What takes precedence? Free speech or misogynistic humour?
I’ve been wondering whether I’m a hypocrite this week.
Dapper Laughs, aka Daniel O’Reilly, has decided to make a comeback on the back of a BBC interview on Radio 1’s Newsbeat.
Last year, you may remember, there was a huge furore over his particular brand of sexist humour that provoked such animosity on social media, that he was forced to kill off the Dapper Laughs character.
Popular on Vine, the video streaming site that restricts video to a duration of 6 seconds, Dapper Laughs could often be seen walking along the street, directing shockingly vulgar comments at unsuspecting women in what he would describe as ‘banter’. It was this brand of misogynistic humour that was judged to be inexcusable by a large number of very vocal protestors, and so Dapper Laughs was no more.
But now he’s back.
Despite having apologised at the time for the nature of the humour, Daniel O’Reilly now says that he was bullied by the media mob into giving up his comedy against his wishes, and wants to continue in the same vein as before. He cites the press support for free speech that came out of the Charlie Hebdo attacks as being hypocritical, since his right to free speech was curtailed. Does he have a point?
I attended the wake in Birmingham for the victims of Charlie Hebdo. I was also fairly scathing about Dapper Laughs when it all kicked off about him last year, and was pleased he’d stopped. So can those two actions sit comfortably side-by-side?
I would say yes – but it’s not an argument about humour. It’s more about consent.
Where Dapper Laughs crosses the line for me, is when he videos himself targeting women in the street with misogynistic lines in an effort to capture their reactions.
This way of delivering humour has become more frequent on TV over the past 10 years. It all started out in the 50s and 60s with Candid Camera, of course, and continued up to the 90s in the UK with Jeremy Beadle and Noel Edmonds honing their versions to the delight of millions of Saturday night TV viewers.
But even then, there was something a bit too easy, and a bit too ‘cheap’ about humour that relies on engaging an unsuspecting ‘victim’ for laughs. The examples from the 80s and 90s were quite puerile and didn’t have any particular theme, apart from perhaps the use of slapstick and the ‘practical joke’ element. They didn’t just make women look stupid – they made everyone look stupid – and so the only charges you could level at them was that they were cheap, unfunny and occasionally a bit cruel.
Recent examples have become more targeted, and have become part of a character’s specific repertoire rather than just generic ‘stunts’. Jocelyn Jee Esien was using hidden camera stunts while in character in her BBC3 show ‘Little Miss Jocelyn’ back in 2006. Dapper Laughs is the latest incarnation of this, albeit in the 6-second format required for Vine. Because the character is extreme, the interactions are often toe-curling; funny to some, no doubt, but probably crossing the line for many who don’t readily relate to that kind of ‘banterised’ humour.
My problem with it is that there’s no consent from the victim of the humour. If you go to a Frankie Boyle concert, you are actively choosing to be in his audience. There’s a chance you may get picked on, and there’s a chance that a lot of the humour will be near-the-knuckle. But you can have no complaint when you’ve chosen to be there. If, for some bizarre reason, you didn’t have a clue what you were getting yourself into, you could still leave and not have your embarrassment witnessed by millions of viewers on social media.
Maybe that’s why it’s been so easy for many to accuse Dapper Laughs of supporting rape – because millions of viewers see him repeatedly humiliating women on his Vine feed without their consent. I’m not saying that in a hysterical way – I’m just stating fact. The humiliation there is real – they’re not actors. If he claims to be in it ‘for the laughs’, why humiliate women for real? Surely it’s easier for knuckle-headed misogynistic men to ape what they see him doing because it does target women for real. If it was staged as sketch comedy, we might be able to see some irony there, and he could turn the ‘humour’ back on himself.
Free speech doesn’t come without boundaries and responsibilities. And no popular comedian should underestimate the potential for humour to find its way into the national psyche, and for people to use it as a green-light for inappropriate behaviour.
But people are also ultimately responsible for their own actions. Comedy should occasionally challenge and offend – it’s what makes it so rich and interesting. If there are idiots out there that think making women feel uncomfortable in the street is funny, then they shouldn’t be surprised if they get a slap on the face or a knee in the groin. A comedian is not responsible for the actions of an imbecile.
But the comedian should also realise that reinforcing stereotypes can affect behaviour in society in a bad way. That’s why we don’t see sitcoms such as ‘Mind Your Language’ any more. The public has rejected them – but that has happened organically over the years, as people have slowly rejected intolerance and prejudice.
