-investigation-v5hxdlmb6?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1694876330">allegations against comedian Russell Brand</a> were published by The Sunday Times, The Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches. Brand has <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CxOooOsIGXd/">denied the allegations</a> in a video posted to his Instagram account.</p>
<p>Much discussion about the allegations has highlighted the possibility that celebrity status can be leveraged to abuse and silence women. There has not been as much attention, however, to the way Brand’s persona as a comedian and the specifics of the comedy industry may have influenced events. </p>
<p>The live comedy industry (as with many creative industries) employs a huge number of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0018726718758880">precarious freelancers</a>. It is therefore sadly unsurprising that power imbalances exist between comedy bookers, producers or household-name talent and those starting out on the circuit. </p>
<p>Comedy as an industry, both in its live and media forms, <a href="http://discover.ticketmaster.co.uk/stateofplay/comedy.pdf">continues to</a> be <a href="https://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/50744/8/00187267221137996.pdf">male dominated</a> and so these power imbalances are gendered. Women and non-binary comedians encounter sexually abusive behaviour and misogyny on the circuit with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/aug/05/creepy-uncomfortable-sexism-harassment-assault-faced-by-female-standups">startling regularity</a>.</p>
<p>But there’s something that can make the industry a particularly toxic environment: the comedy itself. The interactions baked into the live comedy industry (both on and off stage) make it simultaneously easier for those in power (mostly men) to obscure sexually aggressive behaviour and misogyny, and harder for women to speak up against it. </p>
<h2>The only woman</h2>
<p>Until relatively recently, women comedians – when included at all – worked alone on comedy bills. All-male lineups have been prevalent since the Working Men’s Clubs of the 1960s and still cling on in some spaces today. </p>
<p>When women were booked they were there as the “only woman” and were therefore unfairly placed in a position of representing an entire gender. The reasons for this lack of opportunity are linked to <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23501434/women-funny-comedy">stereotypical views</a> about <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2007/01/hitchens200701">women and humour</a>, such as: “women aren’t funny”, “only women are interested in comedy performed by women”, “all women comics talk about the same things” and so on. </p>
<p>Working in isolation makes women more vulnerable to exploitation and prevents them from sharing experiences. This makes it harder to identify and address problems. The lower status of women entering the industry (at a disadvantage after years of unquestioned male dominance), the fact they would almost always be the only woman amid a male lineup, and the late-night context of their work, builds in <a href="https://funnywomen.com/2018/07/17/home-safe-collective/">opportunities for mistreatment and abuse</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1703061000973324509"}"></div></p>
<h2>Comic license</h2>
<p>Being a standup comedian obviously requires a keen sense of humour. Above artistic or aesthetic concerns, the number one priority is to be funny. The need to show comic skill on stage is coupled with the necessity of building personal relationships with bookers and promoters to ensure future work. </p>
<p>The result of this relationship building (which historically has been between male comics and male promoters) is that a very informal way of interacting has developed, where offstage joking or banter is the default. </p>
<p>Comedy is often about pushing boundaries, saying the unsayable and engaging with taboos. As such, some problematic behaviour easily becomes normalised or masked with humour. </p>
<p>This was evident in Channel 4’s <a href="https://www.channel4.com/programmes/russell-brand-in-plain-sight-dispatches">Dispatches broadcast</a>, where former colleagues of Brand described how he regularly took meetings in his underwear – or naked – and this was just chalked up to “Russell being Russell”, aka his cheeky comic self.</p>
<p>This constant testing of and pushing at boundaries, means that when behaviour crosses the line and becomes abusive, the defence of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378216615003380">“it was just a joke”</a> (used widely by men in all aspects <a href="https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/disp-2021-0001">of society</a> to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0959353517727560">excuse the impact</a> of their words and actions) is right there for the taking. </p>
<h2>The ‘humourless prude’</h2>
<p>It’s difficult for women comics to speak out about the sexual abuse or misconduct they experience for many reasons. </p>
<p>First – as was the case for many of the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/from-aggressive-overtures-to-sexual-assault-harvey-weinsteins-accusers-tell-their-stories">2017 #MeToo revelations related to the entertainment industries</a> – there’s the fear of having a career cut short, or being labelled “difficult to work with”.</p>
<p>But in addition to this, in comedy, when calling out problematic behaviour women run the risk of appearing like they cannot take a joke. Most peoples’ careers do not depend on their ability to be humorous or see the funny side of things. </p>
<p>As an academic, if my students or colleagues cross a line, one thing I don’t have to worry about is whether challenging this makes me appear humourless. For women comics, however, this accusation strikes right at the heart of their professional identities – identities that already labour under a huge amount of baggage related to stereotypes about women and comedy.</p>
<p>This <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2040610X.2017.1279914">humourless prude stereotype</a> is particularly resonant with the way feminists have been dismissed when attempting to address sexism in society more broadly.</p>
<p>It is the way women have worked alone, in spaces where boundary pushing is normalised and where to raise concerns would jeopardise both women’s careers as freelancers and call their professional identity as a comic into question, that has made comedy such a hostile environment to navigate.</p>
<p><em>This article was amended on 18 October to include a number of new urls to relevant research.</em></p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ellie Tomsett is the author of Stand-up Comedy and Contemporary Feminisms referenced in the article.</span></em></p>I’ve researched women’s experience of the UK comedy circuit for ten years – this is what I’ve learned.Ellie Tomsett, Senior Lecturer in Media, Birmingham City UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2115752023-08-15T15:56:34Z2023-08-15T15:56:34ZAdults: how a sex play about boomers v millennials brings both together<p>Kieran Hurley’s new play <a href="https://www.traverse.co.uk/whats-on/event/adults-festival-23">Adults</a> brilliantly illuminates an intergenerational clash that should leave <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2008/06/25/baby-boomers-the-gloomiest-generation/">boomers</a> (born between 1945 and 1964) and <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/">millennials</a> (born between 1981 and 1996) in the audience with a little more empathy for each other.</p>
<p>It all starts entertainingly when a strawberry milkshake bursts open in the face of Iain (Conleth Hill) just as he arrives early at the flat of thirtysomething Zara (Dani Heron). Zara is a sex worker who runs her business from home “collectively and ethically”.</p>
<p>Iain, in his 60s, married with two grown-up daughters, is completely out of his comfort zone and there to have sex with a young man: Zara’s business partner, Jay (Anders Hayward), who is running late.</p>
<p>As Iain wipes the pink goo from his face, Zara recognises him as her former teacher Mr Urquhart. And so Hurley sets up his character triangle. For the next 80 minutes, the audience has the pleasure of watching Zara, Iain and Jay argue with, blackmail, and eventually simply hold each other across the generational divide.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/apr/29/millennials-struggling-is-it-fault-of-baby-boomers-intergenerational-fairness">spat</a> between boomers and millennials has been rumbling on for the last few years, pitting the former against their children’s/grandchildren’s generation who are viewed as whiny, lazy snowflakes with an overinflated sense of entitlement.</p>
<p>Conversely, millennials view boomers as the generation that took everything, ruined everything, and have left very little for those who came after. As journalist David Barnett has succinctly <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/millenials-generation-x-baby-boomers-a7570326.html">pointed out</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Boomers live in the past and have ransomed the future. Millennials fear the future and are ignorant of the past.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Envy, resentment, misunderstanding</h2>
<p>Disappointed expectations and repressed resentment bubble up during Zara’s and Iain’s initial confrontation, which plays out in her small one-bedroom flat while she matter-of-factly turns her living space into a brothel, replete with dildo collection (set and costume design: Anna Orton).</p>
<p>Zara, a literature graduate now earning money through sex work, begrudges the older generation their safe careers and settled lifestyles, and resents her teacher for instilling in her the bogus belief she could do anything with her life. Iain, meanwhile, feels trapped and envies the younger generation their seeming freedom, abandon and sexual confidence.</p>
<p>Both are deliberately ignoring the fact that the object of their envy is a fantasy. Iain is oblivious to the fact that the carefreeness of the younger generation (the young men he watches in his videos) is largely performed for a capitalist market that values only these qualities.</p>
<p>Zara’s resentment, meanwhile, doesn’t take into account that the apparent safety of her teacher’s generation came at the expense of not pursuing other, maybe more exciting or fulfilling alternatives.</p>
<p>Their debate treads the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/apr/29/millennials-struggling-is-it-fault-of-baby-boomers-intergenerational-fairness">familiar territory</a> of millennial precarity versus boomer affluence, but is nonetheless supremely entertaining. Spontaneous applause rewards Zara’s viciously eloquent takedown of Iain’s cherished memories of reading his kids Thomas the Tank Engine, which, according to Zara, is simply “pseudo-imperialist nostalgic colonial nonsense … some big nostalgic cry-wank for a lost idea of Britain”. </p>
<p>However, once Jay arrives, with his infant daughter screaming in the pram, the stakes are raised considerably. While Zara berates him for bringing his daughter to work, he insists that she owes him money, thus revealing her talk of an ethical and “non-hierarchical business practice” as hypocritical.</p>
<p>Jay needs money to secure shared custody of his daughter. And when the little one finally goes to sleep, he puts all his expertise into performing the willing, lascivious little “twink” to seduce the inhibited Iain and earn his money.</p>
<h2>Comedy and tragedy</h2>
<p>Hayward and Hill (who played Varys, Master of the Whisperers, in Game of Thrones) excel in this seduction scene that alternates beautifully between moments of physical comedy and verbal exchanges that reveal profound sadness. Hill’s Iain, a sexually inexperienced older man who has never explored his desires, gradually develops into a tentative, then enthusiastic punter who enjoys roleplay – only to revert to the condescending, middle-class teacher who judges Jay for how he earns his money and is scathing about his parenting.</p>
<p>Hayward’s Jay writhes seductively on the floor, performs the invested listener and works his literal butt off, but draws the line at being insulted. When he vindictively posts a compromising picture of Iain on Facebook, the secrets that Iain and Zara have kept from their families are revealed.</p>
<p>Roxana Silbert’s confident direction lets the play text breathe and leaves room for her actors to insert some well-timed physical comedy – Hill sliding/falling off various bits of furniture hits the spot every time. </p>
<p>In the end, Iain, shocked but also relieved that he has nothing more to lose, comes clean to his wife in the face of his very public outing. The humbled Zara acknowledges in yet another reference to children’s literature, this time <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-lorax/dr-seuss/9780007455935">The Lorax by Dr Seuss</a>, that she just might be a “Once-ler” too – meaning to “accept that the world you’re passing on is in a worse state than when you inherited it”.</p>
<p>Before the lights go out, we see Jay, the overwhelmed millennial father, lying on the bed holding the sobbing Iain, while offstage the voice of his crying baby clamours for attention to the coming generation.</p>
<p>With Adults, Hurley, a millennial author himself, seems to appeal to his own generation to let go of their rage, be more understanding of their elders, and accept that, one day, they too will to be blamed for the future. Because as it turns out, confirms Iain: “Everyone always grows up thinking it’s the end of the world.”</p>
<p><em>Adults is showing until August 27 at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh</em></p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ann-Christine Simke is affiliated with the theatre company Stellar Quines. She is a member of the board for the company.</span></em></p>Kieran Hurley’s new play treads the familiar debate of millennial precarity versus boomer affluence with verve and insight.Ann-Christine Simke, Lecturer in Performance, University of the West of ScotlandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2100242023-08-14T15:36:33Z2023-08-14T15:36:33ZBlackadder at 40: the difficult birth of a classic TV comedy<p>As part of this year’s 40th anniversary celebrations of Blackadder, the classic historical BBC comedy series, the pilot episode from 1982 aired for the first time in years on Gold. It’s been hitherto kept under wraps, never broadcast or released on DVD. Why? It’s because it’s simply not Blackadder as we know it.</p>
<p>In a classic episode, you want Blackadder to be a scheming, conniving character who has a hopeless, dimwitted underling named Baldrick and a domineering but clueless master above him. Except it didn’t start that way.</p>
