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Do you think Jam is funny?

Started by magval, May 01, 2020, 09:33:20 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

GoblinAhFuckScary

Had a great ride listening to all of Blue Jam whilst cooking over a lockdown week. Realised I'd become deeply embarrassed to have it on speakers in the presence of housemates at certain points.

Genuinely I think it's Morris' best work? I think, however, in my circle of friends, and I suppose personally, some of it is barely defensible in certain topics it makes comedy out of (a few rape jokes and similar no-go).

Actually I thought a lot about when the humour punches down a bit. I like to tell myself those bits were written by Graham Linehan.

M-CORP

That's interesting as apparently Linehan had that problem with the TV version of Blue Jam, and possibly the main radio show by extension...

'You've said that you don't particularly like writing very dark stuff, yet you contributed to Jam, which has got to be amongst the darkest comedy of the last ten years...?
Jam wouldn't be my favourite thing of Chris's, and it was the one where I didn't really feel like we were contributing a lot. Its mood was so grim that I just found it difficult to join in. I think that Chris [Morris] was just interested in tying people in moral knots – giving them a moral problem and then just twisting it so they have to do something awful to get out of the first moral problem. Although this is a secondary impulse for him, he's also interested in pushing buttons that haven't been pushed in comedy in people; making them laugh in a way that they're not used to.'

https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-den-of-geek-interview-graham-linehan/

GoblinAhFuckScary

Quote from: M-CORP on May 07, 2020, 07:29:46 PM
That's interesting as apparently Linehan had that problem with the TV version of Blue Jam, and possibly the main radio show by extension...

'You've said that you don't particularly like writing very dark stuff, yet you contributed to Jam, which has got to be amongst the darkest comedy of the last ten years...?
Jam wouldn't be my favourite thing of Chris's, and it was the one where I didn't really feel like we were contributing a lot. Its mood was so grim that I just found it difficult to join in. I think that Chris [Morris] was just interested in tying people in moral knots – giving them a moral problem and then just twisting it so they have to do something awful to get out of the first moral problem. Although this is a secondary impulse for him, he's also interested in pushing buttons that haven't been pushed in comedy in people; making them laugh in a way that they're not used to.'

https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-den-of-geek-interview-graham-linehan/


That is interesting. I'd be keen to know what (if little) he contributed to specifically at all then.

M-CORP

According to the Disgusting Bliss biography of Chris Morris, Linehan and his writing partner Arthur Matthews contributed, amongst some other sketches, the scene in episode 6 of the TV series with the security guard trying to warn people about an empty lift shaft.

Shaky

Quote from: M-CORP on May 07, 2020, 09:36:53 PM
According to the Disgusting Bliss biography of Chris Morris, Linehan and his writing partner Arthur Matthews contributed, amongst some other sketches, the scene in episode 6 of the TV series with the security guard trying to warn people about an empty lift shaft.

See, I quite liked that. One of the very rare new pieces in the show and something which actually made proper use of the format change.

Clownbaby

#35
I love Blue Jam and Jam but they don't make me laugh at all. I think they're clever and strange and uncannily specific and this gets an ''oooh love it'' out of me but not an actual laugh
It's been clear for such a long time that Graham Linehan doesn't have much integrity at all and backpedals on past decisions constantly so who the fuck really knows how much he did contribute and how much he didn't. He's the JK Rowling of 90s to 2000s comedy



"That just about sez it, now here's a man who gets turned on by cold porcelain and the smell of harpic and now he wants to murder Paul!"

A lot of satire is really on the nose nowadays and I love how Blue Jam was sort of open to interpretation a lot of the time, like listening to a song where the artist gives you the raw material but you have to do some of the heavy lifting yourself, putting it together and deciding exactly what it means to you.

I'll have to give it a relisten, but yeah, I thought it was funny. I can remember I was depressed at the time and it was the only thing that'd make me laugh so I'd stay up until silly o'clock hiding under my bedsheets, listening on a ghettoblaster, stifling my giggles so I didn't wake my mam and dad.

