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[News] Jimmy Carr



Jul 20, 2003
20,686
Has he sacked any of the team of people who write his shit material for him yet?
 






father_and_son

Well-known member
Jan 23, 2012
4,652
Under the Police Box
I take your point. To be fair, The Producers isn’t about the Holocaust. It’s about Nazi Germany. I would not be sure that the Holocaust or even the word Jewish is mentioned.

And I think I would probably agree with you that no joke about the Holocaust is likely to be funny. But Carr’s in particular was awful because it was specifically rejoicing in the fact that a certain ethnic group suffered - died!

I will cite the two examples above. Both funny, but at the same time completely unacceptable... all about context and, as pointed out, your audience.
Think we just fall on opposite sides of the fence. I have no lines.
 


The Wizard

Well-known member
Jul 2, 2009
18,399
A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laugh and is usually not meant to be taken seriously. It takes the form of a story, usually with dialogue, and ends in a punch line.

Regardless of whether you think Jimmy Carr is funny or not, a joke in its definition is not meant to be taken as a serious musing or opinion, I fear for all comedians because at some point in every comedians career they’ve said what some would deem offensive IF taken seriously, which by its definition a joke should not be.

The offended, cancel culture crew are becoming very tiring, not everything needs to be sanitised.
 


Jan 30, 2008
31,981
Q - Why aren't there more right wing comedians on the TV?
A - because they are not funny.

Q - How do you know they are not funny if they are never on the TV?
A - Jimmy Carr

LMFAO what would you expect from the woke Pinko liberal luvies of main stream TV


Regards
DF
 




The Optimist

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Apr 6, 2008
2,773
Lewisham
A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laugh and is usually not meant to be taken seriously. It takes the form of a story, usually with dialogue, and ends in a punch line.

Regardless of whether you think Jimmy Carr is funny or not, a joke in its definition is not meant to be taken as a serious musing or opinion, I fear for all comedians because at some point in every comedians career they’ve said what some would deem offensive IF taken seriously, which by its definition a joke should not be.

The offended, cancel culture crew are becoming very tiring, not everything needs to be sanitised.

Do you think any joke is too far? For example, should a clearly racist joke based on nothing but harmful racist stereotypes be allowed in comedians’ routines? If no, then a line exists and with Jimmy Cart’s joke the debate is around which side of the line.
 


KZNSeagull

Well-known member
Nov 26, 2007
21,097
Wolsingham, County Durham
I am in broad agreement with those that say that if people want to go and see Jimmy Carr tell jokes like that, then that is up to them. I am not going to stop them but I am not going to join them.

My problem with this is partly that those jokes have been included in a programme on Netflix, so I would question Netflix's choices there - any reputable free to air channel would not touch that material with a barge pole and rightly so. What concerns me more is that clip has been up on Twitter for days now free to be seen by anyone apparently without any warnings or age restrictions. No traditional publisher or broadcaster would get away with that without being pilloried by the public so why do Twitter get away with it?
 


Baldseagull

Well-known member
Jan 26, 2012
11,839
Crawley
Many Jokes rely on an understanding of their being negative stereotypes or a level of discrimination against a certain religion, race, nationality, gender, hair colour etc.
Al Murray's Pub Landlord is an example of using this in reverse, for me, he is taking the piss out of small minded, jingoist and ignorant bigots, but a few years back, when I went to see his show, half his audience were small minded jingoist bigots, that lapped up his material.
I have always seen a joke as a joke, and not serious examples of bigotry, but over the years I have found that others do not, and use the jokes as reinforcement of their bigotry, and so I would only share such a joke with people I am confident do not hold such beliefs, and will not believe it represents my beliefs in any way.

Whoever wrote that joke could have used disabled people, homosexuals or Jehovahs Witnesses as the butt of it, but for homosexuals and disabled people he would have got more of an ooooh, and less of a laugh and I am pretty sure, no whistles, probably would have got a decent laugh still from Jehovahs Witnesses.
Does the joke play up to and reinforce the prejudice against Gypsies, or seek to highlight that we are still capable of caring far less, or at all, about some people than others? I have not seen it in the context of the show, but I suspect he was just pushing the limits, and it was neither.
 




Baldseagull

Well-known member
Jan 26, 2012
11,839
Crawley
Do you think any joke is too far? For example, should a clearly racist joke based on nothing but harmful racist stereotypes be allowed in comedians’ routines? If no, then a line exists and with Jimmy Cart’s joke the debate is around which side of the line.

