A Picture of Caitlyn Jenner Thats Supposed tobe Inherently Funny
W e're used to the idea that what's offensive, in comedy and beyond, can change over time. Back in the 1970s, your granny may have enjoyed Love Thy Neighbour, but it's unlikely that many would now. We tend to think of the shift as generational – which is flattering to ourselves, of course. But this tectonic process is altogether less comfy when speeded up, as per this week's decision by Ofcom to censure an eight-year-old episode of Harry Hill's TV Burp – repeated this spring on TV channel Dave – as "highly offensive to the transgender community". Ofcom deemed the same episode acceptable after an investigation following its original broadcast in 2008.
It's a measure of how swiftly and dramatically mainstream attitudes to trans people have changed that the clip was considered palatable in the first place. It concerns Channel 4 documentary The Pregnant Man, about a trans man, Thomas Beatie, who retained his female reproductive organs after transitioning, and conceived a child. (You can see a clip of the original documentary here.) UKTV, which owns Dave, made a stab at defending the item on the basis that Hill was mocking Channel 4 sensationalism rather than Beatie himself. But – judging by the transcripts – that's a hard argument to uphold. The laughs are clearly coming at the supposed weirdness of a woman with a beard, a pregnant man, and the chaos that supposedly ensues when gender norms break down.
Until recently, to consider all this abnormal was a fairly mainstream position – hence the lack of controversy surrounding the item's first broadcast. Maybe some of us, appalled to read about it today, were among those who were laughing a few years ago? It wasn't until 2014 that British TV commissioned its first transgender sitcom, Boy Meets Girl. (It was announced this week that US sitcom Modern Family will soon become the first to feature a transgender child.) In the US, Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn – a high-profile transition – and Jeffrey Tambor from The Larry Sanders Show reinvented himself as Maura Pfefferman in Transparent, an Emmy award-winning series propelling trans issues further into the mainstream.
Attitudes to gender (transitioning, fluidity, etc) are shifting fast, and comedy is often as behind as it is ahead of the curve. I'll leave it to you to decide what it means that, in the same decade that binary definitions of gender were challenged as never before, the UK's favourite sitcom featured a man in a dress. It also saw Eddie Izzard joined in the ranks of gender-queer comedians by Axis of Awesome frontman Jordan Raskopoulos, 2016 America's Got Talent quarter-finalist Julia Scotti, Will Franken (who publicly transitioned to Sarah, and back again, in 2015), and "Britain's only goth, lesbian, transsexual stand-up comedian" Bethany Black.
That's a lot of movement in a short time, and its effect has been to raise awareness of trans issues, to foster understanding of and solidarity with transgender people. Hill's Pregnant Man clip draws on the assumption that few of us know (or indeed are) women with beards, men who get pregnant, or anyone who complicates the black-and-white certainties of binary gender. In an age when gender fluidity has gone mainstream, that's no longer a viable assumption. This week, the comic Sofie Hagen announced her intention that all venues on her upcoming tour be equipped with gender-neutral toilets. That's the new normal – and in such an age, it would seem incongruous and unfunny (or funny to fewer of us) to mock the whole idea of gender fluidity as inherently comical
That doesn't mean gender transitioning can't be a subject for comedy. In his 2015 Hammersmith Apollo shows and elsewhere, the US comic Dave Chappelle performed a joke about mistakenly calling a trans woman "he", then explaining: "I support anyone's right to be who they want to be. My question is: to what extent do I have to participate in your self-image?" It wasn't overtly mean spirited: it was confrontational, and zeroed in on the hot-button identity-politics issue of whether the individual defines their own identity.
This whole reimagining of what gender is, and how social norms should adjust to it, is one of the major cultural faultlines of the age, and I hope more comedians (both cis and trans) explore it fearlessly in their work. But the Ofcom ruling does show how attitudes, if not subjects, can nosedive out of fashion. And how funny is contingent: today's big laughs, as Dave TV has discovered, can quickly become tomorrow's cringes.
Three to see
Nish Kumar
Two-time Edinburgh comedy award near-miss Kumar takes to the road with his latest bulletin from the frontline of UK politics and culture. This year's offering focuses on Britain post-Brexit, gentrification and the never-ending ascendancy of the white male.
- At Hazlitt, Maidstone 1 October; at Lowry, Salford 2 October; then touring.
Barry Crimmins
First UK gigs in 30 years for US standup and activist Crimmins, whose new special is being produced by his fan Louis CK, and who "takes political comedy to a totally different level," according to Mark Thomas.
- At Leicester Square Theatre, London, until 1 October.
Josie Long
The autumn premiere of Long's all-new set, Something Better, which promises to combine the personal and political strands of her work, and finds the 34-year-old "really feeling like an outsider for the first time".
- At Soho Theatre, London, from 30 September to Oct 15.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/p/553bj?CMP=gu_com
0 Response to "A Picture of Caitlyn Jenner Thats Supposed tobe Inherently Funny"
Post a Comment