<p>I spoke about the pilot with Lucy Lumsden, boss of <a href="https://www.yellowdoorprods.com/about-us">Yellow Door Productions</a> and former Head of BBC TV Comedy Commissioning, for a book I am in the process of writing on comedy. Lumsden agrees the pilot is all over the place.</p>
<p>Played by Philip Fox, Baldrick is not yet the fool he was to become. He’s slightly useless, as Lumsden notes, “but you’ve got to pull hard in the opposite direction. You want Baldrick to be the total opposite of Blackadder”. </p>
<p>As a writer, if you really embrace the idea of opposites, all you need is one strong, clearly defined character. Then for your next character you just go to the complete opposite of this first one. And now suddenly, you’ve got another good character and the two of them are going to be really funny together.</p>
<p>At least Blackadder is exactly as we want him to be – smart, cynical, sarcastic. </p>
<p>And yet, as Lucy observes, in the pilot, “Blackadder, the character that’s absolutely going to draw the eye and you’ll want to just spend every scene with, doesn’t appear for five minutes! As a viewer, I don’t know where my attention should go in that pilot”.</p>
<p>If you didn’t know otherwise, you’d probably think the protagonist was Robert Bathurst’s Prince Harry character who is alongside the queen in the opening scene. Note to writers: unless there is an absolutely compelling reason not to, introduce us to your brilliant protagonist right away.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Blackadder is his cynical self in the pilot, so at least they have that to build on as they go into series one, right? No, they throw away the one thing that was working about the pilot and instead of being witty and cutting, in the first series Blackadder becomes a Baldrick-style fool. </p>
<p>Baldrick meanwhile, although now played by Tony Robinson, is at this point the smarter one. It’s like coming across an early Jeeves and Wooster novel where Bertie Wooster is level headed and mature and Jeeves is an idiot.</p>
<p>But happily following the pilot and the misfiring first series, they got another chance and the Blackadder we know and love was born.</p>
<h2>A trusted comedic structure</h2>
<p>With a smaller budget than series one, no on location filming and a new writing team (Ben Elton now writing with Richard Curtis), series two returned to Elizabethan times. The domineering master is still Elizabeth I but Elspet Gray’s rather dull queen is replaced by Miranda Richardson doing her now legendary shriekingly childish performance.</p>
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<p>You have the return of the cynical Blackadder from the pilot. With the crazy Queen Elizabeth above him and the – at last – stupid Baldrick below him, you have an ensemble that works. </p>
<p>As I write in my book <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/creating-comedy-narratives-for-stage-and-screen-9781350155787/">Creating Comedy Narratives for Stage and Screen</a>, the classic shape of an ensemble of comedic characters is what I term the boss, striver, fool dynamic. </p>
<p>The boss is the one who is in charge by dint of their role, position in the family or simply because they are the alpha figure. The key to the comedy though is that they are dysfunctional boss figures. </p>
<p>At the opposite end is the self-explanatory fool and stuck in the middle is the protagonist, the striver. Being stuck in the middle is the plight of scores of sitcom characters. They are sitcom’s dreamers. Aspiring to a better life, free of their bookends. </p>
<p>So many sitcoms have this dynamic at their heart, or as part of a wider ensemble. It’s the Sybil, Basil and Manuel of Fawlty Towers. Or the Martin Crane, Frasier and Niles in Fraiser (your fool can be intelligent, what makes them a fool can be their lack of self-awareness or naivety or social awkwardness).</p>
<h2>Seasons of bosses, strivers and fools</h2>
<p>Blackadder is an interesting case to consider with it’s shifting cast of characters from series-to-series. As we’ve seen, in the first Blackadder, he himself was the fool which is unusual for a central character but he was shifted to striver for series two, with the boss Queen Elizabeth I and the fool Baldrick (and Percy).</p>
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<p>In Blackadder the third, set during the Georgian era, Mr. E. Blackadder is a butler to the Prince Regent. Baldrick the fool is Blackadder’s dogsbody. Here Blackadder is of course the striver, the boss became the Prince Regent.</p>
<p>Transported to the trenches of the first world war, Blackadder Goes Forth doubles up all the slots with General Melchett and Field Marshall Haig as bosses. In the striver slot we have Blackadder again, alongside his antagonist Captain Darling. Fools also double up with Baldrick and George, one working class and one upper class.</p>
<p>Looking back to that first season 40-years-ago, it is odd to think that such a beloved comedy could initially have got it so very wrong. While Blackadder was afforded the kind of trial and error that would be unheard of today, for today’s new comedy writers it can be encouraging to see that even masterpieces can have a difficult birth. </p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Head does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The first series had the characters’ roles all the wrong way round. Blackadder was dim, Baldrick clever and the queen was dull. Thankfully they got a second try.Chris Head, Teaching Fellow in Comedy, Bath Spa UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2097532023-08-04T10:27:05Z2023-08-04T10:27:05ZEdinburgh Fringe 2023: how to immerse yourself in the world’s biggest arts festival<p>When the <a href="https://www.eif.co.uk/">Edinburgh International Festival</a> launched in 1947, it was inevitable that a fringe event would follow. Beginning with just eight companies of performers in five venues, the <a href="https://www.edfringe.com">Edinburgh Festival Fringe</a> (known as “the Fringe”) is now the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-62427442">biggest arts festival in the world</a>, and welcomes tens of thousands of performers across over 250 venues every August. Given the scale of the Fringe – almost 3,000 productions this month – navigating the array of shows on offer can be a challenge, so a visit needs some planning to make the most of your time and budget.</p>
<h2>First things first</h2>
<p>Many famous performers and writers found their big break at the Fringe, including <a href="https://thegentlewoman.co.uk/library/phoebe-waller-bridge">Phoebe Waller-Bridge</a>, when her hit show <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p070npjv">Fleabag</a> premiered in 2013. The tradition of discovering emerging stars, especially those who have won an award, is often characterised by winning a <a href="https://www.edfringe.com/learn/news-and-events/final-fringe-first-winners-announced">Fringe First</a>.</p>
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<span class="caption">Phoebe Waller-Bridge brought Fleabag to the Fringe in 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebe_Waller-Bridge#/media/File:FleabagWyndham290819-3_(cropped).jpg">Raph PH / Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Most famously, the comedy award (formerly and best-known as the Perrier Award) is given to outstanding comedians and has been won in the past by <a href="https://www.contactmusic.com/steve-coogan">Steve Coogan</a>, <a href="https://www.bridgetchristie.co.uk/what-on-earth-is-bridget-christie/">Bridget Christie</a>, <a href="http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/1210573/index.html">Dylan Moran</a>, <a href="http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/476881/index.html">Emma Thompson</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/lily-savage-how-paul-ogrady-helped-embed-drag-in-the-british-mainstream-202910">Lily Savage</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/aug/26/the-league-of-gentlemen-review-stage-tour">The League of Gentlemen</a> among many other household names. The scale of the Fringe, however, means that it’s difficult to know who or what might be the next big thing. Based on many enjoyable years of attending the festival, here are my top tips.</p>
<h2>Before you go: do your homework</h2>
<p>Looking at the <a href="https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on#q=*%3A*">programme online</a> to plan your visit is almost as daunting as attending the Fringe itself. In August, Edinburgh can feel like a strange planet. Everywhere you turn you’re confronted with impromptu acts of performance, colourful characters and flyers decorating the city’s old streets advertising myriad shows. Spending some time in advance choosing what to watch can help curate a more fulfilling experience. </p>
<p>Usefully, the Fringe website has a <a href="https://tickets.edfringe.com/plan-your-fringe">tool for planning</a> which helps schedule your chosen shows to ensure you will be in the right place at the right time. Downloading the <a href="https://www.edfringe.com/experience/app">the Fringe app</a> is also essential, now that all tickets are digital. </p>
<p>When deciding what to see, first consider your preferences. Put simply, what do you enjoy? It can be tempting to seek out what might be considered serious or worthy. After all, the world’s talent is gathered within a few square miles. For me, as a researcher of performance, the Fringe is an opportunity to indulge in theatre that engages the senses, and experience a city that is intensely alive with performers, spectators and transient inhabitants. </p>
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<h2>Dive right in</h2>
<p>In recent years, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/immersive-theatre">immersive performance</a> – a highly sensory experience for the spectator – has grown in popularity, and this is no exception at the Fringe. During the festival, Edinburgh itself feels like one big immersive performance. Everywhere the city is alive with sights, sounds, smells, tastes and tactile experiences to be enjoyed.</p>
<p>To kick things off, I recommend seeking out an immersive theatre experience. <a href="https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/without-sin">Without Sin</a> (at Summerhall) is described as a “contemporary confessional for the modern sinner” for an audience of two. Produced by <a href="https://www.unqualified-design.com/people">Unqualified Design Studio</a>, this show places the spectator at the heart of the action. While short at just 15 minutes, Without Sin promises to be an intensive experience.</p>
<p>At the <a href="https://trust.pleasance.co.uk/content/edinburgh-pleasance-dome-0">Pleasance Dome</a>, another immersive show, <a href="https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on#q=eulogy">Eulogy</a>, offers a “surreal, otherworldly journey through a dreamlike, labyrinthine hotel that exists entirely in your mind”. Like other immersive theatre, Eulogy offers a good deal of agency for the participant-spectator. The producing company, <a href="https://www.darkfield.org">Darkfield</a>, is known for using technology to create immersive experiences, both in-person and through an <a href="https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/darkfield/id1586116023">app</a>.</p>
<p>Darkfield’s second show at the Fringe is <a href="https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/seance">Séance</a>, which transforms a shipping container into a Victorian séance. While the audience is plunged into darkness, it’s for a mercifully short time, but it should certainly heighten your senses, ready to enjoy myriad other Fringe experiences. </p>
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<h2>Something for everyone</h2>
<p>If an immersive theatre experience is not your thing there’s a whole smorgasbord of entertainment ready for tasting, from comedy – traditionally a defining element of the Fringe – to theatre, dance, circus and burlesque. Whether you find joy in watching a comedian competing to win the <a href="https://www.timeout.com/edinburgh/edinburgh-fringe-best-jokes">Joke of the Fringe</a>, or you want to see some world-class <a href="https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on#fq=category%3A%22Dance%2C%20Physical%20Theatre%20and%20Circus%22&q=*%3A*">dance and physical theatre</a> or even something to <a href="https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on#fq=category%3A%22Children's%20Shows%22&q=*%3A*">entertain your children</a>, the Fringe is so broad everyone will find something that appeals. </p>
<p>As a spectator, having a “successful” Fringe experience doesn’t necessarily mean catching the big zeitgeist comedian or bagging tickets for the latest show from a star actor. A successful visit to the Fringe might just mean you’ve soaked up the atmosphere, seen some interesting shows and come away feeling stimulated by the experience. </p>
<p>Sometimes that can include seeing a bad show. Seeing something truly terrible is all part of the Fringe experience and can help us hone our instincts for the good stuff in future. As can seeing something wonderful that has only a handful of people in the audience, giving you bragging rights of the “I saw them at a tiny venue with three people and a dog at the Fringe” variety, when it produces future stars of stage and comedy.</p>
<p>So, while it’s impossible to offer a failproof guide to navigating the Fringe, a little forethought and planning will pay off when you’re there. Even booking ahead for a couple of shows creates a focus for a day at the Fringe and can prevent feeling overwhelmed by what to see. And just like immersive theatre, sometimes all we need is a faint sense of what to do and then let our instincts guide us. </p>
<p><em>The Edinburgh Festival Fringe runs August 4-28</em></p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Layton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There will be almost 3,000 shows playing at this year’s Fringe, which can feel a little daunting, especially for the first timer. Here’s how to get it right.James Layton, Lecturer in Performance, University of the West of ScotlandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2097102023-07-20T11:03:25Z2023-07-20T11:03:25ZNo Hard Feelings: a sex comedy that makes the case for friendship over romance<p><em>This article contains spoilers.</em></p>
<p>Jennifer Lawrence’s new film No Hard Feelings is a modern-day <a href="https://theconversation.com/welcome-to-the-new-feminism-where-the-aim-is-to-gross-you-out-65579">feminist</a> sex comedy, enlivened by ribald humour and occasional gross-out moments. But it’s also a crucible for working through a range of cultural anxieties dogging both romantic comedies and the wider popular culture.</p>
