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March 28, 2024, 05:49:41 PM

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Has Chris Morris become old-fashioned?

Started by Retinend, March 10, 2019, 01:06:46 PM

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Retinend

Do any of his sketches sit unwell with the moral status quo? Asking for a friend, actually.

rasta-spouse

I watched the Jam Festival episode recently (having posted it as a choice moment on the latest TDT thread in CC) and didn't really like the cruelty, or laugh. Also on one of the music shows he uses the n word. But generally, compared to the moral vacuity of, say, something feeble like Tramadol Nights, Morris is Thomas Aquinas. The horror in TDT and BE come from someone with a moral backbone made of iron.

Shoulders?-Stomach!


buttgammon


Shaky

Quote from: rasta-spouse on March 10, 2019, 02:07:43 PM
I watched the Jam Festival episode recently (having posted it as a choice moment on the latest TDT thread in CC) and didn't really like the cruelty, or laugh. Also on one of the music shows he uses the n word. But generally, compared to the moral vacuity of, say, something feeble like Tramadol Nights, Morris is Thomas Aquinas. The horror in TDT and BE come from someone with a moral backbone made of iron.

But that's Morris lampooning Paxman et al, doing a piece about a charity event in unsuitably aggressive and over-the-top fashion. I think the satirical point still shines through even today. It's fake cruelty like, "You're wrong, and you're a grotesquely ugly freak," at the beginning of Brass Eye. Completely inappropriate and unexpected in the setting... and therefore funny.

The Fur Q bit gets a pass from me because Morris did that whole Rok TV section himself away from the rest of the cast. He's a massive fan of funk/soul/hip hop etc as well so I highly doubt he was intending it to be a Milligan, Curry n Chips type of thing.

I bet he even has black friends!!

BlodwynPig

Old fashioned doesn't equate to racist, sexist or homophobic.


the

Quote from: Retinend on March 10, 2019, 01:06:46 PMHas Chris Morris become old-fashioned?

Do any of his sketches sit unwell with the moral status quo? Asking for a friend, actually.

What are you really asking here? Whether the threshold of acceptability has receded over time to reveal now-indefensible elements of unfairness, punching down or a dodgy moral position behind his material (if present)?

And which strands of his material have you in mind? (You mention 'sketches', are you talking more about Blue Jam / Jam?)

Retinend

Brasseye has always struck me as essentially sketch-like in nature.


Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

There are a few sketches in Blue Jam that appear to be mocking transgender folk. All the ones about people replacing their genitals with those of a duck, etc. I think I started a thread about it a few years ago.

chveik

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on March 11, 2019, 06:44:05 PM
There are a few sketches in Blue Jam that appear to be mocking transgender folk. All the ones about people replacing their genitals with those of a duck, etc. I think I started a thread about it a few years ago.

I remember a sketch where the parents replace their child's genitals by those of a duck. it's a bit of a stretch to call that "mocking transgender people".

up_the_hampipe

Quote from: Shaky on March 11, 2019, 11:51:43 AM
But that's Morris lampooning Paxman et al, doing a piece about a charity event in unsuitably aggressive and over-the-top fashion. I think the satirical point still shines through even today. It's fake cruelty like, "You're wrong, and you're a grotesquely ugly freak," at the beginning of Brass Eye. Completely inappropriate and unexpected in the setting... and therefore funny.

Yeah, baffled how that can be looked at differently or fit the criteria of the thread question.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: chveik on March 11, 2019, 07:58:41 PM
I remember a sketch where the parents replace their child's genitals by those of a duck. it's a bit of a stretch to call that "mocking transgender people".
It's taking the piss out of people for having surgery to make their groins match their own self-image. If there is an analogue other than trans folk, I don't know what it is.

As noted in the relevant thread, these sketches might actually have been written by Graham Linehan.

chveik

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on March 12, 2019, 01:13:24 AM
It's taking the piss out of people for having surgery to make their groins match their own self-image. If there is an analogue other than trans folk, I don't know what it is.

As noted in the relevant thread, these sketches might actually have been written by Graham Linehan.

we don't know who wrote them, and we'll probably never know. I don't see Blue Jam as a work of satire, the point is not to mock people, it's about our imagination taking things to the extreme (in a very dark way), anyway, I only listen to Blue Jam at times of depression  (it's oddly therapeutic), I guess I'm not listening to it with a critical mind. and to be honest I don't really want to.

Endicott

I've always thought of Blue Jam / Jam as absurdity for absurdities sake. There's a tradition of that in British comedy going back decades. That duck thing never evoked trans people in my mind, anyway.

momatt

Quote from: Retinend on March 10, 2019, 01:06:46 PM
Do any of his sketches sit unwell with the moral status quo?

No, it's the children who are wrong.

Petey Pate

FWIW I recently showed some people the symptomless coma sketch from Jam and one girl in her early twenties reacted to it by saying 'this isn't allowed now is it?'.

