When Jimmy Carr’s Netflix special (His Dark Material) dropped, my initial reaction was “Wow, Jimmy Carr got a Netflix deal?”. I’d assumed Netflix were only interested in *global* standup superstars - heavyweights like Dave Chappelle, Amy Schumer and Bill Burr. This is like finding out James Corden got that Late Night gig again. But no, there he was, his face creeping out from behind the on-brand red curtain as though he was cheekily dropping-in to the same prestigious format that so many of his North American peers had made comedy’s new home. I watched a little bit of it. Not much. It’s hard to allocate an hour to anything when you’ve got a young family, let alone “pun-liner” stand-up by a guy who scarred his domestic reputation by taking part in a tax-dodge. But in a rare thirty minutes of peace and quiet, as my girlfriend took her make-up off, I put it on (the special, not the make-up). I don't remember being particularly fazed by anything I saw. But then, I suppose I'm not in many marginalised groups, am I? I'm a straight, white man with a good income in the South East of England. In that sense maybe it's not up to me whether the jokes in it are unacceptable or not. Interestingly, Carr is also all of those things. Perhaps that should serve as food for thought for us both. A couple of months after its release, the - normally quite punctual - outrage machine kicked in. A rare example of it lagging or missing its moment. A million shit, open-mic comedians lampooned: come on guys, timing is everything. The Independent, BBC, Sky News, The Guardian, half of fucking Twitter - everyone seemed incensed about a line that sought to make fun of the deaths of GRT (Gypsy Roma Travellers). I couldn’t imagine it would be anything THAT bad, surely? The Guardian had the exact wording: “When people talk about the Holocaust they talk about the tragedy and horror of 6 million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine. But they never mention the thousands of Gypsies that were killed by the Nazis... No one ever wants to talk about that, because no one ever wants to talk about the positives.” - Jimmy Carr. How does that joke make you feel? Did you laugh? Did you find it a bit boring? Shit? Did it make you incandescent with rage and demand Netflix shuts down by the end of the week? Reader, where do YOU sit on the “this comedy is protected free speech” vs “this comedy is hate speech” liberalism subdivide? I'll be honest: as an erstwhile comic myself, but also a Progressive, his material (and the reaction to it) leaves me in a bit of a quandary. Let me explain. I’m a standup (or was, before my children ‘cancelled’ those aspirations - they say they 'want a father in the picture', I say 'pfffff gen-Z'rs want everything on a plate these days') and I am of the belief that you should be able to talk about anything up there. But I’m also a Left-leaning guy, who can’t in-good-conscience support the mocking of a minority being murdered. Or at least, not in this capacity. More on that shortly. First, let's examine the case FOR. The reasons Carr's joke should just be left the fuck alone. I want to be upfront. Clearly I love comedy. But also I love comedians. Stand-up comedians are a weird bunch. Neurotic, narcissistic, obsessive, brash. But from all that weirdness comes camaraderie and joy. I mourn the loss of stand-up from my life, every single day. I miss it more than some dead blood relatives. I’d sacrifice some living ones to be able to do it more. I think anything can be used as the foundations of a joke. Anything. If you can find a way to make the most abhorrent subjects funny, whether it's talking through your own experiences of them, or if you use them as a metaphor for something else - I think you should be free to do that. The best standups I've seen have done precisely that. Now with that licence to say whatever, comes an inherent risk. And so Comedy has always been upsetting. In my favoured sub-genre of observational comedy, it's rattled itself against the prison bars of controversy for as long as it's been a thing. From Lenny Bruce => George Carlin => Pryor => Murphy => Rock => Chappelle; it’s forever been thus. It's shock value, exaggeration, busting taboos and pissing people off; it's a celebrated mode for a significant chunk of stand-up. It started with a guy cracking jokes at his Mother In Law’s expense in some Vaudeville Theatre with shocked on-lookers (“what is his family going to think!?”) and it’s currently a posh man telling one-liners about gypsies. Comics say stupid shit. People clutch their pearls. Then we all move on. So, to my mind, the idea that Jimmy Carr, wouldn't attract the same level of controversy (as Chappelle or Bruce) when blasted out to huge audiences on the world's biggest streaming platform, seemed a bit of a stretch. But you could definitely make a case that outrage like this is kind of business-as-usual for a big name. Also in support of Carr, we are inarguably in this weird, warped world right now, where we hold comedians to higher standards than Presidents or Prime Ministers. An elected politician says something outrageous and unacceptable, they remain in office, you're dismissed as a snowflake and the news-cycle moves on to a missing teenager or dead celebrity. But that anger at the injustice and ignorance doesn't go nowhere. Instead, the feeling of powerlessness just re-focuses efforts to areas of public life where you can make a difference. You can feel heard. Action can be taken. And so 'cancelling' talk-show hosts or pop stars or stand-ups becomes the next best thing. I don't think what Jimmy Carr said was clever or okay or funny. But I'd be lying if I said I thought all the outrage directed at him was in no way the runner-up prize to holding Politicians to account. Put simply: if Politicians listened to marginalised communities, policies would be implemented