<p>Lawrence’s promiscuous, in-your-face bartender and Uber driver Maddie (32) is hired by wealthy helicopter parents to seduce their nerdy virgin son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) before he starts college to enhance his confidence and social prospects. In this film, sex is a site of juvenile innuendo (see the title) and also of authentic emotion, as Percy’s physical vulnerability leads to bonding. </p>
<p>No Hard Feelings shares common ground here with several other recent tales of coupledom in making eroticised physical closeness apparently not a big deal yet at the same time the biggest of deals. However, the movie does offer a novel take even on the recent trend.</p>
<h2>The importance of sex</h2>
<p>In my work as a film academic, <a href="https://theconversation.com/has-less-sex-in-real-life-led-to-more-raunch-on-our-screens-169225">I have suggested</a> that sex and romance have been culturally separated, if not opposed in different ways, throughout history. </p>
<p>After the 1970s, sex was notionally absorbed into romance but its actual contours were downplayed in mainstream cinema. Now, in an era where sex itself has become a <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-have-been-having-less-sex-whether-theyre-teenagers-or-40-somethings/">relatively scarce commodity</a>, the very act has gained <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Imagining-We-in-the-Age-of-I-Romance-and-Social-Bonding-in-Contemporary/Harrod-Leonard-Negra/p/book/9780367483272">elevated currency</a>.</p>
<p>While sex is more valuable, contemporary representations of it retain their anti-romantic <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/13/movies/sex-comedies-no-hard-feelings-joy-ride.html">messiness</a>. This is partly as a reaction against the rise of sterile digital cultures, like the screens to which Percy and his friends are often glued. Sex is real, untidy and essentially human while life online is clean but cold. </p>
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<p>The film is geared towards Percy finally having sex: a moment, his parents hope, will bring out hidden qualities in him as he embarks on a fresh chapter in life. When it finally happens, in true gross-out, teen romantic comedy-style, it’s not sexy and Percy ejaculates instantly on contact with Maddie’s bare thighs. </p>
<p>What is striking is that this exchange, as touching as it is gently humorous, is still accorded greater significance than the traditional cultural trappings of romance. Sex is the climax, everything else a journey to it. </p>
<p>Take the hackneyed dating experiences parodied in a hyperactive montage midfilm. Or even the “polished” sexuality of Maddie’s passionless, over-rehearsed lap-dance, which just leaves Percy disconcerted. None of this “romance” is taken seriously even if it bonds them more. </p>
<h2>Friends with(out) benefits?</h2>
<p>Maddie and Percy’s awkward exchanges don’t lead to dating but ultimately to friendship. </p>
<p>Yet the class and generation-crossing aspects of their relationship, and its foundation in physical intimacy, mean it retains something of a romantic aura just the same. This ambiguity is <a href="https://jprstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/JPRS2.1_Deleyto_RomCom.pdf">a phenomenon more commonly seen in buddy films</a> about same-sex characters, such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJU061IOMMU">I Love You, Man</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvKvus3vCEY">Superbad</a>.</p>
<p>Such an ending is not really in line with what Percy’s parents had in mind. They are pushing him to grow up through sex, which is part of their idea of being a “successful” adult, but it’s not Percy’s.</p>
<p>The casting of Matthew Broderick as Percy’s dad, in homage to the 80s film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, underlines the issue of generational clash. In both films, a car is deliberately wrecked, symbolising revolt against adult ideas of accomplishment. </p>
<p>That such ideas are also couched in economic terms highlights the equal importance of wealth dynamics in the film. </p>
<p>Maddie’s motivation for turning to sex work is to avoid eviction from her late mother’s house in Montauk, Long Island. This aligns quite self-consciously with the anti-gentrification strand of romantic comedies, including You’ve Got Mail, Two Weeks Notice and <a href="https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/after-happily-ever-after">Obvious Child</a>. </p>
<p>No Hard Feelings’ ending minimises its social problems in generically classic utopian style. Maddie raises the money to save her house then decides to sell it at a bargain price to friends in any case. </p>
<p>But at least it steers clear of a <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-21866-0_5">Jane Austen resolution</a>, which would see the ragged beauty smoothly absorbed into capitalist ideology through union with the firstborn of the landed gentry. Instead, real connection and friendship is championed. A refreshing change in a film that tips its hat at every turn to the romances and comedies that came before it. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary Harrod does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A sex comedy that’s more like a buddy film than a romanceMary Harrod, Associate Professor (School of Modern Languages and Cultures), University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2084782023-06-29T20:01:47Z2023-06-29T20:01:47ZHow Deadloch flips the Nordic Noir crime genre on its arse and makes it funny<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534482/original/file-20230628-17-izgacn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C2986%2C1989&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prime Video</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>You know how it starts: a drone shot across an expanse of grey water under a leaden sky accompanied by eerie music and a sense of foreboding. Clearly someone is going to die, if they are not already dead, and a small community will be riven as its dark secrets are exposed to the pale light of a wintry Nordic day. </p>
<p>But we’re in Tasmania, and the dead body is not the violated, naked body of a young white girl, but a bloke whose tongue is missing, possibly eaten by the town’s resident seal, Kevin. </p>
<p>This is Deadloch, the fictional town that is the setting for a comedy crime drama that flips the Nordic Noir genre on its arse, so to speak.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dSUjgUjicME?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<h2>Funny Broadchurch</h2>
<p>The creators of this loving, yet savage, parody of Nordic Noir are Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney. In 2015, they launched <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCGc8JKl5EvE8IjZ_qprNcQ">The Katering Show</a> on YouTube: a web series spoofing the homely genre of the cooking show that eventually found its way onto ABC iview. </p>
<p>They followed it with <a href="https://iview.abc.net.au/show/get-krack-n">Get Krack!n</a>, an attack on the genre of the cheerful but inane television breakfast show. It concluded with a <a href="https://youtu.be/B_SnLymcaZ8">memorable episode</a> in which, left in charge of the couch, Indigenous actor Miranda Tapsell berated the Australian public for their treatment of First Nations people. While it might not have been comedy, it was magnificent in its ferocity. </p>
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<p>Deadloch (2023) continues the Kates’ take-no-prisoners assault on television’s favourite genres with a series they described as “funny Broadchurch” in their pitches to the powers that be. </p>
<p>Apparently, the <a href="https://concreteplayground.com/brisbane/arts-entertainment/the-kates-mclennan-mccartney-interview-deadloch">inspiration emerged</a> from the “explosion of Nordic Noir” they were watching while breastfeeding at in the early mornings of 2015.</p>
<p>As a warning: there’s so much “colourful vernacular” in this series that the creators had to write <a href="https://concreteplayground.com/brisbane/arts-entertainment/the-kates-mclennan-mccartney-interview-deadloch">an essay drawing on Shakespeare’s Bawdy</a> to defend their extensive use of the word “cunt” to the Amazon Prime executives. </p>
<p>Indeed, linguistically, the Kates do for “cunt” what director Martin Scorsese did for “fuck” when it comes to turning a profanity into a rhetorical gesture.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534484/original/file-20230628-29-41qgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534484/original/file-20230628-29-41qgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534484/original/file-20230628-29-41qgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534484/original/file-20230628-29-41qgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534484/original/file-20230628-29-41qgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534484/original/file-20230628-29-41qgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534484/original/file-20230628-29-41qgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534484/original/file-20230628-29-41qgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nina Oyama in Deadloch.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prime Video</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<h2>What is Nordic Noir anyway?</h2>
<p>The impact of Nordic Noir on television production around the world has indeed been significant. British academics Richard McCulloch and William Proctor have described it as a “<a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Scandinavian-Invasion-Nordic-Noir-Beyond/dp/1788740491">Scandinavian invasion</a>”. </p>
<p>While there are those who suggest Nordic Noir may have already passed its use by date, McCulloch and Proctor argue that the ripple effects are still being felt. Crime dramas everywhere continue to riff on the aesthetics and themes of the Scandinavian series that have captured the attention of a global niche audience. </p>
<p>Australia, it might be recalled, was one of the first countries to screen Danish crime shows including Rejeseholdet/Unit One (2000–04) and Ørnen/The Eagle (2004–06), even before Forbrydlesen/The Killing (2007-12) appeared on the SBS2 digital channel in 2010. </p>
<p>While the audiences for these shows may have been small, they included, as academics Pia Majbritt Jensen and Marion McCutcheon say in <a href="https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1535682/FULLTEXT01.pdf">their analysis</a> of the Australian audience for Nordic Noir, the “influential and trend-setting” creatives who would go on to produce new Australian crime dramas in which the traces of Nordic Noir are clearly visible. </p>
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<h2>Australian Noir</h2>
<p>Australian crime dramas with clear Nordic Noir influences have become common. This would include the political thriller Secret City based on a series of books by journalists Steve Lewis and Chris Uhlmann. </p>
<p>Produced by Matchbox pictures for Foxtel Showcase in 2016, Secret City re-imagined Canberra as the sexy setting for a Nordic Noir drama that owed as much to the Danish series Borgen as it did to The Bridge in terms of its aesthetics and style. The politics, however, were resolutely Australian, featuring Australia’s pig-in-the-middle predicament in the US-China power game. </p>
<p>And then there was The Kettering Incident, also produced for Foxtel Showcase by a Tasmanian-based team. While shades of David Lynch’s genre-bending Twin Peaks loomed, Kettering bore more than a passing resemblance to the Swedish eco-thriller Jordskott. </p>
<p>This show encompassed a blonde female protagonist returning home, the mystery of a missing girl, small town politics, environmentalism and supernatural happenings in a mystical forest – not to mention the spectacular drone shots of a misty and mountainous hinterland overlaid in blue and black tones. </p>
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<h2>Flip the colour palette</h2>
<p>Not all story boards for Australian Noir are coloured Antarctic grey. The ABC Indigenous crime drama Mystery Road flipped the colour palette to orange and red in what Bunya Productions producer David Jowsey described as “tropical outback gothic noir”. </p>
<p>Mystery Road managed to retain the measured pace of Nordic Noir and <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/sofia-helin-swaps-chilly-nordic-noir-for-outback-gothic-mystery-road-20200403-p54gu0.html">exquisite attention</a> to a monumental and threatened landscape, while focusing on Indigenous issues. </p>
<p>They even imported Sofia Helin, star of The Bridge, for series two as a Swedish archaeologist digging in the iron-red dirt of the Kimberley for Indigenous artefacts. </p>
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<h2>Potty-mouthed satire</h2>
<p>Which brings us back to Deadloch and the apotheosis of the Australian assimilation of Nordic Noir as a potty-mouthed satire that is also a feisty feminist take on the more usual gender politics of the crime drama. </p>
<p>Instead of a mismatched male and female cop from different cultural backgrounds, we have a couple of mismatched female detectives whose initially testy relationship gradually ameliorates as they join forces in the quest for the truth.</p>
<p>Rather than a married male detective having problems at home, we have a female detective whose lesbian wife needs constant affirmation. Replacing the sexually violated female victims naked on the autopsy table, we have dead men with missing tongues and a self-important fool of a male forensic examiner who misses all the important stuff. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/miss-fisher-and-her-fans-how-a-heroine-on-australias-small-screen-became-a-global-phenomenon-131673">Miss Fisher and her fans: how a heroine on Australia's small screen became a global phenomenon</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>As in the best Nordic Noir, there appears to be a serial killer at work who is trying to send some kind of a message through the murders, but what is it? Is it personal or political – or both? </p>
<p>In the meantime, everyone in this female-centric community, from the mayorette to the members of the lesbian choir singing I Touch Myself at the Winter Feastival, is a suspect. It just couldn’t get any better.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208478/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sue Turnbull has received funding from the Australian Research Council for two projects related to this article. LP 180100626 Valuing Web Series: Economic, Industrial, Cultural and Social Valuation, and DP 1600102510 Border Crossing: The Transnational Career of the TV Crime Drama.
