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RIP Norm Macdonald

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  • DCI Harry Batt
    replied
    I don't subscribe to the "in jest" defence, tbh. But even so, if someone has "moved on" (or "become less bigoted" you might say), they can acknowledge that.

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  • WOM
    replied
    I couldn't agree less about 'holding comedians to account'. Making someone apologize for something said 20...25...35 years ago - in jest (because let's not lose sight of what their job is) - is ludicrous.

    And this whole 'you can't say it was different then'; why not? 1996* to today is as distant as 1960 was to 1985. Think about how differently people in those two years would have approached, say, race and gender. To examine a 1996 joke through a 2021 lens is folly.

    None of the above is meant to imply that nobody was hurt or offended by the joke in 1996. Not at all, and the disregarded letters from transgendered people are clear evidence of that. But let's also not pretend that comedians can't evolve over 25 years, whether through true enlightenment or simply due to their innate ability to 'read the room'.

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  • Patrick Thistle
    replied
    In comedy it's harder to separate the art from the artists.

    Norm's comments about Bill Cosby start with the question "Do you think his legacy is ruined?" Norm clearly thinks it is. I've gone off Ellen DeGeneres since the news about how she treated people came out.

    Having said that some of the lines from Norm's sitcom are still funny (to me). E.g. "Why do I need a reading lamp in the living room? I don't have a toilet in there!"

    Sometimes I think more should be done to hold comedians to account. One of the most excruciating things I've watched was Frank Skinner apologising to Matthew Kelly for making jokes about Kelly being a paedophile. You could tell Kelly hated him for what he had done.

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  • Hot Pepsi
    replied
    My favorite current comedians are Patton Oswalt, Gary Gulman, Eddie Izzard, Pete Holmes, Mike Birbiglia, John Mulaney, James Acaster, Dylan Moran, Jim Gaffigan, Jaboukie Young-White, Aisling Bea, Taylor Tomlinson, Neal Brennan, Ron Funches, Ronny Chieng, Hasan Minaj, Nate Bargatze, Ali Wong, Trevor Noah, and a few others.

    Louie CK was the best, but FTG.

    Bo Burnham is a genius, but comes off as kind of a dick.

    Seinfeld’s last special was excellent. I don’t share his opinions on big important things like Palestine, but am right with him on trivial stuff like restaurants.
    Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 16-09-2021, 00:17.

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  • delicatemoth
    replied
    It's not just that it was OK, it's that it was so unremarkable that it went unremarked and so you could watch something having no idea that this would slap you in the face. This happened to me recently watching 1980s hit comedy Crocodile Dundee. I'm not sure things have changed that much though? Certainly there seem to be a fair number of comedians pleading that if they can't talk shit about minorities then their entire routines are fucked, which doesn't come across the way they probably think it does. As my mother-in-law said, while putting me in jail for being English.

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  • Incandenza
    replied
    Originally posted by delicatemoth View Post
    Go on then! I remember liking Steven Wright and Pee Wee Herman as well as Hicks, I like absurd/surreal stuff. The only 'big' comedian I've seen live is Dylan Moran, I remember him being very enjoyable but can't recall a word.
    If you like Steven Wright, give Mitch Hedberg (RIP) a chance.



    Of newer comedians, I really like Rose Matafeo.

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  • Incandenza
    replied
    Originally posted by delicatemoth View Post

    Well fuck, that wasn't my intention at all. My whole point was about how Normalised such hate is, that I could see a whole bunch of people (not just here, also people I follow on Twitter) talking about what a great comedian he was and then I look him up and find that line. He's not exceptional, and the fact that SNL could ignore people protesting about that, but later sack him cos one of his bosses was pals with OJ Simpson, illustrates a far more troubling fact than any of his lines.

