I'd forgotten that beauty...surprising given my 15 year old 'interest' in the sublimely talented Francois Pascal... please log in to view this image Even she couldn't make me watch that **** show...but she featured on my 'teenage hit list'. I never established whether I featured on hers.
I watched JoJo Rabbit a while back. The script hung around for a while before it was made. Not an easy sell as an idea, but a bloody good film, which handles the subject matter in an interesting and affecting manner.
That's the massive difference. Heil Honey seems to have been the only idea that they had. Just came up with the concept and thought it was enough. Really, really wrong.
I pretty much wanted to nail him, too! No matter that he'd been dead for over 100 years...teenage hormones, don't you know?
I don't believe that Love Thy Neighbour as a show was racist - The Character 'Eddie' was a horrible bigot and a racist without question, but the show revolved around the fact that Bill his black neighbour was more intelligent and always came out on top, whilst in the background the wives were proving that a mixed society was possible. The language in the show is appalling and that added to the fact that it wasn't funny are reasons that it should be avoided. But ITV liked the premise so much that they virtually remade the programme as Never The Twain in the 80s (?) but instead of the colour of skin they used the class system pitching working class v Upper class with the children this time proving that people of different classes can get along. Mind your language took racial stereotyping to levels never previously reached and along with above shows was further proof that ITV did not do sitcom well.
I made that bloke up as a joke, but there really is an artist called Francois Pascal! https://francois-pascal.com/univers/
This is probably a large part of the picture. If you're not laughing, it can be uncomfortable at best and insulting and demeaning at worst. My favourite films are made by Mel Brooks. You'd probably struggle to sell the scripts of Blazing Saddles and The Producers today, as comedies about racism, but when acted by Gene Wilder and all of the other cast members, you can see that laughing at the issue can be a force for good and unity. Senses of taste and humour are deeply personal. I think that the Brotherhood Week scene from The Wanderers is ****ing brilliant and shows the stupidity and futility of racism and how easily it can escalate, in a scene that lasts just a few minutes and (to me) is very funny as well, others may very well not find it so... - PLEASE DO NOT WATCH THIS SCENE IF THE USE OF RACIST LANGUAGE OFFENDS YOU - I never thought Love Thy Neighbour to be funny or smart enough to carry the burden of the subject matter. It didn't help that the main characters were fairly young. My grandparents generation thought like and some of them spoke like Alf Garnett, my parents didn't, nor did my mates' parents. Hearing it come from a younger generation was definitely a problem for me when it was screened.
I think watching it some years later (rather than at the time) and now analysing it with a 21st century perspective, I would agree. The white supremacist is shown to be an idiot and comes out on the wrong end of things more often than not. But I’m not sure that was the joke at the time; ridiculing the black family - or attempting to - was probably seen as the joke in that particular show. But comedy has often been about laughing uncomfortably at the fool whose prejudices create many opportunities for him to finish up with egg on his face, whether he’s racist, sexist, snobbish or whatever - and in Basil Fawlty’s case, all of those things. That’s why I don’t understand the desire to ban the shows and expunge them from history. The bigot usually gets their comeuppance.
But Johnny Speight missed a trick. In real life, Alf's son in law, Tony Booth, the scouse git, had a daughter (Cherie Booth) who married a politician who became Prime Minister (Tony Blair) . That would have made an immense story line. Truth is often stranger than fiction.
The late great Marty Feldman stated that comedy is about ridiculing a minority. That includes, oneself, a religion, mother-in-laws, a race, wives, men, women, a football team, terrorists, a disability, politics whatever. Wokies will disagree, that is their prerogative. I agree with Marty.
Mind your language was great, needed a Muslim prostitute and Islamic Terrorist but Mary Whitehouse, aka establishment would have objected. With love thy neighbour, The fact that Eddie was made to look an idiot was wonderful but it could have been funnier.
Indeed, the two funniest sketches I have ever seen both feature one of our own, Peter Cook, the one legged Tarzan, which could be considered taking the mickey out of the disabled and the corrupt Judge, attacking the establishment.
Indeed, the two funniest sketches I have ever seen both feature one of our own, Peter Cook, the one legged Tarzan, which could be considered taking the mickey out of the disabled and the corrupt Judge, attacking the establishment.
Looking at these programmes through a modern perspective isn't helpful. Of course they are horrible to us, and those programmes like 'it was ok in the 70s' or whatever it's called do not help. No of course it wasn't right then either, but that is to omit a gigantic amount of context about when they were made and what was going on relative to the standards of the time. I believe that a programme like Love Thy Neighbour was a necessary stepping stone because it put black faces on TV, and black faces that weren't servants or in some way inferior. The black guy gave as good as, and often more than, he got. Audiences saw this and it helped change attitudes. We didn't go straight from outright racism to the situation we have today, there needed to be progression. Similarly It Ain't Half Hot Mum is simply written off by screaming 'blackface', and you can't argue that it would be better if the bearer hadn't been a white guy in makeup*. *But* it also gave the white audience an asian guy to look at who generally got the better of the white characters, and that hadn't really been seen. Again it's a stepping stone. So before these things are simply written off and laughed at - completely out of context - please consider what was going on at the time and give them some credit. * who incidentally grew up in India, worked in the Indian Civil Service and spoke fluent Urdu
The "court jesters" of yore were able to say things in jest about their ruling classes, that if uttered by the common/noble man would usually induce a nasty end for the speaker. That is a tradition, and purpose, that comedy has long had in the UK. And long may it continue (more so given the "offended" of today can only have "pants down" dreams of having the powers above) .
Comedy is about punching up, not down For the best example, look at Father Ted: an Irish sitcom mocking the Catholic Church, which is anything but a minority in Ireland, which is the best non-satire example of punching up there is As opposed to Graham Linehan's current career choice of losing his **** so badly that one joke in The IT Crowd drew comment that he's gone full JK Rowling