I hear the fears that it may have become a victim of that whole edgelord/dark comedy phase, looking back, that it might seem dated, but I'm guessing not. It was so confident in it's tone, even when it was pushing the "dark" a little too far, it was very knowing in it's impishness.

rue the polywhirl

I just random-watched episode 3 and can definitely say Jam is still really funny. From the very first line of the opening monologue to the sketch and throughout pretty much. The only issue really are the choice of video effects, quite a few of which have aged very badly and no longer enhance the comedy or atmosphere and quite often detract from it. The doctor sketch because of the way it was filmed was probably not quite as effective as it should have been. There's still loads that held up really well though, like The TV lizards sketch. More nightmarish than laugh out loud but still good and I loved Eldon's increasingly histrionic performance and I did laugh when he drops to the floor from rage and the wife starts beating him up in the last seconds of sketch. The wordless abortion clinic skit - Very very funny. The shop robber with a gun in his chest - very visceral, still shocking. The competitive parents sabotaging other children's school places sketch I think is substantively the funniest in the whole episode. Loads of great lines and good reveals with the t-shirts and them chopping their son's finger off. "If they don't give him a place now I will be f*@#ing livid".

magval

Is there anywhere to find the higher quality Blue Jam downloads from the last page in one place? The individual downloads just won't play ball on my computer.

NoSleep

Probably not. Sign up for a free MEGA account, download them direct to your own account and they will appear in your MEGA folder on your desktop.

sambwel

Quote from: magval on May 11, 2020, 09:35:57 AM
Is there anywhere to find the higher quality Blue Jam downloads from the last page in one place? The individual downloads just won't play ball on my computer.
Try jDownloader. You can just copy all those links as a single block of text and let it do the work for you - it'll detect them, add them to a queue, and you just have to hit the start button. Shouldn't even need a mega account.

magval

Quote from: sambwel on May 11, 2020, 04:20:19 PM
Try jDownloader. You can just copy all those links as a single block of text and let it do the work for you - it'll detect them, add them to a queue, and you just have to hit the start button. Shouldn't even need a mega account.

This is running now and seems to be working perfectly, many thanks

Clownbaby

Quote from: flotemysost on May 04, 2020, 12:01:04 AM
Some of it did seem bit off-puttingly 'oohh daarrkk/LOLRANDOM' at the time as well - the tiny coffins and Mr Lizard never really did anything for me, although I know lots of people love those.

Agree. The lizard sketch leaves me cold every time.

The Gush is hilarious to me purely because of how Chris Morris says ''big sexy twat''. Beautiful.

BJBMK2

Quote from: Clownbaby on May 15, 2020, 07:40:07 PM
Agree. The lizard sketch leaves me cold every time.

The Gush is hilarious to me purely because of how Chris Morris says ''big sexy twat''. Beautiful.

Obvious Things You've Only Just Realised...I never realised he actually says "twat" there. But come to think of it, I don't know what I thought he said beforehand...

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

"Mr Lizard."
"Fuckin' nincompoop!"

Thursday

Does anyone else keep reading this thread title in an angry tone. like "Oh you think Jam is FUNNY do you?!?!"


thenoise

Quote from: Thursday on May 19, 2020, 08:45:31 AM
Does anyone else keep reading this thread title in an angry tone. like "Oh you think Jam is FUNNY do you?!?!"

It's a pathetic amount of funny!

the

You could raise more laughs by copying dogs

MrFenandes

Watched it when I was 15 and had never so weirded-out by something. Turned it off mid-episode, but it stayed with me all week and I ended up tuning in the following week and it started to grow on me. Same thing with Brasseye, turned an episode off in "disgust" but it just hung around with me, and I had to revisit it. So Chris Morris quite literally pushed boundaries for me :)

Also I really loved DV stuff back then, 28 days later and Adam and Joe's cheaper sketches, so for me the visuals have a lot of character of the era. I saw it way, way before I even heard of Blue Jam too, so perhaps that's also a big swayer of influence.

paddy72

#50
I still think Blue Jam is Morris' best work - it's a masterpiece of strangeness in its original audio format. The woozy soundtrack only adds to that vibe.