    "Times were different" is nearly always a bad argument though, it relies on erasing the people who were the brunt and the people who were decent enough not to buy into it.
    I'm not saying "times were different" about the 90s as an excuse, but just an observation of how much awful stuff was tolerated in the mainstream and thought to be funny back then. It was like people realized that racist and some misogynistic "humor" was not acceptable anymore, but making fun of trans people was perfectly okay. Pretty much the entire plot of Ace Ventura relies on how gross it is that a woman has a penis. And there really hasn't been any sort of reckoning of that.

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  • delicatemoth
    replied
    Uuuurgh, I missed that. Already knew Seinfeld was a prick though, much as I liked the sitcom of that name. He's the one who complained about audiences not finding him funny any more "not having a sense of humour", basically the Spinal Tap "they were still booing him when we were playing" line in real life.

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  • Patrick Thistle
    replied
    It's not that I wish I hadn't read it, I wish he hadn't said it. I felt the same way when I read about Jerry Seinfeld going to that combat experience camp in Israel and making jokes about bombing on stage. It taints the stuff that I've always found funny.

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  • delicatemoth
    replied
    Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post
    delicatemoth I hadn't seen that "joke" of his until you posted it and it's sullied my memory of him. I felt an 'ah shit that's really disapponting' moment reading it. I haven't found anything online where he distances himself from it, which I think people do need to say before the "times were different then" defence gets rolled out.
    Well fuck, that wasn't my intention at all. My whole point was about how Normalised such hate is, that I could see a whole bunch of people (not just here, also people I follow on Twitter) talking about what a great comedian he was and then I look him up and find that line. He's not exceptional, and the fact that SNL could ignore people protesting about that, but later sack him cos one of his bosses was pals with OJ Simpson, illustrates a far more troubling fact than any of his lines.

    "Times were different" is nearly always a bad argument though, it relies on erasing the people who were the brunt and the people who were decent enough not to buy into it.

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  • delicatemoth
    replied
    That's really informative about SNL, thanks. I've loathed it ever since I became aware of it, and your description helps me understand why - it's like a chat show. Ever since I was a kid I hated watching smug men banter with each other and could not understand why anyone would want to watch them do so.

    Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
    As a cis person, I can recommend some stand-ups that you should not ignore or bin, I think.
    Go on then! I remember liking Steven Wright and Pee Wee Herman as well as Hicks, I like absurd/surreal stuff. The only 'big' comedian I've seen live is Dylan Moran, I remember him being very enjoyable but can't recall a word.

    I still can't get over Norm's comments on Caitlyn Jenner though. I mean, surely a comedian could work up a routine about how people with money cling to it so hard they'll cleave to a political faction that thinks they're subhuman? But no, he went with jokes about her appearance.

    Leave a comment:


  • WOM
    replied
    With no disrespect at all to dm's feelings and opinion, I don't think a comedian's poorest attempts at humour should define their life, or their career for that matter. Norm had his fair share of shitty jokes, but I think it would be a willful misreading to think they came from a place of malice.

    Leave a comment:


  • Patrick Thistle
    replied
    delicatemoth I hadn't seen that "joke" of his until you posted it and it's sullied my memory of him. I felt an 'ah shit that's really disapponting' moment reading it. I haven't found anything online where he distances himself from it, which I think people do need to say before the "times were different then" defence gets rolled out.

    Leave a comment:


  • Hot Pepsi
    replied
    I can see that.

    It might be worth knowing that most of the time, what gets on the air at SNL is what the studio audience laughs at* the most out of the much larger pool of dress-rehearsal sketches and its not usually the stuff that the cast and writers like the most.

    It's a notoriously shitty audience of "tourists" (everyone hates a tourist, but we're all tourists eventually) who are mostly interested in seeing classic characters, walk-ons from famous people and impersonations of famous people in the news. The stuff that actually holds up many years later and is remembered fondly is very often stuff that was on in the second half of the show and not all that well-received at the time.

    He knew he wouldn't be as popular as Dennis Miller doing that job, so his schtick was basically saying "fuck you" to the live audience and getting uncomfortable laughs. He was also saying fuck you to NBC. Basically, he didn't really want to be there but was going to light a fire on the way out. It was uncomfortable watching it at the time. Seth Myers and Amy Poehler picked up a lot of his same delivery, but without so much antagonism or repressed anger.