</span></em></p>Deadloch is a potty-mouthed satire that is also a feisty feminist take on the more usual gender politics of the Nordic Noir crime drama.Sue Turnbull, Senior Professor of Communication and Media Studies, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2060482023-05-26T12:28:31Z2023-05-26T12:28:31ZNot all political comedy is equal – how comics can either depress turnout or activate voters in 2024<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528359/original/file-20230525-22956-3hhbom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=119%2C119%2C4528%2C3143&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former President Donald Trump's many missteps made him an easy target for amateur jokesters.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/protester-dressed-in-a-trump-costume-at-washington-square-news-photo/1229152211?adppopup=true">Ron Adar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Biden is old. Trump has weird hair. Biden mangles the English language. Trump barely seems to understand it. </p>
<p>There’s no question that it is easy to make fun of the two top presidential candidates for 2024. </p>
<p>But as I explain in my new book, “<a href="https://www.routledge.com/Trump-Was-a-Joke-How-Satire-Made-Sense-of-a-President-Who-Didnt/Mcclennen/p/book/9781032278018">Trump Was a Joke: How Satire Made Sense of a President Who Didn’t</a>,” not all political comedy is equal. </p>
<p>Jokes that focus on physical traits – fat bellies, bald heads, bumbling speech – foster negative candidate views that can exhaust voters, as does mocking scandals, whether it’s the mishandling of classified documents, sexual misconduct or family drama. </p>
<p>In contrast, satire – which centers on faulty logic, abuses of power and flawed thinking – can compel citizens to volunteer, donate to campaigns and vote.</p>
<h2>Averting apathy</h2>
<p>A key factor to watch this election cycle is voter fatigue. </p>
<p>There was <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/01/28/turnout-soared-in-2020-as-nearly-two-thirds-of-eligible-u-s-voters-cast-ballots-for-president/">record turnout</a> during the 2020 election. Nearly two-thirds of eligible voters cast a vote, 7 percentage points higher than in 2016. However, <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/639900087/Yahoonews-Toplines-Crosstabs-20230417">recent polling data</a> suggests that 2024 may be different, with 38% of voters saying they were already exhausted at the prospect of another matchup between Trump and Biden.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2016.12.003">Voter fatigue</a> typically translates into lower voter turnout, and low voter turnout correlates to weaker democratic institutions. </p>
<p>This is where comedy comes in. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2011.577087">Humor can alleviate</a> depression, fear, sadness and other negative emotions.</p>
<p>The catch, though, is that even if humor combats exhaustion, it might replace it with negative views of the candidates and cynicism about the entire democratic system.</p>
<h2>Mocking leads to burnout</h2>
<p>Political comedy is complex and highly varied, but it can be divided roughly into two camps: <a href="https://bigthink.com/articles/its-not-just-a-joke-the-ethics-of-mocking-someone-appearance/">mockery</a> and <a href="https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/what-satire">satire</a>. Mocking comedy tends to negatively affect political participation in two ways. It can create negative views of candidates, and this, in turn, can lead to voter apathy.</p>
<p>Communications professor S. Robert Lichter and political scientists Jody C. Baumgartner and Jonathan S. Morris surveyed years of joke data in <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Politics-Is-a-Joke-How-TV-Comedians-Are-Remaking-Political-Life/Lichter-Baumgartner-Morris/p/book/9780813347172">their 2015 book</a>, “Politics is a Joke!” They concluded that the political humor on late-night television was inherently negative and tended to focus more on scandals than on policy. What’s more, they found that there was a connection between negative jokes and negative public perceptions of candidates.</p>
<p>The catch, though, is that voter apathy will happen only if voters feel burned out by both candidates, because that leads to exhaustion with the system they represent.</p>
<p>During the 2008 election, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin found herself the butt of countless jokes, while then-presidential candidate Barack Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, were largely able to duck the searing critiques of comics.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vSOLz1YBFG0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Tina Fey’s first impression of Sarah Palin aired on ‘Saturday Night Live’ in September 2008.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41345969">Research shows that</a> Tina Fey’s impression of Palin on “Saturday Night Live” as a fool who was ill-equipped for national office changed perceptions of Palin – and, most importantly, were even more likely to negatively affect the views of independents and Republicans.</p>
<p>After Trump was elected in 2016, <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2017/0512/Is-edgier-political-comedy-making-America-worse">some worried</a> that late-night comedy had become too partisan, which could make it less effective and more divisive. </p>
<p>Yet, concerns that late night leans too much to the left – and therefore has a negative effect on politics – may miss the fact that jokes that mock Trump can help remind Democrats that they don’t want him back in office. Similarly, right-wing memes and mockery of Biden – the sort of humor that can be found on <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23440579/comedy-wars-greg-gutfeld-jon-stewart-stephen-colbert-liberal-conservative">Greg Gutfeld’s comedy show on Fox News</a> – can motivate Trump voters to support their candidate. </p>
<p>In the end, it is the jokes that suggest that both candidates are not worth voting for that have the highest risk of depressing turnout.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man in suit sits in chair while grinning." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528366/original/file-20230525-15-y0cn12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528366/original/file-20230525-15-y0cn12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528366/original/file-20230525-15-y0cn12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528366/original/file-20230525-15-y0cn12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528366/original/file-20230525-15-y0cn12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528366/original/file-20230525-15-y0cn12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528366/original/file-20230525-15-y0cn12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some see ‘Gutfeld!’ as a conservative answer to the left-leaning bias of late-night television.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/greg-gutfeld-hosts-fncs-gutfeld-at-fox-news-channel-news-photo/1466195423?adppopup=true">Steven Ferdman/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Satire spurs voter engagement</h2>
<p>In contrast with mocking, negative comedy, satirical comedy uses ironic wit to engage critical thinking about the status quo. This means that there is a marked difference between most late-night comedy and the specific genre of political satire, which can be found on “The Daily Show” and “Last Week Tonight.”</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2014.891133">Research by communication professors Hoon Lee and Nojin Kwak</a> indicated that satirical comedy engages viewers and makes them more interested in being politically active. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqaa041">Another recent study</a> found that humor increases the likelihood to share political information with others and enhances information recall – both of which increase voter engagement. And audiences of political satire <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X05280074">have been shown</a> to have more confidence in their political views and a better understanding of the issues.</p>
<p>Furthermore, satirical comedy creates a community ready to engage and participate in politics. In her 2011 book “<a href="https://iupress.org/9780253222817/satire-and-dissent/">Satire and Dissent</a>,” English professor Amber Day explains that satirical comedy has “an integral community-building function, which is a crucial component of nurturing a political movement.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Porta potties with signs reading 'Joe Biden voting booth.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528363/original/file-20230525-15-t2j71z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528363/original/file-20230525-15-t2j71z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528363/original/file-20230525-15-t2j71z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528363/original/file-20230525-15-t2j71z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528363/original/file-20230525-15-t2j71z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528363/original/file-20230525-15-t2j71z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528363/original/file-20230525-15-t2j71z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joe Biden is targeted with some good old-fashioned toilet humor.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/toilets-labels-joe-biden-voting-booth-sit-at-a-trump-news-photo/1229014777?adppopup=true">Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After Trump was elected in 2016, left-wing filmmaker and activist Michael Moore called for Trump’s critics to <a href="https://twitter.com/mmflint/status/828878620563222528?lang=ga">form an army of comedy</a>. He knew from his own work as a satirist and activist that politically engaged comedy can help mobilize communities. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12501">Academic research confirms</a> Moore’s instincts, showing that people who consume satire are more likely to attend rallies, discuss politics, donate to a political party, wear political buttons and vote than viewers of traditional late-night comedy shows.</p>
<p>When actor Kal Penn guest hosted “The Daily Show” in March 2023, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDye3lPbXYg">he did a segment</a> on how the Republican Party is fixated on “woke culture.” He performed a spoof of the hit TV series “House,” in which he tries to diagnose a patient with “woke mind virus,” asking the patient questions like, “Are you pissed off that Mr. Potato Head doesn’t have a penis?”</p>
<p>He then jokingly explains that being woke “is the greatest threat facing civilization” – a position held by many on the right, but one that becomes especially absurd in the context of Penn’s skit. </p>
<p>These kinds of bits have the potential to help the young voting demographic watching these clips engage with the election and vote. They also help frame political positions in ways that make the stakes of the next election easy to grasp. </p>
<p>So, as an exhausted electorate heads into the 2024 election, the question won’t be whether there will be political comedy – it will be whether it mocks the country’s democratic system or helps make it stronger.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206048/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sophia A. McClennen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While derision and mockery permeate airwaves and social media feeds, satire holds the key to creating a more informed, engaged electorate.Sophia A. McClennen, Professor of International Affairs and Comparative Literature, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2014972023-05-12T11:14:01Z2023-05-12T11:14:01ZSeinfeld: how a sitcom ‘about nothing’ changed television for good<p>A quarter of a century ago, on 14 May 1998, the final episode of Seinfeld was broadcast, ending one of the most significant sitcoms of all time after nine seasons and 180 episodes. In fact the self-styled “show about nothing” was so important we can talk about the pre-Seinfeld and post-Seinfeld eras. </p>
