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Transgender- Too Offensive for Comedy

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
http://entertainment.uk.msn.com/tv/news/Article.aspx?cp-documentid=15776282&GT1=61503

I mean, seriously...this is just getting stupid. Every day is a new article about someone offending someone.

This was the best bit:

He continued: "I find Songs of Praise quite offensive, but I don't want Songs of Praise not to be broadcast on television because I think other people who like Songs of Praise have a right to watch it and simply because I find it incredibly irritating and patronising I think that's my problem. It's not Songs of Praise's problem."

Amen to that.

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I haven't seen the show in question. But that's a pretty shit analogy as there's a blatantly obvious difference between Songs of Praise, which doesn't take the piss out of anyone or ridicule anyone, and a show that mocks people from a certain group (in this case transgendered people).

    Though I haven;t seen it so don't know if that is what it does.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    jamelia wrote: »
    I haven't seen the show in question. But that's a pretty shit analogy as there's a blatantly obvious difference between Songs of Praise, which doesn't take the piss out of anyone or ridicule anyone, and a show that mocks people from a certain group (in this case transgendered people).

    Though I haven;t seen it so don't know if that is what it does.

    It doesn't. But it's aired and it probably offends or aggravates quite a lot of people. There are no people of other faiths that complain and say, "This is contrary to my ideas. Please remove it."
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Actually, the portrayal of the character is pretty offensive, it's a very negative character.

    And, even more to the point, Moving Wallpaper is so fucking unfunny it offends the hell out of me for that.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Eh? Being transgendered isn't a faith. As far as I'm aware, it's a medical condition (whether physiological or psychiatric, I don't know).
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Kermit wrote: »
    Actually, the portrayal of the character is pretty offensive, it's a very negative character.

    And, even more to the point, Moving Wallpaper is so fucking unfunny it offends the hell out of me for that.

    In all fairness, I haven't seen it. I guess I'm just fed up of seeing article after article of people complaining. I assume people are on the 'complaining for next to no reason' bandwagon, but I haven't seen it so I wouldn't know!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Kermit wrote: »
    Actually, the portrayal of the character is pretty offensive, it's a very negative character.

    And, even more to the point, Moving Wallpaper is so fucking unfunny it offends the hell out of me for that.

    Yeah, apart from anything, it sounds like really lazy comedy - look at the man dressed as a woman! Hilarious :yeees:
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Its silly that they complain. Anyone remember 'Barbara' from 'League of Gentlemen'? I'm sure if anyone wanted to complain, that character would have been 'offensive' - but it was funny! :)
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Once again, I wonder how many people who complained are actually transgender.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I don't think you'd have to be transgendered to find it offensive though. I say that as I've got a friend who's a clinician who works on a daily basis with people having sex reassignment surgery, and he doesn't find this show funny at all. I'm pretty sure he will have complained about it.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I would imagine quite a few are, the transgendered community IME tend to be pretty hot on complaining. And quite rightly, too, if they don't nobody else will.

    With comedy, though, it does seem to come down to whether something is funny or not, and the context of the character. League of Gentlemen was funny and the character was in a context where all the characters were loonies; it was the same in Little Britain. Moving Wallpaper isn't the same, it is neither funny nor consistent in its treatment of characters.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    jamelia wrote: »
    I don't think you'd have to be transgendered to find it offensive though. I say that as I've got a friend who's a clinician who works on a daily basis with people having sex reassignment surgery, and he doesn't find this show funny at all. I'm pretty sure he will have complained about it.

    True. But surely if it was offensive to transgendered people, there would be transgendered people who complained?