that protected them in the ways they've been asking for. That's why people go apeshit when a Senator or MP says something problematic; because the attitudes and character they let slip ("grab 'em by the pussy", "let the bodies pile high") are the same as is likely to influence a real life policy that's going to dictate how that community is treated. But comedians? Well, then that line of logic kinda falls to pieces. Comics don't write policies. Most of them can barely write fuckin’ jokes. Now we've got the 'for' out the way, - let's flip to 'against'. When I was doing comedy, over the space of five years, as you can imagine I'd get into the odd discussion about what could (/could not) be joked about. The general consensus from comedians, promoters and comedy journos was thus: you can joke about anything, as long as it's funny and always punch *up* and not down. Basically you can use any topic you like but just be conscious that it does kind of matter whose face it comes out of. That means a black guy can joke about black guys. But a white guy, ehhhh, not so much. A fat lady can joke about skinny women. But a skinny woman joking about fat women? Well, it's not impossible, but it'd take a lot more time and skill to make that joke accessible, for the audience to feel it was 'okay to laugh at', that it was more funny than cruel, that it was coming from a good place, or that even if you used the phrase “fat bitch”, that it was a metaphor for something, or that the joke was *actually* about Parent & Child Parking bays. Or something. Great example of this: you might recall a few years ago, much was made of Louis CK's material. Journos marvelled at the free licence he was given to use N-words and F-words galore, where other comics' careers would be dead-on-arrival. I always saw it as evidence of his skill and their lack of understanding of the craft. Viewers could see he wasn't a bigot. Broadly, his material employed themes from the social justice playbook: racism, feminism, domestic violence, gay marriage. Clearly CK's own issues a few years later tainted his public persona, but “tricky material” wise - all of that remains true. He was able to use certain words/jokes because he made the audience feel he was broadly on their side. And that that side was 'good', for want of a better word. He achieved that by couching the harder routines in between more progressive ones, by being best friends with Chris Rock, by exposing the ridiculousness of the words themselves rather than using them in a mean-spirited or “you can’t say anything nowadays” sort of vibe. With Carr it's different. There's no couching of the joke. There's no 'bit' preceding it letting you know that he's on the side of marginalised communities. And in the absence of that, and against the backdrop his background: that of a well-spoken, English, Cambridge-alumni tax-dodger - what you actually get is a sense that this is a privileged, probably quite conservative individual joshing like we all fear privileged Oxbridge southerners josh: about fucking over minorities. Perhaps on reading that you’re thinking “Jesus Christ, Aid, enough with the social justice shit. It’s a comedy special, you’ve said it yourself: comedians have always said offensive shit. SHUT THE FUCK UP”. And I get that. But an interesting exercise to perform on jokes like this is to imagine the same joke told by someone you don't like. If Roy Chubby Brown or Jim Davidson chortled about it being a net positive that Nazis gassed GRTs, it would make for uncomfortable viewing. So you could reasonably conclude: “Well then, there’s your answer. If you’d pillory Davidson for saying it, you can’t stand-by while Carr vomits out the same awful dogshit out, can you? And you’d be right. I can’t. But as I said before, it *does* matter whose face it comes out of. What they look like. How they sound. In so far as whether people will give them a pass or not. There’s a reason Carr has survived this long where Dapper Laughs got canned. Society showed they're fine with a well-spoken man in a suit telling risqué jokes that allude to sexual assault. Conversely they showed they're absolutely not okay with a working class comic treading on those same themes. I'm not saying either are okay. But there is a definite shift in what the public are willing to accept, depending on who is saying it. That doesn't mean Carr should be let-off. I'm not saying he gets a pass because he sounds more quintessentially middle-class or whatever. I'm just contextualising why sometimes it does matter whose face the shit comes out of. Furthermore, I’d counter that we don’t lose sight of who we’re talking about here. Roy Chubby Brown. And Jim fucking Davidson. Two comedians whose ability to stay out of standup’s “semi pro” leagues has been severely challenged in recent times owing almost entirely to the fact people find their humour distasteful. They can probably sell out a gig here and there, and there may be unsettling footage of rows of people laughing along. But mainstream comedy and indeed society have already spoken. That kind of comedy is dead. It feels outdated, lazy and dumb. The nearest it gets to a mainstream airing now is when someone like Al Murray surfaces to mock it. So not to sound like a free marketeer, but the market has moved and shown that people are actually, generally, better than that. On that basis, I think it’s fine to adopt a couple of different, seemingly opposing positions. I don’t think his joke was particularly funny and as a comic I found it a bit lazy. But I don’t think he should have his special pulled off Netflix. And I do think the market will move against him if he pursues this kind of shit. Oh and - as ever - if you disagree with anything I’ve said - feel free to hold me to (Prime Ministerial levels of) account and the very highest of standards. Or go fuck yourself. Either is fine.