Comedians generally do it by framing a racist idiot as the butt of the joke, for their ignorant views, or making it a subset of their own race.
 




The Optimist

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Apr 6, 2008
2,773
Lewisham
Comedians generally do it by framing a racist idiot as the butt of the joke, for their ignorant views, or making it a subset of their own race.

But go back in time and plain racist jokes were told, e.g:

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/leading-article-the-misjudged-policemen-s-ball-1616999.html?amp

If we agree that this is wrong then there is a line and debate around jokes like Jimmy Cart’s joke will happen. This was my original point to people who think that people complaining about Carr’s joke are ‘woke liberal lefties’.
 






Eeyore

Colonel Hee-Haw of Queen's Park
NSC Patron
Apr 5, 2014
25,929


Eeyore

Colonel Hee-Haw of Queen's Park
NSC Patron
Apr 5, 2014
25,929
The problem is that a joke is always funny if there is an audience that will laugh at it.

Doubtless I told sick jokes as a youngster. We all did. But this is another lesson in maturity.

A comedian who targets vulnerable groups and minorities is simply a poor comedian, because it shows they are profiting at a low denominator. A comedian who relies on put downs and humiliation is also a poor comedian. A comedian who doesn't stop swearing, again, lowest denominator. That eliminates a lot of household names. But it also elevates some. There are plenty out there who don't do any of that and are very funny.

But ultimately, if folk laugh then it's a good joke regardless. Well, to them it is.

But what some folks don't realise is how easy it is to re-enforce toxic stereotypes. And that's why hatred lingers. The trouble for someone like Jimmy Carr is it means he needs to change too much and would lose a living.

But it shows what a poor comedian he is though. So that's a start.
 




The Clamp

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Jan 11, 2016
26,197
West is BEST
Could "Till death us do part" be made now?

In theory yes, as we all know it's taking the rise out of a bigot. In practice, I doubt it. The modern extreme right would miscomprehend and see Garnett as a plain speaking hero, telling it how it is. You would get the modern extreme left miscomprehending and thinking they were glorifying bigotry.

Luckily for the more level headed, measured and intelligent among us there are programs such as Curb Your Enthusiasm that tackle the blurred lines of what is acceptable, in an intelligent, thought provoking and very, very, funny way.
 




Machiavelli

Well-known member
Oct 11, 2013
17,774
Fiveways
In theory yes, as we all know it's taking the rise out of a bigot. In practice, I doubt it. The modern extreme right would miscomprehend and see Garnett as a plain speaking hero, telling it how it is. You would get the modern extreme left miscomprehending and thinking they were glorifying bigotry.

Luckily for the more level headed, measured and intelligent among us there are programs such as Curb Your Enthusiasm that tackle the blurred lines of what is acceptable, in an intelligent, thought provoking and very, very, funny way.

I haven't seen Curb since it was on C4. It was brilliant, and sure that it's still maintained its quality. What channel/platform is it now on?
 


The Clamp

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Jan 11, 2016
26,197
West is BEST
I haven't seen Curb since it was on C4. It was brilliant, and sure that it's still maintained its quality. What channel/platform is it now on?

I watch it on Now so it must be Sky. The recent season 11 was still as sharp and hilarious as previous seasons.
 




The_Viper

Well-known member
Oct 10, 2010
4,345
Charlotte, NC
The weirdest part of all of this is that the same people on here calling him a right winged borderline Nazi are the same group of people wanting him arrested and put in prison for saying something they didn't like, which is in itself crazily authoritarian and a trademark of fascism. I believe he even says at the start of his routine on this particular one: "This show contains jokes about terrible things. Terrible things that may have affected you and the people that you love.’

‘But these are just jokes. They’re not the terrible things. There’s a huge difference between doing a joke about a rape, and doing a rape."

If it's me, and I hear that, and I don't want to hear things that could offend me I'd turn the show off. Why would I want to be upset? Why would I want to be angry and offended and emotionally triggered in distressing ways? Just turn it off and don't give him the audience.
 


JJ McClure

Go Jags
Jul 7, 2003
11,108
Hassocks
Seen Jimmy Carr live a couple of times and always really funny.
The show ‘His Dark Material’ has been out since Christmas, is an 18 cert and specifically has a pre warned section called ‘career enders’ if it takes someone over a month to decide to watch that ands then be upset by it then I’m sorry but they’re a fudging idiot that fails to grasp the concept of comedy.
It’s really simple, if you don’t like him, don’t watch him…and therefore don’t be offended by him….especially on someone else’s behalf.
 


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