The world works much quicker these days. Reaction can be swift and painful. Mr O’Reilly had to put up with more than a few irate letters to the Radio Times – his family was subject to inexcusable hate mail. Times have changed.
Daniel O’Reilly can and does write some funny stuff. His persona is cheeky and could be a lovable rogue with a wider appeal if handled more skilfully. I hope his comeback allows him to make his audience laugh in the spirit of free speech that we can all embrace. There’s just one question to answer: how should he go about doing it?
He knows.
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Season’s Tweetings
As we enter that weird Christmas-period which consists of not knowing what day it is, and spending a weekday morning eating mince pies in nightwear while watching reruns of ‘Don’t Do That, You’ll Go Blind Charlie Brown’, it’s time to wish you a ‘Merry Christmas’.
Two weeks off work is valuable time to make progress on substantive projects, and so I may not blog for a couple of weeks. However, I will be posting daily content on Twitter, which at the moment includes festive audio poems and rhymes, captioned Victorian pictures and the usual mix of observations, self-penned gags and occasional links to the arts and anything else I like the look of. Please follow me there – it would be great to have you along.
In the meantime, thank you to everyone who’s subscribed and reads these posts. My creative journey will continue next year with some exciting challenges, and I hope you will gain a lot from reading my updates about them.
Thank you for your support, and have a very Happy Christmas and New Year.
-Gary
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Six-Monthly Review
July is here already, accompanied by its rather fine weather, so it’s time to reflect on how the year is going creatively, and musing about where I should direct my energies for the rest of the year.
This time last year, I was quietly terrified about the prospect of putting on a stage show. This year is much quieter, but it’s still been a creatively satisfying time.
The first 5 months were a bit of a write-off really, because the bloody inspection at work was looming, with no definite date. Stress levels were high and I found it hard to focus on anything else. I enjoyed starting a novel, which I took very seriously, and from which I learned a lot. However, if Im honest with myself, I thought the idea was a bit low-rent and it eventually lost the battle for my attention. I’m now mulling over story ideas, with the intention of getting it right before I embark on the whole planning process again.
So, the result from the novel? A wealth of knowledge about character archetypes and plotting that will be invaluable next time I give it a go.
The rest of the 6 months since the inspection – so just the last 6 weeks really – have been great fun, as if all the creativity that’s been suppressed by the inspection has come out to play.
I’m learning new skills:
I can play the ukulele. Or at least I can get a tune out of it. And a few chords. And I’m loving it. I love the fact there’s no time limit – that I can just pick it up and put it down whenever I like, and that it straddles that line between easy and challenging perfectly. I would love to incorporate it into an act at some point. For now, it remains a hobby.
I’m also learning to draw cartoons. (See previous post.) This is my most exciting project, because it opens up a huge world of possibilities. It means I can take my comedy writing to an audience in a variety of new ways – and what’s more, it involves short-form comedy, that I find much easier to write than the longer-form scripts. More importantly, it opens up a very specific channel through which I can sell my work. More about this as it happens.
I’ve produced my first comedy zine:
For me, this is the real triumph of the year, because I did it on weekends as a therapeutic escape from all things ‘inspection’ and managed to turn it into a completed project. No-one but me and a couple of interested friends really gives a shit about it, and yet again I have a good end-product that is reaching precisely no-one, but there it is: a completed printed booklet that I made. And I think it’s funny enough to be proud of. Go me. 😉
What excites me about the zine is the potential. If I can produce a 16-page zine in the middle of the busiest period of my career, then I can do pretty much anything. (Although I should have already learned this by now.)
So how have I been doing on my new year resolutions? Here they are, with my comments on them in italics:
1. Concentrate on fewer, substantial projects.
The zine is a good example of how this approach can pay dividends. Perhaps it was a good thing that the inspection forced me to focus on just the one project. Lesson learned.
2. Surround yourself with a good team of talented supporters.
This is in development. Apart from a core group of people I can truly rely on, I need to discover new ‘patrons’. I’m hoping that patreon.com can help with this. They claim to want to make the site work for quality content producers, rather than it being a popularity contest. I hope they follow through on that.
3. Keep yourself fit and healthy.
I need to re-motivate myself exercise-wise, but I’ve stayed on top of it, just. Overall, I’m happy with the balance I’ve struck.