    I don't know if that's complicated or cheap, but it was very different at the time, so I at least had to respect him for not playing it safe.
    Now, as you say, it's just cliche. "Edgy," "politically incorrect," "not for everyone," etc is often just code for "I'm an asshole who says ignorant things instead of actually doing comedy."

    As a cis person, I can recommend some stand-ups that you should not ignore or bin, I think. Or at least, they aren't trying to pass off being a dick as comedy. You might not think they're funny.



    * There are examples when Loren Michaels insists on airing a sketch that he thinks is funny even if the audience doesn't get it. Admirable.

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  • delicatemoth
    replied
    I know about 'going to dark places' and offensive comedy, I used to like Bill Hicks and I like It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Oglaf and Perry Bible Fellowship. But there's a thing about professional comedy, and in particular professional comedians.

    If, as happened last night, some schmuck I've never heard of dies, and a load of people are going "oh, he was a great comedian", I can go and do a web search with the search terms "[name] transphobia", and be 95% certain something will come up. It's usually an attempt at an actual joke rather than Norm's blank statement of hate, mind. Often to do with how hilariously ugly trans people are, compared to pricks with a microphone. Oh, Norm did those as well, it turns out. Versatile. "The joke was about how everyone was saying Caitlyn Jenner is beautiful, but she’s not really beautiful. In that joke, I went to great lengths to say you should love Caitlyn Jenner and accept her, but you don’t have to pretend she’s beautiful. There’s no reason to do that." No-one has to love Caitlyn Jenner, she's appalling. A man making a joke about a woman being ugly though, that's groundbreaking comedy. More money for Norm.

    One consequence of this is that I generally dislike comedy - particularly stand-up - as a form. If a cis person recommends a comedian to me I will quietly bin it and ignore them. This also applies to comedy films, especially those from the 80s and 90s. They come with an assumed 'Enter At Your Own Risk' sign. These fuckers can't stay away, they can't help themselves.

    What really struck me, though, was that while I was looking him up I also came across his 'Woody Allen is dating again' joke. He described how the audience projected "pure, crazy hate" at him when he told it. Because he could make a comment about how a 21-year old hate-murder victim and his friends deserved it, and no-one would blink, but if he picks on Woody Allen... People are terrible and that's not and wasn't Norm MacDonald's fault, but please don't tell me he was trying to hold up a mirror to society's hatred of trans people or doing some complicated character comedy, cos he wasn't. He was getting a cheap laugh out of it, for profit.

    I mentioned It's Always Sunny. Imo, comedians should look at this programme, which is about a group of truly horrible people being horrible to each other and everyone else they encounter, and how it handles potentially sensitive and obnoxious material. Because it does it really well.

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  • WOM
    replied
    Almost all of Norm's stuff was 'in character' to a large degree. It wasn't a character that had a name or a funny voice, but it was always earnestly obtuse. Watch him on any of the 'talk show' clips, especially Conan, and he's just out there doing one long bit. There's no level of 'sincere Norm' in there, but that's not the point of what he does.

    Watch the Bob Saget roast where he does his entire spot ''clean' instead of the accepted 'as filthy as you want'. It's clearly missing the audience, but he doubles down on it and they finally figure out what he's doing.

    If you watch Mitch Hedberg's early stuff, you hear the audience just not getting his thing. His structures were so different, they didn't recognize the beats. But then they start figuring out the cadence and start laughing more.

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  • Patrick Thistle
    replied
    Later in the Slate piece the interviewer questions his actions after a previous interview when he followed up to say that some stuff he said was "in character".

    He also came across as ambivalent about Trump in that piece. Although his comment about right wingers being more entertaining may have had something to it.

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  • Hot Pepsi
    replied
    Yeah, that's not right.

    I think the point of that joke is that it's just beyond dark and awful. It doesn't make as much sense in print.

