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'Barry' Melbourne Comedy Festival Award renamed

Started by Urinal Cake, April 16, 2019, 06:50:35 AM

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Urinal Cake

https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-16/barry-humphries-name-dropped-from-prestigious-micf-award/11018726?pfmredir=sm

QuoteSince 2000, the most outstanding show at the festival has won the Barry Award, named after Humphries — but this year the title has been renamed the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Award.

Humphries is a household name for his iconic characters Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson, but last year came under fire for saying that being transgender is "a fashion".

"How many different kinds of lavatory can you have? And it's pretty evil when it's preached to children by crazy teachers," Humphries said in an interview with The Spectator magazine.

In 2016, Humphries called gender re-assignment surgery "self mutilation".
Election on as well so this will become a political issue. Also he has various letters at the end of his name so cancelled soon?

madhair60


Urinal Cake

Legacy, mate. Like taking down the statue of Rhodes before he becomes immovable.

13 schoolyards

If he was worried about his legacy he'd have stopped giving interviews a few years back.


madhair60


Autopsy Turvey

Quote from: 13 schoolyards on April 16, 2019, 02:14:43 PM
If he was worried about his legacy he'd have stopped giving interviews a few years back.

Or, if he was worried about his legacy being dismantled by a handful of stroppy lunatic activists, he'd have  either refused to speak in public (like all straight old white men ideally should), or learned to regurgitate officially sanctioned platitudes from the 21st century hymnbook like a Catholic in Elizabethan England who doesn't want his head cut off. Barry Humphries' legacy is safe from these sanctimonious cunts.

BritishHobo

If he wants his views protected and uncontested, perhaps he could consider building a little safe space in which to whisper them.

Urinal Cake

Quote from: 13 schoolyards on April 16, 2019, 02:14:43 PM
If he was worried about his legacy he'd have stopped giving interviews a few years back.
Like Greer he likes to try and remain relevant in the public conscience. Unlike Greer he's just an entertainer and will be mostly forgotten in 50 years like Julian Entinge (who I only know of from Lenny Bruce).

Why was there an award named after someone who's still alive?

canadagoose

Can they not just keep calling it a Barry but name it after Barry Chuckle (God rest his soul)? Maybe make the award look like his face or something.

Autopsy Turvey

Quote from: BritishHobo on April 16, 2019, 06:18:21 PM
If he wants his views protected and uncontested, perhaps he could consider building a little safe space in which to whisper them.

He's not saying he wants that, nobody wants that. But it's a shame if a lifetime of high-quality outsider comedy achievement is forever tainted due to a few hastily-chosen words taken from context by the Spectator and used against him by a small band of ideological zealots, who are finding it unaccountably easy to force companies and events to crumble in fear of being called names on social media.

I'm surprised this quote hasn't been flagged up, although Walloons don't rank highly on the intersectional agenda: "I felt prejudiced against Brussels. I had a little bit of an anti-Belgium feeling. Being bossed around by the Walloons was not to my taste."

Quote from: Urinal Cake on April 16, 2019, 09:23:48 PM
Like Greer he likes to try and remain relevant in the public conscience. Unlike Greer he's just an entertainer and will be mostly forgotten in 50 years like Julian Entinge (who I only know of from Lenny Bruce).

Like Greer he is often asked his opinions on things by media outlets, who probably get an hour of erudite and interesting material but chose to focus on 20 seconds of unguarded speculation about hot-button trigger-points that he either worded badly or wasn't challenged to elucidate on. It's a good job Lenny Bruce died when he did, rather than risk living long enough to say something unfashionable and get his legacy 'cancelled' by squawking millennials.

His best quote in that Spectator article: "I don't think I'm right to pontificate. I'm really an actor."

would you say that these 'ideological zealots' and 'squawking millennials' are comparable in some sense to the character of Rick from the sitcom The Young Ones

Autopsy Turvey


Urinal Cake

Lenny Bruce much like Jesus was maligned when alive and revered when he was dead.

Bruce was pretty much fucked over at the end of his life because Christians -Catholics in particular- in the police force and judiciary took offence to what he said as a Jew about Christianity.

The problem with Humphries is that his views belong in the 1950s. The routine I was referring to is this:
Quote
Lenny Bruce
Bruce had a routine called something like "The Comic at the Palladium." It tells the story of a bad American comedian who talks his agent into booking him at the London Palladium. He starts his act at the Palladium with typical American-Vegas-style humor, and he bombs. The audience doesn't understand a word he's saying. They hate him. Desperate, the American turns vicious. He starts attacking the crowd. "I'll tell you one," he says, "Up the Irish!"

"Yea, that's right, up the Irish!" shouts a voice from the audience. "That's the funniest thing you've said all night."

"Up the Irish!" shouts the comedian again, emboldened. "Yea, I heard about the rotten deal they gave you!" and on and on, and he manages to whip the crowd into a frenzy. Fist fights break out. The place turns into a riot. The comic is yanked offstage by the Palladium booking agent.

Bruce adopts the debonair voice of an English actor as the booker lectures the comedian. The lecture ends "Face it son, you're just not funny. But there's a difference between not being funny and rearranging the architecture.

"Now, you're young. You might still have time to consider another line of work. And don't worry, we'll get you safely out of town somehow. I believe Julian Eltinge left a wig in the closet many years ago."
Like Bruce and Gadsby said You've got to know the room.

http://dna-view.com/lbruce.htm

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: canadagoose on April 17, 2019, 12:21:38 AM
Can they not just keep calling it a Barry but name it after Barry Chuckle (God rest his soul)? Maybe make the award look like his face or something.

They could just call it the Dame Edna Award instead. Everyone loves Edna, who as far as I'm aware hasn't made any transphobic comments during her lifetime.

Autopsy Turvey

Quote from: Urinal Cake on April 17, 2019, 02:10:23 AM
Lenny Bruce much like Jesus was maligned when alive and revered when he was dead.

Indeed so, I was aware that Bruce underwent the 1960s equivalent of being 'cancelled' by authoritarians. I was going to say sure, being arrested is worse than having your name removed from an award, but then remembered that a trans ex-colleague was arrested effectively for misgendering herself and charged in court with harrassment over an online squabble with a non-trans trans activist who was offended (the judge threw it out as a waste of time). So the taboos are different, but the danger of disproportionate authoritarian overreaction remains. And I'd dispute that Humphries' views "belong in the 1950s", in truth they belong in any time prior to about five years ago.