4. Enter writing competitions in order to learn, not just to win.
I’ve had no time for competitions. I don’t see them as a great use of time, and they’re seldom creatively useful or satisfying.
5. Write something every day.
This has morphed into ‘do something creative every day’, which I do. I also do write every day, although some days it’s just a joke, or the first line of a poem.
6. For god’s sake, man – SELL YOURSELF!
Yep – I’m working on this!
So what about the other stuff? The podcasts, stand-up and sitcoms?
Well, the stand-up has changed into character-driven YouTube videos, although I can see me doing more stand-up in character next year. The stage show needs third- party input, and so that’s for another day. Podcasts won’t be back anytime soon. Nice to have options, though. For now, they’re on the back burner.
My aims for the rest of the year:
– develop Patreon and Twitter followings ( Twitter has been going well lately, with a series of well-timed memes getting retweeted and favourited).
– complete another zine -style publication. (But not necessarily a zine per se.)
– continue to develop cartooning skills
– continue to produce YouTube videos
– kick off project M ( which is for ‘monetise’)
In a couple of weeks, I’m spending a few days in Haye-on-Wye, book-shop capital of the UK, with the sole intention of chilling out. I’m taking note-books, pens and pencils, and am hoping to find inspiration while I’m there.
Please stick with me on this great ride by reading and interacting on this blog. There are so many things to do! 🙂
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Adobe Ideas
It’s a frustrating experience for me that I love visual art, but can’t actually produce anything decent of my own. Words, I can do. But ask me to draw you a picture of a horse, and it will doubtless end up looking like something totally unrelated, like a teapot. Or a mouse. Or a 1970s Triumph Dolomite.
For a long time, I’ve pondered about learning the art of cartooning. It would certainly come in handy. Even writing long-form comedy such as sitcoms can produce material that can be useful in other forms, such as cartoon strips. And I often have disjointed ideas that don’t exist as part of a larger project that I would love to slot in somewhere without having to shoe-horn it into other work.
So – I’m learning how to draw cartoon characters with the aid of a superb book by Christopher Hart entitled ‘Modern Cartooning’. It takes you through different techniques step-by-step, so that by the end of the book, you are equipped with enough knowledge to draw cartoon characters with confidence – from developing appropriate facial expressions, to getting the body type right, and most importantly making everything as funny as it can be.
This type of step-by-step book suits my learning style perfectly. I wrote Spectrum games as a teenager using one, as well as HTML back when roll-over images were the height of sophistication.
So, having bought a sketch pad and some artists pens and pencils, I sat down to learn how to draw. Which is when I realised how technology really can help make things much easier. Because a couple of weeks earlier, I’d downloaded an app onto my iPad called ‘Adobe Ideas’, which is a drawing program. It was fun to use, but I dismissed it after a while because it was too difficult to draw with any kind of accuracy. That was a massive error of judgement.
Because after a while sketching out my cartoons with old-fashioned paper and pencils, I realised that drawing is a very messy business. Instead of a clean-looking cartoon face, I’d be producing a face, yes, but a face covered with the scars of rubbed-out lines and smudged graphite. It’s the sort of thing you don’t see much of on ‘The Simpsons’.
So I began to think: what if, once I’d finished a cartoon, I could upload a copy of it to this app, which I could then use to clean up the image. I could even colour in areas of the drawing without having to resort to felt tip pens (which I always thought looked crap at school, because you could see all the pen strokes, as well as where the pen had started to run out, which made it look rubbish.)
And happily, it turned out that I can indeed do just that. In fact, I can do more. Because Adobe Ideas lets you import an image and keep it on a separate layer, so you can trace over that image from scratch – meaning that you can produce variations of the same drawing – very handy if you want to produce the same character with different expressions in three panes of a cartoon strip. Cheating? Nah. It’s called using the resources available to you. So all I have to do is take a photo of my drawing with my iPad, and then upload it to the app to then alter. Easy!
Now let me reassure you that I don’t suddenly believe I’m an artist. But what I can now do is produce drawings that are good enough to back up my writing – that I could either use as end products in themselves, or as ways of supporting the presentation of my ideas.
See what you think. The character is my own creation and is the first of two that illustrate a set-up/punchline gag. The first picture is the real sketch, and the second is the final result made on Adobe Ideas. I think it works really well!
