Frankie Boyle has for some years now earned a reputation for telling some of the most offensive jokes around. Topics include incest, pedophilia, murder, the royals and other such taboos. One of his less offensive lines include
"I hear the reason we need to Olympics is to boost national pride, if that's what you want then for £18.9 million we could write 'Fuck off Germany' on the moon"
"I read in the news that Margaret Thatcher might be getting a state funeral, I'd say give everyone in Scotland a shovel and we can hand the bitch over to Satan personally"
"Recent surveys show 3 out of 10 men have a problem with premature ejaculation. The rest just didn't really think it was a problem!"
He recently got into trouble with these jokes
"Jordan and Peter Andre are still fighting each other over custody of Harvey - eventually one of them will lose and have to keep him. I have a theory about the reason Jordan married a cage fighter - she needed a man strong enough to stop Harvey from fucking her..."
This caused a stink from those involved with disabled kids for very obvious reasons.
My issue with this is two fold. Firstly, his act is based around the idea that he shocks, and he's not exactly an unknown anymore. The chances of someone watching one of shows and being surprised by what he says is very slim. Unfortunately he is in the position that he has to raise the bar constantly and as a result has said he will retire in a few years anyway, least he becomes a parody of himself.
The second issue is that he is far from the most offensive comic around today. Indeed, Jimmy Carr has crossed the line many times with lines like
"Say what you like about these servicemen amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan, but we’re going to have a fucking good Paralympic team in 2012."
"I'm not being condescending, I'm too busy thinking about far more important things you wouldn't understand.
"I saw a charity appeal in the Guardian the other day, and it read "Little Zuki has to walk 13 miles a day just to fetch water". And I couldn't help thinking, she should move.
"African child dies? I watched those, and couldn't help thinking, "well stop clicking your fingers!"
Just as bad as Frankie yet he never gets into too much trouble.
I did find it odd that after some years of taking the piss out of Jordon and her kids, Its only now, when jordons not been in the media spotlight for more ten minutes that she suddenly finds her outrage.
It all boils down to a few questions. Is it ok to tell offensive jokes, if not than who decides if its offensive or not, and if you are offended then why are you listening to it?
Personally there are many many religious, political and racial statements made that i find sickening and highly offensive. But would I every try to stop people from saying these things? Hell no! I just turn off the TV channel, close the book magazine, walk away from the guy on the soap box.
We need to remember that men like Roy chubby brown and Jim Davidson are no longer on TV, not because they are offensive but because not enough people find them funny.
99% of all that we find funny is based on one person laughing at another. A friend making an arse of themselves or an Irish joke. I tend to find those that complain the most about an "offensive" joke are the ones that will happily laugh at others but don't like it when the joke is on them or someone close to themselves
Classic example, Issac Hayes spent many years working on the show South Park, a comedy that has ridiculed every belief and religion going. This he was ok with. But when an episode aired questioning and openly mocking Scientology, Hayes's own belief, he quit the show in disgust and joined the moral band wagon.
Thursday, 16 December 2010
Wednesday, 1 December 2010
wimmins lib?
Over the years we have seen the social standing of women in society changing. at the end of the 19th century we had women not being able to vote, hold office, divorce her husband on the same grounds that he could her and many many more inequalities. Those was clearly wrong and had to be address and from the suffragettes to the female eunuch we saw many movements to bring about this change*.
This change of law and society in general could not come about without a change in attitude. The days of women being seen as the weaker sex had to go. This in theory is a good thing but had some strange side effects that no-one could have predicted.
If we are to achieve full equality we must accept that there are no such things as "mans job" "women's role" etc. There must be nothing out of bounds for either sex. The 2012 Olympics will be the first to feature women's boxing, only a hundred years after women were first banned from running the marathon on the grounds that "their wombs might fall out" and other such nonsense. Indeed, women were banned right up until 1984!
When we look at the idea that there should be no activities that should be considered "male domain" or "not something a woman should do" we need to look at all activities, even the bad ones. In the late '90's we saw a rise of what was called laddette culture, personified by girls like DJ's Zoe Ball and Sara Cox. these were girls who would going clubbing, get drunk and behave like any normal bloke would on a Saturday night including getting argumentative, eating kebabs, random hook ups etc.
This was a sign that we had crossed the point at which women stopped wanting to "men" things because they were previously told they couldn't because of their gender and were now wanting to them simply because they wanted to do them. While this seems a very very minor semantically point it is actually an earth shatteringly important part of our cultural history. It meant that we now had the first generation of women that did not understand, let alone follow, this idea that as a woman, they had a set list of rules by which to live by that was different from the men.
In my own life this has manifested itself in my wife leaving me with the kids and my sister leaving my brother-in-law in the same way. It seems anyone over the age of 45 see's this as very strange that a woman would leave her children to go back to the single life and yet they are perfectly accepting of a man doing it. Those under 45 on the whole see this a couple splitting up and the kids, for the sake of a stable environment stays with ONE of the parents and doesn't see any problem in it being a man (except that its quite rare)
I wonder if Mary Shelly Wollstonecraft would have done anything different if she had known that the movement she started all those years ago would have lead to this?
I don't think so and I would have to agree with her. After all, life is not a Disney movie full of happy endings.
This change of law and society in general could not come about without a change in attitude. The days of women being seen as the weaker sex had to go. This in theory is a good thing but had some strange side effects that no-one could have predicted.
If we are to achieve full equality we must accept that there are no such things as "mans job" "women's role" etc. There must be nothing out of bounds for either sex. The 2012 Olympics will be the first to feature women's boxing, only a hundred years after women were first banned from running the marathon on the grounds that "their wombs might fall out" and other such nonsense. Indeed, women were banned right up until 1984!
When we look at the idea that there should be no activities that should be considered "male domain" or "not something a woman should do" we need to look at all activities, even the bad ones. In the late '90's we saw a rise of what was called laddette culture, personified by girls like DJ's Zoe Ball and Sara Cox. these were girls who would going clubbing, get drunk and behave like any normal bloke would on a Saturday night including getting argumentative, eating kebabs, random hook ups etc.
This was a sign that we had crossed the point at which women stopped wanting to "men" things because they were previously told they couldn't because of their gender and were now wanting to them simply because they wanted to do them. While this seems a very very minor semantically point it is actually an earth shatteringly important part of our cultural history. It meant that we now had the first generation of women that did not understand, let alone follow, this idea that as a woman, they had a set list of rules by which to live by that was different from the men.
In my own life this has manifested itself in my wife leaving me with the kids and my sister leaving my brother-in-law in the same way. It seems anyone over the age of 45 see's this as very strange that a woman would leave her children to go back to the single life and yet they are perfectly accepting of a man doing it. Those under 45 on the whole see this a couple splitting up and the kids, for the sake of a stable environment stays with ONE of the parents and doesn't see any problem in it being a man (except that its quite rare)
I wonder if Mary Shelly Wollstonecraft would have done anything different if she had known that the movement she started all those years ago would have lead to this?
I don't think so and I would have to agree with her. After all, life is not a Disney movie full of happy endings.
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