Funny, ha-ha
October 9th, 2008 • comedy, culture
It has been a pretty difficult week for comedy. Before we go any further, it’s helpful to recognise that comedy is hard work. Sometimes - and even with the best preparation and writers - jokes fall flat. Having to explain that something is, in fact, a joke is not normally a good sign, and not a defence that works well with audiences or reviewers.
For example, the noted humourist, the Rector of St Michael, Cornhill and St Sepulchre without Newgate Dr Peter Mullen, has been having some trouble with his new material. Let’s hand over to The Guardian for a second:
A Church of England vicar could face disciplinary action for saying gay men should have “sodomy” warnings tattooed on their bodies. [...]
Mullen, 66, wrote it was time for religious believers to recommend the discouragement of homosexual practices in the style of cigarette packet warnings.
“Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan sodomy can seriously damage your health and their chins with fellatio kills.”
Mullen is apparently unaware that straight people are also allowed to have oral sex. No-one tell him, okay? When complaints were made, Mullen responded:
“I wrote some satirical things on my blog and anybody with an ounce of sense of humour or any understanding of the tradition of English satire would immediately assume that they’re light-hearted jokes.”
Some small confusion here from Mullen, whose piss-weak “ha-ha, you can’t take a joke” defence rather fails to understand the “tradition of English satire” which he hopes to join. Satire is not kind. Satire is not half-hearted and satire is certainly not light-hearted. It’s a way of attacking something of which the speaker strongly disapproves. The person being attacked should not be provoked into genuine laughter, but sharply needled.
Beyond the failure to meet certain rhetorical standards, if Mullen had the strength of his homo-hating convictions (and understood satire at all) he might have taken this opportunity to tell us how AIDS is Gods punishment for “teh homo” (always a rib-tickler) rather than hiding behind the defence that he was sadly misunderstood and that:
I certainly have nothing against homosexuals. Many of my dear friends have been and are of that persuasion.
I quite understand. I myself have spent many hours riling up hatred and revulsion against some of my closest friends. /sarcasm
Mullen’s attempt to distance himself from the content of his homophobia by claiming it’s just light-hearted satire is nonsensical (and hey, I got to use some literary criticism at the same time). And obviously, the main problem with Mullen’s “joke” is that it’s old and tired. I’m sure we all remember how quickly the Third Reich’s “comic” forced tattooing of social minorities became unfunny. Instantaneously, in fact.
Hmm.