<p>Set in Manhattan, Seinfeld focused on the minutiae of daily life for four friends: Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld), his best friend, George Costanza (Jason Alexander), his ex-girlfriend Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and his neighbour Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards). </p>
<p>Such a setup might sound familiar to fans of 90s American comedy shows. But Seinfeld abandoned the traditional sitcom structure of an A story and a B story and instead gave each character their own storyline, full of self-aware and metatextual jokes.</p>
<p>While co-creators Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld wanted a single-camera, filmlike aesthetic, the network, NBC, forced them to adopt a multi-camera setup taped in front of a live studio audience to supply the laughter track. </p>
<p>Eventually, David and Seinfeld subverted that by shooting more scenes using single cameras and externally so that they could not be taped in front of a studio audience. They also employed a rapid-paced, quick-cutting, music-led style that was then unusual for sitcoms. </p>
<p>This created the opportunities for expanding the narrative and cinematographic possibilities we’ve seen since. Seinfeld was a forerunner of the cinematic television we watch today. </p>
<p>Consider the elaborate single-camera set pieces of the comedy The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon Prime, or the epic, cinematic look of Netflix’s Better Call Saul.</p>
<p>Seinfeld tackled a host of then-taboo topics, which were part of everyday life, including antisemitism, same-gender relationships and masturbation. But because censorship and social mores at that time would not allow the characters to say the word “masturbation”, instead they referred to who can be the “master of their domain”. Such topics are commonplace these days.</p>
<p>All four characters are antiheroes. None of them is particularly likeable nor were they intended to be. They are morally ambiguous, malicious, selfish, self-involved and extremely petty. They refuse to improve themselves, evolve or even manifest the slightest desire for change. They learn no lessons and the arc of the entire series revisits those they have wronged. </p>
<p>Similar characters can be found in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367279/">Arrested Development</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472954/">It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia</a>. Also, consider Walter White from <a href="https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/70143836">Breaking Bad</a> and <a href="https://www.hbo.com/the-sopranos">Tony Soprano</a>.</p>
<p>If all four leads in Seinfeld are bad, then George is the worst. Modelled on co-creator, Larry David, he is the epitome of male privilege. Such characters populate the televisual landscape today, not least in David’s later show, <a href="https://www.hbo.com/curb-your-enthusiasm">Curb Your Enthusiasm</a>, in which he stars as a version of himself. </p>
<p>Elaine Benes stands out as a strong female character for the time. In one episode, in the face of a shortage of contraception, she judges whether her sexual partners are “sponge-worthy” or not. Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays her with a tremendous physical comedy, as well as comic timing. She was unapologetic, and her sexuality and work life are foregrounded. Clearly, this set the template for her later series, <a href="https://www.hbo.com/veep">Veep</a>. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Festivus is celebrated on December 23 each year, thanks to Seinfeld.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The show generated billions of dollars in revenue, making NBC US$150 million (about £93 million) a year at its peak. By the ninth and final season, Jerry Seinfeld was earning US$1 million an episode. NBC executives tried to get him to return for a tenth season by offering him US$5 million an episode, but Seinfeld turned it down. </p>
<p>Among the show’s fans was the legendary director Stanley Kubrick. “He was crazy about The Simpsons and Seinfeld,” his friend <a href="https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/kubrick-by-michael-herr/">Michael Herr recounted</a>. As a Kubrick expert, I even suspect that the set design influenced his final film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120663/">Eyes Wide Shut</a> (1999).</p>
<p>Watching Seinfeld again now – and I have re-watched every episode – some of it lands terribly today. Take the episodes with Babu Bhatt, a Pakistani immigrant who runs a restaurant across the street from Jerry’s apartment. He appears in three episodes of the show and is known for his catchphrase, “Very bad man!” which he uses to insult Jerry. </p>
<p>The problem is that Babu is played by actor Brian George, who was born in Jerusalem to Iraqi Jewish parents, and is clearly wearing makeup and affecting a south Asian accent. </p>
<p>At the same time, the lack of diversity in Seinfeld is striking. New York is represented by Manhattan alone, rather than any of the other four boroughs that make up the metropolis. Its image of the Big Apple is white and middle class. </p>
<p>As journalist and screenwriter Lindy West has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/09/politically-correct-jerry-seinfeld-comedy-marginalised-voices">observed</a>, the series featured only 19 black people, 18 of whom were one-off characters such as “the waiter” and “the guy who parks cars”. There was only one recurring black character – Kramer’s lawyer, Jackie Chiles – whose mimicry of OJ Simpson’s lawyer, Johnnie Cochran, makes him look like a real shyster. </p>
<p>So, while Seinfeld may feel like a dated product of the late 1990s, it was ahead of the curve aesthetically, structurally and in terms of narrative and characterisation. Today’s television would be unthinkable without it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201497/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nathan Abrams has received funding from research councils and charities including the AHRC and The British Academy among others. </span></em></p>The 90s sitcom featuring Jerry Seinfeld influenced the type of cinematic television we are so familiar with nowadays.Nathan Abrams, Professor of Film Studies, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2001152023-02-20T15:16:17Z2023-02-20T15:16:17ZMuch Ado About Nothing: National Youth Theatre gives Shakespeare the Love Island treatment<p>“<a href="https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/56469/1/love-relationships-type-on-paper-dead-love-island-ekin-su">What’s your type on paper?</a>” is frequently asked by contestants on the popular reality dating show <a href="https://theconversation.com/love-island-what-the-show-can-teach-young-people-about-commitment-185459">Love Island</a>. “Rich, that’s certaine” responds Benedick, a contestant on “Nothing Island”, who appears to know exactly what he likes. “Wise, or I’ll none”, “virtuous”, “fair”, “mild” – though he concedes he is not fussed about hair colour.</p>
<p>In this <a href="https://www.nyt.org.uk/MuchAdo">National Youth Theatre production</a> celebrating their tenth anniversary, poet and playwright Debris Stevenson (<a href="https://royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/poetindacorner/">Poet in Da Corner</a>) adapts Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing as the final segment of reality TV show “Nothing Island”. “If it ain’t love,” executive producer Leonato (Jessica Enemokwu) says: “it’s Nothing”.</p>
<p>Stevenson’s production is sprinkled with quotations from other Shakespeare plays. “To thine own self be true,” cautions on-set therapist Dr Dogberry (a brilliant new lease of life for Shakespeare’s nightwatch policeman). “To sleep perchance to dream,” says the executive producer as the islanders turn in the night before the finale. </p>
<p>However, King Lear’s caution: “Nothing comes from nothing” might be the overriding concern, as this production sets Shakespeare’s coupling and uncoupling within the nihilistic and superficial world of reality TV.</p>
<p>The concept, however, is an effective springboard. As Stevenson and director Josie Daxter explain: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We were forced to lean into the shared, uncomfortable realities of the play [patriarchy, misogyny, racism] and the TV show [superficiality, racism, heteronormativity] in order to expose and critique them. The lens made us braver.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Through innovative approaches, theatre productions can make the historical values of Shakespeare’s plays <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Political_Shakespeare.html?id=K2UgAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">both understandable and relevant</a> to modern audiences. This is exactly what has been achieved here.</p>
<h2>Staging reality</h2>
<p>The TV production set frames all the play’s action, in a coherent, if claustrophobic, 90-minute run time. What audiences see of the play, they also simultaneously see being manipulated by a production team for an off-stage TV audience, whose torrent of caustic, sentimental and superficial social media interjections appear on screens above the action.</p>
<p>The rationale for the villainy in Shakespeare’s original plot has shifted. Don John is still the disaffected and illegitimate sibling – now sister – of Don Pedro (both decried as “nepo babies”). However, in this adaptation, she is more puppet than puppeteer.</p>
<p>Conrad (played brilliantly by Tomas Azócar-Nevin) is now the arch manipulator as an ambitious “story producer”. With an eye over all the action, Conrad seeds rumours that bloom into reality TV gold. He whispers in people’s ears (headsets) providing prompts and cues. </p>
<p>At the height of one character’s public humiliation, when they are jilted at the altar and presumed dead, he says: “Oh! I think we are going to win a Bafta.”</p>
<p>The reality show elements of the diary room (soliloquies), staged competitions (Benedick and Beatrice’s first encounter is a girls v boys “rap battle”) and parties (the masked ball), map uncannily well onto the plot devices and structure of Shakespeare’s comedy.</p>
<p>Will surprise couple Beatrice and Benedick win this year, or will it be Hero, back from the brink of death, and her lover/abuser Claudio (Jez Davess-Humphrey)? The executive producer, herself a black woman, articulates her cynical certainty that TV audiences will never vote for someone who looks like her.</p>
<p>There are also some tensions or distortions produced by this amalgamation. That Beatrice still requires Benedick, a man, to “kill Claudio”, is <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/6048">a hangover of Shakespeare’s patriarchal society</a> that feels out of kilter with the equality of the 50/50 gender split cast and female-led creative team.</p>
<p>Stevenson’s language is predominantly true to Shakespeare’s original play, with some deft interpolations and witty disjunctures: “I must cancel your company”, declares Benedick to Don Pedro. </p>
<p>However, the decision to keep other bits of original text (“he is as civil as an orange”, says Beatrice of the jealous Claudio, a pun on the sour imported Seville oranges of the 17th century, played here as a piece of nonsense), is unnecessary.</p>
<p>In other instances, Shakespeare’s verse is shown to excellent effect as rap and spoken word, though some of the play’s chipper couplets (“If it proves so, then loving goes by haps/ Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps”) could have been made more of.</p>
<p>Overall, this youth adaptation speaks with wit to a generation saturated in reality television and social media versions of love, who have missed out on real social contact during the COVID pandemic. The cynicism of the exposed reality TV strategies is counterbalanced by the warmth and joy of an assembled audience who laugh, gasp and click their fingers at this fast-paced and witty production.</p>
<p>If you want to know what love is, this adaptation suggests: switch off the reality TV and turn to Shakespeare instead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200115/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Penelope Woods has previously received funding from The Arts Council and The Arts and Humanities Research Council.