    Though to be honest, I'd endured many things in life that I found were particularly offensive to me. But then I don't like to kick up a fuss.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    If, as Kermit said, the portrayal of the character was negative then they have every right to be offended. I'm sure a lot of transgendered people were, too, since they have a hard enough time being accepted as it is.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Oh man, Songs Of Praise is one of those shows that's often about to come on, just because you've left BBC One on the box. Then the anouncer says it's coming on, so there's a big scramble for the remote, preferable so that we don't even have to hear one little bit of the theme tune.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I'm offended by the people who find this offensive. Doubtless that there will now be someone offended by the fact that I'm offended by the people who find this offensive. Later, someone comes along claiming to be offended by the offended person who finds that this other person is offended that some other people are offended. And so forth.
    jamelia wrote: »
    ...look at the man dressed as a woman!
    That's how it was done for hundreds of years. If you go back far enough, plays were done almost entirely by men, so that meant if there were female characters, the men had to go into drag.

    If I hear any person later this year complaining about seeing a man in drag when he/she/it goes to see the Christmas panto, the person in question should have a pair of testicles surgically attached to their head.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    SG, if you think this is appropriate then you're wrong.

    It's OK, nobody will think you're a raging lefty Guardian lentil-chomping homosexualist if you admit that some things are completely unacceptable!

    It isn't the fact they've used a transgendered character that's offensive, it's the fact that the character is very negative in a programme where not all the characters are treated like that. In League of Gentlemen Barbara was just another character in a programme where all the characters were bizarre; this programme isn't the same. It was using the transgendered element as the hook to hang the character with. That's why nobody finds Brian Potter offensive; the fact he's wheelchair bound is incidental to the fact he's a twat.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Kermit wrote: »
    Actually, the portrayal of the character is pretty offensive, it's a very negative character.

    And, even more to the point, Moving Wallpaper is so fucking unfunny it offends the hell out of me for that.
    I agree, it is appallingly transphobic (yes, that is a word). Trans women are not the same as drag queens. They are not "men in dresses" and to imply as much is disgusting.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Kermit wrote: »
    It isn't the fact they've used a transgendered character that's offensive, it's the fact that the character is very negative in a programme where not all the characters are treated like that.
    Are you in the process of getting a sex change yourself, Kermit? I'm not, so I have no way of knowing what's offensive to transsexuals. Maybe you do, who knows?

    Funny how it's acceptable to treat certain characters in negative ways on television but not others. I wonder if we'd be having the same conversation if a man had put on a fat suit and pretended to be an incredibly obese, bumbling idiot. I can't see our size-obsessed society complaining too much about that.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    stargalaxy wrote: »
    Are you in the process of getting a sex change yourself, Kermit? I'm not, so I have no way of knowing what's offensive to transsexuals. Maybe you do, who knows?
    Well I don't know about you but I don't need to be black to know that a black person would be offended if a TV programme portrayed black people as, say, thieves, or mentally inferior, or anything else.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    stargalaxy wrote: »
    Are you in the process of getting a sex change yourself, Kermit? I'm not, so I have no way of knowing what's offensive to transsexuals. Maybe you do, who knows?

    I work in a welfare role at a university and that involves working with LGBT.

    But, even more to the point, I'm socially literate enough to understand that a negative portrayal of a victimised group is offensive.

    As for your comments about fat people, I'm actually pretty consistent. Making jokes about fat people is fine; making fat people the joke is not fine.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Aladdin wrote: »
    I don't need to be black to know that a black person would be offended if a TV programme portrayed black people as, say, thieves, or mentally inferior, or anything else.

    Yes, quickly, let's make every thief a white woman in case we offend anyone.
    Oh wait not a woman, we can't do that! And so on.

    Your analogy ended up being more offensive than what he'd said originally. Pretty sure black people can see a black thief without feeling they're being victimised, but you go ahead and defend the cause anyway.

    Back on topic, this comedy show is a massive pile of dogshit and should receive a hell of a lot more than 85 compliants purely for the fact it makes me want to die whenever I see it.