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Good F***ing Morning Britain
Flicking quickly through the TV channels this breakfast time, I was disturbed to briefly catch Susanna Reid on ‘Good Morning Britain’ calling someone a f***ing w***er live on air! Surely, I thought, this is not the way for ITV to improve flagging ratings. So I flicked back and was relieved to find that she was just reading a story about the abdication of King Juan Carlos.
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Back on the Horse
I thought it might be an idea to get some stage-time under my belt before the big show in July, so last night I did my first comedy gig in a long time, at Lou Deemy’s Soup at the Blue Orange Theatre.
It was fun!
I did it as a character instead of myself, which was a first for me – and I have to say I was a lot less nervous as a result. I also found the timing much, much easier as a result; I could never seem to find my rhythm during my previous stand-up gigs, and I think that was why I felt like it wasn’t coming naturally (and stopped gigging.) Last night, I felt much more comfortable being a character.
I also know the level of practice I need in order to remember the script properly, which will be really critical in July. It will be a lot easier in the show, because there will be dialogue from someone else to bounce off, which means you’re never more than a couple of lines away from a prompt (assuming the other person remembers correctly, of course…)
I’m behind on writing the show this week, mainly because of a really crap weekend, so the gig has given me the boost I needed. We have a script read-through on Sunday evening, which will be an early indication of how well it’s coming together.
And judging from the reaction to my gig last night, it is coming together!
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Show Update – Tickets on Sale!
In case you haven’t been following the blog, I’m writing and producing a live theatre comedy show as part of ‘Birmingham Fest‘ – a celebration of drama, comedy and poetry taking place across a number of theatres in Birmingham in July.
The big news is that tickets are now on sale, so I can now reveal a bit more detail about the show!
It’s called ‘Driving School’ and is a spoof ‘Driver Awareness’ course in which the audience are trainees on the course. Here’s the blurb from the website:
Do your passengers put their arms in the air when going over speed-humps? Does it take longer for you to park than to reach your destination? Do you drive a Nissan Micra?
‘Driving School’ is a unique theatrical experience where you, the audience, are trainees on a Driver Awareness course.
Drivers and non-drivers welcome!
The show lasts for one hour, and will be hosted by myself and comedian Jonny Greatrex, who is an up-and-coming performer on the stand-up comedy circuit, and has his own comedy nights at the Rose Villa Tavern in Birmingham. The performance is scheduled for Friday 19th July at 7pm at the Blue Orange Theatre in Birmingham.
So, with just 7 weeks to go before the big night, how is the development of the show coming along?
Well, this is how it looks right now! :-
Although the script is by no means ready as yet, we now have a plan for the sequence of events in the show in the form of a board full of Post-It notes! I want the show to be fast-moving and dynamic, with lots of energy and no time for the audience to get bored, so there are going to be a lot of short segments, and lots of opportunities for the audience to get involved. It should be a lot of fun.
The show will make heavy use of slides for visual gags, and to support the “course” as it progresses. There’ll also be recorded interludes between the set pieces that provide opportunities to reset the stage and to prepare for segments that follow. These will also be useful in holding the show together by strengthening the theme of the show.
It’ll be challenging to sustain a good level of comedy for an hour. It’s something neither Jonny nor myself have tried to do before, either as writers or performers, and so we’ll be in unknown territory. Jonny is the more experienced performer, and will be leading the segments that require audience interaction. He’s also going to be key in relaxing the audience at the start of the show.
Essentially, we’re a double-act for the duration of the performance, and so we’ll need to work on the dynamic between us, which was already developed to a certain extent during our previous podcasts.
We also have the backing of Andy Gough, who is the man behind the Vivid Ink line of deluxe body art shops in Birmingham, Sutton and Walsall. Andy is taking an active role in the development of the show, by providing financial and creative support. He’ll also be taking a starring role!
My next job is to finalise a script to enable rehearsals to start, and to be submitted for lighting and sound cues, both of which will be essential for the smooth running of the show on the night.
If you’d like to come along to the show, tickets are £5 each and are available online from the Birmingham Fest website. Otherwise, follow the build-up and aftermath here! We’re all sure to learn loads along the way!
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Disappointed.
The results of the Sitcom Mission have just been announced, and out of 185 entries, I didn’t manage to make it into the top 32.
It’s always disappointing when you don’t make the grade, and I’m definitely gutted after the initial feedback I was given was so positive. I also worked really hard on a substantial rewrite, and had set myself the target of at least making the last 32.