She is a member of the Labour Party.</span></em></p>Shakespeare’s Conrad is now an ambitious ‘story producer’. With an eye over all the ‘Nothing Island’ action, he seeds rumours that bloom into reality TV gold.Penelope Woods, Lecturer, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1997042023-02-10T14:52:55Z2023-02-10T14:52:55ZFawlty Towers reboot: with farces out and ‘dramedies’ in, audiences could see a darker side of Basil Fawlty<p>Approaching its 50th anniversary, Fawlty Towers is back in the news, due to the announcement of a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/feb/08/why-the-fawlty-towers-remake-is-a-truly-nauseating-idea-john-cleese"> reboot</a> where Basil Fawlty is now running a boutique hotel in the Caribbean with his daughter – to be played by Cleese’s real-life daughter, stand-up comedian Camilla Cleese. One question this raises is how on earth did Basil Fawlty, the cantankerous parochial hotelier in the English seaside, somehow end up in the Caribbean? A second question is why are they bringing the show back at all?</p>
<p>Stylistically <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/feb/17/john-cleese-farce-bang-bang-fawlty-towers-rat-manuel-feydeau">Fawlty Towers is a farce</a>, which is a genre of comedy built around a series of increasingly absurd, exaggerated and improbable situations.</p>
<p>Sitcom wise, the last great farce was <a href="https://tvovermind.com/frasiers-complicated-relationship-farce/">Frasier</a>. But despite the extraordinary stage farce <a href="https://www.whatsonstage.com/bath-theatre/news/felicity-kendal-noises-off-tour_56103.html">Noises Off being revived</a> for a 40th-anniversary production, rebooting Fawlty Towers as a farce in the 21st century would be a mistake. </p>
<p>That’s because, as a form, the farce has been eclipsed by <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/writersroom/authors/23951ea4-203f-4ea3-b6ad-479516c05209">comedy drama</a> (aka “dramedy”). </p>
<h2>An unstable tower of lies</h2>
<p>Fawlty Towers was released at a time when farce was a dominant cultural form – joined, for example, by Bedroom Farce by Alan Ayckbourn (National Theatre, London 1975) and the works of Ray Cooney. Farces are powered by a lie that gets out of control, the comedy driven by the increasingly desperate attempts of the protagonist to keep the lie going and all the chaos and absurdity this causes. </p>
<p>In a Fawlty Towers plot, for instance, Basil tells an initial lie to get out of a tight spot, then is forced into more and more convoluted lies in order to sustain the original lie, until it all becomes too convoluted and comes crashing down.</p>
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<p>In classic stage farces, you’ll often find a lover hiding in a wardrobe of a hotel bedroom. In a nod to this kind of bedroom farce, in the “Kipper and the Corpse” episode of Fawlty Towers, Basil – along with a reluctant waiter Manuel and maid Polly – have carried the deceased guest Mr Leeman’s body out of his room whereupon resident guest Miss Tibbs sees the corpse and becomes hysterical. </p>
<p>On Basil’s urging, Polly slaps her to bring her to her senses but applies too much force and knocks her out cold. In a panic, they manhandle both the unconscious Miss Tibbs and the corpse into a nearby empty bedroom and hide them in the wardrobe. At which point – like the unfaithful wife’s husband – the couple who are staying in the room return and, of course, want to get something from their wardrobe.</p>
<p>Having an unconscious pensioner and a dead body inside is certainly upping the ante on the classic lover “hiding in the wardrobe” scenario.</p>
<h2>A more serious spiral</h2>
<p>If the show returned in the form of a farce, it would feel chronically dated alongside today’s best comedies that are a heady mix of comedy and drama. A case in point is the celebrated White Lotus, itself set in a hotel but with a class of guest that Basil could only dream of.</p>
<p>Comedy dramas have all the gloss of big-budget dramas and tackle darker and deeper subjects within their comedic frame than the traditional TV sitcom ever could. </p>
<p>The first season of White Lotus, in a pleasing echo of Basil Fawlty, has hotelier Armond, a tall moustachioed volcano of emotion covered up by a supercilious exterior. Armond, however, goes in directions Basil never would. He’s gay and a recovering addict, who falls spectacularly off the wagon and runs amok – leading to <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/08/white-lotus-season-1-finale-murray-bartlett-armond-interview">a death</a> with more gravity and consequences than the demise of Mr Leeman.</p>
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<p>But like Fawlty Towers, at the heart of the comedy, are lies that spiral out of control. For example, Armond claims to not have found a lost rucksack belonging to two young guests because this bag is his supply of drugs. Armond also continuously lies to cover up his incorrect booking of a room – a lie that spirals spectacularly out of control collides with his drug taking and leads to a grisly finish. </p>
<p>While the style and subject matter changes, the fundamentals of comedy remain the same. So it’s not that the new Basil shouldn’t be a chronic liar losing control of his falsehoods, but rather that stylistically the revival would be better off being in the dramedy mode, like White Lotus. This also opens up the show to the delicious possibility of a much darker and wilder Basil Fawlty.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199704/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Head does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Lies that spiral out of control feature in both farce and ‘dramedy’ - but the latter deals with more serious issues.Chris Head, Associate lecturer in Comedy, Bath Spa UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1985692023-01-27T12:21:27Z2023-01-27T12:21:27ZDeep Fake Neighbour Wars: ITV’s comedy shows how AI can transform popular culture<p>ITVX’s <a href="https://www.itv.com/presscentre/ep1weekweek-04-2024-sat-21-jan-fri-27-jan/deep-fake-neighbour-wars-itvx">Deep Fake Neighbour Wars</a> is the breakthrough in television’s use of artificial intelligence that experts in the cultural use of deepfakes like myself have been waiting for.</p>
<p>In this six-part series, celebrities have apparently invaded our everyday lives. Presented as a reality TV show, we meet suburban neighbours in Catford, south London. Idris Elba (handyman/delivery driver) takes pride in the garden behind his ground-floor flat, until new upstairs tenant Kim Kardashian (bus driver) starts to exercise her right to use the shared space. They recount the story of a dispute that ultimately turns to violence.</p>
<p>In a second storyline set in Southend, Greta Thunberg (single mum) has adopted the sunny coastal Essex town to escape the cold of northern Sweden, until she confronts neighbours Conor McGregor (florist) and Ariana Grande (scaffolder) – Christmas decoration fanatics with a permanent display of noisy, flashing reindeer in front of their bungalow. Cue high drama when Thunberg takes justice into her own hands.</p>
<p>It’s a brilliant play on the mockumentary, a genre that brought us film comedy classics such as This Is Spinal Tap (1984) and Borat (2006, 2020), and TV hits like Parks and Recreation (2006-2015).</p>
<h2>The creative potential of deepfakes</h2>
<p>Deepfakes sound suspicious just from their name, which tells us immediately that we’re being deceived. Many producers now prefer the term “synthetic media” to avoid this connection.</p>
<p>The major ethical issue with deepfakes is the idea that they’re trying to trick us – but this isn’t a problem when they’re used for obvious comedy. </p>
<p>It may look like Idris Elba is living an alternative reality in Catford, but we laugh because we know clearly that this isn’t the real thing. Deepfakes can twist and rejuvenate pop culture through their playfulness, while also challenging us to consider what we accept as real.</p>
<p>As philosopher <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-021-00459-2">Adrienne De Ruiter</a> explains, “deepfake technology and deepfakes are morally suspect, but not inherently morally wrong.”</p>
<p>This year marks a watershed moment for deepfakes. The technology is at a cultural crossroads in which the primary use in its early years – non-consensual pornography – is being overshadowed by the technology’s adoption by mainstream popular culture.</p>
<p>Neighbour Wars follows on from other attempts to use deepfakes in television. In 2020, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyFQPjIrnQE">Channel 4’s Alternative Christmas Message</a> featured Queen Elizabeth II speaking to the nation during the pandemic.</p>
<p>At that time, broadcast deepfakes were made by colossal visual effects (VFX) companies – Channel 4’s Christmas message was made by the UK’s <a href="https://www.framestore.com/work/alternative-queens-speech?language=en">Framestore</a>, which also created the VFX for big movies including <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-witch-treatment-what-dr-stranges-wanda-tells-us-about-representations-of-female-anger-184509">Doctor Strange</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/fantastic-beasts-experts-explain-the-mysterious-real-life-questions-behind-jk-rowlings-magic-tales-107382">Fantastic Beasts</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Sassy Justice, by the makers of South Park, features a deepfake Donald Trump.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Trey Parker and Matt Stone (makers of <a href="https://theconversation.com/dude-south-park-turned-20-how-to-make-an-all-time-classic-by-insulting-everybody-82274">South Park</a>) also tried out deepfakes in 2020. They posted a 15-minute spoof consumer rights programme, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi38HMIvRpGgMJ0Tlm1WYdw">Sassy Justice</a>, on YouTube. Its fictitious host, consumer advocate Fred Sassy, was played by a deepfake Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Sassy Justice was a true forerunner of Deep Fake Neighbour Wars, as it created multiple deepfake celebrities also including Julie Andrews and Mark Zuckerberg. The video’s hokey visual style spoofed low-budget daytime TV and joked with our gullibility, ensuring its audience was always aware of its AI origins.</p>
<h2>‘It’s all the real thing’</h2>
<p>Smaller online content creators have been the main innovators of deepfakes in pop culture. <a href="https://www.corridordigital.com">Corridor Digital</a> was set up by two geeky guys from Minnesota – Sam Gorski and Nico Pueringer – who moved to Los Angeles to produce viral videos.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Corridor Digital’s viral Keanu Reeves video.</span></figcaption>
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<p>When deepfakes emerged, they jumped on the technology and produced a breakout video, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dBiNGufIJw">Keanu Reeves Stops A Robbery</a>, in 2019. As deepfakes expert <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13548565211030454">Lisa Bode</a> writes, Corridor Digital’s work demonstrated how the technology was “widely available and now affordable, or even free, in the case of open-access deepfake generation face replacement apps like Faceswap”.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsn6cjffsvyOZCZxvGoJxGg">The team’s YouTube channel</a> now features dozens of short deepfake videos, many of them boasting how they can do visual effects better than Hollywood studios.</p>
<p>Chris Ume is a Belgian deepfake creator who stunned the online world in 2022 when he produced short <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwOywe7xLhs&t=87s">videos of Tom Cruise</a> at such a high level of resolution and believability that only the script reassured us they were fake.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Chris Ume’s viral deepfaked Tom Cruise video.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Ume has taken his deepfake expertise into the world of mainstream TV. In August 2020, he entered America’s Got Talent with collaborator Tom Graham. The pair brought singer Daniel Emmet on to the stage and rolled a TV camera directly in front of him. When Emmet began to sing, his image on the massive screen above was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPU0WNUzsBo">deepfaked live into that of Simon Cowell</a> performing You’re The Inspiration.</p>
<p>The delighted audience and judges progressed the act to the show’s final. As with comedy, this use of deepfakes avoided any sense of deception (the real Simon Cowell was sitting with the jury, aghast).</p>
<h2>The future of deepfakes</h2>
<p>The music industry is set to become a rich area for deepfakes, and artists have already begun experimenting with the technology. </p>
<p>Last year, Kendrick Lamar released <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAPUkgeiFVY">The Heart Part 5,</a> with a video using deepfakes to transform him into OJ Simpson, Nipsey Hussle and Kobe Bryant. Lamar’s groundbreaking work was quickly followed by fellow rapper Kanye West adopting deepfakes in his video for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=401hZy6Hipw">Life of the Party</a>.</p>
<p>Like a magician’s act, deepfakes create wonder (and fear) – and like all new technologies, this AI generates a buzz. Deep Fake Neighbour Wars shows that deepfakes don’t need to remain as short online clips; they can now be used to make longform TV content. Expect ITV’s venture to be the tip of the iceberg.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198569/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dominic Lees receives funding for his deepfakes research from the University of Reading’s Impact Acceleration Account, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UK Research and Innovation.</span></em></p>Deepfakes have found their perfect vehicle in comedy – which allows them to be enjoyed without fear of deception.Dominic Lees, Associate Professor in Filmmaking, University of ReadingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1924702022-12-14T17:24:50Z2022-12-14T17:24:50ZWhat’s so funny about race? — Podcast<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501042/original/file-20221214-6441-p74buy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=38%2C19%2C944%2C643&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We discuss the politics of comedy with comedian Andrea Jin who recently made her late-night debut on 'The Late Late Show with James Corden' in October.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(The Late Late Show with James Corden)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe height="200px" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="https://player.simplecast.com/fabfe1af-b65f-46e1-8b83-1eefdb614dfd?dark=true"></iframe>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-572" class="tc-infographic" height="100" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/572/661898416fdc21fc4fdef6a5379efd7cac19d9d5/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>A lot of us turn to comedians we know and love to help us laugh at ourselves, our communities or the overwhelm of politics. Just look at the beautiful accolades received by Trevor Noah this month as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/12/08/trevor-noah-daily-show-legacy/">he bade goodbye to his <em>Daily Show</em> audiences</a>. </p>
