The Policing of Humour
Moral Maze
BBC
4.4 • 623 Ratings
🗓️ 20 June 2019
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Comedy is a serious business, as Jo Brand discovered when she made a joke about throwing battery acid at politicians. The police have now dropped their investigation into her and she has not been sacked by the BBC – unlike Danny Baker after his apparently ‘racist’ tweet last month. Guardians of free speech worry about the policing of humour and the erosion of the right to offend. Yet we live in politically-febrile times and a joke may provoke more than mere amusement or even offence. Jokes can be deemed to trivialise political violence, encourage hatred and excuse rape. With that in mind, do comedians have a social responsibility to rein themselves in, even if they believe they’re ‘punching up’, not ‘punching down’? Or should they follow their comedic instinct when it’s telling them to let rip? After all, humour is by nature subversive and, from Martin Luther to Mock The Week, it has always been an important part of political discourse. Beyond politics, where should we draw the line on funny lines? It could be argued that a joke becomes unacceptable when it dehumanises minorities or incites violence. Yet aren’t these criteria themselves subjective? Context and tone are everything in comedy but they’re fiendishly difficult to define. Does it matter that the intent behind a gag is benign if the consequences of telling it are harmful?
Producer: Dan Tierney
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a program from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:04.6 | Good evening. The programme was called Heresy and promised a challenge to received wisdom. |
| 0:09.3 | We'll gate crash the party of lazy thinking, it boasted. |
| 0:12.8 | In fact, its critics say, it was the usual gang of smug far-left comics with irritating accents, |
| 0:18.3 | being snide about everybody who doesn't share their right on agenda, |
| 0:21.4 | particularly politicians, who we all know, don't we, are evil, corrupt or plain stupid. |
| 0:26.7 | Nigel Farage is one of their pantomime villains, and in one of the high points of radio comedy, |
| 0:31.3 | the veteran comedian Joe Brand fantasised about throwing battery acid over him. |
| 0:36.6 | The BBC, in my experience, almost painfully |
| 0:38.8 | scrupulous about balance in its news, and whose motto, incidentally, is nation shall speak |
| 0:43.7 | peace unto nation. Initially, saw nothing wrong with this, a joke, you see, not to be taken |
| 0:48.0 | seriously. Not everybody in a world where an MP has been murdered, people mutilated and |
| 0:53.1 | disfigured in acid attacks, |
| 0:54.5 | saw it that way, and the BBC eventually cut it out of the repeat. |
| 0:58.4 | OK, humour is subjective. The best of it is often also subversive. |
| 1:03.1 | If we want a bracing public and political discourse, not to mention something meaty to laughter, |
| 1:08.1 | we have to have the freedom to offend. |
| 1:10.7 | But actually, for all the talk about being edgy, there are rules. |
| 1:14.3 | It does seem pretty selective. |
| 1:16.2 | If Joe Brand had said the same about Muslim, say, or the transgendered, |
| 1:19.6 | or maybe said something mildly complimentary about Donald Trump, |
| 1:22.8 | there are many who reckon she'd be out on the pavement to Port and Place |
... |
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