The first episode I listened to as it went out on the radio started with the sketch about a guy (voiced by Morris) supercharging Stephen Hawking's wheelchair, and I was hooked from there. 'Fackin' jumped up little spider'

I loved many of the sketches already mentioned in this thread, but also nominate the parents with a zombie child 'One little zombie and everyone goes doolally', and - one of my absolute favourites - Unnecessary Operations.



I bought the Jam DVD when it came out, but it doesn't come close to the original. The concept just works much more effectively when it's placed in your head.


I recently re-watched it after many years. Some of it makes me kaugh (ex: tv lizards, elevator shaft,tiny hoover.)
Some moves me/feels relatable(ex:suicide with an escape clause, living outside, intros, dr knee,men kissing.)
Some of it grosses me out but I can justify the atmosphere (baby boiler, sex for houses,the gush.)
Some of it genuinely upsets me and feels brimming with a bizarre sort of hate that I'd have not included in the show
(ex:Ryan, the breast exam arrest, little girl balls, I only r@p3d her.)

I much prefer the radio show.

Shaky

The lack of original sketches really annoys me. I could understand a few repeated bits and pieces but it's around 80% recycled, complete with the radio audio plonked on top. Missed opportunity.

buttgammon

Although I like it enough that the text under my avatar is a fairly obscure Jam reference, I'm still not entirely convinced that it's funny. There are certainly funny moments, particularly sillier bits like little hoover, Lovin' You, Kilroy losing his mind etc, but as a whole it's very hit and miss for me and I will only really laugh at it if I'm in the right mood. Some of it (anything about rape or cancer) makes me uncomfortable in a bad way and this doesn't help. Part of this is clouded by the fact that 'oooooh, dark' stuff hasn't aged well in my opinion and watching it at the time would have been a very different experience, so I'm reluctant to judge the quality of the programme based on my own feelings.

Blue Jam, on the other hand, is one of my favourite comedy things and is consistently very funny, often in very small and specific things like a turn of phrase in the monologues or David Cann's deadpan delivery in the doctor sketches. There's an attention to detail that doesn't translate to the TV version.

Noodle Lizard

I never found it funny, or at least not in the sense that it would ever make me laugh. The outright "gags" are never its strong suit, it's more interesting than that. That's not to say many of the concepts aren't funny, like the idea of a suicidal man jumping repeatedly from a low height in case he changed his mind, but it's more of a meditative kind of absurdity for me.

I don't know if it was Morris himself who intimated that it was targeted towards people suffering from insomnia or coming down after a night out, but that makes perfect sense. Perhaps more than anything else of its caliber, it seems designed to be found without much explanation or foreknowledge, and making it too obviously "funny" would be meeting its prospective audience on a level which would negate that intention. It's not as if Morris et al. don't know how to make you laugh if they want to.

kowalski

I can't imagine that Morris ever intended Jam to be funny. If fans classify it as comedy, it's for lack of a better term. It has the general form of a sketch comedy show, and the individual sketches have recognizably comedic structures (absurd premises developed by persistent surprise escalations), but comedy is only a kind of mask for what Jam actually is.

I would say that Morris wanted Jam to feel like a nightmare. Not just to retell the events of a nightmare, but to make the audience feel what one feels during a nightmare. Often, in nightmares, familiar and comforting parts of waking life often appear as distorted and upsetting mockeries of themselves. The humorous elements of Jam are, I think, there to mock the comfort viewers normally take in comedy. Morris makes the sketches a little bit reminiscent of comedy in order to make it seem like the show itself is making fun of you for being disturbed by what's happening in the sketches.

Jam is to comedy what predators are to camouflage. It is, by design, a horrific, uncomfortable, and confrontational show, packaged as sketch comedy in order to make the experience more disconcerting for the viewer.

GoblinAhFuckScary

it's funny because as i get older i definitely get more sensitive to Certain Things but i find jam so much funnier now

guess i take myself a whole lot less seriously

bgmnts

#58
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