<p>Noah and other comedians like Roy Wood Jr., Mindy Kaling, Ali Wong, Chris Rock and Hasan Minhaj put race and other sensitive issues at the centre of their comedy. This gives us — the audience — reason to laugh, whether the jokes are directed towards us or not. It’s a way to release some of the tensions around some serious issues. </p>
<p>As comedy evolves, where is the line between a lighthearted joke and deep-rooted racism? And how far is too far? </p>
<p><a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/episodes/whats-so-funny-about-race">In this episode of <em>Don’t Call Me Resilient</em></a>, we get into it with Faiza Hirji, associate professor of communication studies and media arts at McMaster University and award-winning <a href="https://fanlink.to/GrandmasGirl">stand-up comedian Andrea Jin</a>. They look at how comedy can be an easier way to talk about difficult issues, and at how we can find a way to laugh with each other — rather than at each other. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501072/original/file-20221214-10178-cj9xs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501072/original/file-20221214-10178-cj9xs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501072/original/file-20221214-10178-cj9xs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501072/original/file-20221214-10178-cj9xs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501072/original/file-20221214-10178-cj9xs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501072/original/file-20221214-10178-cj9xs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501072/original/file-20221214-10178-cj9xs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trevor Noah, host of ‘The Daily Show’ tackled some deep issues about race using humour. Here he speaks at the 2022 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The psychology behind laughing at jokes can be traced back many years. While Hobbes and Plato suggested that making fun <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/02/the-dark-psychology-of-being-a-good-comedian/284104/">helps us feel superior</a>, Kant thought about it more as a cognitive shift from a <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/55636">serious situation into playful territory</a>. More recently, psychologist Daniela S. Hugelshofer <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/per.586">showed</a> how humour can act as a buffer against hopelessness and depression.</p>
<p>According to marketing psychologist Peter McGraw, who runs the Humor Research Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysSgG5V-R3U">“benign violation”</a> needs to be satisfied for us to find something funny. That is, for a joke to be funny, there needs to be a social or cultural violation and it must be benign.</p>
<h2>Follow and listen</h2>
<p>You can listen to or follow <em>Don’t Call Me Resilient</em> on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/dont-call-me-resilient/id1549798876">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9qZFg0Ql9DOA">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/37tK4zmjWvq2Sh6jLIpzp7">Spotify</a> or <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/">wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts</a>. <a href="mailto:theculturedesk@theconversation.com">We’d love to hear from you</a>, including any ideas for future episodes. Join The Conversation on <a href="https://twitter.com/ConversationCA">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheConversationCanada">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/">Instagram</a> and <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@theconversation">TikTok</a> and use #DontCallMeResilient.</p>
<h2>Read more in the Conversation</h2>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mindy-kalings-never-have-i-ever-makes-me-feel-hopeful-about-representation-gender-and-race-138262">Mindy Kaling's 'Never Have I Ever' makes me feel hopeful about representation, gender and race</a>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/goodbye-apu-heres-what-you-meant-to-us-105948">Goodbye Apu -- here's what you meant to us</a>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/psychology-behind-the-unfunny-consequences-of-jokes-that-denigrate-63855">Psychology behind the unfunny consequences of jokes that denigrate</a>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/roseanne-barr-saying-its-a-joke-is-no-defence-for-racism-97551">Roseanne Barr: saying 'it's a joke' is no defence for racism</a>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/stand-up-comics-should-concentrate-on-being-funny-so-dont-take-offence-if-they-are-108761">Stand-up comics should concentrate on being funny: so don't take offence if they are</a>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-wanna-be-white-can-we-change-race-78899">'I wanna be white!' Can we change race?</a>
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<h2>Transcript</h2>
<p>For an unedited transcript of this episode, go <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/episodes/whats-so-funny-about-race/transcript">here</a>.</p>
<h2>Clips used in this episode</h2>
<ul>
<li>Andrea Jin on <em>The Late Late show with James Corden</em> on Oct. 25, 2022</li>
<li>Andrea Jin, <em>Grandma’s Girl</em></li>
<li>Russell Peters: <em>Comedy Now Uncensored Special</em>, 2004 (Toronto)</li>
<li>Eman El-Husseini: <em>Comedy Now Uncensored</em>, Season 15, 2012 (Toronto)</li>
<li>Mindy Kaling: <em>Never Have I Ever …"felt super Indian</em>“ (S1, E4) </li>
</ul>
<p><em>Don’t Call Me Resilient is produced in partnership with the Journalism Innovation Lab at the University of British Columbia and with a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192470/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Some comedians put race at the centre of their comedy, giving audiences a chance to release some tension. But how far is too far? Where is the line between a lighthearted joke and deep-rooted racism?Vinita Srivastava, Host + Producer, Don't Call Me ResilientOllie Nicholas, Assistant Producer/Journalism Student, Don't Call Me ResilientRithika Shenoy, Assistant Producer, Don't Call Me ResilientLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1949012022-11-23T02:27:13Z2022-11-23T02:27:13ZReading the room: with NZ’s hate speech laws postponed, where are the limits for comedy?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496614/original/file-20221121-18744-rf6vdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=51%2C17%2C5760%2C3811&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>After a long and at times divisive public consultation process, the government has opted to make a <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/130525745/human-rights-act-amendment-to-protect-religious-communities-very-disappointing-says-commission">single change to the Human Rights Act</a> and push the “wider and more complex” issues around hate speech legislation to the Law Commission for review.</p>
<p>While the act will be amended to include religious communities in existing protections against speech likely to “incite hostility”, any extension of the law (including to protect the rainbow and disability communities) has been postponed for now.</p>
<p>But the government’s main justifications for the change and review remain. As the <a href="https://www.justice.govt.nz/justice-sector-policy/key-initiatives/human-rights-act-amendment-to-strengthen-incitement-laws/">Ministry of Justice explains it</a>: </p>
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<p>Seeking the right balance between protecting freedom of expression, ensuring everyone’s rights and interests are protected, and every person can express themselves without fear, is important for all New Zealanders. </p>
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<h2>Balancing acts</h2>
<p>This balancing act will create different categories of affected speech. For example, explicitly political figures like Destiny Church leader Brian Tamaki might be penalised for his views on Islam, gender roles, homosexuality and transgender rights. </p>
<p>But there’s another kind of speaker who sometimes looms large in discussions of the limits of speech: the comedian. While they’re doing different things – Tamaki is trying to get us back on the path to God, comedians are telling jokes – their defences are similar. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/twitter-and-elon-musk-why-free-speech-absolutism-threatens-human-rights-193877">Twitter and Elon Musk: why free speech absolutism threatens human rights</a>
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<p>Both argue that part of what it means for a society to be free is that people like themselves are given a degree of free rein. Barring a few exceptions – yelling “fire!” in a crowded theatre being the classic example – people need to be able to say what they want. </p>
<p>Members of robust liberal societies cannot be too fearful of consequences, it’s argued, because such fear allows the tyranny of opinion to compromise the pursuit of truth. </p>
<p>Of course, being free to say something is compatible with choosing not to use that freedom. A person can assess any particular occasion – or a general atmosphere – in terms of how a joke might be understood, interpreted and then used, and choose not to tell it. In other words, comedians can exercise a degree of responsibility. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496616/original/file-20221121-18432-7grz29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496616/original/file-20221121-18432-7grz29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496616/original/file-20221121-18432-7grz29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496616/original/file-20221121-18432-7grz29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496616/original/file-20221121-18432-7grz29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496616/original/file-20221121-18432-7grz29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496616/original/file-20221121-18432-7grz29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Hard to pigeonhole: US comedian Dave Chappelle has been accused of anti-transgender prejudice.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span>
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<h2>The Chappelle factor</h2>
<p>US comedian Dave Chappelle has been caught in the crossfires of these debates, and was recently lambasted for a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-62249771">perceived anti-transgender bias</a> in his recent Netflix specials. </p>
<p>But pigeonholing Chappelle is complicated by the fact that in 2005 he walked away from his own highly successful series, The Chappelle Show, because he felt it was <a href="https://www.looper.com/266269/the-real-reason-dave-chappelle-quit-his-sketch-show/">reinforcing racial stereotypes</a> rather than sending them up.</p>
<p>Crucial to Chappelle’s earlier experience, then, was the idea that not all laughs are equal. And, related to that, a comedian can make mistakes in pursuit of laughs. </p>
<p>Comedians are not infallible, and often wander into difficult terrain. Trying to get a laugh out of race, sex, gender or even dead babies (a dark comedy trope) is already a weird business. When it goes wrong, it is going to go wrong in a weird way, too. </p>
<p>This isn’t to say you can’t get good material from such subjects. But comedians might also reflect on why they have been interpreted in one way rather than another. Why are some people laughing in ways that make the comedian – and others – uncomfortable? And is that discomfort caused by mistakes they might have made themselves?</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/comedy-should-punch-up-not-kick-down-184705">Comedy should punch up, not kick down</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>Reading the room</h2>
<p>During more politically settled times, however we might define them, a “let it all hang out” approach might seem generally justifiable. A joke, after all, is a joke. If the culture isn’t a battleground of belligerent, reactionary or otherwise dangerous political forces that threaten the vulnerable, then freedom of speech should take precedence. </p>
<p>But if those reactionary forces are rampant, then comedians need to reflect on the role of comedy (especially the kind that fills arenas) within wider public ideas and conversations. Perhaps jokes can contribute to our perception of certain issues in subtler and more complex ways than political or religious diatribes. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-inciting-violence-should-not-be-the-only-threshold-for-defining-hate-speech-in-new-zealand-164153">Why ‘inciting violence’ should not be the only threshold for defining hate speech in New Zealand</a>
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<p>Having a whole sub-genre of comedy specials making fun of trans people, for example, might contribute to mobilising certain political movements. In turn this could affect trans-people’s access to gender-affirming healthcare.</p>
<p>None of this means hate speech laws are necessarily the solution. Legal remedies generally involve punishment. In societies that claim to be democratic, punishment can also include the censure and opprobrium of “the people”. </p>
<p>Given the law claims to speak for “the people”, this can turn a matter of manners and individual responsibility into an issue of the proper use of state power. Someone who was simply spewing invective can be transformed into a martyr for their cause.</p>
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<h2>Laughter and politics</h2>
<p>Because these are unsettled times, lobbing the grenade of the law into the mix is likely to exacerbate existing divisions and generate new problems. For better or worse, free speech is perceived as a central part of what it means to <em>be</em> free. </p>
<p>In light of next year’s election and the likely culture war it will involve, it’s perhaps not surprising the government opted to avoid entangling itself in these complicated issues. </p>
<p>But the fact free speech is regarded as central to what it means to be part of a free society means people saying hateful things can gain political currency. And they can use that to generate political outcomes that could harm certain groups.</p>
<p>The law is a blunt instrument, unsuited to remedying such complex problems. All the more reason for comedians – especially popular ones with considerable reach – to exercise caution.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194901/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Jenkins does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The government has backed away from broad hate speech legislation. But the law can be a blunt instrument, and comedians are still better off regulating themselves.David Jenkins, Lecturer in Political Theory, University of OtagoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1927572022-10-18T15:27:27Z2022-10-18T15:27:27ZRobbie Coltrane: a free-styling talent suffused with intelligence and humour<p>“I believe that men are here to grow themselves into the best good that they can be,” the iconic saxophonist <a href="https://www.johncoltrane.com/biography">John Coltrane</a> once said. Anthony Robert McMillan chose his stage name as a homage to the jazz great and, as the actor <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-31150653">Robbie Coltrane</a>, went on to grow into the best good that he could be. Both Coltranes possessed notes that had a unique flavour and could be delivered with singular skill.</p>
