Comedy Being Strangled?

[Deleted member 292770]

Perhaps it's because they are out worrying sheep or are we not aloud to joke about sexual abuse towards sheep now. I can just see the great upset marching on the Welsh Parliament

The welsh Parliament, now that’s a joke. Not to mention the scottish.
But aren’t they all.

 

[AngleEyes]

But it's often not large swathes, is it? Again I'll say no one should ever feel bullied etc, however we can't expect to never be offended.

Of course we shouldn't expect to never be offended. But just as many think it's everyone's right to offend if they wish, so it must remain everyone's right to object to being offended.
For some to argue the 'woke' or cancel culture' argument is those very people who want to retain the right to offend as and when it pleases them to 'cancel' the right to object to being offended.

Sometimes an individual might be caught out e.g. innocently going to a Chubby Brown gig with no prior knowledge of his material. They might then be offended by said material. However surely these cases (no prior knowledge of a comedians material) are quite rare. We can all do some basic research before booking for a show.

But such 'showbiz' style people can be 'idols' and role models to the type of people that gain pleasure in being offensive.
Their comedy normalises that type of humour and ignorant, offensive people, who may make up a fair proportion of the audience, take that comedy outside of the 'comedy arena' and offend others in the normal walk of life. Thus racism, homophobia, etc is normalised, and the offended are branded as snowflakes, etc.

The danger re bit in bold is, we're now going down the route of cancelling things to appease minorities, sometimes small minorities at that.

A minority is by definition a smaller part of society. That does not justify ridicule which can easily lead to bullying, which in turn leads to further marginalising that discriminated minority.

 

[AngleEyes]

Would we ever have dreamed of writing to the theatre saying the act should be banned? That we felt 'unsafe' by the material.

Never. We all have choices in a democracy. If we're not careful, they'll be eroded beyond all recognition and not for the better.

We've come a long way from the days of hunting certain ethnicities through the streets, posting notices in windows of which ethnicities are acceptable, etc.
But we haven't yet reached a truly equitable society, and we have a long way to go, against much resistance.
To stop now and think we have achieved enough would be foolhardy and we would return to a society that acquiesces to discrimination because it has become normalised again.

 

[Odds]

It's a pity George Carlin is no longer around. He had a real instinct for knowing which buttons to push and how far he could go.
His observations on the Trump Presidency would've been comedy gold.

 

[diy_fun_uk]

We've come a long way from the days of hunting certain ethnicities through the streets, posting notices in windows of which ethnicities are acceptable, etc.
But we haven't yet reached a truly equitable society, and we have a long way to go, against much resistance.
To stop now and think we have achieved enough would be foolhardy and we would return to a society that acquiesces to discrimination because it has become normalised again.

You do realise we'll never have a TRULY equitable society, right? I don't care if people call me a pessimist, I'd say I'm a realist. From year dot humankind has had those in power and those with zero power, the haves and have nots. We have groups of people that don't like groups of other people for numerous reasons. Unless they start giving us lobotomies at birth, I can guarantee you 100 years from now we'll still have a society that isn't equitable. Politicians will still be coming out with the same old guff (year 2122 they'll probably still be talking about levelling up, more power for the north etc) and people, quite rightly, will still be fighting for a more equitable society.

Those fights should never stop, however whatever the utopian dream is, it'll never be reached. We don't as a collective have it in us. We'll be the masters of our own downfall and all that.

Here's a bit of fantasy ... or maybe not. Can you imagine in decades/centuries to come what it'll be like as we further progress with space exploration. Imagine if the moon was ever colonised. So in a sense we'd have a clean slate on a new planet to 'get things right' in terms of building a truly equitable society. Do you think that would happen? Or do you think there would be countries laying claim to parts of the moon depending on who got there first, who'd invested the most money, who was aligned with who etc?

All the isms will still exist decade in decade out. I'd like to think things are slowly trending upwards in terms of improvements. However in achieving that, if we all need to act like vanilla droids so no one's offended etc, is that really the world we want to live in?

 

[AngleEyes]

You do realise we'll never have a TRULY equitable society, right? I don't care if people call me a pessimist, I'd say I'm a realist. From year dot humankind has had those in power and those with zero power, the haves and have nots. We have groups of people that don't like groups of other people for numerous reasons. Unless they start giving us lobotomies at birth, I can guarantee you 100 years from now we'll still have a society that isn't equitable. Politicians will still be coming out with the same old guff (year 2122 they'll probably still be talking about levelling up, more power for the north etc) and people, quite rightly, will still be fighting for a more equitable society.

Those fights should never stop, however whatever the utopian dream is, it'll never be reached. We don't as a collective have it in us. We'll be the masters of our own downfall and all that.

Here's a bit of fantasy ... or maybe not. Can you imagine in decades/centuries to come what it'll be like as we further progress with space exploration. Imagine if the moon was ever colonised. So in a sense we'd have a clean slate on a new planet to 'get things right' in terms of building a truly equitable society. Do you think that would happen? Or do you think there would be countries laying claim to parts of the moon depending on who got there first, who'd invested the most money, who was aligned with who etc?

All the isms will still exist decade in decade out. I'd like to think things are slowly trending upwards in terms of improvements. However in achieving that, if we all need to act like vanilla droids so no one's offended etc, is that really the world we want to live in?

Perhaps you're right, but that doesn't mean we should give up and settle for second (third, fourth or worse) best.
The priority for any government is to protect its citizens, that doesn't only mean protection from outside malevolence, it also means protecting minorities from internal malevolence.
Any government that fails to protect its citizens (all of them) is failing in its basic duty.

 

[Ihavenojob]

Think yourself lucky how do you think i feel going through life being a black irish jew with ginger hair

That sounds like Tony Gerrard "If you think you're hard done by, just look at me, I'm black, Jewish and in a wheelchair."