She did find the funeral sketch funny though, so go figure.

Shit Good Nose

Basically pretty much every film and TV show made before about 2015 and pretty much every single person involved in the entertainment industry since it began up until about the same time is going to have something suspect about it somewhere when glanced at with current "more enlightened" eyes.

I've said it many many times before and I'll say it again - we are in a VERY strange world where everything is okay and nothing is okay all at the same time, and no one knows where the boundaries are because they keep shifting on an almost daily basis.


Most of you know what a dim view I take of people trying to re-write history and apply a current-day mindset.  Drives me up the fucking wall.

shh

Quote from: Petey Pate on May 09, 2019, 11:47:05 AM
FWIW I recently showed some people the symptomless coma sketch from Jam and one girl in her early twenties reacted to it by saying 'this isn't allowed now is it?'.

Odd that they would have a reaction to that sketch - surely that creepy doctor strand is all about the abuse of authority, although on the other hand there's no cheap cathartic psychologising where the viewer is led to 'understand' (and therefore condemn) his behaviour.

bgmnts

Quote from: Shit Good Nose on May 09, 2019, 12:41:29 PM
Most of you know what a dim view I take of people trying to re-write history and apply a current-day mindset.  Drives me up the fucking wall.

Yeah I remember you saying this and I think nowadays that's not on.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: shh on May 10, 2019, 09:31:16 PM
Odd that they would have a reaction to that sketch - surely that creepy doctor strand is all about the abuse of authority, although on the other hand there's no cheap cathartic psychologising where the viewer is led to 'understand' (and therefore condemn) his behaviour.
Maybe they meant that doctors aren't allowed to euthenise people.

Ferris

Does "old-fashioned" mean "offensive"? Or dated? I don't understand the criteria.

It's as offensive to Daily Mail curtain twitchers as it's always been, but it isn't at all offensive to people with a sense of humour and a bit of intelligence. I did a rematch of TDT and BE a few months ago and was amazed at how fresh and cutting the satire and sketches felt. So nah I don't reckon it's old-fashioned.

I don't want to sound like I'm having a go at you or anything, I just don't follow the point you're making.

jsgibble

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on March 12, 2019, 01:13:24 AM
It's taking the piss out of people for having surgery to make their groins match their own self-image. If there is an analogue other than trans folk, I don't know what it is.

As noted in the relevant thread, these sketches might actually have been written by Graham Linehan.

They probably are, his weird attitudes go way back.

https://twitter.com/wariotifo/status/1071477987395153922

Shaky

Most of Morris's work treads a dangerous line between making a point and just being nonsensical as fuck. There's obviously stuff in his work which is meant to shock (definitely once Jam and Blue Jam came around) but I don't sense any genuine hatred/anger/whatever directed at anyone other than politicians, the establishment, musicians etc who can take a bit of a bollocking. It's clear from his stuff and interviews with collaborators that he's always had a very acute sense of right and wrong, while still having the urge to poke a finger in the mix from time to time. I'm not sure how that's old-fashioned as it's sort of a perennial thing even when topics themselves date -see also The Goons, Python, Not The 9 O'Clock News and loads more. David Schneider's quote always holds true for me: "Chris is the boy who runs up to ring a stranger's doorbell then waits to see what happens next". That's pretty key to his work.

Having said all that, Morris's slowwwww pace and varying quality doesn't do him any favours these days and a lot of other comic minds have caught up and even overtaken him. In that sense, he has fallen behind the curve.

Barry Admin

#25
Quote from: jsgibble on May 11, 2019, 06:02:30 PM
They probably are, his weird attitudes go way back.

https://twitter.com/wariotifo/status/1071477987395153922

Not sure that's particularly weird, is it?

Pingers

The sketch in the first episode of Jam where a couple are arguing about him having had sex with someone else and he's trying to persuade his partner it meant nothing and she doesn't believe him until he says he raped her, then they make up. That sits uneasy with me now.

the

Quote from: Pingers on June 02, 2019, 12:14:10 PMThat sits uneasy with me now.

I assume you're taking the piss, unless you're suggesting that that was originally a bit of laff-along observational comedy

Petey Pate

Quote from: the on June 03, 2019, 09:58:50 AM
I assume you're taking the piss, unless you're suggesting that that was originally a bit of laff-along observational comedy

Maybe he only saw the DVD extra version with the laugh track added.

thenoise

TDT and, to some extent, Brass Eye are 'old-fashioned' in the sense that they are parodying a style of news reporting that doesn't really exist any more - or at least, isn't quite so ubiquitous. Where is the audience interaction? The twitter storms? The laid back women sitting on a brightly coloured sofa joking among themselves in between the hard hitting news headlines. Etc.

I don't think the humour is any more or less 'right-on' or offensive than it was at the time (possibly for slightly different reasons).