Showing posts with label Jeremy Clarkson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jeremy Clarkson. Show all posts
Airport delays could be solved by "a bit of racism"
But, because it's Jeremy Clarkson saying it, it will be ironic racism, and we'll all laugh heartily, like yuppies pissing on a homeless teenager. I do wonder what it's going to take to bring Clarkson down? Does he need to say something like: "I would like to see sections of the current population shot or gassed based on their skin colour, nationality, political opinions, physical fitness or level of income", before someone who is in charge of something says, "hang on a minute... that's not on". These are mere pipedreams. If he said that the Director General of the BBC would just shrug and reply: "he earns lots of money through DVD sales, what'd you want me to say?"
Bourgeois adjudicator finds bourgeois advocate not guilty of anything - shock
So why are we circling round this story like a dog round some tasty vomit? Here's a clue.
Yes, folks, you could have expected Jeremy Clarkson to say something disgusting and right-wing about striking trade unionists, just as much as you'd expect the broadcasting establishment and press to back him to the hilt... but that's missing the point. Why should we expect it? Why should people have to put up with it? Jeremy Clarkson is a symptom, albeit a prominent symptom, of the coarsening of public life. Thanks to people like him public debate has become ever more scabrous and deceitful (e.g. Clarkson, in between calling for ironic death-squads, had the gall to describe public sector pensions as "gold-plated"... last year Clarkson earned more than £2 million).
What is going to be done about this decline in public debate? Clarkson certainly hasn't given pause for thought... why would he? We need to teach the upper class yahoos who rule us some manners... more strikes more frequently would help.
But there is another dimension to this. Jeremy Clarkson has provocative and outspoken views... really? So what? I have provocative and outspoken views. Many, many people have provocative and outspoken views. Why does a supporter of the hard-right English Democrats get a free pass when, for example, a Labour party councillor is suspended for liking rambunctious facebook statements regarding Margaret Thatcher and the IRA...? A rough example, but you get the picture.
In this world coarseness, prejudice and abuse is allowed, so long as its directed downwards.
Jeremy Clarkson prompted more than 30,000 complaints when he said on BBC1's The One Show that striking public sector workers should be shot. But media regulator Ofcom has cleared the programme of breaching broadcasting regulations, saying viewers should be familiar with the Top Gear presenter's "provocative and outspoken nature".
Yes, folks, you could have expected Jeremy Clarkson to say something disgusting and right-wing about striking trade unionists, just as much as you'd expect the broadcasting establishment and press to back him to the hilt... but that's missing the point. Why should we expect it? Why should people have to put up with it? Jeremy Clarkson is a symptom, albeit a prominent symptom, of the coarsening of public life. Thanks to people like him public debate has become ever more scabrous and deceitful (e.g. Clarkson, in between calling for ironic death-squads, had the gall to describe public sector pensions as "gold-plated"... last year Clarkson earned more than £2 million).
What is going to be done about this decline in public debate? Clarkson certainly hasn't given pause for thought... why would he? We need to teach the upper class yahoos who rule us some manners... more strikes more frequently would help.
But there is another dimension to this. Jeremy Clarkson has provocative and outspoken views... really? So what? I have provocative and outspoken views. Many, many people have provocative and outspoken views. Why does a supporter of the hard-right English Democrats get a free pass when, for example, a Labour party councillor is suspended for liking rambunctious facebook statements regarding Margaret Thatcher and the IRA...? A rough example, but you get the picture.
In this world coarseness, prejudice and abuse is allowed, so long as its directed downwards.
One false move and I'm Jim Davidson - pt 2
An interesting and potentially important article (LCHR anyone?) in this month’s Socialist Review:
There has been a trend going toward obscene, shock-jock comedy. You might call it “taboo-busting” but since when has respect for minorities, sometimes vulnerable minorities, been some kind of ghastly hypocritical sham? And it isn’t enough to say its ironic humour. A situational irony is action which achieves the opposite of the intentions behind the action. This is important for stand up comedy.
Humour is very specific, especially when it comes to live performance. All the great comedians (great by consensus, I would say – your Hicks, your Pryors, your Bruces) took care to cultivate their audience, so their comedy would be understood on stage. It’s a common observation that if a routine goes down well 9 times out of 10 the 10th time, where it is poorly received, is that particular audience’s fault – they just didn’t get it.
It is well and good to say:
I suppose it should but, if we’re being picky, the first thing comedy should be about is making people laugh. Comedy can challenge authority and convention, it can also point out the ironies of the mundane, it can take you on flights of fantasy; it can even lift the lid on the darker areas of humanity – giving you a sense of relief that you’re not the only one to think that (even if you know it's wrong). Bill Hicks was brilliant at ‘dark poetry’, Frankie Boyle, I think, has his moments too.
Popular comedy started to move away from the Alternative Ideal when it became truly popular. In 1993 Newman and Baddiel played Wembley Arena and Comedy was the New Rock and Roll. Rock and Roll is a broad, cool medium. Stand up comedy is very specifically intense, hot.
How do you make 12,000 people simultaneously laugh? You can’t lose any part of the room when you’re playing to that number (as the top comedians do quite frequently now). This is where the cutting edge is blunted. It leads back into the point about irony. It is, or should be, a subtle rhetorical tool, what are the prospects for successful irony at a stadium gig? Everyone knows the example of Al Murray, a character comedian who started off satirising Little Englanders but ended up going native. Given the history of comedy more generally, you have to wonder what future there is in ironic satire. Racists loved Alf Garnett, Yuppies took Loadsamoney to their bosom and today Hipsters adore the Dickhead Song.