    Makes me wonder how many letters the Beeb, ITV, and Ofcom get from the same 85 people though. Wonder if any of them have a Complaint Template saved in My Documents so they can quickly change a few words and ping it across.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    It's a kind of interesting what's happening with complaints. In the past, because it took so much effort to actually contact Ofcom or the Beeb, through letters or phoning, there was always a basic criteria used - 1 complaint equals 10,000 or a 1,000 people actually pissed off.

    The internet, email complaints, etc have all thrown that - I'm pretty certain, though don't quote me on the numbers, that previous to the Jade/Shilpa compaints the highest number of complaints were a couple of 1000, but that had 100,000s of complaints - pretty much destroying the system.

    What that leaves you with is a serious problem judging future complaints - in the past 86 complaints from people would be significant, now it looks paltry next to something liek the Brand/Ross affair...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Makes me wonder how many letters the Beeb, ITV, and Ofcom get from the same 85 people though. Wonder if any of them have a Complaint Template saved in My Documents so they can quickly change a few words and ping it across.
    Part of the reason that complaints can be sent so easily is because of the internet. Around the time of the Baby P furore, I saw several internet blogs posting e-mails of complaint that they were sending in to various people at Haringey Council. They would usually end the posts by saying something along the lines of "feel free to send your own complaint to *email address goes here*". I wouldn't be surprised if there were a fair few who simply copied what they'd seen on the blog into their e-mail browser and sent it under their own name. Blog owners often encouraged their readers to do this.

    The people receiving the complaints would almost certainly notice that many read almost identically to one another. But because of the way many organisations work, they have a duty to respond regardless of this.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Whether or not someone finds something offensive holds absolutely no weight in serious debate. It's the substance behind the hollow cry of offence that should be scrutinised.

    I haven't seen the show. What's the real beef with the character?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Laughing at rather than with
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Jim V wrote: »
    Laughing at rather than with

    Crikey, Jim, you'll end up banning half of television and a significant proportion of every comedian who's ever taken up the mic.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Is an issue though, especially for a comedy that is expressly aiming to represent a post-modern view of the processes being a Tv show.

    The comedy isn't driven by the fact of the situation around the character or the differences she presents, she didn't drive the comedy in a sense of being part of the plotting. Imagine dropping Kenneth Williams into the middle of Curb your Enthusiasm and then just stopping all the plot to laugh at the queer then carrying on with everything else.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Jim V wrote: »
    Is an issue though, especially for a comedy that is expressly aiming to represent a post-modern view of the processes being a Tv show.

    The comedy isn't driven by the fact of the situation around the character or the differences she presents, she didn't drive the comedy in a sense of being part of the plotting. Imagine dropping Kenneth Williams into the middle of Curb your Enthusiasm and then just stopping all the plot to laugh at the queer then carrying on with everything else.

    That's a clearer picture than just simply laughing at someone. If it's as black and white as that then it's bad. I'm not sure I'm for taking it off air, though.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I think the problem is that the number of ridiculous complaints now is drowning out the genuine complaints. I see that a couple of hundred people have complained to ITV about a burlesque dancer on Britain's Got Talent. Never mind she had nipple tassles, never mind it was shown after 9pm, down with this sort of thing!

    Complaints about this TV programme, and about rancid cockstains like Woss, are perfectly justified. But because people are complaining about everything now the makers of these programmes can say that listening to the complaints will close down television, instead of dealing with the real issues. Namely the abuse of a minority group as a 'joke'.

    I think there's a difference between using minority groups (in this case transgendered people) as a prop to the joke and using them as the joke. The Barbara character in League of Gentlemen was a pretty bad character, but her being transgendered was not the joke, and it was in a context of a programme full of nasty characters.

    Nobody complains about Peter Kay's use of Brian Potter's disability as a prop to a joke because his disability isn't the joke. But if the joke was 'laugh at this guy, he's in a wheelchair, isn't that so funny?' then it would be offensive.

    As I said above, making jokes about people from minority groups is OK, but making them the joke is not OK.
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