<p>Robbie Coltrane, who died on October 14, leaves behind a rich stage and screen legacy that audiences will continue to admire and enjoy for decades to come. Much of the world will remember him for his performance was as <a href="https://hogwarts-life.fandom.com/wiki/Rubeus_Hagrid">Rubeus Hagrid</a>, full of warmth and humour as the benevolent groundskeeper at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films.</p>
<p>Being half-giant exposed Hagrid to prejudice, but he vowed to “never be ashamed” of his heritage and advised Harry: “You’ll be just fine. Just be yourself.” That seems to be the mantra Coltrane embodied throughout his own lengthy career. He wasn’t afraid to be himself.</p>
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<p>On graduating from Glasgow School of Art, he connected with fellow artist and GSA graduate <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-john-byrne-is-one-of-scotlands-greatest-artists-186961">John Byrne</a> in the comedy play <a href="https://digital.nls.uk/scottish-theatre/slab-boys/index.html">The Slab Boys</a>, based on Byrne’s experiences working in a Paisley carpet factory in the 1950s. Both had strayed from their brushes into drama, but in Coltrane’s case, it would lead to a permanent separation as he launched headlong into the heady world of theatre, film and television. </p>
<h2>Finding his comedy feet</h2>
<p>His first film was Bernard Tavernier’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/jun/03/death-watch-review-bertrand-tavernier">Death Watch</a>. A bleak prophetic 1980 Glasgow-set sci-fi starring Harvey Keitel, this was a typically unusual debut, where his scene-stealing turn in a run-down flea market searching for Romy Schneider was the start of a varied and never predictable career.</p>
<p>Coltrane then embraced the ascendant left-wing “<a href="http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1085514/index.html">alternative comedy</a>” scene in London that was boisterously sweeping away the well-worn tropes of predominantly male post-war British comedy that was often sexist and racist. Coltrane cut his TV comedy teeth on a variety of shows, most notably <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2007/oct/20/comedy.television">The Young Ones</a>, <a href="https://www.channel4.com/programmes/comic-strip-presents">The Comic Strip Presents …</a>, <a href="https://nostalgiacentral.com/television/tv-by-decade/tv-shows-1980s/laugh-i-nearly-paid-my-licence-fee/">Alfresco</a> and <a href="https://www.comedy.co.uk/tv/blackadder/episodes/">Blackadder</a>. In this series, Coltrane’s Samuel Johnson is one of many memorable larger-than-life comedy characters Coltrane is associated with.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.scotsman.com/heritage-and-retro/retro/tutti-frutti-30-making-bbc-scotland-cult-classic-1437061">Tutti Frutti</a>, John Byrne’s comedy about a second-rate band on the road in Scotland, was a departure for Coltrane. It returned to the rock'n'roll-inspired Glasgow of the Slab Boys, but this time in the 1980s, with the actor clearly enjoying himself as big loud rock'n'roller Danny McGlone. </p>
<p>With Emma Thompson as his love interest Suzi Kettles, it was exuberant and wildly funny. But at the edges it was painted black, with an air of menace suffusing the character of McGlone. </p>
<p>Coltrane moved on from comedy in Cracker, where the dark notes he captured in Danny McGlone deepened and extended in his portrayal of the physician who could not heal himself. Writer <a href="http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/510555/index.html">Jimmy McGovern</a> consulted Coltrane as he was writing the character of Fitz. Coltrane spoke about drawing on the atmosphere that pervaded his youth in Glasgow to create the intoxicating rhythms of a man of vices, frailties and a genius for criminal profiling.</p>
<p>Coltrane seemed to instinctively recognise this troubled dark edge in Fitz, and indeed his the actor’s own reputation for drinking was legendary. But British audiences really connected with Coltrane’s performance as a criminal psychologist and he won three consecutive Baftas for the role. </p>
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<h2>Exploring his passions</h2>
<p>Throughout his career he had a chance to freestyle like his namesake, to improvise from nobody’s script but his own. He presented a number of factual series that indulged his passion for cars and engineering including <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0130393/">Coltranes, Planes and Automobiles</a>. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/tvandradioblog/2007/aug/16/lastnightstvrobbiecoltrane">Robbie Coltrane’s B Road Britain</a> saw him take an appropriately unconventional route around the UK via back roads in a jaunty red Jaguar XK150, and ended with a paean to his beloved city of Glasgow.</p>
<p>There was also an American road-trip travelogue, <a href="https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12364365.robbie-coltrane-puts-tv-cadillac-up-for-auction/">Coltrane in a Cadillac</a>, where he crossed the country from LA to New York in a 1951 convertible model of the iconic car. His warm personality shone through with his constant witty quips, and a natural ease with people everywhere he went.</p>
<p>This warmth was clear in his portrayal of Hagrid, which brought him the global fame any actor dreams of. It was a fame, he reflected, that was difficult at times to negotiate as someone so used to playing interesting roles for select audiences, but he made his peace with it. He seemed to recognise that immortality doesn’t always depend on your most challenging solos: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The legacy of the movies is that my children’s generation will show them to their children. So you could be watching it in 50 years time, easy. I’ll not be here, sadly. But Hagrid will, yes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When Coltrane’s death was announced it felt like a real loss to Scotland, and clearly to the world of comedy, which inundated the media with affectionate remembrances. Such warm regard says a lot about the man, his talent and the way he embodied and humorously reflected Scottishness for a wider world.</p>
<p>I will always remember him as a master of many morally ambiguous roles, but most fondly as Victor Hazell, the larger than life villain in the TV adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/roald_dahls_danny_the_champion_of_the_world">Danny Champion of the World</a>. He was so suitably menacing that my siblings and I would shout at the screen to warn Danny of his approach, little knowing that I was witnessing an artist at work, making his noise, the best noise it could be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192757/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Cotter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A talented comedian and serious dramatic actor with a gift for accents, Robbie Coltrane is a huge loss to TV and screen.Kate Cotter, Broadcast Lecturer, University of the West of ScotlandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1888182022-08-31T03:16:02Z2022-08-31T03:16:02ZA Beginner’s Guide to Grief: joy and sadness belong together in this new Australian ‘traumedy’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481925/original/file-20220830-46102-1isx65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C7951%2C5304&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: A Beginner’s Guide to Grief, directed by Renée Mao</em></p>
<p>We all experience grief in different ways. It is a powerful force that can affect our daily lives, making the simplest task feel difficult, at best, or entirely insurmountable at worst. </p>
<p>Grief is messy, surprising, revealing and honest at different times and all at once. </p>
<p>This is what lies at the heart of the SBS comedy A Beginner’s Guide to Grief. </p>
<p>Written by its star, Anna Lindner, and directed by Renée Mao, the six 12-minute episodes follow Harriet “Harry” Wylde as she navigates her way through the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance also provide the first five episode titles) after losing both her parents to cancer within a week – first her mum and then her dad on the day of her mum’s funeral. </p>
<p>Aunty Barb (Georgina Naidu) is the epitome of “putting on a brave face” as she attempts to offer Harry solace in the knowledge that at least her dad is “now in the arms of our Lord and Saviour”. </p>
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<p>Harry’s very Christian Uncle Trev (Rory Walker) and creepy cousin Isaiah (Carlo Ritchie) take over her dad’s funeral preparations with the implication that men can deal with these kinds of emotional situations better. </p>
<p>The most interesting relationship in the series is between Harry and her foster-sister Daisy (Cassandra Sorrell), a pyromaniac who has spent time in prison after lighting a car on fire when she was young. </p>
<p>Their relationship is far from perfect, but Daisy is a welcome relief from the rest of the family’s suffocating presence. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/iggy-and-ace-a-zany-aussie-comedy-about-two-gay-best-friends-and-alcohol-abuse-165953">Iggy & Ace: a zany Aussie comedy about two gay best friends — and alcohol abuse</a>
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</em>
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<h2>Contemporary traumedies</h2>
<p>A Beginner’s Guide to Grief joins recent series like Netflix’s <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/archive/au/entry/never-have-i-ever-mindy-kaling_au_5eb54cacc5b62d0addad63a0">Never Have I Ever</a> (2020-) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8398600/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">After Life</a> (2019-2022) that centre on grieving characters who have lost loved ones and are left behind to cope in the aftermath. </p>
<p>These shows have been labelled “<a href="https://www.wellandgood.com/traumedy-trend/">traumedies</a>”: narratives that explore feelings of loss and pain presented through a comedic lens. </p>
<p>Traumedies can offer audiences an <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/06/17/877090656/if-youre-grieving-right-now-here-are-5-shows-that-get-it">opportunity for catharsis</a>, processing our feelings of loss and grief – particularly at a time of so much social and cultural upheaval.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481945/original/file-20220831-22-brw5j5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An alpaca and a woman stand at a grave." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481945/original/file-20220831-22-brw5j5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481945/original/file-20220831-22-brw5j5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481945/original/file-20220831-22-brw5j5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481945/original/file-20220831-22-brw5j5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481945/original/file-20220831-22-brw5j5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481945/original/file-20220831-22-brw5j5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481945/original/file-20220831-22-brw5j5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Traumedies acknowledge there is joy alongside grief.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Like these international examples, A Beginner’s Guide to Grief invites us to have frank conversations about and acknowledge the impacts of death, dying and grieving openly – rather than bottling those feelings away to maintain an image of strength. </p>
<p>It is through the series’ funniest thread, a self-help audio tape on dealing with grief that Harry listens to each episode, we truly feel permission to laugh at tragedy. </p>
<p>The tape’s grief therapist, brilliantly voiced by Ted Lasso’s Brett Goldstein, provides a bizarre distraction for Harry – and us – as each stage of grief is described in more and more ridiculous ways. Grief, the tape tells us, is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>an overwhelming emotion not unlike […] sitting down to your favourite breakfast cereal but then pouring its milky sweet contents over your lap, smashing the porcelain bowl with nothing but your forehead, and slowly swallowing shard after jagged shard of the broken remains until you realise you are indeed bleeding from your stomach.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A visceral yet poetic description. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-five-stages-of-grief-dont-come-in-fixed-steps-everyone-feels-differently-96111">The five stages of grief don't come in fixed steps – everyone feels differently</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Grief is a mixed bag</h2>
<p>The sixth and final episode, The Next Chapter, initially feels unnecessary. We have moved through the five stages of grief, after all. But Lindner is careful to acknowledge grief is not cured once you’ve reached “acceptance”. </p>
<p>The process of grieving is complex and can’t be miraculously solved by the end of a series. </p>
<p>Life must go on for Harry, but she still has some healing to do. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481946/original/file-20220831-22-dygfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman cries; another woman comforts her." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481946/original/file-20220831-22-dygfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481946/original/file-20220831-22-dygfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481946/original/file-20220831-22-dygfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481946/original/file-20220831-22-dygfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481946/original/file-20220831-22-dygfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481946/original/file-20220831-22-dygfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481946/original/file-20220831-22-dygfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Grief doesn’t end at ‘acceptance’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Throughout the series, flashbacks are interwoven with the present-day, depicting scenes of happier times with her parents next to ones showing the realities and ravages of cancer.</p>
<p>The show is semi-autobiographical. Lindner’s <a href="https://indaily.com.au/inreview/film/2022/08/26/death-and-anarchy-in-the-barossa/">father died</a> from cancer, and her mother was also diagnosed with the disease. She brings a deep perspective on her own grief. “I want people to know that grief and joy don’t just co-exist, but they belong together,” <a href="https://tvtonight.com.au/2022/08/airdate-a-beginners-guide-to-grief.html">she has said</a>.</p>
<p>A Beginner’s Guide to Grief does not offer a particularly unique perspective on grief, but it is a worthy local entry into the traumedy genre and an excellent example of contemporary Australian short form storytelling.</p>
<p><em>A Beginner’s Guide to Grief premieres on SBS On Demand on September 4.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188818/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sian Mitchell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Grief is messy, surprising, revealing and honest at different times and all at once. Here, it is also funny.Sian Mitchell, Lecturer, Film, Television and Animation, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.