Though there’s clearly a lot more to establish, we need to understand how stand up comedy went from cutting edge to middle of the road to lowest common denominator. Otherwise you might fairly conclude that, in the 1980s, people were right-on, whereas these days they’re giggling reactionary scum.
What's going on? It seems like every time I switch on my TV, so-called comedians and panel show celebrities are telling racist and other offensive jokes.
Only the other day, Jimmy Carr was on a quiz panel spouting a tirade of racist jokes about Travellers and their protest at Dale Farm. Two days later Jeremy Clarkson was on the BBC's One Show saying that strikers should be shot in front of their families.
His excuse? It was only a joke. I don't recall the same leniency being applied to the two young men who jokingly called on people to riot on facebook over the summer.
There has been a trend going toward obscene, shock-jock comedy. You might call it “taboo-busting” but since when has respect for minorities, sometimes vulnerable minorities, been some kind of ghastly hypocritical sham? And it isn’t enough to say its ironic humour. A situational irony is action which achieves the opposite of the intentions behind the action. This is important for stand up comedy.
Humour is very specific, especially when it comes to live performance. All the great comedians (great by consensus, I would say – your Hicks, your Pryors, your Bruces) took care to cultivate their audience, so their comedy would be understood on stage. It’s a common observation that if a routine goes down well 9 times out of 10 the 10th time, where it is poorly received, is that particular audience’s fault – they just didn’t get it.
It is well and good to say:
Comedy should be about challenging authority and convention, not laughing at the most oppressed and exploited in society. The fact is we don't live in an equal world.
I suppose it should but, if we’re being picky, the first thing comedy should be about is making people laugh. Comedy can challenge authority and convention, it can also point out the ironies of the mundane, it can take you on flights of fantasy; it can even lift the lid on the darker areas of humanity – giving you a sense of relief that you’re not the only one to think that (even if you know it's wrong). Bill Hicks was brilliant at ‘dark poetry’, Frankie Boyle, I think, has his moments too.
Popular comedy started to move away from the Alternative Ideal when it became truly popular. In 1993 Newman and Baddiel played Wembley Arena and Comedy was the New Rock and Roll. Rock and Roll is a broad, cool medium. Stand up comedy is very specifically intense, hot.
How do you make 12,000 people simultaneously laugh? You can’t lose any part of the room when you’re playing to that number (as the top comedians do quite frequently now). This is where the cutting edge is blunted. It leads back into the point about irony. It is, or should be, a subtle rhetorical tool, what are the prospects for successful irony at a stadium gig? Everyone knows the example of Al Murray, a character comedian who started off satirising Little Englanders but ended up going native. Given the history of comedy more generally, you have to wonder what future there is in ironic satire. Racists loved Alf Garnett, Yuppies took Loadsamoney to their bosom and today Hipsters adore the Dickhead Song.
Though there’s clearly a lot more to establish, we need to understand how stand up comedy went from cutting edge to middle of the road to lowest common denominator. Otherwise you might fairly conclude that, in the 1980s, people were right-on, whereas these days they’re giggling reactionary scum.
The Top Gear Defence
It's an almost unbeatable strategy, with practically limitless applications: why're you getting upset? It's all just a joke, like on Top Gear. Let's test it out:
Tory youth sing songs about the holocaust, but it's all just a joke... like on Top Gear.
Victims of Domestic Violence are to be charged commission on Child Maintenance payments, but it's all just a joke... like on Top Gear.
Cancer patients are to be subjected to welfare tests to see if they're sick enough, but it's all just a joke... like on Top Gear.
Public sector workers to face 16% pay cut to pay for bankers in need, but it's all just a joke... like on Top Gear.
With antimonies like these...!
Who needs, um... ontology? And that's as far as I got with Historical Materialism. But seriously, a note on the contradictions of class baiting: In order to get their buddy Clarkson off the hook rightwing commentators have had to insist it was all said in jest (c'mon, any fool knows Clarkson does want to see us all shot, he just doesn't think it's practical right now). The trouble is the strike wasn't in jest, hence the 'joke' fell flat. Days ago the right was screaming blue murder about the cost to the economy, now they have to about face and dismiss the strikers as having non-jobs.
Similarly Cameron has claimed Wednesday's strike was a damp squib and, 24 hours later, obviously big.
Which is it, we're left wondering? For rightwingers it's both and everything.
Similarly Cameron has claimed Wednesday's strike was a damp squib and, 24 hours later, obviously big.
Which is it, we're left wondering? For rightwingers it's both and everything.
You pay his wages - he advocates your murder.
And in the topsy-turvy Land of Chocolate most right-wingers inhabit that's fair exchange no robbery. If Top Gear is Britain's cultural expression of fascism I suppose we have to comfort ourselves it's ironic fascism (it's all just a joke you see, can't you take murder fantasies with a pinch of salt?). If Clarkson and co get the upper hand we'll have ironic jackboots, kitsch swastikas and self-reflexive zyklon B.
[Extra note] The point about Jeremy Clarkson's statement is not that it shows him to be a violent minded idiot, there are plenty of those in the world. Clarkson and his Top Gear cohort consistently push aggressive, bigoted language from a public platform into everyday life, acclimatising people to violence. Where does it all end? One example is Anders Breivik, the Utoya mass murderer, who was inspired and encouraged to do what he did by over a decade of bigoted mainstream language and attitude directed against multiculuralism and immigration in general, muslims in particular. Amongst other things Breivik was a Clarkson fan.
It's a small thing in the long run but you can make your complaint here.
It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times
Give a thousand monkeys a thousand typewriters and they'll eventually produce Shakespeare. Give a thousand nazis a thousand typewriters and sooner or later they'll give you The World According to Clarkson.
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