If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Options
Transgender- Too Offensive for Comedy
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
http://entertainment.uk.msn.com/tv/news/Article.aspx?cp-documentid=15776282>1=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.
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.
0
Comments
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."
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!
Yeah, apart from anything, it sounds like really lazy comedy - look at the man dressed as a woman! Hilarious :yeees:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
I haven't seen the show. What's the real beef with the character?
Crikey, Jim, you'll end up banning half of television and a significant proportion of every comedian who's ever taken up the mic.
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.
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.