    A big part of his SNL schtick was to play a guy who delivered very dark and mean comments with an upbeat delivery. That was the joke. It wore a bit thin after a while. I don't know how much of that was his real personality. I suspect not much. Because somebody like that couldn't function in society. But it wasn't all an act. Edit: But as PT's post notes, he did care about how people interpreted what he said.

    Obviously, crossdresser is not ok, but that wasn't widely understood then and the prevalence of anti-trans violence wasn't well known then (or now). The gender identity of the victims doesn't really matter to the "joke" either.

    This is one of the reasons why SNL has tried - and needs to keep trying - to diversify its writing room. If it's all just white guys from Harvard Lampoon and drunk improv people from Chicago, they're less likely to know how something like that would be received by the broader audience.
    Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 15-09-2021, 16:23.

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  • Patrick Thistle
    replied
    He was asked by Slate about jokes he made about Caitlyn Jenner

    I think the ambivalence had more to do with jokes you’ve made about transgender people.

    Yeah, the other thing was a joke about Caitlyn Jenner which, as a matter of fact, was a joke I’d deliberately left out of the Netflix special. It wasn’t much of a joke really, and it’s weird when you have to explain jokes that aren’t that funny. The joke was about how everyone was saying Caitlyn Jenner is beautiful, but she’s not really beautiful. In that joke, I went to great lengths to say you should love Caitlyn Jenner and accept her, but you don’t have to pretend she’s beautiful. There’s no reason to do that. That was the entire point of the joke. It was pretty weak. So I won’t do those jokes anymore. Which is fine, because the reason I didn’t do the joke on the special is because I came to an understanding that other people came to much sooner than I did.

    Which is what?

    Which is that a lot of people are idiots. You don’t want to have a joke be misunderstood and then someone goes and beats up a trans person.

    So are you stopping telling jokes about transgender people because you want to avoid those jokes being misinterpreted or because you’ve reached the conclusion that those jokes are offensive?

    I’m worried that someone might get hurt, not offended. I know other comedians that go, “If the joke is funny, I don’t care if someone gets beat up.” I don’t care if the whole world laughs: If someone gets beat up over a joke of mine, what was the point of doing it? Really it’s my own fault if someone had ambiguity or felt any pain on behalf of my jokes. That means I didn’t communicate the joke clearly or properly.
    https://slate.com/culture/2017/06/no...x-special.html

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  • johnr
    replied
    Originally posted by RobW View Post
    I didn't know him by name, but recognised his face as Larry Sander's guest (along with Henry Winkler) when Hank's sex tape has been leaked.
    Same here. What an episode that was, one of the best in the best-ever series.

    That cross-dressing 'joke' is fucking horrible.

    Leave a comment:


  • Patrick Thistle
    replied
    He deliberately went to some dark places. On Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee he starts talking about the Bill Cosby rape allegations and the reactions of other comedians to it, and how inane they have been. He makes jokes about what they said but it was borderline.

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  • DCI Harry Batt
    replied
    Originally posted by delicatemoth View Post
    "In Nebraska, a man was sentenced for killing a female crossdresser [sic] who had accused him of rape and two of her friends. Excuse me if this sounds harsh, but in my mind, they all deserved to die."

    Right back atcha, Norm!
    Christ, that's horrific.

    Leave a comment:


  • WOM
    replied
    Yeah, that's awful.

    Leave a comment:


  • delicatemoth
    replied
    "In Nebraska, a man was sentenced for killing a female crossdresser [sic] who had accused him of rape and two of her friends. Excuse me if this sounds harsh, but in my mind, they all deserved to die."

    Right back atcha, Norm!

    Leave a comment:


  • Snake Plissken
    replied
    From The Ringer

    I did this joke in which I showed that picture of the girl running away from napalm in Vietnam. I said, “In gossip news, Woody Allen’s dating again.” Lorne told me not to do it, and I told him he was wrong, that people would like it. Then I did it in dress rehearsal and there was this insane audience reaction that went on for two minutes: hate. I was completely wrong.
    By God, I would have loved to be in the room when he did that.

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