Taking Offence

OK, I'm back. Last week's exertions on the picket lines, on marches and at rallies left me so exhausted that i had to take three days off from blogging. But that didn't stop things irritating me and I'm champing at the bit to share my irritations with you! "I saw something on TV in 1981 that made me laugh and nothing has been as funny since - comedy ended in 1981. Modern comics are rubbish - if only they'd do what those hilarious people did in 1981, they wouldn't be shit." I encounter that sort of sentiment a lot on the web these days. There seem to be a lot of people, (particularly on Twitter), who spend their time slagging off 'modern' comedy and eulogising the 'good old days' of the 1980s and 1990s, of proper 'alternative comedy' and telling us all that some obscure sketch show that nobody but they remember was the greatest TV comedy series ever. The irony, of course, is that they sound exactly like the pub bores and middle aged newspaper TV critics of the1980s 1990s who spent their time lamenting the demise of traditional stand-ups and denouncing 'alternative comedy'.

Get with the programme guys - things change, comedy, like all other art forms, evolves. If you'd just give 'modern comedy' a chance, you might find that some of it is funny. Just like some 1980s comedy is still funny, (but not that sketch show only they remember. That was shit). But that's the problem, of course. They've decided that any comedy made after 1997 isn't funny and are determined that they will never laugh at any of it. Indeed, they proceed to demonise practitioners of the hated 'modern comedy', denouncing them as 'right wing apologists', 'closet racists', misogynists, un-PC and, well, Ricky Gervais. All these accusations are on the basis of no actual evidence at all, merely that the comic in question has expressed a view they might disagree with. It's all pretty pathetic really, watching these supposed comedy fans working themselves up into a lather of outrage at the 'offense' caused by the likes of Gervais and his use of the word 'mong', for instance. Leaving aside the arguments as to whether the word can legitimately be disassociated from its original (offensive) meaning and instead be used as general term of abuse, I'm left with the impression that it is simply Gervais they are offended by, and the fact that he's enjoyed success purveying a type of humour they refuse to acknowledge as being legitimate, because it isn't the same as 1980s comedy. Even worse, they always seem to be getting offended on someone else's behalf - those with Down's syndrome, or dwarves - rather than their own. Look, if these groups really are offended by Ricky Gervais, they're quite capable of raising the issue themselves, you patronising bastards!

The bottom line here is simple - if you like 1980s comedy, fine, just keep watching your Young Ones videos, waiting for a laugh, (oh and by the way, surely that series featured an incredibly right-wing and establishment stereotype of students as layabouts, drunks and drug takers), and shut the fuck up. If you don't like contemporary comedy, you don't have to watch it. But, of course, if they didn't, what would they have to get offended by and tweet about?