I really could have used the confidence boost right now, having taken the plunge to put on a show myself. Any kind of professional recognition has eluded me so far – I’ve had nothing accepted by the BBC, and haven’t progressed in any competitions as yet. The self-belief I have – that I’m not deluding myself like some wannabe X-Factor contestant – comes from reactions I’ve had from fellow writers and from audiences both live and on the web.
But I knew that my name wasn’t going to appear on that list tonight.
Success seems to only happen for me when I don’t expect it. The jobs I really want are never the j0bs I get, and…
OK, I’m going to stop there. Self-pity isn’t an attractive quality, and I’m old enough and wise enough to recognise when the few beers I’ve had while waiting for tonight’s results are starting to have their rotten, negative effect.
I certainly learned a lot from the experience. My next script will be better. The show is coming on well, and there’ll be a new blog over the weekend with news of its progress.
In the meantime, I should probably be glad that I can concentrate 100% on the show in July, with no sitcom-writing distractions.
And I suppose I should be proud of the fact that, rather than waiting for someone else to tell me I’m good enough, I’m putting myself in the spotlight and submitting myself to the scrutiny of a live, paying audience. Which, though I say so myself, takes balls.
Hey, who knows! Maybe that’s my route to success.
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Getting It Together
This week is my last week of pulling ideas together to make a coherent script for the live show on July 19th. By the end of this week, I hope to have a script that runs over 50 minutes, and that has plenty going on to keep an audience entertained and laughing. I’m getting there.
At the moment, I have a mish-mash of ideas and script that simply isn’t detailed or funny enough to form the final piece. I’m not stressing about it not being funny enough – more ideas will come from the script read-throughs – my main aim at the moment is to get a workable structure to the piece so that there is enough going on, and the piece holds together in a logical and coherent manner.
It’s really important that I get any big set-pieces sorted out in the next week, because I’m going to need clearance for any pieces of commercial music that I might need to use. At the moment, the only piece of music I’m using is royalty-free, so there are no issues to consider there, but I may need to use the themes from Top Gear and James Bond. It’s difficult to do an entire show without any commercial music at all.
Props-wise so far I need a specially-printed T-shirt, a period costume, two tables and a hostess trolley. Oh, and a pair of bespoke comedy glasses that I’ll need to make myself.
I’ll also be performing a rap, which is written, and which I’ve been busy learning, both in the car and at home. To make it as funny as possible, I need to also learn a dance routine to do while rapping, but there is one drawback to that – the rap is pretty full-on, with very few spaces for taking breaths, so any vigorous moving about leaves me out of breath and unable to rap! So basically, I also need to get fit before opening night too. Talk about suffering for your art!
There are quite a lot of lyrics to learn for the rap, which is why I’ve started early. I will have to know it back-to-front, because the pace of it is such that if I hesitate on any line, I could lose my place and screw up the whole thing. I might see if there’s a stand-up slot I can practice it in before the big night.
So – it’s writing week! Lots to do – and more updates later in the week.
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In the Tradition of Tupac and Biggins.
I’m writing a rap.
It’s for the show I’m putting together in July, and is going to be performed in character. By me.
The thing is, it’s rather long. And complicated. And I need to learn it. By July.
Now that’s quite a while, but having written it and attempted to perform it while reading it off a sheet of paper, I now realise what a gargantuan task I’ve set myself.
The rap lasts for three and a half minutes and includes within it three ‘lists’, in a similar tradition to the Beloved song ‘Hello’. Each list is different, which means a lot of learning. Plus the rap is quite fast, so there’s not much thinking time.
Now this would be enough of a challenge, but I also need to perform a silly dance routine at the same time. Which is actually more difficult than learning the lyrics, despite it being about as complicated as one of Pan’s People’s routines on an off-day.
So, I need a strategy, which is as follows:
1. Record the music – with me rapping the lyrics – onto a CD, and play it in my car.
2. Repeat endlessly. (I have two-hours of commuting time per weekday.)
3. Once the lyrics are successfully embedded, learn the dance.
It can’t fail. Although I might actually drive myself insane in the process. And I will have to remember to stop the CD from playing should I need to give a lift to someone. Although avoiding the embarrassment of other people hearing it might be a little pointless considering I’M GOING TO BE PERFORMING IT LIVE ON STAGE.
Add to that the small matter of remembering the script for the rest of the show, and you can see the challenge ahead. Which I would normally describe as being a pant-wettingly terrifying prospect, except for one thing:
I’m loving every moment 🙂
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